Speech and Thought Representation in English: A Cognitive-Functional Approach 9783110215373, 9783110205893

Table of contents :
Frontmatter
Contents
Abbreviations
Tables
Figures
Chapter 1. The need for a construction-based approach to speech and thought representation
Chapter 2. The syntagmatic structure of direct and indirect speech or thought
Chapter 3. Deixis and expressivity in direct and indirect speech or thought
Chapter 4. The grammatical semantics of direct and indirect speech or thought
Chapter 5. Distinguishing free from distancing indirect speech or thought: Person deixis
Chapter 6. Spatiotemporal deixis and expressivity in free and distancing indirect speech or thought
Chapter 7. The grammatical semantics and the pragmatics of free and distancing indirect speech or thought
Chapter 8. Subjectified forms of speech or thought representation
Chapter 9. Conclusion
Backmatter

Citation preview

Speech and Thought Representation in English

≥

Topics in English Linguistics 65

Editors

Elizabeth Closs Traugott Bernd Kortmann

Mouton de Gruyter Berlin · New York

Speech and Thought Representation in English A Cognitive-Functional Approach

by

Lieven Vandelanotte

Mouton de Gruyter Berlin · New York

Mouton de Gruyter (formerly Mouton, The Hague) is a Division of Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin.

앝 Printed on acid-free paper which falls within the guidelines 앪 of the ANSI to ensure permanence and durability.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Vandelanotte, Lieven, 1978⫺ Speech and thought representation in English : a cognitive-functional approach / by Lieven Vandelanotte. p. cm. ⫺ (Topics in English linguistics ; 65) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-3-11-020589-3 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. English language ⫺ Discourse analysis. 2. English language ⫺ Indirect discourse. 3. English language ⫺ Deixis. 4. Thought and thinking. I. Title. PE1422.V36 2009 420.1141⫺dc22 2009020384

ISBN 978-3-11-020589-3 ISSN 1434-3452 Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de. ” Copyright 2009 by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, 10785 Berlin All rights reserved, including those of translation into foreign languages. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Cover design: Christopher Schneider, Laufen. Printed in Germany.

To the memory of Guido Vandelanotte (1940–1992)

Acknowledgements

The genesis of this book has involved the help, interest and support of many people. First among these is Kristin Davidse, the prime instigator of my research into English speech and thought representation, who took me on first as an MA student and later as a PhD researcher at the University of Leuven. It is impossible for me to say what impresses me most about her: her sharp linguistic judgement, her unfailing kindness and generosity of spirit, her constant support and encouragement, or the confidence she shows and by the same token inspires in younger colleagues, however much they may at times be lacking in self-confidence. I feel deeply grateful and privileged to have been her student, and now to be her colleague. In their capacity as members of my doctoral examination committee, Barbara Dancygier, Eirian Davies, Nicole Delbecque and William Van Belle provided valuable input at a crucial stage in the development of the ideas presented here. I owe a special debt of gratitude to Eirian for selflessly supplying extensive and thought-provoking commentary on earlier papers of mine, and to Barbara for keeping this book project high on the agenda as well as for the open-minded, no-nonsense naturalness with which she has initiated fruitful collaboration between us. In Elizabeth Traugott I have found a series editor whose detailed feedback cuts straight to the chase and whose response time is phenomenal. I would like to thank her not only for her intellectual input, but also for the patience and continued support she has shown. I also thank Bernd Kortmann for his feedback at the proposal stage, and Mouton de Gruyter’s editors Birgit Sievert and Wolfgang Konwitschny for their good cheer and efficient guidance throughout the publication process. I thank the editors of books and journals in which I have published for their help in complementing my analyses from sometimes very different theoretical backgrounds, as well as the anonymous referees for the time they have spent on my behalf: you know who you are, even if I do not. As well, I am grateful to all colleagues who have made helpful suggestions or posed challenges at various talks or other exchanges and have thereby helped shape my own position, and in particular Bert Cornillie, Renaat Declerck, Ad Foolen, Bill McGregor, Jacob L. Mey, Susanna Shore and Geoff Thompson.

viii Acknowledgements I count myself lucky in having found not one, but two intellectual “homes” where the categories of colleagues and friends show very significant overlap. The Department of Linguistics at the University of Leuven, and the Functional Linguistics Leuven research group in particular, proved an excellent environment in which to work towards a PhD. For sharing their personal experience in the exacting art of getting a book into publication, I thank Liesbet Heyvaert, An Laffut, Jean-Christophe Verstraete, Tine Breban, Peter Willemse and Lot Brems. In Peter and Lot especially I have found kindred spirits, with whom it is always a pleasure to indulge in our shared interests, be they in music, film, literature, comedy or, well, less lofty pastimes. Thanks also to An Van linden for opening my eyes and ears to the world of theatre. Moving to the University of Namur to take up a “real job”, almost four years ago now, was a rather daunting prospect for someone who was at the time fresh out of doctoral nappies. Here again, I had the good fortune of having fine colleagues who made the transition as smooth and painless as possible. Dirk Delabastita deserves special mention for his support and companionship, as well as for his recurrent taxi services. The trials and tribulations of academic life are also much alleviated by the sympathy and friendship of Ruth Astley, Eloy Romero-Muñoz and all other colleagues in the department and the faculty. When, at one point, a minor but nevertheless infuriating IT problem seemed impossible to solve, Eric Bernagou amazed me by swiftly devising an absurd but effective detour to outwit the recalcitrant software: chapeau! To my students, past and present, I say thanks for providing me with constant practice in thinking on my feet, and for helping to create and sustain a pleasant atmosphere on our “fifth floor”. Closer to home, I want to thank my family and friends for caring, for keeping me sane and for reminding me to live first and philosophize later. The main credit here goes to my mother, Denise Hoedt, who made sure the woodwork of my house got the layers of paint it so sorely needed during my great summer of book revisions, as well as to Servaas Carbonez, Frederik De Vriese and Frederic Roekens, who are always just a phone call or e-mail away and whose friendship feels to me, in Larkin’s phrase, “like an enormous yes”. My final salute goes to my late father, whose gentle, pensive nature and profound love of English, of which he remained an active life-long learner as well as a teacher, continue to inspire me.

Contents

Acknowledgements Abbreviations Tables Figures

vii xiii xiv xv

Chapter 1. The need for a construction-based approach to speech and thought representation 1. Aims of this book 2. STR constructions between grammar and discourse 3. Orientation 3.1. Scope and terminological practice of this study 3.2. Theoretical affiliation 3.3. Data considered 4. Outline of the study

1 1 7 10 10 14 15 16

Chapter 2. The syntagmatic structure of direct and indirect speech or thought 1. Problems with the constituency analysis 2. The reporting and reported clause as basic units 3. The reporting clause as a semantically incomplete head 3.1. Elaboration, conceptual dependence, and complementation 3.2. The conceptual dependence structure of STR constructions 4. DST versus IST: juxtaposition vs. incorporation 5. Extension to other STR types 5.1. Innovative quotatives in colloquial speech 5.2. Other ‘non-direct’ types of STR 6. Conclusion

19 21 26 33 33 37 41 50 50 52 56

Chapter 3. Deixis and expressivity in direct and indirect speech or thought 1. Deictic centre and deictic shift in DST and IST 2. Person deixis in DST and IST 2.1. Reference point organization and accessibility 2.2. Reference to speech participants in DST and IST 2.3. Reference to third parties in DST and IST 2.4. Reflexives in DST and IST

58 59 65 66 70 74 77

x Contents 3. 3.1. 3.2. 3.3. 3.4. 3.5. 3.6. 4. 5. 6.

Temporal deixis in DST and IST Declerck’s model of tense in English What is remarkable about tense in STR? Tense in DST Relative tense in IST The distribution of absolute vs. relative tense in IST reconsidered The functions of absolute tense in IST Other deictics in DST and IST Expressivity in DST and IST Conclusion

Chapter 4. The grammatical semantics of direct and indirect speech or thought 1. Traditional approaches to the meaning of DST vs. IST 1.1. Verbatimness 1.2. Mention vs. use 1.3. Demonstration vs. description 2. Towards a constructional semantics for DST and IST 2.1. McGregor’s “framing” proposal 2.2. Towards a “grounding” semantics for DST and IST 3. Conclusion Chapter 5. Distinguishing free from distancing indirect speech or thought: Person deixis 1. Deictic centre in FIST and DIST: Introduction 2. The problem of proper name reference to speech participants 2.1. Pronouns, proper names, and accessibility 2.2. Attested examples of the proper name problem 3. Pronominal reference to speech participants in FIST and DIST 3.1. No addressed “you” in FIST: beyond Banfield’s bans 3.2. Grammatical person of pronouns designating speech participants in FIST and DIST 3.3. Pronouns designating speech participants in FIST and DIST: special cases 3.4. Pronouns and the ambiguity between FIST and DIST 4. Reference to third parties in FIST and DIST 5. Reflexives in FIST and DIST 5.1. Binding and ‘non-anaphoric reflexives’ 5.2. Reflexives in FIST and DIST 6. Conclusion: Deictic duality vs. singularity in FIST and DIST

80 81 87 88 90 93 95 105 109 115

117 118 118 124 127 131 131 135 139

141 141 145 146 150 157 160 164 169 171 175 178 178 182 186

Contents xi

Chapter 6. Spatiotemporal deixis and expressivity in free and distancing indirect speech or thought 1. Temporal deixis in FIST and DIST 1.1. Tense in FIST 1.1.1. Tense in FIST: Past time-sphere 1.1.2. Tense in FIST: Present time-sphere 1.1.3. A note on progressive aspect 1.2. Tense in DIST 1.2.1. Tense in DIST: Past time-sphere 1.2.2. Tense in DIST: Present time-sphere 2. Other deictics in FIST and DIST 3. Expressivity in FIST and DIST 3.1. The echoed expressivity of DIST 3.2. The expressivity of FIST 4. Conclusion

190 190 191 191 202 206 208 208 214 217 222 222 226 230

Chapter 7. The grammatical semantics and the pragmatics of free and distancing indirect speech or thought 1. The secondary grounding in FIST and DIST 1.1. Self-expressive speech function re-enactment in FIST 1.2. Echoic speech function enactment in DIST 1.3. FIST and DIST: from semantics to pragmatics 2. The ‘dual voice’ of FIST and beyond 2.1. Dual voice 2.2. Beyond voice: the represented speaker’s self-expressive re-enactment 2.3. FIST: irony and empathy? 3. The echoic semantics of DIST 3.1. ‘Echo’ as metarepresentation and attitude 3.2. Discourse distance 4. Pragmatic usage types of DIST in different genres 5. Conclusion

248 251 255 256 263 266 279

Chapter 8. Subjectified forms of speech or thought representation 1. Grammaticalization, subjectification, and deictic singularity 1.1. Subjectified STR: Parameters of grammaticalization 1.2. Subjectified STR: Subjective and intersubjective meanings 1.3. Deictic singularity as a prerequisite for subjectification 1.4. Conclusion

280 281 283 289 294 299

232 232 233 236 240 244 245

xii Contents 2. 2.1. 2.2. 2.2.1. 2.2.2. 2.2.3. 2.3. 2.4. 3. 3.1. 3.2. 4.

The syntagmatic structure of S-IST and S-DIST Thompson’s (2002) ‘fragment’ approach to I think A scopal analysis of S-IST and S-DIST Compositional vs. non-compositional meaning and structure Unithood in representational vs. subjectified STR The scopal structure of subjectified STR Syntagmatic differences between S-IST and S-DIST Conclusion Subjectified DIST in discourse S-DIST in discourse: epistemic, illocutionary, and evidential comments From representational to subjectified DIST: A cline of subjectivity Conclusion

300 300 307 307 309 312 317 322 322 324 327 331

Chapter 9. Conclusion

332

Example sources References Index

341 343 378

Abbreviations

CB COLT CSS DST DIST IST FIST RSS S-DIST S-IST STR t0 t0(cur) t0(rep)

Cobuild corpus (The Bank of English) (*) Corpus of London Teenage Language current speech situation direct speech or thought distancing indirect speech or thought indirect speech or thought free indirect speech or thought represented speech situation subjectified distancing indirect speech or thought subjectified indirect speech or thought speech and thought representation temporal zero-point current speaker’s temporal zero-point represented speaker’s temporal zero-point

(*) Relevant Cobuild subcorpora: npr today times usbooks oznews bbc ukmags sunnow ukspok ukbooks ukephem

US National Public Radio broadcasts UK Today newspaper UK Times newspaper US books; fiction & non-fiction Australian newspapers BBC World Service radio broadcasts UK magazines UK Sun newspaper UK transcribed informal speech UK books; fiction & non-fiction UK ephemera (leaflets, adverts, etc.)

Tables

Table 1. Table 2. Table 3.

Absolute and relative tense in IST Deictic centres in the four types of speech or thought representation A cline from representational to subjectified DIST: Increasing subjectivity

94 188 328

Figures

Figure 1. Figure 2. Figure 3. Figure 4. Figure 5. Figure 6. Figure 7. Figure 8. Figure 9. Figure 10. Figure 11. Figure 12. Figure 13. Figure 14. Figure 15. Figure 16. Figure 17. Figure 18. Figure 19. Figure 20. Figure 21. Figure 22. Figure 23.

Traditional analysis of reported clauses 19 The conceptual dependence structure of DST 38 Diagrammatic representation of a simple example of IST 62 Diagrammatic representation of a simple example of DST 62 The four absolute zones according to Declerck (2006: 149) 83 Temporal subordination 83 Shift of domain 83 Absolute tense in direct speech or thought 89 Relative tense in IST: Declerck’s (2006: 373) analysis 90 Relative tense in IST: shift of intensional perspective 92 Absolute present tense in IST: intensionally absolute tense 99 Absolute present tense in IST: current noteworthiness in evidential contexts 101 Full speech function re-enactment in DST 136 No speech function re-enactment in IST 138 Diagrammatic representation of a simple example of FIST 142 Basic deictic control in FIST 189 Basic deictic control in DIST 189 Absolute tense in DIST 210 Self-expressive speech function re-enactment in FIST 236 Echoic speech function enactment in DIST 239 Deixis and grounding clines in STR 240 Speech or thought representation, deixis, and subjectification 295 The syntagmatic structure of representational vs. subjectified STR: comparison of different approaches 316

Chapter 1 The need for a construction-based approach to speech and thought representation

This study is concerned with types of speech and thought representation in present-day English including, but not limited to, direct, indirect, and free indirect speech or thought. These types will be described and modelled as grammatical constructions, i.e. entrenched and conventionalized pairings of form and meaning (cf. Langacker 1987: 57–63, Croft 2005: 274), with specific structural, deictic, and expressive properties from which the different construction types derive their meaning. In attempting a grammar-based description and typology of speech and thought representation, this study will challenge some of the received wisdoms and propose to re-draw the boundaries of categories such as indirect and free indirect speech or thought. The resulting model will also throw a new light on a number of long-standing issues in the pragmatic study of speech and thought representation, such as that of the so-called ‘dual voice’ of narrator and character in free indirect speech or thought. This introductory chapter sets the scene for the exploration of in all six types, with chapters 2 to 4 focusing on direct and indirect speech or thought, chapters 5 to 7 on two different syntactically ‘free’ indirect types, and finally chapter 8 on two types in which clauses such as I think have subjectified. Section 1 states the aims of this study in terms of perceived gaps in the literature on English speech and thought representation, and section 2 considers the way in which the types distinguished in the present framework can be treated as ‘constructions’. The scope, terminological practice and theoretical orientation of this book, as well as the range of data considered in it, will be clarified in section 3. The fourth and final section provides a preview of chapter topics.

1. Aims of this book This book tries to redefine the field of speech and thought representation (abbreviated as STR) by consistently keeping in view the contribution of both syntagmatic structure and the alignment of deictic and expressive

2 The need for a construction-based approach to STR grammatical resources with either the current speaker (responsible for representing someone’s speech or thought) or the represented speaker (whose speech or thought gets to represented). Before illustrating how the neglect of a salient contributing formal cue may result in unsatisfactory analyses, I will first consider briefly the properties commonly reported for the three main types, direct, indirect and free indirect speech or thought (abbreviated as DST, IST and FIST respectively). Perhaps the most traditional formulation of the difference between DST (as in 1 below) and IST (as in 2) remains Leech and Short’s (1981: 318) contention that the former is used for verbatim quotation, and the latter “expresses what was said in one’s own words” (a very similar view is expressed in Banfield 1982: 36, 108). Even if the criterion of verbatimness in its strictest interpretation has long since been abandoned (see further Chapter 4), Short (1988), Short et al. (2002) and Semino and Short (2004) continue to defend a version of this model in which at least in representing writing and speech (but not sensibly in representing thought) DST and IST differ in terms of the number of “faithfulness claims”: IST presents the “speech act value” as well as the “propositional content of what was said”; in addition, DST also “provides the words and grammatical structures claimed to have been used to utter the propositional content and associated speech act” (Semino and Short 2004: 12).1 In terms of deixis, the difference between DST and IST has often been stated rather mechanically in terms of the kinds of “conversions” (cf. Leech and Short 1981: 319) only too familiar from pedagogical grammar and affecting (mainly) pronouns, tense forms and spatiotemporal adverbials. As for syntax, the dominant view is that the reported clause is a direct object of the speech or thought predicate (e.g. Quirk et al. 1985: 1020f), even if this analysis is said to apply more straightforwardly to IST than to DST because the former shows greater dependence vis-à-vis the “reporting verb” (Leech and Short 1981: 319). (1)

1

Smith, 20, from Cheltenham, Glos, and Winter, 19, from nearby Bishops Cleeve, broke down in tears in the dock at Bristol Crown Court. Winter’s father said afterwards: “We’ve been through 20 months of sheer hell. I’ve got my son back at last and I’m glad it’s all over. Now we just want to get on with our lives.” (CB, today)

I quote here from Semino and Short’s (2004) summary of the Leech and Short (1981) model, but the latter is in its essence adhered to in the former, although some categories and subcategories are added to the existing clines, as is a separate ‘writing presentation’ cline.

Aims of this book 3

(2)

US District Judge Stanley Sporkin said that he’d permit the settlement if the government would guarantee to protect the rights of five Alaskan native villages. (CB, npr)

Against this background, FIST is typically treated as “a ‘mix’ of the deictic and other features” of IST and DST, which results in an ambiguous status “with with respect to the ‘words and structures’ faithfulness claim” as it is “often difficult to know, for particular words, whether they ‘belong’ to the character or the narrator/reporter” (Semino and Short 2004: 13). In (3) below, for instance, the interrogative clause structure and use of “this morning” could also occur in a DST counterpart, but pronoun number and past tense use invite comparison with IST: (3)

Where was he this morning, for instance? Some committee, she never asked what. (Woolf, Mrs Dalloway, p. 10 qtd. Banfield 1982: 98)

The co-occurrence of ‘narrative’ past tense with present time deictics, referred to as ‘NOW in the PAST’ in Banfield (1982) and ‘WAS–NOW paradox’ in Adamson (1995), has often been considered one of the most striking features of FIST. More generally, FIST is characterized by the possibility to vividly recreate the represented speaker’s emotional states “without suggesting that its grammatical form was that uttered by an original speaker, whether aloud or silently” (Banfield 1982: 108, see also van der Voort 1986). One additional type which is often distinguished is a ‘free’ variant of DST, which is seen as ‘freer still’ than DST, and thus does not impinge on the area in between DST and IST covered, on the traditional account, exclusively by FIST. Free direct speech or thought is generally defined as DST without its “conventional orthographic cues” (McHale 1978: 259), more specifically without a reporting clause (such as he said or she thought) and/or without quotation marks (see e.g. Bickerton 1967: 233, McHale 1978: 259, Leech and Short 1981: 322, Rosier 1993, Simpson 1994: 22, Rosier 1999: Ch. 5.5). Arguably, however, as suggested by Short (1988: 69–71) and Semino and Short (2004: 194–197), ‘free DST’ does not form a distinct category on its own, but rather a pragmatic subtype of DST used for instance, in Short’s (1988) newspaper data, to save space, or in narrative texts to avoid cumbersome repetition of reporting clauses in representing turns in dialogue, as happens often in Hemingway (Leech and Short 1981: 322). In extreme cases, authors may deliberately avoid any

4 The need for a construction-based approach to STR reporting clauses and leave it wholly to the reader to sort out who is speaking, as in the novel J.R. by William Gaddis, discussed by Traugott and Pratt (1980: 44). While the pragmatic effects reached by opting for ‘free’ DST may thus be considerable, I will also not consider it a constructionally distinct type. As will be argued in Chapter 2, the possibility of not having an overt reporting clause is one of the properties of the particular type of syntagmatic structure evidenced by DST as well as other types which share this type of structure (see Chapter 2, section 5). What emerges from this discussion is a widespread, tacit assumption in the literature that FIST covers the area in between DST and IST.2 This is one of a number of assumptions or claims which this book will challenge. Indeed, its central aim is to critically examine the existing orthodoxy so as to arrive at a well thought-out, grammar-based typology of English STR constructions consonant with the structural as well as deictic and expressive patterns found in them. Without closing the door on genuine transitional cases, the present approach seeks to re-draw some of the boundaries, and to draw other, existing ones more sharply. This line of approach is inevitably at odds with some stylistic analyses of STR, notably Sternberg’s (1982) Proteus principle according to which the “supreme control lies with the frame” (1982: 125), i.e. the primary or ‘current’ speech situation from which another discourse is represented, and the conditions of which are said to determine the function of any instance of STR. If, as Sternberg affirms, “any form […] may be made to go with any representational affect” (1982: 119), defining as accurately as possible the distinctions between different STR constructions is bound to be of limited importance. Against this, I believe that over and above the inherent interest of a better understanding of the nitty-gritty linguistic detail, it also pays off in terms of better stylistic description. An example of a boundary which is often kept vague in places where it need not be so is that between IST and FIST. Thus, Baynham and Slembrouck (1999: 440) claim for the underlined sentence in (4) below that in terms of “received categories” it can be labelled either as IST and FIST; for the underlined part in (5) Ikeo (2007: 371), applying the tagging con2

Banfield (1982: Ch. 5) does distinguish another type of ‘sentence of narration’, the sentence representing nonreflective consciousness, but this type shows partial overlap with (among others) narrated perception, as also noted by Fludernik (1993: 377–378, 430). I will return to this sentence type in Chapter 5 (section 2.2), where I will show that it is not coherently defined, and does not correspond to my understanding of ‘distancing indirect speech or thought’.

Aims of this book 5

ventions of Semino and Short (2004), argues that ambiguity between IST and FIST is involved: (4)

(5)

that was a further four weeks before the child was taken to hospital for an appointment on being taken there erm (1) the hospital felt that this was a clear picture of failure to thrive […] (Baynham and Slembrouck 1999: 439) And house porter Gordon Curry, 30, revealed he was also aware of drugtaking at the Palace. But he said the lad who used to supply cannabis had now left. (News of the World, ‘Everyone Got Off Their Heads and Started Feeling Randy’, 1996, qtd. Ikeo 2007: 371)

In both cases, the tightly integrated syntagmatic structure involving a sentence-initial reporting clause (and in 4 also the conjunction that) is incompatible, in the model to be developed in Chapter 2, with an interpretation of either (4) or (5) as FIST. As I will argue further in Chapter 3 (section 5), the idea underlying use of the “IS–FIS” tag for cases like (5) in the Semino and Short (2004) model is that the appearance of “colloquial lexis” (Ikeo 2007: 371) such as lad renders categorization as IST problematic because IST does not (and apparently on this view may not) involve faithfulness to the words and structures used. The view of IST to be developed in chapters 2 to 4 does not exclude ‘colloquial’ or otherwise ‘expressive’ lexis and indeed even allows for some deictic resources to be referred to the represented speaker’s spatiotemporal situatedness. Rather than having to decide at what point a given word or structure becomes too colloquial or colourful for it to be permissible in IST, the cut-off point between IST and FIST in my approach will be formed by the different syntagmatic structure, along with the important repercussions it has on the occurrence of expressive features (with the reported clause of IST disallowing, for instance, interrogative or exclamative clause structure). An example of a new boundary that will be drawn is that between FIST and a second syntactically ‘free’ type mixing features of DST and IST, distancing indirect speech or thought (DIST). While it is possible to use FIST as a catch-all category to cover all cases that diverge from both DST and IST, I will argue in chapters 5 to 7 that there are good grammatical reasons for separating out DIST as a current speaker-oriented counterpart to the represented speaker-expressive type of FIST. As I will argue in Chapter 7 in particular, doing so will turn out to be helpful in arriving at a more

6 The need for a construction-based approach to STR coherent understanding of the pragmatic functions of STR in the area in between or beyond DST and IST. The attempt to formulate a new synthesis of English STR types should not be taken to imply that transitional cases may not occur. In diachrony, it stands to reason that transitional forms have emerged on the pathway leading up to the present-day (an example will be discussed in the Conclusion of this book), and since the history of English obviously has not ended more are likely to emerge. In synchrony, a ‘mixed’ STR type that has attracted considerable attention is “combined direct/indirect speech” (Waugh 1995: 141–150), also known as ‘incorporated’ (Clark and Gerrig 1990: 789–791), ‘partial’ (Thompson 1996: 311–313) or ‘mixed’ (e.g. Cappelen and Lepore 1997, 2007; Noh 2000: 26, Aikhenvald 2008: 402– 403, 406–407) quotation. In most cases, as in (6) or in the first sentence of (7), the partial direct quote “does not alter the essence” (Semino and Short 2004: 54) of the categorizations they would be given without the partial quote (in these cases, IST); indeed, in some cases deictic expressions within the quotation marks are in fact those of IST, as in Waugh’s French example il avouait “ne pas arriver à se sentir concerné […]” (he admitted “just never feeling concerned […]”, qtd. Waugh 1995: 142), in which se is third person, not first. However, the second sentence of Cappelen and Lepore’s example (7) does show a shift to first person (us): (6)

(7)

He said the Bosnian situation was ‘a disastrous, humiliating affair’. (‘Major faces Clinton snub on Bosnia’, Daily Express, 5 December 1994 qtd. Semino and Short 2004: 54) Mr. Greenspan said he agreed with Labor Secretary R. B. Reich ‘on quite a lot of things.’ Their accord on this issue, he said, has proved ‘quite a surprise to both of us.’ (Cappelen and Lepore 1997: 429)

Apart from such ‘mixed’ cases, where complex examples can be interpreted in terms of a combination of two STR types, it is also recognized in this study that there may sometimes be doubt as to the ‘correct’ or most likely reading of a given example. For instance, in chapters on FIST and DIST the possibility of ambiguity or vagueness between the two readings will be addressed (Chapter 5, section 3.4; Chapter 7, section 1.3). As is well known, ambiguity may even extend to the question whether a given passage involves the representation of someone’s speech or thought, or rather the current speaker’s narration. Such cases point up the complex position of

STR constructions between grammar and discourse 7

STR constructions between grammar and discourse, to which I turn briefly in the next section.

2. STR constructions between grammar and discourse The present study’s focus on the grammatical means relevant to the description of STR categories should not be taken to imply that they can be described in terms of grammar alone: they are categories of discourse and context as much as of grammar. As a simple illustration of this, consider the constructed minimal pair in (8–9), in which the underlined sentence is exactly the same but still involves a different type of STR as a result of the different referent of the pronoun you: (8)

(9)

A: I talked to the boss yesterday and asked him what he wanted us to do. B: Yes? A: You will have to get the situation under control, he said. B: That’s easy for him to say, it’s not as if he’s ever given us a clue as to how it could arise in the first place. A: I talked to the boss yesterday and he wasn’t in a good mood. B: That makes for a nice change. A: You will have to get the situation under control, he said. B: Why me? A: I guess he really likes you.

In (8), reference to us in the preceding and following context makes it clear that you refers to speakers A and B together in the represented speech situation, in which the boss sees it as A and B’s joint responsibility to address the problem which has arisen. In other words, you is the boss’s ‘original’ you and (8) instantiates DST. In (9), however, it is clear (for instance from B’s reply Why me?) that you refers exclusively to speaker B, who has the feeling of being picked on by the boss. In the ‘original’, represented speech situation, the boss presumably referred to speaker B by means of his or her proper name (for instance, Bernie will have to get the situation under control), but speaker A draws the representation of this utterance into the current speech situation by directly addressing speaker B as you (for reasons to be explored further in Chapter 5, [9] is an example of DIST).

8 The need for a construction-based approach to STR What this simple example illustrates is the distinction between the grammatical ‘stuff’ which STR is made of, and the way in which this plays out in context. In particular, detailed knowledge of the precise set-up of the current and represented speech situations – their speakers and addressees and other parties present in them as well as their location in time and space – is indispensable for arriving at a correct interpretation of the reference of pronouns and other deictic resources, which play a crucial role in the distinction between STR types. To recognize the importance of context need not and should not be taken to mean that in STR, ‘anything goes’; on the contrary, it can and should be seen as an incentive to try and offer cogent, context-informed analyses in terms of a linguistically plausible typology. The role of the discourse context in determining which STR construction type is instantiated in concrete cases, such as (8–9) above, might at first glance be taken to discredit the notion of construction itself. However, in cognitive-functional approaches, constructions are not understood as syntactic objects independent from meaning but rather as form–meaning correlates. Recent years have seen a spate of publications advocating and comparing different varieties of construction grammar (e.g. Fillmore 1988, Goldberg 1995, Croft 2001, Östman and Fried 2005, Goldberg 2006; for discussion and comparison see in particular Croft and Cruse 2004: Chs. 9– 11, Langacker 2005, Croft 2005), but focus on the pairing of form and meaning as such is not new (cf. Haas 1954; Bolinger 1968, 1977a) and certainly informs cognitive and functional approaches such as Halliday’s (1973, 1994 [1985]), McGregor’s (1997) and Langacker’s (1987, 1991) which do not (or did not initially) adopt the constructional hallmark. A definition of the notion of ‘construction’ which is shared across the different varieties of construction grammar is the following explication by Croft (2005) of Langacker’s (1987: 57–63) understanding of it as a “conventional symbolic unit”:3 Roughly, a construction is an entrenched routine (‘unit’), that is generally used in the speech community (‘conventional’), and involves a pairing of form and meaning (‘symbolic’ […]) (Croft 2005: 274; italics original)

3

Croft (2005: 272–276) offers a useful summary of the main tenets of what he calls “vanilla construction grammar” to which his own Radical Construction Grammar (Croft 2001, 2005: 276–310) adds a number of theses, prime among which is the thesis that the primitive elements of grammar are constructions and not grammatical categories such as noun or verb (rather, the latter are derived from the former).

STR constructions between grammar and discourse 9

Some earlier versions of construction grammar, taking their inspiration from work on idioms such as Fillmore et al.’s seminal paper on let alone (1988), tended to posit unpredictability as a condition for constructional status. In Goldberg’s (1995: 4) formulation, “a construction is defined to exist if one or more of its properties are not strictly predictable from knowledge of other constructions existing in the grammar”. Even though this stipulation can have a certain heuristic value – if you deal with the idiosyncratic first, you are likely to be able to handle the fully regular as well – as such it is unwarranted, and fully compositional conventionalized structures such as I love you are also constructions (cf. Taylor 2002: 567, Langacker 2005), as Goldberg (2006: 5; Ch. 3) now concedes. Significantly for the purposes of this study, constructions are recognized at all levels of grammatical analysis, from substantive (or concrete) to schematic (or abstract) and from small to large, with intermediate steps such as partially substantive idioms (e.g. send X to the cleaners), together forming a lexicon-syntax continuum (see e.g. Fillmore et al. 1988, Croft 2005: 274–275, Goldberg 2006: 5). Also significant is the broad understanding of the notions of ‘form’ and ‘meaning’, with the former including morphology, phonology and prosody as well as syntactic structure, and the latter encompassing not just semantic but also pragmatic and discourse properties. Within an approach which associates information of these different kinds with a given construction, it becomes possible indeed to see STR types as defined in this book as ‘constructions’. Even so, most work in construction grammar to date has focused on structures which are ‘halfway up’ on the continuum – idioms of various kinds – or on monoclausal ‘argument structure constructions’ (as in Goldberg 1995). Only recently have still more complex phenomena such as mostly biclausal conditional constructions (Dancygier and Sweetser 2005), ‘discourse patterns’ such as recipes (Östman 2005) and free indirect style (Nikiforidou subm.) come to be considered from an explicitly constructionbased perspective. What has emerged in particular from the work of Dancygier and Sweetser (2005: 272–277) is that a specific constructional meaning is not always directly reliant on the complete configuration of constructional forms, but may be prompted by a particular salient aspect of form […]. (Dancygier 2008: 665)

In this way, the presence of a particular salient aspect may metonymically afford access to the whole constructional frame, with “contextual background [being] involved in setting off such cuing” (Dancygier and Sweetser 2005: 272). In discussing the example of FIST, which has traditionally been

10 The need for a construction-based approach to STR associated with a variety of possible indices (e.g. the past + now pattern, progressive aspect, non-anaphoric reflexives, ‘main clause’ structures expressive of the represented character’s emotional states), Nikiforidou (subm.) notes in this connection that “although all or some of these [indices] may coexist in a given passage, it is also possible that only one of them is present and enough to support a shifted reading [i.e. a FIST reading]”. Adopting such a view, then, we can say that contextual knowledge, particularly of the precise situation of discourse, current as well as represented, combines with salient formal cues to prompt the appropriate constructional frame. The formal cues which will be investigated systematically for the STR types distinguished in this study include syntagmatic structure – the precise manner of clausal integration – and the current versus represented speaker orientation of deictic and expressive elements. Specific combinations of features along these parameters will be argued to correlate with fairly abstract, ‘grammatical’ semantics for each type, together defining different constructional clusters. Before detailing, in section 4, the way in which this will be attempted across subsequent chapters, the next section first defines this book’s scope and theoretical stance.

3. Orientation 3.1. Scope and terminological practice of this study The term speech and thought representation is used in this study as a general cover term in much the same way as ‘reported speech’ is often used. I have avoided the latter because it is sometimes also used to refer to IST only. In addition, the term ‘representation’ is preferred here because it suggests something of the complexity of the phenomenon: very often it is not the case that there is an ‘original’ utterance or thought which can subsequently be ‘reported’. The term ‘representation’ thus stresses the active involvement of the speaker engaged in the act of representing or constructing another discourse (cf. Tannen 1986 on ‘constructed’ dialogue): in STR, something is represented as someone’s speech or thought, irrespective of whether or to what extent this is ontologically ‘true’. The term ‘speech and thought representation’ is not to be confused with Banfield’s (1982) ‘represented speech or thought’, which is her term for what is most widely known as FIST (for many other names of this type, see for instance McHale 1978: 249 n1, van Gunsteren-Viersen 1980: 266 n1).

Orientation 11

The focus of this book is on constructional features shared by speech and thought representation, which explains the conflation of the two different categories (the former ‘publicly’ accessible, the latter inherently ‘private’) into one term for the purposes of this study.4 This is not to deny interpretive differences resulting from the differences between speech and thought, but constitutes rather a deliberate choice to restrict attention to the grammatical groundwork resulting in distinct types of STR such as DST, IST, FIST and DIST. Nevertheless, in a few places where there is cause to distinguish between speech and thought (in Chapters 7 and 8), this will be pointed out. While there are good reasons to prefer ‘speech and thought representation’ as a cover term, I have continued to use the traditional terms ‘reported’ and ‘reporting clause’, because they are less likely to invite misunderstanding than the term ‘representing clause’ (understood either as a clause describing the act of representing speech or thought, or as a clause representing someone else’s speech or thought). The reporting clause is that in which a speech or thought act is described (e.g. she said), whereas the reported clause is that in which the content of this speech or thought act is given (e.g. she was fine in she said she was fine). In connection with the terminological pair of reporting and reported clause, it should be clarified that only cases which involve a reported clause and (explicitly or implicitly) a reporting clause will be considered instances of STR constructions. I thus exclude from consideration certain types of sentences bordering on what I consider to be STR proper, which do give information about mental states of represented ‘characters’, but which do not contain a separate clause construing the content of a speech or thought act.5 One such type generally considered to be “more indirect than indirect speech” (Leech and Short 1981: 323) has been discussed under the rubric of narrative reports of speech or thought acts (Leech and Short 1981: Ch. 10, Semino and Short 2004), as in (10) below. Semino and Short (2004: 43–47) distinguish even more minimal types where reference is merely made to some vague verbal or mental activity, as in She talked on or I was 4

Semino and Short (2004) broaden the traditional categories of ‘speech and thought presentation’, as they call it, to explicitly include ‘writing’. For the sake of simplicity I will not adopt this practice, also considering the fact that writing, like speech, has the kind of public status which thought lacks, and thus naturally groups with speech (as also pointed out by Semino and Short 2004: 48, 98–113). 5 The reported ‘clause’ can also be a minor clause or clause fragment corresponding to a turn in conversation as in She exclaimed “Not in a month of Sundays!”.

12 The need for a construction-based approach to STR immediately filled with alarm.6 Cases like (11), in which the reporting “signal” (Thompson 1996: 501) is “a phrase rather than a clause” (Semino et al. 1997: 36) and which Semino et al. (1997) analyse as ambiguous between IST and FIST also do not come under my notion of STR constructions because of their different syntagmatic composition. (10) (11)

He answered me in the fewest possible words. (William Golding, Rites of Passage, p. 33 qtd. Semino and Short 2004: 52) According to one source six Russian armoured vehicles were left ablaze in Ingushetia. (The Guardian, ‘Russian Forces Steamroll into Breakaway Republic’ qtd. Semino et al. 1997: 36)

Broader approaches to the incorporation of ‘other-oriented’ discourse by any means, including adjuncts like according to X as in (11) but also for instance adverbs like apparently or reportedly or adjectives like alleged and so-called are of course valid in their own right, and indeed theories of ‘enunciation’ in the spirit of Ducrot (1984) are widespread in the French research tradition (see e.g. Authier-Revuz 1995 and for comparison and discussion Marnette 2005). From a constructional perspective, however, which aims at describing form–meaning pairings, it would be ill advised to include such widely divergent forms within the same category on the basis of a similar general function. What I also exclude from consideration is narrated perception (see e.g. Hernadi 1972, McHale 1978: 278, Brinton 1980, Fludernik 1993: 305– 309), even though it has sometimes been considered alongside with, or even as part of, FIST (e.g. in Adamson’s [1995, 2001] notion of “empathetic narrative”), mainly because it can show the same co-occurrence of present-time temporal adverbs with the past tense. Thus, for instance, the now in (12) below indexes the moment of the protagonist’s perception rather than the moment of telling. In narrated perception generally, then, the perception of various sense impressions is attributable to a character.7 6

As Semino and Short point out (2004: 47), Cohn’s (1978) category of psychonarration shows partial overlap with their category of ‘internal narration’, the most minimal type of thought presentation, but it also includes examples of narrative report of thought act and even of indirect thought (e.g. He wondered if he was late, Cohn 1978: 105). 7 In Banfield (1987), a sentence type is described which shares some features with narrated perception, but in which no character is ‘on stage’ to whom the perception could be attributed. Banfield argues that these sentences (e.g. The sun had sunk

Orientation 13

The crucial point from the perspective of STR, however, is that narrated or ‘represented’ perception does not reach the level of verbalization or cognition but stays at that of “pre-verbal impressions” (McHale 1978: 278). Whereas the underlined sentence in (12) can thus be said, in narratological terms, to be focalized through the characters currently on scene (they), a reading of it as involving a thought is rather unlikely (compare ?The pear tree before Mrs Littlejohn’s was like drowned silver now in the moon, they thought): (12)

He opened the door again and amid the old strong sunless smells of cheese and leather and molasses he measured and cut off sections of plow-line for them and in a body and the clerk in the center and still talking, voluble and unlistened to, they returned up the road. The pear tree before Mrs. Littlejohn’s was like drowned silver now in the moon. (Faulkner, “Spotted horses”, 1995 [1931]; underlined part qtd. Banfield 1982: 200)

Passages involving narrative reports of speech or thought acts (10) or narrated perception (12) are of course interesting and important within the development of a character in a narrative, but my present concern is with STR constructions narrowly conceived as “projecting” (Halliday 1994 [1985]) structures representing the content of speech or thought from a distinct, ‘secondary’ speech situation in a reported clause, irrespective of genre considerations and thus including ‘nonliterary’ cases just as well. The secondary speech situation in which the represented speech or thought is located will be referred to as the represented speech situation (cf. McGregor 1997: 252) and abbreviated as RSS; the primary speech situation from which the other discourse gets to be represented will be called the current speech situation (CSS). As already indicated above, the main participants in the two speech situations will be referred to correspondingly as current speaker and represented speaker; simplifying matters one could liken the current and represented speaker, at least in the context of narratives, to the narrator and the character respectively. Because of the above considerations, the focus of this study will thus be on only part of the kinds of scales proposed by McHale (1978), Leech and

lower in the sky, The Waves, Woolf 1972: 129 qtd. Banfield 1987: 273) represent “impersonal subjectivity” (1987: 286).

14 The need for a construction-based approach to STR Short (1981: Ch. 10), and Semino and Short (2004), who each in their own way devised clines from pure narration to pure ‘mimesis’ or demonstration (McHale 1978: 258). Apart from DST, IST, and FIST, the typology proposed in this book also includes DIST (see sections 1–2 above and further Chapters 5–7).8 One respect in which the scope of this study is broader than that of most studies of STR is in its treatment of ‘subjective’ uses, for instance for purposes of hedging, of clauses such as I think or I guess as the grammaticalized and subjectified counterparts of STR. Because in such subjectified cases, a subset of the grammar of ‘canonical’ STR is put to a different use, it is important to explicitly address the relation between the two (Chapter 8).

3.2. Theoretical affiliation This book is not written within one specific, well-defined linguistic framework, but it is situated within a tradition of functional and cognitivelinguistic approaches to language (mainly Langacker 1987, 1991; Halliday 1994 [1985];9 McGregor 1997), which on account of their focus on form– meaning correlates can be considered ‘constructional’ in the sense indicated in section 2 above. By adopting this eclectic perspective, I hope that the synthesis presented here will help to bring out essential compatibilities and complementarities between functional approaches such as Halliday’s and McGregor’s on the one hand, and Langacker’s cognitive grammar on the other hand. Other works which take a similar cognitive-functional approach include Lemmens (1998), Heyvaert (2003) and Laffut (2006). While the precise ways in which cognitive-functional approaches have inspired the claims made in this book will become clear in later chapters, one issue needs to be clarified from the start. Within cognitive grammar in particular, the idea that meaning is use and that therefore the distinction between semantics and pragmatics is too vague for it to be maintained (cf. Langacker 1987: 154) has gained wide currency. However, research into semantic change (e.g. Traugott and Dasher 2002) has convincingly demon8

The position in this typology of colloquial quotative expressions such as be like and go will be addressed briefly in Chapter 2 (section 5.1). 9 Halliday and Matthiessen (2004) is a third edition of Halliday’s Introduction to Functional Grammar, revised by Matthiessen. Because the specific points used in later chapters, as well as the general theoretical outlook, are essentially Halliday’s, reference will be to the second edition.

Orientation 15

strated the heuristic value of distinguishing semantics from pragmatics, however fuzzy the boundaries may indeed be: because much semantic change is concerned precisely with the semanticization of initially pragmatic, contextually inferred meanings, making the distinction allows one to tease out more precisely the factors involved in semantic change. How precisely semantics and pragmatics should then be distinguished is a much debated issue (for a recent summary and discussion, see Huang 2007: Ch. 7), but defeasability of pragmatic interpretations seems an important component of most attempts at demarcation. For the purposes of this study, I will take constructional semantics to refer to a construction’s encoded (and therefore non-defeasible) meaning, whereas pragmatic aspects are contextually engendered (and therefore defeasible). A global characteristic shared by current versions of cognitivefunctional and constructional theories is their attempt to provide usagebased descriptions of linguistic phenomena, that is to say, descriptions using attested data as a starting-point for linguistic analysis. How this is to be understood in the context of this study is addressed in the next section.

3.3. Data considered The descriptive claims in this study are based closely on the observation and interpretation of patterns in authentic data. Chapters on DST and IST, as well as Chapter 8 on subjectified STR, use data from the COBUILD Bank of English corpus and the COLT corpus of London teenage language. The nature of the remaining types, FIST and DIST (Chapters 5–7), whose recognition is based on complex cues not readily reducible to search queries, precludes automatic retrieval of examples from computerized corpora (cf. Semino and Short 2004: 26). Instead, and in keeping with tradition, the description of these types relies on a personally compiled corpus culled both from existing studies and from personal reading. In order to cover as much ground as possible, and also to reflect the ubiquity of phenomena sometimes still believed to be found only in literature, data from nonliterary sources (journalistic and academic discourse) are also considered. In all this, the aim has been to explore as far as possible in ‘real’ language data the range of formal properties and deictic features found with the construction types in question. Occasionally, however, it proved useful or necessary to use constructed examples or permutations of attested examples to argue particular points. In a handful of cases where a particular

16 The need for a construction-based approach to STR point could be demonstrated convincingly with examples from other languages, I have preferred to use such data (providing close English translations in the main text and, in a footnote, the French, German or Dutch original) to inventing an example or to not making the point at all. In practical terms, the sources of example sentences will be indicated as follows. Examples from the Cobuild or COLT corpora are followed by ‘CB’ or ‘COLT’ respectively; for the former, an abbreviation of the relevant subcorpus is also included, and a list of these subcorpora is included in the general overview of abbreviations at the beginning of this book. Examples taken from secondary literature are quoted with the information as provided in the studies they are taken from, followed by a reference to the latter, which can be found in the list of references at the back. The primary sources of examples from personal reading are listed in a separate list of example sources preceding the reference list. Where this is relevant, underlining is used to highlight the element or structure under discussion. While the research reported on in this study is based on attested data as far as its specialized topic permits, it is not a large-scale quantitative study of STR in the spirit of Semino and Short (2004). Rather, the orientation is clearly qualitative, and aimed at providing a new, linguistically grounded description and typology of English STR, which could subsequently lead to further work in quantitative as well as qualitative stylistics.

4. Outline of the study To round off this introductory chapter, I will outline the structure of this book. In a first block of three chapters (2–4), I will discuss syntagmatic structure, deictic and expressive features, and grammatical semantics of direct and indirect speech or thought. In Chapter two, a new, integrated account of the syntagmatic structure of DST and IST constructions is proposed which tackles the problems that remain both in traditional verbal complementation analyses and in more functional alternatives. This account builds on the systemic-functional insight (Halliday 1994 [1985]) that the syntagmatic relation is between reporting and reported clause (and not between reporting predicate and reported clause), but combines it with Langacker’s (1987: Ch. 8) view of dependence relations in which the question of headhood is separated out from that of conceptual autonomy or dependence. The analysis of DST in particular will be argued to apply to

Outline of the study 17

other types as well, including be like constructions and free and distancing indirect speech or thought. In Chapter three, the general deictic and expressive features of DST and IST are explored in terms of the concepts of deictic centre (cf. Bühler 1934) and reference points (Langacker 1993, Van Hoek 1997). Even though IST does not show the complete deictic and expressive ‘reset’ to the represented speaker’s deictic centre witnessed in DST, this chapter will show that IST does allow important ‘local’ shifts, such that sometimes tense forms, spatiotemporal adverbials and expressive lexemes are understood directly with reference to the represented speaker’s deictic coordinates. In the light of this evidence, the common view that IST is a current speaker’s paraphrase in which “all those features which are directly related to the embedded speech situation only” are “remove[d]” (Leech and Short 1981: 319) is unsatisfactory. In keeping with this finding, Chapter four considers and rejects a number of traditional accounts of the difference between DST and IST, viz. in terms of verbatimness vs. non-verbatimness, mention vs. use, and demonstration vs. description. Instead, a ‘grammatical’ semantics is proposed which is based closely on the syntagmatic and deictic-expressive properties of the two types. It is the confluence of these two clusters of features which determines the degree to which the ‘original’ speech act can come to be ‘re-enacted’. The next three chapters (5–7) turn to the two ‘noncanonical’ categories of STR which differ from the canonical types DST and IST: ‘free indirect speech or thought’ (FIST) and ‘distancing indirect speech or thought’ (DIST). Chapter five lays out the argument in favour of this categorial distinction, which is essentially a novel one, even though a number of insights and proposals have been around from which it takes its cue, especially Reinhart’s (1975) “speaker oriented sentences containing parentheticals”. As Chapter five on person deixis argues, a crucial question which has tended to be overlooked is whether it is the current or represented speaker who determines the accessibility coding (cf. Ariel 1990) of noun phrases referring to the represented speaker and addressee. The choice for ‘full’ noun phrases coding a low degree of mental accessibility to the (current) addressee is, in this approach, compatible only with DIST, a current speaker-oriented type, whereas FIST is defined more narrowly than is customary as a type representing the represented speaker’s expressivity and accessibility organization, and thus permitting only pronouns to refer to the inherently highly accessible represented speaker and addressee.

18 The need for a construction-based approach to STR Further problems in the area of person deixis, in particular the analysis of examples displaying first and second person pronouns referring to current speaker and addressee, are also handled in terms of the separate postulate of the category of DIST alongside that of FIST. Chapter six further substantiates this postulate in the domains of spatiotemporal deixis and expressivity, and Chapter seven translates the syntagmatic and deicticexpressive features of the two types into a grammar-based, schematic description of their meaning. The consequences of this apportioning of forms and functions, also for the pragmatics of FIST and DIST, are considered in confrontation with notions such as ‘dual voice’ (for FIST) and ‘echo’ and ‘distance’ (for DIST), and some pragmatic subtypes of DIST in different genres will be illustrated with textual examples. Chapter eight completes the typology of English STR types by adding to the picture two grammaticalized and subjectified variants, viz. of IST and of DIST. In subjectified STR, the ‘reporting clause’ no longer has its original lexical meaning, but has acquired instead an (inter)subjective meaning (cf. Traugott and Dasher 2002), encoding speaker stance or directing the hearer’s attention. By the same token, subjectified STR really only involves one speech situation. As regards deixis and syntagmatic structure, I will posit a link between the deictic properties of IST and DIST and their eligibility for subjectification, and I will argue that this subjectification is accompanied by a syntagmatic reanalysis in terms of scopal structure (cf. McGregor 1997: Ch. 6) rather than complementation. In Chapter nine, finally, the main theoretical and descriptive points argued for in this study will be summarized, and a number of diachronic and typological areas for further research into the grammatical underpinnings of STR will be suggested.

Chapter 2 The syntagmatic structure of direct and indirect speech or thought

Various proposals have been put forward to describe the syntagmatic structure of sentences of speech or thought representation. The predominant view is still the traditional one which treats the reported clause of speech or thought as the direct object complement of the reporting verb (see among others Quirk et al. 1972/1985, Noonan 1985, Ransom 1986, Clark and Gerrig 1990: 771, Cappelen and Lepore 2007: 131). Thus, a sentence like Dorothy said: “My mother’s on the telephone” (Quirk et al. 1985: 1022) receives the same structural analysis as sentences with non-reported nominal direct objects like an apple in Tom ate an apple, or a book in Sue bought a book (Figure 1). S NP

VP V

NP

Dorothy

said

"My mother's on the telephone"

Tom Sue

ate bought

an apple a book

Figure 1. Traditional analysis of reported clauses

On this view, the reported clause is a participant in, or constituent (usually the direct object) of the process of saying or thinking. Thus, on the traditional view, a sentence like (1a) has the same configuration of processparticipant roles as (1b), that is to say, they both have two participants (a subject and an object) in the saying process: (1a) (1b)

He said “You’ll never believe it!” He said it.

20 The syntagmatic structure of DST and IST In Halliday’s (1985) view, however, these sentences are not syntagmatically equivalent: whereas in (1b), it is a participant in the verbal process, the quote “you’ll never believe it” in (1a) is not (1994 [1985]: 141). Instead, the quote is analysed as a clause entertaining a dependency relationship with the reporting clause, more particularly one of parataxis, in which both clauses can potentially occur on their own. Indirect speech or thought, on the other hand, is analysed in terms of hypotaxis because the reported clause in it is dependent on the reporting clause.1 Within the functional tradition established by Halliday, McGregor (1990b, 1994, 1997) has developed a radically interpersonal approach to STR. Interpersonal grammar is that level of the grammar at which the meaning construed at the representational level gets to be negotiated between speech participants (Halliday 1970, 1994 [1985]; Hengeveld 1989); it is the area of illocution, modality, evidentiality, speaker attitudes and hearer orientedness. The claim is not simply that this constitutes a different kind of meaning, but also that it is encoded differently. McGregor (1997) has argued that interpersonal phenomena in language require a conjugational structural analysis: rather than relate parts to wholes (the daughter– mother relationship of constituency) or parts to parts (the sister relationship of dependency), what interpersonal ‘operators’ do is relate wholes to wholes. For instance, Frankly in (2) is not a part of the representational configuration of a process (need) and the participants therein (millionaires and child-care assistance or maternity payments): (2)

1

Frankly, millionaires don’t need child-care assistance or maternity payments. (CB, oznews)

In philosophy, Davidson’s (2001 [1968]) account of the semantics or “logical form” of IST in terms of parataxis has gained ground. A sentence like Galileo said that the earth moves is analysed as a bisentential paratactic combination of the sentences Galileo said that and The earth moves, and Galileo and the current speaker thus become “samesayers” of the latter sentence. From a linguistic point of view Segal and Speas (1986) have put forward convincing arguments against this view, hinging on their view that that in IST is not a demonstrative but rather a complementizer since, unlike demonstrative that, it allows phonetic reduction and alternation with zero and induces syntactic restrictions. In addition, Hand (1991, 1993) has argued that Davidson’s interpretation fails even if it is restricted to the “logical form” (see Hand 1991: 352–353), as shown in the behaviour of negative polarity items in examples such as I didn’t say that there is any beer in the fridge, which resists analysis into I didn’t say that. There is any beer in the fridge.

Problems with the constituency analysis 21

In other words, frankly in (2) is not a constituent of the process– participant configuration, because it does not contribute to representational meaning. In addition, it is also not dependent on the clausal head because it does not relate the process–participant configuration to some circumstance of time, cause, manner, or whatever. Instead, it overlays an interpersonal meaning (viz. the speaker’s indication to the addressee that his or her claim is a frank statement of opinion) over the entire clause (see also Chapter 8). STR is likewise analysed in terms of interpersonal whole–whole relationships by McGregor (1990b, 1994, 1997). One whole, the reporting clause, encompasses the other, and indicates how it is to be taken interpersonally, viz. as not belonging to a first-order reality of things, events, and the relations between them, but rather to a second-order reality of semiotic entities (utterances, thoughts). The one important commonality that remains between Halliday’s and McGregor’s views is that both involve not just the reporting predicate, but the full reporting clause in the syntagmatic relationship proposed to describe sentences of STR. The aim of this chapter is to revisit these diverse proposals and arrive at an integrated understanding of the syntagmatic structure of STR. In section 1, I outline some of the problems that arise from the constituency view, and suggest that in order to transcend these problems we need to bring the full reporting clause, and not just the reporting predicate, into the picture. This is substantiated in section 2 in which reporting and reported clauses are contrasted with ‘factive’ matrix and complement clauses. Section (3) next examines the question of the structural integration between reporting and reported clause in terms of Langacker’s (1987: Ch. 8) description of complementation structure. I will argue that the reporting clause as a whole is a conceptually dependent head vis-à-vis the reported clause, which elaborates the semantically incomplete reporting clause. In section 4 I show how DST and IST can be differentiated within this approach in terms of the differing degree of relative conceptual autonomy of the reported clause. Finally, section 5 extends the analysis proposed in this chapter to other types of STR, including colloquial innovations such as be like.

1. Problems with the constituency analysis By way of example of a constituency approach, let us briefly consider Quirk et al.’s (1985) account of DST and IST (1985: 1020f). For IST, Quirk et al. propose a straightforward ‘complementation’ analysis, accord-

22 The syntagmatic structure of DST and IST ing to which the reported clause is viewed as a constituent (usually the direct object) of the matrix clause (1025). For reported clauses of DST, Quirk et al. are more circumspect: such clauses are said to share some characteristics with direct objects, but others, to do with variable positioning and even omissibility, with adverbials. The main reason why a direct object analysis is said to be possible is that some ‘alternates’ are shared with sentences with direct objects. In the spirit of Gleason (1965: Ch. 9), we can view argumentation on the basis of such ‘alternates’ as the establishing of identical structural relations on the basis of their agnates, i.e. their systematic and regular grammatical variants. According to Gleason (1965: 202–204), one can determine whether two structures are identical or not by checking whether they are characterized by the same set of ‘agnate’, or related, structures. Thus, for instance, the sentences the man saw a stranger and the man seemed a stranger may seem at first sight to be structurally identical. The fact that they do not, however, instantiate the same constructions follows from the fact that their agnates are different: the man saw a stranger allows a stranger was seen by the man but not *the man saw to be a stranger, whereas the man seemed a stranger allows the man seemed to be a stranger but not *a stranger was seemed by the man. Let us look at some of the agnates adduced by Quirk et al. which a DST sentence shares with sentences with an ‘ordinary’ direct object: (3) (3a) (3b)

Dorothy said, “My mother’s on the phone.” (Quirk et al. 1985: 1022) What did Dorothy actually say? – “My mother’s on the phone.” (Quirk et al. 1985: 1022) What Dorothy said was “My mother’s on the phone.” (Quirk et al. 1985: 1022)

These agnates do seem to argue in favour of assigning the same structure to the reported clause in (3) as to undisputed direct objects, as can easily be checked against examples (e.g. I just bought them a telly allows What did you just buy them? A telly as well as What I just bought them is a telly). However, in other areas agnation behaviour diverges. An important difference pertains to affectedness: as the attempted passivization in (4a) and do-probe in (4b) show, a quote is not affected by the verbal process. Uncontroversially such agnates are readily available for genuine direct objects, as in he hit the burglar; the burglar was hit by him; what he did to

Problems with the constituency analysis 23

the burglar was hit him, in which the burglar is truly a ‘done to’ or ‘affected’ participant. (4) (4a) (4b)

And then he said “Well he’s stupid and you’re stupid too!” (CB, usbooks) ??And then “Well he’s stupid and you’re stupid too!” was said by him. *What he then did to “Well he’s stupid and you’re stupid too!” was say it.

Another pattern that sets quoted clauses apart is the degree of separability they allow: the quote can easily be set off by means of punctuation (4c), and the reporting clause can occur at several places in the reported clause (4d) or, indeed, at the end. This type of behaviour is difficult to replicate with typical direct objects: And then he hit this: the burglar is marked, and *The, he hit next, burglar ungrammatical. (4c) (4d)

And then he said this: “Well he’s stupid and you’re stupid too!” “Well,” he said next, “he’s stupid and you’re stupid too!”

What the differences in terms of affectedness and separability minimally demonstrate is that if a quoted clause is some sort of object of the verb, it certainly is not a prototypical direct object. In fact, the only kind of nominal object taken by say is a cognate object: whereas verbs such as buy and hit allow a wide variety of direct objects which are clearly affected by the processes of buying or hitting (5–6), reporting verbs like say and think (7– 8) only take maximally non-specific ‘slot fillers’ (things, it) or cognate objects (words, thoughts) which, if concatenated as in (7–8), produce slightly awkward results because their meaning largely overlaps: (5) (6) (7) (8)

He bought a new computer, a digital camera, and a webcam. He hit the cook, the thief, his wife, and her lover. ?He said it, some things, and a few words. ?He thought some depressing thoughts, a few strange things, and it.

Perhaps the most compelling argument against the traditional verbal complementation analysis pertains to the types of verbs used in STR. These include not only verbs which can at least still take non-specific or cognate nominal objects, like say and think, but also indisputably intransitive predi-

24 The syntagmatic structure of DST and IST cates which do not take any objects at all (Davidse 1994: 263). Consider these examples of DST and IST respectively: (9) (10)

“The war has educated many of us”, he reflected, “so that we have found that peace of mind.” (CB, ukbooks) He was seven when they first met, and insists that he fell instantly in love. (CB, oznews)

It is not possible to insist it or (at least not in the sense intended) to reflect something, so to regard the reported clauses in (9–10) as the direct objects of insist and reflect would imply that these verbs are somehow turned into transitive verbs when they combine with a reported clause. There is a fair amount of crosslinguistic evidence suggesting that the transitivity of say verbs is not to be taken for granted. Thus, Munro’s (1982) data revealed features such as the absence of ‘object’ or ‘subordination’ marking in languages where complement taking verbs require such marking, restrictions on the passivization of say, treatment of the say clause as an intransitive in ergative languages, and treatment of the reported clause as a non-constituent. In De Roeck’s (1994) sample, it appears that in only about half of the 40 languages she looked at, verbs of saying can be considered to be fully transitive (47,5 %), in 10 % the quoting verbs behave transitively only if the addressee is expressed and intransitively if not, in 22,5 % they behave intransitively, and in 5 % both a transitive and an intransitive alternate are available.2 In several of the contributions to Güldemann and von Roncador’s (2002) typological volume, concrete cases of non-transitive or ‘intransitivizing’ verbs of saying are discussed in detail (e.g. Cohen et al. 2002, Güldemann 2002, Klamer 2002). For English specifically, Munro has suggested that say combined with a reported clause of DST is at least not convincingly transitive, for instance by pointing to the difficulty in passivization of quotes (?* “Help!” was said vs. A few words were said, Munro 1982: 307–308) or to certain word order possibilities (“What’s up?” said John vs. *Linguistics likes Mary, Munro 1982: 312). From the arguments adduced so far I conclude that the verbal complementation analysis as traditionally conceived is problematic for DST. As has appeared already from the indirect example with an intransitive report-

2

For the remaining 15% no information pertaining to the (in)transitivity of verbs of saying was found.

Problems with the constituency analysis 25

ing verb (10), similar problems appear in its application to IST, even though the direct object analysis in this case is more readily accepted in Quirk et al. 1985 and elsewhere (see also Mosegaard Hansen 2000: 282). Just as in DST, there are problems relating to the transitivity of the reporting verb (see 10 above), and in the case of IST as well as in DST the reported clause cannot be construed as a ‘done to’, i.e. a direct object participant that is affected by the saying or thinking process: (11) (11a)

She said that things would now never be the same. *What she did to that things would now never be the same was say it.

Note that even to read (11a), one needs to invoke quotation marks or quoting intonation around the reported clause which, in a sense, suggests that the do-probe yields even more anomalous results with indirect than with direct speech or thought. I hope to have shown up to this point that there is ample reason not to regard the reported clause of direct or indirect speech or thought as the direct object of the reporting predicate.3 In the following sections, I will elaborate a proposal which does not adopt the direct object analysis and as such avoids the many problems associated with it. Any alternative analysis which rejects the direct object analysis, however, will have to address the fundamental problem that a reporting clause such as He said or she thought has a sense of incompleteness to it – an incompleteness which is not resolved in a Hallidayan paratactic analysis which merely juxtaposes two clauses, nor in McGregor’s approach which claims that the two clauses stand in a whole–whole relationship. As well, it should be able to accommodate the syntagmatic differences observable in English between direct and indirect speech and thought constructions.

3

Mosegaard Hansen (2000) defends the ‘direct object’ analysis for direct quotes, at least in French. A number of the arguments discussed here are not addressed in her paper (e.g. do-probes, separability, the problem posed by intransitive verbs used in STR), and several arguments adduced by her can only work if one first accepts her unproven premise that the direct object analysis is valid for IST. Some of her observations do helpfully point up difficulties with Halliday’s paratactic account of DST; I will return to these in section 4. For a more detailed critique of Mosegaard Hansen’s argumentation, see Vandelanotte 2005b: 36–38.

26 The syntagmatic structure of DST and IST 2. The reporting and reported clause as basic units In this section, I will argue that it is the reporting clause as a whole that entertains a syntagmatic relationship with the reported clause and hence, that the reported clause cannot be a complement in the traditional sense, viz. a complement of a predicate (the reporting verb). In order to make this point, I will compare the semantics and syntax of reporting and reported clauses to those of so-called ‘factive’ matrix and complement clauses. I will focus particularly on IST because it is especially IST and fact constructions which may at first sight seem to be ‘structurally identical’, in Gleason’s (1965) terminology introduced in the previous section.4 This is because both IST and fact constructions contain a subject, a predicate, and a complement clause, as in the following examples:5 (12)

(13)

4

In a speech that focused on schemes to raise standards in inner-city schools, he said that many children lacked space at home to study. (CB, times) On one of my frequent return visits back home to Britain a string of family deaths, accidents and traumas so devastated me that I suffered a relapse into amnesia. Incredibly, the newspaper headline came true and I actually forgot that I had a husband in the US! I never went back to him. I spent the next four years in another mental fog. (CB, ukbooks)

I am using the term fact in a broader sense than in Kiparsky and Kiparsky (1971). Delacruz (1976) was probably the first to point out that the ‘factive presupposition’ which the Kiparskys described (viz. that the proposition in the factive complement is regarded as true by the speaker) does not always obtain. On the basis of corpus evidence, Davidse (2003) has shown that factive propositions may be regarded as facts in some cases by only the speaker, in other cases by only the secondary consciousness named as subject of the matrix predicate, and in still other cases by both speaker and secondary ‘processer’. My use of the term fact does thus not invoke the Kiparskys’ narrow conception of ‘factive presupposition’. 5 With DST, it is more immediately clear that there is no relation of structural identity vis-à-vis fact constructions, for instance because DST in present-day English does not normally have a complementizer (that), and because fact constructions do not allow the kind of ‘break’ in typography and pitch that DST does (*I completely forgot: “that I still owe you money”).

The reporting and reported clause as basic units 27

In spite of their apparent structural identity, the constructions in (12) and (13) are not instances of the same construction type,6 as shown by their different agnation patterning (see Kiparsky and Kiparsky 1971 and Davidse 1994). Thus, for instance, (13) allows an agnate with the fact that (I actually forgot the fact that I had a husband in the US), whereas (12) does not (*he said the fact that many children lacked space at home to study). I would like to argue that semantically as well as in terms of a number of syntactic agnates, there is one fundamental difference between the two construction types that points up an important characteristic of STR constructions in general. This difference, as we will see, pertains to the unithood in STR constructions of the reporting clause (subject and verb): the reported clause in STR is a kind of complement of the reporting clause as a whole, whereas in fact clauses the factive complement is an argument of the matrix predicate. The unithood of the reporting clause does not only apply to IST, but initially the discussion will be focused on IST in its different semantics and agnation patterns compared to fact constructions. Some of the agnates allowed in IST, but not allowed in fact constructions, in fact also apply to STR in general, as will become clear in the discussion. Turning to semantics first, I claim that it makes good sense to consider the reporting clause as the relevant unit in the interclausal relationship involved in sentences of STR: it is this unit as a whole which identifies the represented speaker and his or her speech or thought act, and thereby sets the reported clause apart as belonging to a ‘semiotic’ rather than an ‘experiential’ level of reality – a world of linguistic rather than real-world entities. It is thus the combination of the subject and verb in the reporting clause that together construe the reportative ‘frame’ (cf. McGregor 1997: Ch. 6.5) which gives the reported clause its special, semiotic status as giving the linguistic content of the speech or thought act described in the reporting clause. Halliday (1994 [1985]) has termed this type of meaning’ ‘metaphenomenal’ because in the reported clause, one is not given a direct representation of experience, but rather a representation of such a representation. Let us now see how examples (12) and (13) differ on this point. We can begin by noting that the reported clause of (12), that many children lacked 6

From an English perspective at least, Marnette’s (2005: 55–56) meaning-based classification of verbs involved in speech and thought representation into the categories ‘external speech’, ‘internal speech’ and ‘attitudes’ (the latter including factive verbs such as reconnaître ‘acknowledge, admit’ and oublier ‘forget’) glosses over this constructional distinction.

28 The syntagmatic structure of DST and IST space at home to study, gives the content of the speech act he said. In contrast, one cannot say that in (13) the clause that I had a husband in the US gives the ‘content’ of I actually forgot. This is because in (12), the reported proposition exists only by virtue of its having been said by ‘him’. The factive proposition in (13), on the other hand, is not created by the amnesiac’s act of forgetting, but is, in Davidse’s (2003: 126) words, “preexistent to the relation in which it participates”. This echoes Halliday’s (1994 [1985]) characterization of facts as “ready packaged” propositions. The pre-existent nature of factive propositions is confirmed by their behaviour in contexts of negation (Hooper 1975: 97). Compare, for instance, (14a) to (14b): (14a) (14b)

I actually forgot that I had a husband in the US! I didn’t forget that I had a husband in the US.

The negation in (14b) leaves the factive proposition as such unaffected: in it, just as in (14a), the speaker has a husband in the US. In contrast, if the IST report in (12) is negated (he didn’t say that many children lacked space at home to study), then it is denied that the content of the reported proposition was said by him. Under negation, the represented speaker of (12) either did not say anything like the reported proposition, or depending on the focus of the negation said something that differs in at least one respect from it (Hooper 1975: 98), as in (15). (15)

He didn’t say that many children lacked space at home to study, he said that some children lacked space at home to study.

The different semantics of factive constructions and IST can be summarized as follows. Instead of being dependent on an act of verbalization or cognition like reported propositions, factive propositions are independent from the process (forgot in [13]) they take part in. All one can say is that the factive proposition is ‘interacted with’ in terms of the factive process: it is a “proposition capable of being manipulated, evaluated, and commented on” (Langacker 1991: 35), but it does not give the linguistic content of the factive process nor of the factive matrix clause. In contrast, a reported proposition does give the content of the reporting clause, and exists only by virtue of its having been said or thought. This general semantic difference has several syntactic corollaries. I will discuss four types of agnates which point up the difference between IST and factive constructions. Together, they argue in favour of viewing the

The reporting and reported clause as basic units 29

reporting clause of STR as a unit which interacts, as a whole, with the reported clause, whereas in fact constructions the factive proposition is directly an argument of the verb, and not of the entire matrix clause. A first agnation pattern on which IST and fact constructions differ is that only reported propositions allow clausal substitution. Halliday and Hasan (1976) have shown that substitution (and ellipsis, which they view as ‘substitution by zero’) is a fundamentally different type of cohesive relation from reference: substitutes can only occur in precisely the same grammatical environment (in terms of grammatical class and function) as what they stand for, whereas reference items refer to ‘meanings’ rather than to grammatically defined bits of actual preceding text. Whereas IST (16) allows both reference (by means of that or it) and substitution (by means of the clausal substitutes so or not, or by zero),7 factive propositions can only be referred to, not clausally substituted (17). (16) (17)

He said that many children lacked space at home to study. :: He really said that/it/so. I actually forgot that I had a husband in the US! :: I really forgot that/it/*so.

The fact that clausal substitution is possible in (16) means that the thing substituted, viz. the reported proposition that many children lacked space at home to study, functions as a clause. This makes it difficult to defend the thesis that the reported clause is an object of the verb, since a verb only takes nominal or nominalized objects. In contrast, the factive proposition that I had a husband in the US does not allow clausal substitution, which means that it has lost its clausal status and can function as a (nominalized) object. A second patterning in terms of which IST and fact constructions differ confirms this last point. Because fact constructions have transitive matrix predicates, like accept, regret or forget (as in [13]), they can in principle take an object, and there is nothing that stands in the way of viewing factive propositions as objects of the verb. This is supported by the observation (cf. Davidse 1994: 271–272) that factive propositions can often (though not always) be replaced by noun phrases (to accept a proposal, to regret the false accusations, or in [13] to forget one’s marriage), whereas reported

7

Zero can occur in questions (Who says?) and with some predicates (I guess, I think) (Davidse 1994: 274).

30 The syntagmatic structure of DST and IST clauses can only be replaced by cognate objects (to say a few words, to tell the truth, to think deep thoughts) and not by nominal rephrasings of the reported clause (as in [12] *He said the lack of space). More fundamentally still, it will be recalled from section 1 that there exist intransitive predicates which can occur in reporting clauses, like insist or reflect. Such predicates can never take an object, and form a strong impediment to viewing reported clauses as objects of the reporting verb. A third agnation pattern pertains to the post-position of the matrix clause. IST allows such a post-posed alternate (18), whereas fact constructions do not (19) (Davidse 1994: 266, see also Banfield 1982: 191, Vandelanotte 2000: 217): (18a) (18b) (19a) (19b)

He said that many children lacked space at home to study. Many children lack space at home to study, he said. I actually forgot that I had a husband in the US! *I had a husband in the US, I actually forgot!

This difference argues in favour of viewing the reporting subject and verb as one unit, which can construe the reportative reading from different positions (including sentence-medial position) in an STR construction. It also suggests that this unit status does not obtain for the matrix clause of fact constructions, in which the factive proposition instead is directly a participant in the process designated by the matrix predicate. A final difference in agnation behaviour that I will discuss briefly pertains to the potential for subjectification which is present in the case of IST reporting clauses, but absent in the case of factive matrix clauses. In subjectified cases of IST, the reporting clause no longer straightforwardly describes an act of thinking, but has rather come to express, for instance, the speaker’s degree of commitment to the truth status of the proposition or the speaker’s signal to the addressee that no face threat is intended by making his or her claim. Consider example (20): (20)

Cos I think he’s sort of realized now that nobody’s particularly impressed by him taking six grams and twelve Es [ecstacy pills] at once and going oh I took six grams of [sic] and twelve Es at once and I was really fucked. (COLT)

I think in (20) does not serve to construe a representation of the current speaker’s thinking process, but instead it serves to temper the claim being made and hence, like sort of, its main function seems to be to act as a

The reporting and reported clause as basic units 31

hedge. There are two things to note here. Firstly, it is the reporting clause as a whole which, under certain circumstances, can acquire a grammaticalized form and a subjectified meaning (Chapter 8), and this supports the claim that the reporting clause is a primary unit in IST constructions. Secondly, fact constructions lack this subjectification potential, and this is in part related to the fact that their subject and verb do not form such a ‘primary unit’ interacting as a whole with the factive proposition. What can we conclude from the above agnation differences between IST and fact constructions? Semantically, a factive proposition is ‘pre-existent’ and is “interacted with, or mentally manipulated” (Davidse 1994: 276) by the subject of the factive predicate, whereas a reported proposition is as it were ‘created’ in the speech or thought act described in the reporting clause. Grammatically, a reported clause is still a clause and cannot be viewed as an object of the verb, since there exist reporting clauses with intransitive predicates. That a reporting clause forms a primary unit in the syntagmatic combination of reporting and reported clause is supported by the observation that it can occur as a unit sentence-medially or sentencefinally in a postposed agnate, and by the fact that it subjectivizes as a whole. A factive proposition, on the other hand, is nominalized since it does not allow clausal substitution, and it is directly a participant of the transitive factive process. The matrix clause of fact constructions does not form a primary syntagmatic unit, as suggested by the absence of a postposed agnate or of subjectified forms. While the discussion up to this point has concentrated on IST, the characteristics just summarized for IST can be extended to DST as well as to other STR constructions (section 5). This is not to say that all specific agnates distinguishing IST from fact constructions can without modification be applied to DST as well, but there is enough evidence to suggest that the fundamental split between reporting and reported clause is also valid for DST and the other types of STR. I will briefly consider some of this evidence. First of all, in terms of semantics, it is in all types of STR the case that the ‘metaphenomenal’ status of the reported clause is conferred onto it by the reporting clause which identifies as a whole the represented speaker and the speech or thought act. While the reporting clause thus names the central participant(s) of the represented speech situation of which the interactive content is given in the reported clause, it also embodies the current speech situation through its own grounding (in terms of grammatical person and tense) vis-à-vis the current speaker’s here and now.

32 The syntagmatic structure of DST and IST Secondly, while we saw that IST allows of an agnate in which the reporting clause is postposed, but which itself no longer instantiates IST, the other types of STR all have as a property that their reporting clauses can be sentence-medial or sentence-final instead of sentence-initial (cf. Longacre 1985: 252). The non-sentence initial position of reporting clauses is an obvious but important index of their status as a primary unit in the syntagmatic structure of STR. Apart from allowing different positions for the reporting clause, it is also possible in many cases to omit the reporting clause, which can be viewed as a kind of alternation of the entire reporting clause with zero.8 This is because the reading of STR sentences as representing someone’s speech or thought can often be deduced from contextual cues, such as the presence of overtly marked reportative structures in the surrounding text, the use of lexis or subjectivity markers not belonging to the current speaker, descriptions of mental states or of actions which may introduce verbalizations (e.g. He was in a bad mood or She nodded followed by a direct or free indirect quote representing an angry man’s speech or the consenting words of a female speaker), and so on. In a broad sense, such resolution processes producing the correct reportative reading could be treated as a case of coercion (cf. Michaelis 2004, Traugott 2007): in order to make, for instance, unexpectedly subjective lexis ‘fit’, a reading of the sentence as instantiating a reportative construction is required.9 What alternates with zero in such cases is the entire reporting clause, which again supports the view that this is a primary unit which can, however, in some contexts be left unexpressed.10 Certain typographical uses associated with STR can be considered as a fourth kind of reflex of the split between reporting and reported clause. DST reported clauses are conventionally used in writing with quotation 8

As indicated in Chapter 1, I do not adopt the position which treats ‘free direct speech/thought’ as a separate category besides DST, but rather view it as part of a single category conceived of as a discourse construction. See further section 5.2. 9 See, in this connection, Nikiforidou’s (subm.) application of the notions of coercion and blending to FIST. For a critical review of ways in which the notion of coercion has come to be used in cognitive linguistics, see Ziegeler 2007. 10 Alternation with zero is possible with all types of STR, except with IST, which only very occasionally occurs without an explicit reporting clause, viz. if a second reported clause is added after a first, full sentence of IST, as in the following example: She did tell me that her father died in 1970, and her mother a year or so later. And that she had no living relatives (CB, ukbooks).

The reporting clause as a semantically incomplete head 33

marks, and may be combined in spoken language with quoting gestures or with quote and unquote formulas (I quote). While this only indirectly marks off the reporting clause by virtue of not being included in the quotation marks, the use of commas, colons or semicolons frequently provides a means of explicitly separating the reporting from the reported clause in DST as well as in other types of STR. Finally, it seems that in terms of prosodic features, the reporting clause may also be signalled to be ‘different’ from the rest of a sentence of STR. According to Halliday (1994 [1985]: 250), if the reporting clause of DST follows all or part of the reported clause, prosodically it follows as a ‘tail’; if it occurs sentence-initially, on the other hand, it is typically ‘proclitic’. In either case, the point is that the reporting clause is phonologically less prominent than the reported clause. I conclude that for DST and IST, there are good reasons to view the reporting clause as a primary unit in the syntagmatic structure of the STR construction under consideration. Extension of this analysis to other types will follow in section 5; first the question must be addressed as to how precisely the two primary units, reporting and reported clause, are syntagmatically combined into a complex sentence. In the following section, I will develop a proposal in which the reporting and reported clause combine in terms of conceptual dependence (Langacker 1987: Ch. 8)

3. The reporting clause as a semantically incomplete head In this section, I will introduce Langacker’s (1987: Ch. 8) approach to the integration of component structures into an integrated ‘composite’ structure (3.1). This description in terms of the elaboration of schematic substructures and of the difference between ‘complementation’ and ‘modification’ will then be applied to the combination of reporting and reported clauses into ‘composite’ DST and IST constructions (3.2).

3.1. Elaboration, conceptual dependence, and complementation In Langacker’s view (1987), a grammatical construction involves the integration, at the semantic as well as the phonological pole, of component structures into a composite structure. Such integration depends on correspondences between a substructure of one component structure with a

34 The syntagmatic structure of DST and IST substructure of the other (Langacker 1987: 94). In this section, I will discuss the conceptual mechanisms involved in the integration of component structures at the semantic pole, although these mechanisms also apply at the phonological pole. In general terms, what does the ‘integration’ on the basis of ‘correspondences’ between substructures of component structures mean? The ‘substructures’ in this line of analysis are to be understood as very abstract or in Langackerian terminology schematic specifications. When such a schematic substructure of one component structure ‘corresponds’ to a substructure of the other, this means that they are construed as being identical (Langacker 1987: 278), and it is through this identical or ‘shared’ substructure that the component structures are integrated into a composite conceptualization. To take a simple example discussed by Croft (2001: 274), in a structure like Hannah sings, the predicate sing has a schematic structural ‘slot’ for someone doing the singing, and the proper name Hannah can have as a schematic substructure an activity performed by Hannah. The composite structure Hannah sings is then formed by superimposing corresponding entities: to the schematic ‘singer’ in the structure of sing corresponds the profile of Hannah (i.e. what is designated by the proper name Hannah), and to the schematic activity that may be associated with Hannah corresponds the profile of sings. Thus, the schematic semantic substructures of Hannah and sings are ‘filled in’ or elaborated by the more concrete instantiations of them profiled by the other component structure: Hannah elaborates the primary participant or ‘trajector’ (the singer) of sings, and sings elaborates the process in which Hannah participates. The schematic substructure of one component structure that is elaborated by the profile of the other component structure is called an elaboration site or e-site (Langacker 1987: 304). Typically, the component structures that are integrated to form a composite construction manifest “substantial asymmetry” (Langacker 1987: 300) termed A/D asymmetry by Langacker (1987: 306). This asymmetry is stated in terms of “conceptual dependence”: One structure, D, is dependent on the other, A, to the extent that A constitutes an elaboration of a salient substructure within D. (Langacker 1987: 300; emphasis omitted)

Both elaboration and salience are scalar notions, and thus conceptual dependence itself “is inherently a matter of degree” (Langacker 1987: 300).

The reporting clause as a semantically incomplete head 35

This will prove important in my account of the syntagmatic difference between DST and IST (section 4). It is important to stress that this notion of conceptual dependence is different from standard applications of the notion “dependency” which are based largely on distributional criteria (“often one element is said to be dependent on another because it only occurs when the second element also does”, Langacker 1987: 306). A dependency grammar would consider Hannah in Hannah sings as a dependent of sings because, informally, Hannah sings is about singing (singing is the ‘head’). Headhood, however, in Langacker’s account pertains to a different dimension (viz. that of profile determinacy) than conceptual dependence, to which I will return below. Let us consider the simple example Hannah sings in terms of conceptual dependence. It is easy to see that it is sings which in its semantic structure makes salient reference to the one doing the singing: given a singing activity, the presence of a singer is logically implied. Conversely, sings only elaborates a more loosely associated substructure of Hannah: given a person, it is not strongly implied that this person is engaged in some activity. In view of this difference in salience, we can conclude that Hannah is conceptually autonomous relative to sings, since Hannah elaborates a salient schematic substructure of sings. In terms of the above definition, we can state that one structure, sings, is dependent on the other, Hannah, to the extent that Hannah constitutes an elaboration of a salient substructure within sings. As already hinted at above, the integration of component structures into a composite construction is not exhaustively characterized in terms of conceptual dependence alone. Depending on whether it is the conceptually more dependent or the conceptually more autonomous component structure which is semantically the ‘head’ of the composite construction, Langacker makes a further dinstinction between head–complement and head–modifier relations (1987: Ch. 8). Headhood is defined by Langacker in terms of profile determinacy: For the most part, a composite structure simply inherits the profile of one of its components. The component structure whose profile is inherited will be termed the profile determinant of the construction. (Langacker 1987: 289)

The profile of an expression is what the expression actually designates, as opposed to the background or “base” invoked by an expression. Thus, when someone talks about her uncle, the word “uncle” profiles or designates only one person, but it invokes a certain path through a family tree involving one of the speaker’s parents and a brother of this parent. Since a composite

36 The syntagmatic structure of DST and IST structure like Hannah sings profiles an event (singing), the overall profile is inherited from the ‘profile determinant’ sings. Two contrastive examples discussed by Croft (2001: 255–256) are the vase broke and a broken vase: broke is the profile determinant of the event the vase broke, whereas vase is the profile determinant of the thing a broken vase. In the rich body of literature on how to determine headhood (e.g. Zwicky 1985, 1993; Van Langendonck 1994; Croft 2001: Ch. 7), several operational criteria are discussed which can help to recognize the ‘profile determinant’ or head of a construction. One of the strongest indicators of headhood or profile determinacy has been described by Hudson (1990: 106) in terms of a hyponymy relation between the whole construction and its head. Van Langendonck (1994: 246–247) adjusts this criterion so as to cover also cases of determination (this book is not exactly a ‘kind’ of book in the way that big book is a kind of book) and proposes that the whole construction refers to an instance of what the model, i.e. the head, refers to (1994: 247). For instance, knocking once is an instance of knocking (its head), not of once, and the book is an instance of book, not of the. This criterion is further refined by Van Langendonck (1994: 247–248) in terms of a question-word test according to which it must be possible to replace the ‘non-head’, but not the head, “by an appropriate question-word” in normal, non-echoic WH-questions consisting of one clause (1994: 247). Thus, big book is questioned as what book?; knocking once as knocking how often? As this last example shows, a WH-word alone may not suffice and may need to be supported by a “general term” (Van Langendonck 1994: 247) such as often, times, kind, many, etc. The notions of profile determinacy and of conceptual dependence vs. autonomy provide the input to a distinction between two types of ‘head/non-head’ relations, complementation and modification. When, in a construction showing the type of autonomous/dependent (A/D) asymmetry explained above, it is the conceptually dependent element which is the profile determinant, A is a complement of D. If, instead, A is the profile determinant, D is a modifier of the head A (Langacker 1987: 309). To take the example of Hannah sings once more, we saw earlier that sings is the conceptually dependent element and also the profile determinant (thus, one might say, it is a ‘conceptually dependent head’). This means that Hannah is a “complement” of sings, in the technical sense of being the conceptually more autonomous component structure that is not the profile determinant. In an example like Hannah is singing in the bathroom, on the other hand, in the bathroom is a modifier vis-à-vis the process–participant constellation

The reporting clause as a semantically incomplete head 37

Hannah is singing (cf. Langacker 1987: 309). This is because in the bathroom is both conceptually dependent vis-à-vis the clausal nucleus, and not the profile determinant.11 In the next section, the fine-grained distinctions allowed by Langacker’s detailed account of the factors involved in integrating component structures into a construction will be applied to the syntagmatic ‘integration’ of reporting and reported clauses in STR constructions.

3.2. The conceptual dependence structure of STR constructions In order to characterize the syntagmatic structure of DST and IST, I will propose an analysis in terms of Langacker’s model of complementation of a simple example sentence of DST (21). The analysis can be extended to IST, since all that will be discussed here is the manner of constructional ‘assembly’ of reporting and reported clause. The syntagmatic differences between DST and IST will be discussed in section 4. (21)

He said “I’m leaving”.

Following the discussion in section 2, we can identify the component structures of (21) as the reporting clause He said on the one hand, and the reported clause I’m leaving on the other hand. Of these component structures, the reporting clause He said taken on its own is semantically incomplete, whereas “I’m leaving” can function on its own. Therefore, we can assume that He said makes schematic reference to a salient semantic substructure giving an abstract specification of the ‘missing’ part, viz. ‘WHAT IS SAID OR THOUGHT BY THE REPRESENTED SPEAKER’. This salient schematic substructure is elaborated by the reported clause “I’m leaving”. Conversely, a fully articulated event like I’m leaving only has as one possible, more incidental and in this sense non-salient substructure the abstract schema of tying an event to a current speech situation. Hence, the reporting clause can be argued to elaborate only a less salient substructure of the reported clause. This provides an indication of the A/D layering in 11

This example should not be taken to mean that all prepositional phrases are modifiers. For instance, in a box in I put the sweater in a box (Langacker 1987: 308) is a complement, not a modifier, because the ‘putting’ is conceptually dependent on the final destination in a box (compare the semantically incomplete I put the sweater), and put is the profile determinant.

38 The syntagmatic structure of DST and IST (21): since it is the reported clause which elaborates a highly salient substructure within the reporting clause (and not vice versa), we can conclude that the reporting clause is conceptually dependent on the reported clause. Adopting the simplified representation used by Croft (2001: 274 Fig. 7.1) for Hannah sings, in which only the more salient e-site is included, we can represent this analysis schematically as in Figure 2. HE SAID

e-site

"I'M LEAVING" elaboration

Figure 2. The conceptual dependence structure of DST

This analysis does full justice to the proposal made earlier (section 2) that the reporting clause should be recognized as a primary unit in the syntagmatic structure of DST and IST constructions (and of STR constructions generally; see section 5). It is a nonstandard analysis in precisely this regard, since the traditional analysis, rephrased in Langackerian terms, would posit an elaboration relation between the reported clause and a schematic substructure of the reporting verb rather than the reporting clause. Even though my alternative is nonstandard in assigning an elaboration site to the reporting clause, it is not nonstandard as such to ascribe an e-site to a clause: adverbials such as in the bathroom in Hannah is singing in the bathroom elaborate the schematic substructure specifying the location not just of the verb, but of “the constituent formed by the verb together with its subject and object nominals” (Langacker 1987: 309), i.e. of the clausal nucleus. Even though it is thus recognized implicitly by Langacker that a clause can have an elaboration site, it should be noted at this point that Langacker’s own analysis of STR constructions is the “traditional” one in which reported clauses are analysed as elaborating a schematic substructure of the reporting verb, not the full reporting clause. For instance, in discussing the sentence They were, I think, very cooperative, Langacker speaks of the “status of THEY WERE VERY COOPERATIVE as a complement of THINK” (1997: 23), and in discussing the complex chain of complementation in Alice says Bill thinks Chris believes Dave left (Langacker 1997: 28–29), correspondences are posited each time between the verb and the complement: “BILL THINKS corresponds to the landmark of

The reporting clause as a semantically incomplete head 39 SAYS, CHRIS BELIEVES 12 BELIEVES” (1997: 29).

to that of THINKS, and DAVE LEFT to that of

Now that we have determined the direction of the A/D asymmetry, we can determine whether the integration of reporting and reported clause involves complementation or modification. The head or profile determinant of (21) is He said rather than “I’m leaving”, since He said “I’m leaving” is about ‘his’ saying, not about ‘his’ leaving. In terms of Van Langendonck’s (1994) formulation, we can state that (21) is an instance of a ‘saying event’, not of a ‘leaving event’. Since it is both conceptually dependent and the profile determinant, we can conclude that the reporting clause is a conceptually dependent head, while the reported clause is a conceptually more autonomous complement (and not a modifier) of the reporting clause. While this outcome may seem traditional on a superficial reading, it is important to bear in mind the fact that, for the reasons explored in the previous sections, the reported clause here is proposed to be a complement of the reporting clause as a whole (and not as traditionally assumed of the reporting verb), and that complement is specifically defined as the conceptually autonomous component structure which is not the profile determinant in an A/D asymmetry. The main benefit of the analysis proposed here can be summed up as follows. If we regard the reporting clause in sentences of DST and IST (and other types, see section 5) as a ‘semantically incomplete’ or conceptually dependent head in the sense defined by Langacker, we avoid the trap of imputing unconditional transitivity to the reporting verb by viewing the reported clause as a direct object of that verb (section 1), while at the same time taking account of the fact that the reporting clause on its own is semantically incomplete. The reporting clause is head vis-à-vis the reported clause since the full sentence profiles an act of saying or thinking, and not of whatever the process construed in the reported clause is, but at the same time the reporting clause cannot occur independently on its own as it is ‘conceptually dependent’ on the reported clause for its completion (compare *He said.).13 I thus reject Halliday’s (1994 [1985]) analysis 12

In Cognitive Grammar, a “landmark” is a salient substructure of a relational predication – a verb, in this case – but not the most salient one (the latter is called the “trajector”), or it is the profile of a nominal predication. For instance, in John hit Bill, John is the trajector and Bill is the landmark. 13 This does not entail that clauses such as He told her or She insists can never occur on their own: they can, but only in contexts in which they do not function as reporting clauses, as in the following constructed dialogues (i–ii):

40 The syntagmatic structure of DST and IST presented in the introduction to this chapter, according to which both component clauses of DST, and the reporting clause of IST, are viewed as ‘free’ clauses which can occur independently as a functioning whole. Halliday’s position ascribes more ‘freedom’ to reporting clauses than is warranted by actual usage. My position also implies a rejection of McGregor’s approach (1990b, 1994, 1997) in which the syntagmatic structure of STR constructions is claimed to be exclusively interpersonal. In McGregor’s ‘framing’ analysis of STR constructions, a reporting clause ‘overlays’ the reported clause with an interpersonal meaning, viz. one of ‘non-commitment’ on the part of the current speaker vis-à-vis the reported utterance (1997: 269). As an interpersonal relationship, framing does not, according to McGregor, involve constituency or dependency. Against this, I have argued that the A/D asymmetry between reporting and reported clause must be taken seriously. This translates into a dependence analysis in which reporting and reported clause are integrated as conceptually dependent head and conceptually autonomous complement respectively. This means that the type of syntagmatic structure involved is representational rather than interpersonal. An STR construction in its congruent use describes a speech or thought act and is not merely concerned with the expression of interpersonal attitudes. As for the semantics of ‘non-commitment’ which informs McGregor’s notion of framing, I do not believe one needs to take recourse to an interpersonal syntagmatic structure in order to account for this. As far as I can see, these non-committing semantics arise from the very fact that speech or thought representation is going on, i.e. that the represented proposition is not a current speaker’s proposition. A representational analysis is compatible with these semantics, since the reporting clause is fully recognized as describing a represented speaker and his or her speech or thought act. Now that we have a model for the syntagmatic structure of sentences of DST and IST, we need to consider how to differentiate between DST and IST syntagmatically: apart from the global commonalities in terms of conceptual dependence and head–complement structure, there remain (i)

(ii)

– He didn’t know whether to tell her or not. – So what did he decide? – He told her. – Mother wanted you to join us for dinner tomorrow night. – Oh, I don’t know, don’t you think she’d mind? – Oh, but she insists!

DST versus IST: juxtaposition vs. incorporation 41

fundamental differences pertaining particularly to the structural status and form of the reported clause of DST versus IST.

4. DST versus IST: juxtaposition vs. incorporation In this section, I will relate the syntagmatic differences between DST and IST to the different degree of relative conceptual autonomy of the reported clause in the two types of STR constructions. Even though DST and IST share important commonalities in terms of syntagmatic structure (section 3), there are important differences as well. As we will see in section 5, in which other types are added to the picture, it is IST that stands out in a number of respects. Among the features which distinctively characterize IST are the use of complementizers and restrictions pertaining to basic clause types, expressive features, and the reporting clause. I will discuss each of these briefly in turn. 1. Complementizers. In present-day English, complementizer that can only occur at the beginning of a reported clause of IST.14 When it is a yes/no question that is reported, a complementizer if or whether normally occurs. It has been stressed (for instance by Bolinger 1972, Rissanen 1991) that the variation between that and zero is not a matter of ‘omission’ (pace Dor’s [2005] semantic account of “that-deletion”), but of different choices, since zero has existed uninterruptedly beside that since Old English (Rissanen 1991: 276–277). Historically, the that variant seems to have grammaticalized from an original demonstrative pronoun, cataphorically referring to the content of the saying or thinking announced in the reporting clause (“he said this: [report]”) (see Hopper and Traugott 2003 [1993]: 190–194). As for present-day English, the choice between that or zero has been correlated with many factors (cf. Elsness 1984) including frequency (Bolinger 1972) and semantics (Rissanen 1991) of the verb, avoidance of ambiguous or incomprehensible sentences (McDavid 1964, Bolinger 1972, Quirk et al. 1985: 1050), register differences (McDavid 1964, Bolinger 1972, Rissanen 1991, Thompson and Mulac 1991a/b), and ‘objectification’ in the presence of that vs. greater subjectivity in its absence (Storms 1966,

14

According to Rissanen (1991: 274), that could in Old English also be used to refer to an ensuing direct quotation, as evidenced by the deictic make-up of the reported clause in his example Þa cwæð se Hælend Þæt ðu segst (‘And Jesus said unto him [this:], Thou sayest’, West Saxon Gospels, Matt. 27: 11).

42 The syntagmatic structure of DST and IST Bolinger 1972, Wierzbicka 1988: 165, Rissanen 1991, Thompson and Mulac 1991a/b, Langacker 1991: 445–449, Hand 1993). 2. Restrictions on basic clause types. It is only in IST that there are restrictions on the basic clause types (or ‘moods’ in the sense of Halliday 1994 [1985]) that can occur in the reported clauses (e.g. no interrogatives or exclamatives); an original question, for instance, is reported as a declarative (e.g. Tony Howell asks if she knows what the general risk of breast cancer is [CB, ukmags]). The importance of this formal restriction lies in the association of clause types with the speech functions they realize in the unmarked case: as Halliday has remarked, the form of the reported complement of IST “precludes it from functioning as a move in an exchange” (1994 [1985]: 256). For instance, a declarative clause typically realizes a statement whereas an interrogative clause realizes a question; in the former the speaker assumes responsibility for the propositional content whereas in the latter responsibility is ‘transferred’ to the hearer (Davies 1979). The fact that the reported clause of IST has no independent speech function or exchange value provides the underlying reason for the restrictions in regard of basic clause types. As argued by Halliday (1994 [1985]: 257f), one option which the reported clause of IST does still have is a general ‘finite/non-finite’ option, illustrated in the contrast between (22) and (23).15 The non-finite construal can be used according to Halliday to report ‘proposals’, i.e. offers or commands, after verbs like suggest, threaten, promise, request, and so on. Even in the non-finite option, however, no independent speech function is coded. A complement such as not to go back home to Sussex… in (23) cannot function independently as a move in an exchange in the way the corresponding command don’t go back home to Sussex can. (22)

15

He told her that either she went with him or he hit the deck. (CB, oznews)

Quirk et al. (1985: 1052) mention that inversion can occur in literary style “when the wh-element is the subject complement or an obligatory adverbial, particularly if the subject is lengthy”, as in their example She told us how strong was her motivation to engage in research. This is still a declarative, but with exceptional inversion. An indirectly reported question is normally turned into a declarative (I asked her how strong her motivation to engage in research was), a rendering as I asked her how strong was her motivation to engage in research? would have to be naturalized as FIST or DIST with an introductory reporting clause and with a change in pitch after the reporting clause (see section 5 below).

DST versus IST: juxtaposition vs. incorporation 43

(23)

When he was in London er he his father told him not to go back home to Sussex where he lived. (CB, ukspok)

In the remainder of this chapter, I will focus on finite IST complements. However, I do believe that the general syntagmatic analysis proposed in the previous section is valid for the non-finite complements as well: in (23), for instance, the reporting clause his father told him is conceptually dependent on the reported clause for its semantic completion, while at the same time it is the profile determinant of the composite construction (which designates the father’s giving advice, not the son’s cancelled act of going home).16 3. Restrictions on expressive features. The restriction on basic clause types can already be viewed as a restriction on the amount and kind of expressive features allowed in the reported clause of IST. Banfield’s (1973, 1982: 28–34) well-known list of ‘expressive’ features allowed in DST but banned from IST includes many more, but this list has provoked severe criticisms, especially from McHale (1978, 1983). I will return to this controversy in Chapter 3 (section 5). What is important here is that, even if not all items on Banfield’s list are really excluded from IST, there are still some expressive features which are very difficult to tolerate in an IST reported clause but perfectly acceptable in one of DST. Thus, for instance, it is possible in DST to have an incomplete chunk of a sentence in a reported clause, when this is understood to be a short reply or retort (24a). Such chunks are not easily accommodated in IST (24b): (24a) (24b)

“Not for the Queen of England,” said Mrs Ramsay emphatically. (Woolf, To the Lighthouse, p. 124 qtd. Banfield 1982: 32) *Mrs Ramsay said emphatically that not for the Queen of England. (Banfield 1982: 32)

A restriction that seems to me related in spirit to the one illustrated in (24) pertains to the fact that conjunctions relating several parts of an argumentation cannot normally be reproduced at the beginning of an IST 16

I will not deal with non-finite IST complements separately because they open up many additional problems pertaining to the various semantic specializations they have undergone diachronically. Even so, I would suggest that IST with finite complements and various types of IST with non-finite complements (tocomplements, accusative and infinitive complements, and nominative and infinitive complements) form ‘subconstructions’ of a more schematic, overarching IST construction within a “network of constructions” (Langacker 1988).

44 The syntagmatic structure of DST and IST reported clause (*he said that but that’s not true). Further valid contrasts suggested by Banfield obtain with regard to imperatives (25) and the speaker–hearer encoding adverbial between you and me (26):17 (25a) (25b) (26a) (26b)

Mr Chubb repeated: “(Will you) excuse me.” (after Banfield 1982: 33) ??Mr Chubb repeated that (will you) excuse him. (after Banfield 1982: 33) John said, “Between you and me, she is lying.” (Banfield 1982: 34) *John said that between him and her, she was lying. (Banfield 1982: 34)

In addition, while it may not amount to ungrammaticality per se to have discourse markers or interjections like well, oh, shit, and so on in IST, they are marked and infrequent, whereas reported clauses of DST, particularly in spoken language, are very frequently introduced by such elements: (27)

?He said (that) oh well, he would again try to swallow his pride and not say anything.

While the restrictions on expressive elements can thus not always be formulated as hard and fast ‘bans’, it is beyond doubt that IST generally has less potential in this area than DST. 4. Restrictions pertaining to the reporting clause. Whereas DST allows sentence-medial and sentence-final reporting clauses, the reporting clause of IST is obligatorily sentence-initial, which points to the tighter syntagmatic bond between reporting and reported clause. Not only is the position of the reporting clause in IST fixed, its presence is also required whereas DST can occur without an explicit reporting clause given sufficient contextual cues. As we saw earlier (section 2, note 10), an exceptional context in which IST does allow the reporting clause to be elided is when a second reported clause is added to an initial, fully explicit 17

Bolkestein (1990: 96 n5, 1992: 400) has pointed out that complex clauses which perform one speech act cannot be indirectly reported in the same complex form. Examples include “warnings (touch this and I’ll hit you), threats (take this or I’ll hit you) or contingent promises (touch this and it will open)” (1990: 96 n5). This is related to the restrictions holding on basic clause types discussed above; indirect renderings with if-clauses or with non-finite to-clauses (he told her not to touch that or he’d hit her) are again possible.

DST versus IST: juxtaposition vs. incorporation 45

sentence of IST as in She did tell me that her father died in 1970, and her mother a year or so later. And that she had no living relatives (CB, ukbooks). To the type of IST instantiated by this last sentence I will refer as truncated IST. One other context in which truncated IST may occur is that in which a ‘truncated’ reply is given to a question like What did she say/ask? (as in the response That she had no living relatives). The four types of restrictions on the reported clause of IST just discussed can be made sense of if we recall from the preceding discussion (section 3.1) that conceptual dependence is a matter of degree, since the notions of salience and elaboration in terms of which it is defined are inherently scalar (Langacker 1987: 300). In view of this gradience, it is possible to have one type of complement which is more strongly autonomous than another type of complement. This, I will propose, is the case with DST complements compared to IST complements. Given the appropriate ‘reportative’ context, the reported clause of DST readily occurs on its own without an explicit reporting clause. In addition, the reported clause allows the full array of clausal structures (including, for instance, interrogatives and exclamatives).18 This shows that the A/D asymmetry is very strong in DST: the reported clause can ‘manage’ without the reporting clause, but the reporting clause is, as it were, ‘helpless’ without its reported clause. The reported clause of DST is thus strongly autonomous. As I will argue in section 5.2 below, the same goes for the other types FIST and DIST; with these types the independent functioning of the reported clause seems even to be the typical case. In IST, in contrast, the reported clause is restricted in several ways, as we saw above, in terms of the illocutionary and expressive meanings that can be encoded. In addition, the reported clause cannot normally occur without the reporting clause. With the exception of ‘truncated’ IST discussed above, a reported clause of IST introduced by a complementizer is infelicitous if it occurs without its reporting clause. As an illustration, consider the constructed examples (28a–b): (28a) contains a stretch of DST without overt reporting clauses; (28b) is what IST without reporting clauses would look like:

18

This is not to say that the DST reported clause has exactly the same inventory of possible constructions that can appear in it compared to non-reported discourse: ‘placeholders’ (von Roncador 1988: 106) such as so and so and such and such occur more freely in reported clauses than in non-reportative contexts. See further Chapter 4 (section 1.1), and von Roncador (1988: 102–108).

46 The syntagmatic structure of DST and IST (28a)

(28b)

I ran into my ex-wife in the street yesterday. How have you been doing? Do you still work in that dreadful firm? Still single are you then? Not that she really cared but well, it was nice of her to pretend. ??I ran into my ex-wife in the street yesterday. How I had been doing? Whether I still worked in that dreadful firm? Whether I was still single then? Not that she really cared but well, it was nice of her to pretend.

The evidence thus clearly suggests that the reported clause of DST is more autonomous than that of IST. This is, of course, quite generally accepted and seems commonsensical enough. It also correlates with the deictic difference between DST and IST: in the former, the current speaker yields the floor to (or in a sense, ‘poses as’, cf. Wierzbicka 1974) the represented speaker, whereas in IST the current speaker controls essential aspects of the deixis in the reported clause (Chapter 3). In order to capture the distinction in terms of differing degrees of autonomy terminologically, I propose to characterize DST in terms of juxtaposition and for IST I propose to adopt Haiman’s (1985: 216–228) notion of incorporation, a notion which is intended to reflect the tighter syntagmatic bond between the two component clauses in IST.19 The sort of distinction posited here between DST and IST may seem uncontroversial as such, but there is one important point which both more traditional approaches as well as Halliday’s (1994 [1985]) alternative proposal tend not to make.20 This is the point that in spite of the distinctly lower degree of autonomy of the reported clause of IST compared to that of DST, this reported clause is still the autonomous one in the conceptual A/D 19

I have chosen a relatively idiosyncratic set of terms here to avoid the rather divergent meanings that can be associated with often used terms such as subordination or embedding (cf. Haiman and Thompson 1984). Huddleston (2002: 1024– 1026) calls the reported clauses in both She said that she lived alone and She replied, “I live alone” embedded, and that in She lived alone, she said and “I live alone,” she replied non-embedded. Approaches like those of Li (1986: 36) and Givón (1980), who distinguish degrees of “fusion” or “binding” respectively, seem to me on safer terminological ground. 20 In McGregor’s (1997: Ch. 6.5) ‘framing’ approach, no syntagmatic distinction is proposed for DST and IST in English (see below), although for some languages such as Latin it is suggested that “embedding is involved in indirect speech representing” (1997: 258).

DST versus IST: juxtaposition vs. incorporation 47

asymmetry between reporting and reported clause. Recall that the integration of component structures depends on the sharing of elements. Following this rationale, I maintain that the schematic substructure elaborated by the reported clause in IST (viz. ‘WHAT IS SAID OR THOUGHT BY THE REPRESENTED SPEAKER’, see above) is still more salient than the schematic substructure of the reported clause that is elaborated by the reporting clause (viz. the abstract schema of tying a speech situation to a current speech situation). Informally, one might say that the only possible ‘completion’ of a reporting clause (i.e. the only possible elaboration of its e-site) consists in a reported clause. Conversely, a clause like that she was old or whether it was true or not can not only be ‘completed’ by a reporting clause, but can equally come to function in other structures, for instance as subject in clauses like (29) and (30): (29) (30)

That she was old was not in dispute. (CB, times) [compare “I said that she was old”] Whether it was true or not was immaterial, but it obviously had the desired effect. (CB, ukbooks) [compare “I asked her whether it was true or not”]

I therefore conclude that the reported clause of IST is still conceptually autonomous vis-à-vis its reporting clause, but this autonomy is weak compared to the strong autonomy of a DST reported clause.21 The theoretical consequence of this position is that at a highly schematic level, not only should two different types of reported complements be distinguished (viz. a weakly autonomous IST complement and a strongly autonomous DST complement), but two different types of reporting clauses should be distinguished as well: the DST reporting clause has in its semantic structure a salient substructure or e-site, elaborated by the reported clause, which is more salient than that of the IST reporting clause. As will be recalled from the introduction to this chapter, Halliday’s approach to the syntagmatic difference between DST and IST is couched in terms of taxis: DST involves parataxis or “the linking of elements of equal status”, IST hypotaxis or “the binding of elements of unequal status” (1994 21

Arguably, in non-finite IST complements the syntagmatic bond is even tighter and the A/D asymmetry less strong than in the case of finite IST complements, since a to-complement, for instance, shares its implied subject with the subject or object of the reporting clause (as in He threatened to kill me and He told him to go respectively).

48 The syntagmatic structure of DST and IST [1985]: 221). Abstracting from further implications of this proposal,22 there remains one fundamental point on which I cannot agree with Halliday: my argument in terms of an A/D asymmetry in both DST and IST, and especially of a stronger A/D asymmetry in DST, contradicts the claim that in DST the reporting and reported clause are elements “of equal status”. Some of the phenomena discussed by Mosegaard Hansen (2000) support this rejection of equal status for the clauses making up DST: for instance, although passivization is restricted, sometimes the reported clause can become the subject of a passive clause (31). In similar vein, the pseudocleft structure in (32) is problematic on Halliday’s account: (31) (32)

“I love you” is said by all lovers. (Mosegaard Hansen 2000: 295) What she said was “You’ll never see me again”. (Mosegaard Hansen 2000: 299)

Not unlike Halliday, McGregor claims of STR in general that it relates two “complete units”, the reporting and reported clause, which are both said to be “capable of independent occurrence” (1997: 253). The previous discussion has argued against this claim. Furthermore, in his approach (1997: Ch. 6.5), McGregor does not propose a syntagmatic distinction to set IST apart from DST in English: both are syntagmatically analysed only in terms of the interpersonal relationship of framing. One respect in which DST and IST are contrasted is that of perspective (represented vs. current). In defence of McGregor’s position, one might suggest that the structural differences between DST and IST derive from the perspectival ones, which

22

In section 3.2, the assumption that reporting clauses can stand on their own “as functioning wholes” was criticized (but see note 13 for non-reportative ‘independent’ uses of clauses with speech or thought predicates). In addition, McGregor (1990b: 37–38, 1994: 66–68) has raised several other objections to analysing STR in terms of parataxis and hypotaxis. The fact that one can change the order of the reporting and reported clauses without affecting the relationship between them is unusual for parataxis, in which the second normally expands on the first (e.g. He sat down and stopped talking vs. He stopped talking and sat down); conversely, in IST, the order is fixed, which is unusual in hypotaxis (compare If it rains, I’m staying home to I’m staying home if it rains). Furthermore, McGregor argues, the fact that the reporting clause of DST can be interpolated within the reported clause, or can even be omitted altogether, “cannot happen elsewhere in parataxis” (1990b: 38).

DST versus IST: juxtaposition vs. incorporation 49

could then be seen as primary.23 Thus, it could be argued that since in DST the reported clause is construed from the represented speech situation, it must allow interrogative or exclamative syntax because in the represented speech situation the represented speaker can ask questions or make exclamations, whereas in IST interrogative or exclamative syntax should be disallowed since from the perspective of the current speech situation, the current speaker is not asking a question or exclaiming anything in representing a question or exclamation. Against this, I argue that there is no direct link or one-to-one correspondence between perspectival and structural differences in STR constructions. Firstly, there is a classificatory problem with the fact that in terms of perspective, more than two types have to be distinguished, whereas in terms of structure there are only two types which I have termed juxtaposition and incorporation. To the ‘mixed’ perspective of FIST, for instance, does not correspond a separate set of structural features; rather, FIST like DST involves juxtaposition (see section 5.2 below). Secondly, there is a descriptive problem as well: to say that an IST report is construed from the perspective of the current speech situation represents a simplification, at least in English, of the actual facts. It is true that the overall construal is geared to the current speech situation, but we will discuss various examples of represented speaker related deictics in Chapter 3. On the other hand, the distinction between juxtaposition and incorporation is rather clear-cut, and the differences listed at the beginning of this section can be used as probes in determining which of the two is involved. For these reasons, I believe that the structural parameter is at least partly independent from the perspectival one. What I have argued in this chapter up to this point boils down to this: reported clauses do not function as a complement (typically, direct object) of the reporting verb; rather they are clauses which elaborate a salient substructure (e-site) of the reporting clause, which functions as a unit. While the reporting clause is the head of the DST or IST construction, as it is its profile determinant, it is at the same time ‘conceptually dependent’ on the reported clause, which it needs in order to become semantically complete. DST involves the juxtaposition of the two component clauses:

23

It should be stressed that this is not McGregor’s claim; his treatment of the perspectival differences between DST and IST is developed as an alternative to traditional approaches to the meaning differences between DST and IST in terms of, for instance, ‘verbatim’ vs. ‘non-verbatim’ (see also Chapter 4, section 1).

50 The syntagmatic structure of DST and IST the reporting clause can take several positions in the sentence, and the reported clause cannot take a complementizer but can take all basic clause types. IST involves incorporation: its reported clause can and in some cases must take a complementizer, it does not have an independent speech function (reflected in the fact that it does not allow the different basic clause types) and it is more tightly linked to the reporting clause, which always occurs sentence-initially and cannot normally be elided. In the following section, I will propose to extend this analysis, and particularly the juxtaposed analysis applicable to DST, to other types of STR.

5. Extension to other STR types 5.1. Innovative quotatives in colloquial speech24 Over the past two decades, the use of innovative quotative expressions such as be like and go to represent speech and thought has attracted a lot of attention, particularly in sociolinguistics (for brief overviews of research, see Golato 2000: 32–33 and Cukor-Avila 2002: 24–27; for further references see Vandelanotte and Davidse forthcoming). This section will not focus on the sociolinguistic and grammatical spread of these forms, nor on renewal phenomena recruiting new variants into the paradigm (e.g. be just, be all; see e.g. Rickford et al. 2007). What is of interest in the context of this chapter is the independent support these relative newcomers lend, from an unexpected source, to the model of syntagmatic structure relating the reporting clause to the reported clause in terms of conceptual dependence. As an illustration of the kinds of constructions under discussion, consider the extract in (33), in which an anecdote involving a lost kitten is recounted by the speaker. The go quotative is used to report what others said, and be like is used in the speaker’s self-report. (33)

24

And everyone was going Oh you’ve got no chance of getting it out of there may as well just leave it and I was like I cannot leave it there I cannot leave it ’cos it was just crying all the time it was so sad. (CB, ukspok)

For a more detailed treatment of the forms discussed in this section, see Vandelanotte and Davidse forthcoming.

Extension to other STR types 51

The important thing to note is that go is intransitive, as it involves only a ‘goer’ and not a second entity ‘being gone’, and be is a copula or, in Halliday’s (1994 [1985]) typology of process types, a ‘relational’ verb, used to attribute a characteristic to some entity (e.g. she is a teacher) or to identify an entity in terms of some ‘value’ (e.g. Tom is the tall one in the picture). As was the case with intransitive verbs used in DST and IST (section 1), go and be like do not even admit of the kind of ‘filler’ or cognate object which say allows (consider, for instance, *everyone was going a few words, ≠I was like it). The fact that a transitive construal is not possible for go nor for be means that the quote in examples like (33) above cannot be viewed as their direct object. Like ordinary DST, then, go and be like constructions are not amenable to the traditional analysis of STR constructions in terms of verbal complementation. However, the alternative proposed in this chapter, which involves the elaboration of the salient ‘e-site’ or schematic substructure not of a verb, but of a clause, can be applied to them successfully, with clauses such as everyone was going or I was like as conceptually dependent heads whose e-site is elaborated by the conceptually more autonomous reported clause.25 By fitting the innovative quotatives in with the conceptual dependence analysis involving two clauses, we avoid having to impute transitivity to the verbs go and be, and we also avoid having to view expressions like go and be like as ‘reporting verbs’, i.e. as verbs expressing a process of verbalization or cognition. Thus, the innovation does not consist in an extension of the inventory of ‘reporting verbs’, but rather of ‘reporting clauses’. What enabled this extension is a perceived correspondence between on the one hand canonical reporting clauses, designating acts of verbalization or cognition, and on the other hand ‘imitation clauses’ such as everybody was going or I was like. Indeed, both go and be like can be argued (see for instance Butters 1980, Meehan 1991, Vandelanotte and Davidse forthcoming) to involve approximative and similative meanings, such that when an imitation clause is followed by a reported clause the former can be brought into correspondence with the constructionally required sense, i.e. a verbalization or cognition clause, owing to the compatibility of imitation and 25

This position implies a rejection of Romaine and Lange’s (1991) view of like as a complementizer: like forms part of the reportative ‘frame’ and does not have the linking function which that has, as brought out in contrasts such as What did you say? That I cannot leave it there vs. *What/How were you? Like I cannot leave it there.

52 The syntagmatic structure of DST and IST verbalization/cognition meanings (see, for instance, Clark and Gerrig 1990 on quotation as ‘selective depiction’). This line of explanation is inspired by Langacker’s (2005) account of the creative ‘accommodation’ of seemingly inappropriate components into complex constructions, as in the much debated example of using sneeze in the caused motion construction (Goldberg 1995) to produce Sam sneezed the napkin off the table. Here, as in the case of the accommodation of imitation clauses into the DST construction,26 what enables the innovation to appear is a correspondence between, in this cases, sneezing (with its attendant forceful emission of sound and possibly saliva and mucus) and causing motion. This constructional understanding of linguistic innovation can also help to understand the use of rather ‘literary’ reporting clauses such as she smiled, he nodded, or she giggled, which could be argued to involve a correspondence between a description of a person communicating nonverbally (by smiling, nodding, giggling) and a description of a person communicating verbally (by saying something).

5.2. Other ‘non-direct’ types of STR If, apart from DST and IST, other types of STR are brought into the picture, it soon becomes clear why it was suggested earlier (section 4) that IST is the odd one out. In this book, the area ‘in between’ or ‘beyond’ DST and IST is divided into two, FIST and DIST (the rationale behind this distinction is explored in Chapters 5–7). Since FIST, whose main features were adumbrated briefly in Chapter 1, has the longer pedigree, the discussion will be restricted to it here, but for all points raised similar remarks apply to DIST. In terms of the terminological distinction between juxtaposition and incorporation, the component clauses of FIST pattern with DST in involving juxtaposition. Just like the reported clauses of DST, those of FIST 26

That initially the DST and not the IST construction forms the constructional template for the innovative structures with be and go is suggested among other things by the possibility of having interrogative syntax in the reported clauses following be like and go, and by the many discourse markers like oh (33) in the reported clause. Further extensions into the IST construction are not excluded, however, as in the example of reportative be all, he’s all he’s okay (where the two occurrences of he are corefential) reported in Van Elslander 2007.

Extension to other STR types 53

allow all manner of basic clause types (including, for instance, interrogatives and exclamatives), as well as a wide variety of expressive devices less easily accommodated within the incorporated reported clause of IST, such as incomplete chunks and interjections. As well, reporting clauses, like those of DST, can occur at different places or can even alternate with zero, given sufficient contextual clues engendering a reportative reading. As an example, consider the interrogative clause order and sentence-final reporting clause of (34): (34)

Which looked best against her black dress? Which did indeed? said Mrs Ramsay absent-mindedly. (Woolf, To the Lighthouse p. 59, qtd. Banfield 1982: 190)

It is uncontroversial to claim the same kind of syntagmatic structure for DST and FIST (and, by implication, DIST). However, there are two views put forward in the literature on the syntagmatic composition of FIST which I would like to argue against. The first is that FIST necessarily occurs without an overt reporting clause, the second that FIST cannot have a sentence-initial reporting clause. Sometimes the absence of a reporting clause has been taken as criterial for FIST, for instance by Page (1973: 32–35), Declerck (2003: 101) and Marnette (2005: 24, 27). Another position is that taken by Leech and Short (1981: Ch. 10) and Mey (1999: 73, 102). According to them, a structure as in (35) below represents an intermediate category between IST and FIST, in which the ‘freeness’ of FIST is not yet fully realized because a reporting clause is explicitly given. (35)

Had she got swimming things? Wilkie said. She shifted her string bag in her rigid lap. ‘Come on in,’ said Wilkie. (A.S. Byatt, Still Life, p. 81 qtd. Mey 1999: 102)

In the model for the syntagmatic structure of STR constructions proposed here, the possibility of lacking an overt reporting clause is viewed as a reflex of the high level of conceptual autonomy vis-à-vis the reporting clause in the juxtaposed types DST and FIST (as well as DIST). If distinct categories were to be created on the basis of the presence or absence of a reporting clause for each of these types, analysts would have to double the number of categories distinguished, even though the type with and that without reporting clause would share all grammatical, deicticexpressive, and semantic properties (see the discussion of ‘free’ DST in

54 The syntagmatic structure of DST and IST Chapter 1, section 1). Rather than doing this, it seems better not to regard the presence or absence of a reporting clause as criterial for distinguishing distinct categories of ‘juxtaposed’ STR constructions. The difference that does arise in the absence of an explicit reporting clause is that more pragmatic ‘work’ needs to be put into the interpretation of a juxtaposed reported clause occurring on its own: either an overt reporting clause somewhere in the preceding context needs to be retrieved, or other contextual cues have to be picked up so as to arrive at the correct interpretation. In this sense, the weight given to the presence or absence of a reporting clause is perhaps largely a matter of choice and of theory internal consistency:27 either one takes this parameter to define categorial boundaries, or one views it as merely involving a different measure of pragmatic processing cost. One position which, in my view, is not a matter of choice however is to regard a case like (35) as an example of IST rather than FIST on account of its not being ‘free of’ a reporting clause. Such a position cannot be maintained because the grammatical and expressive properties of (35) – especially the interrogative clause structure – are incompatible with the ‘incorporated’ structure of a reported clause of IST. If there is confusion on this point, it is likely that it results from a desire to pin down an easily identifiable meaning of the component ‘free’ that forms part of the traditional label ‘free indirect speech or thought’. Thus, for instance, Mey holds that “[f]ree indirect discourse (for short, ‘FID’ […]) is considered ‘free’, since it appears without any obligatory parenthetical: it is both ‘stand alone’ and indirect discourse” (1999: 73). There is no need, however, to define ‘free’ in relation to the absence of reporting clauses, and the history of its use in the literature suggests that it has not always been understood in this sense. For instance, Charles Bally, one of the earliest scholars to have dealt with FIST, spoke of “style indirect libre” (free indirect style) and included in his discussion examples with reporting clauses as in L’amour, croyait-elle, devait arriver tout à coup (‘Love, she thought, had to arrive suddenly’, Bally 1914: 411). A better way of understanding ‘free’ is to view it as a reflection of the juxtaposed nature of FIST compared to the incorporated nature of IST. Let us now turn to the other claim pertaining to the syntagmatic structure of FIST which is incompatible with the analysis proposed here in terms

27

For instance, from the production perspective adopted in Functional Discourse Grammar, Keizer (forthcoming) distinguishes FIST from ‘FFIST’, i.e. FIST with an explicit reporting ‘frame’.

Extension to other STR types 55

of juxtaposition. Banfield (1982: 78) has explicitly denied the possibility of having sentence-initial reporting clauses in FIST. Against this, examples such as (36–37) suggest that sentence-initial reporting clauses do occur, as they can in other juxtaposed types (DST and DIST). Admittedly such occurrences are relatively marked, which might explain why commas are often used to set off the reporting from the reported clauses. This, together with the clearly juxtaposed syntax (involving, for instance, interrogative [36] and exclamative [37] clause structure) underscores once more the syntagmatic difference between IST and other types of STR, even if these do have a sentence-initial reporting clause. (36)

(37)

She opened her scissors, and said, did he mind her just finishing what she was doing to her dress? (Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway, p. 46 qtd. Banfield 1982: 281 n7) […] till Lily thought, How childlike, how absurd she was, sitting up there with all her beauty opened again in her, talking about the skins of vegetables. She was irresistible. Always she got her own way in the end, Lily thought. (Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse, p. 116 qtd. Ehrlich 1990: 48)

Banfield (1982: 76–80) assumes that sentence-initial reporting clauses cannot occur in FIST, and she claims that cases like He thought, women were always like that (Banfield 1982: 78), if they occur at all, have to be read as DST with ‘original’ past tenses. However, a look at attested examples like (36–37) above reveals that at least in these cases, such an interpretation makes no sense. For instance, in (36), it seems highly unlikely that the original question was past tense (did you mind me just finishing what I was doing to my dress [at some point in the past]) since the preceding narrative event is that of opening her scissors, which suggests that the clothes mending takes place in the narrative present. In addition, pronominal behaviour in (36) is wholly incompatible with a reading as DST. In conclusion, I hope to have shown that within the model developed in this chapter for the syntagmatic structure of STR sentences, FIST involves juxtaposition, not incorporation, because of the variable positioning and optionality of its reporting clauses, and because of the different basic clause types and the large variety of other expressive features which it allows. Against what is sometimes assumed, I have shown that FIST occasionally allows introductory reporting clauses which are typically marked off typographically from their reported clauses. I have also stressed that the absence of an overt reporting clause is not criterial for FIST, as it has occasionally

56 The syntagmatic structure of DST and IST been taken to be. Similar remarks apply to DIST, which will be distinguished from FIST on the basis of deictic, not syntagmatic, differences in Chapter 5.

6. Conclusion In this chapter, I have proposed an analysis of the syntagmatic structure of DST and IST. I have argued that the traditional verbal complementation analysis poses many problems, since the agnation behaviour of reported clauses is quite different from that of ‘ordinary’ verbal complements like factive complements, and since the degree of transitivity of reporting verbs is certainly far removed from ‘full’ transitivity and may even reach into the domain of intransitivity (with verbs like insist or reflect). I have argued that is it the entire reporting clause, and not just the reporting predicate, that engages in a syntagmatic relationship with the reported clause. This relationship has been characterized in terms of Langacker’s notion of conceptual dependence along the following lines. The reporting clause, which is the profile determinant or head of the composite STR construction, is at the same time conceptually dependent on its reported clause. The reported clause is, then, a “complement” of the reporting clause in the sense of being the conceptually “autonomous” non-head element in the A/D asymmetry between reporting and reported clause. The conceptual autonomy of the reported vis-à-vis the reporting clause has subsequently been argued to be a matter of gradience: in DST the complement is more autonomous than in IST, which explains the structural differences between DST and IST in terms of complementizers, basic clause types, a few expressive elements, and the position and presence of the reporting clause. The component clauses of the DST construction may thus be said to be ‘juxtaposed’, whereas the reported clause of IST is more tightly integrated or ‘incorporated’ with the reporting clause. In a final section, I have argued that the analysis of DST in terms of juxtaposition can be extended to innovative quotative constructions involving go, be like and related forms, as well as to FIST and DIST. By revisiting the long-standing problems surrounding the syntactic analysis of STR constructions and proposing a new synthesis, this chapter has sought to incorporate syntagmatic structure more explicitly than is customary in many stylistic approaches to STR. If, as a result, the ‘freeness’ of FIST is understood in terms of juxtaposition as defined in this

Conclusion 57

chapter, a number of contradictory claims about FIST can be addressed: FIST need not lack a reporting clause, as some have maintained, and in it a reporting clause can occur not only in interposed or postposed position, but also sentence-initially. The consequences of the distinction between juxtaposition and incorporation for the types of expressive structures permitted in different types will also prove important in Chapter 3, which turns to the deictic and expressive properties of DST and IST.

Chapter 3 Deixis and expressivity in direct and indirect speech or thought

That deictic properties distinguish DST and IST is readily understood and is widely recognized, also in traditional school grammar descriptions: socalled “transposition” exercises are designed to create a feel precisely for the deictic differences between a direct representation and an indirect one. This commonsensical understanding of deixis in DST and IST does not exhaust the deictic and expressive potential especially of IST, since it tends to stress the current speaker-relatedness of these resources in the reported clause of IST. In this chapter, I will investigate to which deictic centre – that of the current speaker or that of the represented speaker – pronominal, temporal, and adverbial deictics as well as expressive features can be referred in DST and IST. In section 1, I will clarify the different aspects of a speech event conceptualized by the notions of deictic centre and speech situation, and I will argue that the traditional view according to which the ‘shifters’ (Jespersen 1924, Jakobson 1971) such as personal and demonstrative pronouns, tense forms, and deictic verbs undergo ‘shifts’ in IST is conceptually misguided. Rather, it is DST which involves a shift from one deictic centre (the current speaker’s) to another (the represented speaker’s). In sections 2 and 3 I will discuss issues of person deixis and temporal deixis in DST and IST respectively. In general, they function in similar ways in that the choice of the noun phrase or the tense form used is determined either directly by a deictic centre (these are then “absolute” uses), or only indirectly, via the intermediary of an “absolute” form (these are “relative” uses). An “absolute”, nonphoric noun phrase or tense form is one which establishes a new “reference point” (Langacker 1993), to which “relative”, phoric nominal or temporal forms may be related within the domain of the reference point. In the realm of tense use (section 3), I will propose a modified analysis of tense in DST and IST which aims to incorporate the represented speaker’s point of view rather than stressing the unremarkableness of tense in STR compared to tense in non-reportative contexts (as in Salkie and Reed 1997). The distribution and function of absolute tenses in IST will be reconsidered and previous hypotheses (Declerck and Tanaka 1996) will be refined on the

Deictic centre and deictic shift in DST and IST 59

basis of corpus data. Section 4 will deal briefly with spatiotemporal adverbial deictics in DST and IST, and in section 5, finally, I will discuss the relations between deixis and expressivity in DST and IST, proposing that although expressive features may relate to either the current speaker or the represented speaker independently, the deictic centre is still the linguistic construct to which expressivity is best tied.

1. Deictic centre and deictic shift in DST and IST By and large, the notion of deixis refers to those phenomena in language which make reference to an individual speaker’s ‘situatedness’ in the real world (or in a fictional world) in terms of time and space in a specific speech event or ‘ground’ (Langacker 1987, 1991). Central to such a speech event is, commonsensically, a speaker. The deictic coordinates that determine a speaker’s linguistic ‘situatedness’ have been identified by Bühler (1934, 1982) as here, now, and I. Thus, for instance, it is only in relation to the I of a speaker that an addressee can be identified as you, just as it is only in relation to the now of a speaker that yesterday can be used meaningfully. In terms of Peirce’s semiotics, what deictic elements do is to ‘point to’ designata in relation to the “origo” (Bühler’s term) or deictic centre: they function indexically in order to “bring the thought to a particular experience” (Peirce 1955: 56). It is important to clarify the distinction between the notion of ‘speech situation’ and the notion of ‘deictic centre’.1 A speech situation is defined primarily in terms of the participants therein, speaker and addressee (either or both of which may of course be a ‘plural’ collective), and only secondarily in terms of the circumstances of their interaction such as time, space, and their shared knowledge and background. As Davies has remarked in connection with speech situations (for which she borrows Lyons’ [1977] more broadly defined term ‘situations of utterance’, SU): Place may vary, as when two people talk while walking, and time may extend over variable periods, some of them quite long, within what I would see as one SU. Conversely, one participant in a conversation might leave, and a new individual join in, within a short space of time, and in the same space. Here I would distinguish two SUs.” (Davies 1979: 58)

1

I thank Eirian Davies for discussion of this point.

60 Deixis and expressivity in DST and IST A deictic centre, in my view, is defined always in relation to only one participant – a current speaker or a represented speaker – and defines this participant’s situatedness in terms of identity, time, and place. As pointed out by Hanks (1992: 53), the context of interaction is inherently dynamic, and patterns of deictic usage reflect the changes (of place, topic, speech participants, etc.) in the framework of reference. In the analysis of STR, the dissociation of speech situation and deictic centre is helpful because in the represented (‘original’) speech situation construed in the reported clause, deictic resources such as grammatical person, tense, or temporal and spatial adverbials can be related to either the current speaker’s or the represented speaker’s deictic centre. In the current speech situation, these resources are necessarily referred to the current speaker’s deictic centre. As an illustration of these basic concepts, consider sentence (1), a straightforward instance of IST: (1)

Ann Taylor, newscaster: At a news conference this morning in Dallas, Ross Perot said that he was sick and tired of the news media doubting his integrity […]. (CB, npr)

In the current speech situation (CSS), the current speaker is the person who produced the utterance following the colon in (1) as a whole, in this case a newscaster called Ann Taylor reporting for the National Public Radio, and the current addressee is the ‘listener’ (or rather collectively, the listeners) of the NPR. Note that “current” is employed in a technical sense: it refers to the person saying Ross Perot said to others, which means this is a speech situation taking place between the newscaster and her audience rather than between the newscaster and the reader of this book on STR constructions. In the represented speech situation (RSS), the participants in terms of whom the RSS is defined are Ross Perot (the represented speaker) and his original addressee, the journalists present at his press conference. In terms of deictic centre, however, the deictic resources in the reported clause (construing the RSS) are tied not to Ross Perot’s {I–you; here–now}, but to that of the newscaster Ann Taylor: it is from her perspective that Ross Perot is a third person (he) and that Ross Perot’s being sick and tired of the media’s doubting his integrity is a past situation (was). As we will see in later sections, however, there are ways in which certain deictic resources may also be construed or co-construed from the represented speaker’s deictic centre. Even though deictic centre and speech situation should be kept conceptually distinct, they are clearly interrelated in STR constructions: the cur-

Deictic centre and deictic shift in DST and IST 61

rent and represented speaker, with their deictic centres, belong to the current and represented speech situations respectively. Deictic centre and speech situation can also be seen to interact inasmuch as the sharing of participants and spatiotemporal circumstances between a current and a represented speech situation will affect the form deictics will take. For the DST sentence in (2), for instance, Leech and Short (1981: 319) provide (2a) as its “conversion” into IST: (2) (2a)

He said, “I’ll come back here to see you again tomorrow.” He said that he would return there to see her the following day.

Imagine, now, a speech situation in which three participants A, B, and C are present. At the end of a short, hurried conversation A says to B I’ll come back here to see you again tomorrow, and leaves in a rush. B did not quite catch what A said and asks C: What did he say?. At this point, C might reply: (2b)

He said he’ll come back here to see you again tomorrow.

In (2b), the current and represented speech situations differ only in terms of the absence vs. presence respectively of speech participant A; they are constant in terms of the presence of participants B and C and in terms of spatiotemporal coordinates. As a result, the current speaker of (2b), participant C, can use almost all the same deictic forms as A originally used, with the exception of the pronoun referring to A, since from the deictic centre of the current speaker (C) place and time are the same as from the deictic centre of the ‘original’, represented speaker A, and B is as much an addressee to C in CSS as to A in RSS.2 The diagrammatic representation proposed by McGregor (1997: Ch. 6.5) in his ‘framing’ analysis of speech or thought representation allows one to indicate clearly which deictic resources are related to whose deictic centre. 3 In addition, one could also include information pertaining to whose expressivity is coded by what devices in such a representation. Applying 2

Leech and Short (1981: 319–320) also discuss a possible indirect counterpart of (2) in which the current and represented speech situations share some features (he said that he would come back here to see her again tomorrow), but fewer than in the ‘extreme’ option represented by (2b). 3 It should be noted that McGregor relates deictic phenomena primarily to speech situation rather than deictic centre (1997: 254–255).

62 Deixis and expressivity in DST and IST McGregor’s box diagrams to a simple English example, we could represent Henry asked himself whether he was certain as in Figure 3: the choice for third person (3), for a past tense (PA) and for declarative mood (DECL) are all related to the current speaker’s deictic centre and hence, in the diagram, fall outside the thick box representing the represented speech situation:4

Henry asked himself

whether

3

PA

DECL

he

was

certain.

Figure 3. Diagrammatic representation of a simple example of IST

Henry asked himself:

PR

1

INTER

Am

I

certain?

Figure 4. Diagrammatic representation of a simple example of DST

In contrast, in the DST sentence Henry asked himself: “Am I certain?” (Figure 4) the choices for present tense (PR), first person (1) and interrogative mood (INTER) are made from the represented speaker’s (i.e. Henry’s) deictic centre, and for this reason they fall within the thick box (the represented speech situation), as the RSS is where the represented speaker’s deictic centre is operative. What is evidenced in the case of DST is thus a shift or ‘transposition’ (Hanks 1992: 56) from the current speaker’s construal of deictic and expressive resources to the represented speaker’s. Von Roncador (1980, 1988: 55–66) described this as a shift in reference, occurring when deictic and expressive designations of the same type have different referents within the same immediate linguistic context, or when deictic elements of a different type have the same referent (1988: 56). Thus, for instance, in He said to me: “I’m leaving”, the deictic designations me and I do not refer to the same referent; likewise, in He said to me: “I’m leaving

4

The box encapsulating the reported clause whether he was certain and that encapsulating the entire sentence serve to indicate the two ‘wholes’ that, in McGregor’s ‘conjugational’ analysis of STR, are involved in the framing relationship. See also Chapter 2.

Deictic centre and deictic shift in DST and IST 63

you”, the deictic designations me and you, although clearly of a different type (viz. of a different grammatical person), refer to one and the same referent. To my knowledge, with his notion of “Referenzverschiebung” von Roncador is the first to have grouped together deixis and expressivity in the context of STR. In Banfield (1982), for instance, the notion of “subject of consciousness” or SELF was introduced specifically to function as a kind of expressive centre to which expressive devices (e.g. exclamative force, attitudinal lexemes, and so on) were referred. As far as I can see it is unnecessary to posit two ‘centres’, a deictic and an expressive one, for one and the same speech participant: ultimately, what the notion of deictic centre captures is the linguistic ‘essence’ of a speech participant. Whenever a ‘person’ needs to be accessed linguistically to assign deictic control or expressivity, this is achieved through the deictic centre. In this sense, positing a ‘subject of consciousness’ alongside a deictic centre for any speech participant seems redundant, as long as it is recognized that deictic control and expressivity need not be assigned to the same deictic centre in the same linguistic environment. For instance, as we will see in later chapters (5–7), whereas expressivity is assigned to the represented speaker in the reported clause of FIST, basic (but not full) deictic control is exerted by the current speaker. Up to this point, I have followed von Roncador (1980, 1988) in describing DST as involving ‘a deictic shift’ from the current speaker to the represented speaker, and IST as lacking such a shift. Although this conceptualization was picked up by some (e.g. De Roeck 1994: 333), the case still seems mostly to be stated reversely (e.g. Vanparys 1996: 108– 109, Haßler 2002: 145, Kammerzell and Peust 2002: 291, Steever 2002: 98), influenced no doubt by the traditional pedagogical grammar approach. On this view, the so-called ‘change’ of pronouns, tense forms, and spatiotemporal adverbials in IST is taken to constitute a deictic shift, and the purported ‘retention’ of them in DST to indicate the lack of shift. This traditional view relies heavily on what might be called the ‘transformation fallacy’ (Vandelanotte 2000: 35–38), viz. the mistaken belief that IST can unambiguously and unproblematically be derived from DST.5 Banfield’s

5

Underlying this fallacy is the so-called ‘direct discourse fallacy’ (Sternberg 1982a, 1982b), summarized by Fludernik (1993: 281) as “the mistaken (ingrained) belief that direct discourse is in every sense of the word primary and originary to other types of quotation”. One need only think of hypothetical or negated reports (I

64 Deixis and expressivity in DST and IST discussion of expressive features allowed in DST but disallowed in IST (1982: 28–34) already laid bare this fallacy; McHale (1978) likewise discusses problems in derivational accounts of DST, IST and FIST. Harking back to example (1) above, Ross Perot said that he was sick and tired of the news media doubting his integrity, any number of possible ‘direct’ equivalents could be construed. Some of these are illustrated in (3) below. (3) (3a) (3b) (3c)

Ross Perot said: “I am sick and tired of the news media doubting my integrity.” “I’ve had it with you guys questioning my sincerity!” “If the press keep on slandering me, I will sue them.”

In similar vein, different IST “derivations” of a DST “original” could easily be formed. What this demonstrates is that fundamentally, DST and IST are two alternative ways of construing speech or thought from a different perspective, rather than mechanical derivations of one another. What is linguistically the more remarkable way of these two is DST, because in DST the current speaker – the ‘producer’ of the unfolding text – yields the floor to another consciousness (the represented speaker). In this act, described by Wierzbicka (1974) as an act of imagination with the current speaker posing as the represented speaker, it becomes possible for two I’s with different reference to co-occur within the same sentence (cf. Banfield’s 1E/1 SPEAKER&PRESENT principle, 1982: 58). In IST, in contrast, the current speaker does not yield the floor so fully, neither deictically nor expressively, although as we shall see in the remainder of this chapter, some features of the reported clause of IST may get to be interpreted in terms of the represented speaker’s deictic centre. For these reasons, I believe the traditional idea that IST involves a shift of pronouns, tense, and adverbial deictics should be abandoned. It is DST which involves a full deictic and expressive shift, whereas IST remains predominantly construed from the central producing instance of the entire text, viz. the current speaker. In the remaining sections of this chapter, I will show in the domains of person deixis, temporal deixis, adverbial deictics and expressivity that this generalization holds, but I will also show that a restricted number of deictic and expressive shifts to the represented

might have said…; he didn’t say…) to see that there is often no ‘primary original’ (see also Chapter 4).

Person deixis in DST and IST 65

speaker can combine with the overall current speaker-dominated construal in IST.

2. Person deixis in DST and IST In this section, I will discuss in what way people (speech participants or third parties) get to be referred to in the reported clauses of DST and IST. The way in which this reference is achieved flows to a large extent directly from the overall description of the deictic shift in DST vs. the deictic speaker control in IST discussed in the previous section. In this sense, a discussion of person deixis in DST and IST might be quickly passed over because of its apparent simplicity. However, a more detailed discussion is preferred here because of a number of interesting point of view phenomena that can be discerned on closer inspection, and also because it prepares the ground for the more complex issues of person deixis in FIST and DIST, to be discussed in Chapter 5. By rendering explicit the conceptual mechanisms underlying the choice of a pronoun over a full noun phrase, for instance, it will be easier to understand why DIST needs to be distinguished from FIST. In addition, by discussing person deixis in terms of basic conceptual mechanisms (“image schemas”, Langacker 1987, 1993) it becomes possible to establish a deep conceptual commonality in the way person deixis and temporal deixis work (section 3). The very general “image schema” that I will propose underlies not only pronominal anaphora (Van Hoek 1992, 1995, 1997) but also temporal anaphora (relative tense) is what Langacker has discussed under the heading of reference point constructions, viz. constructions which make use of our cognitive “ability to invoke the conception of one entity for purposes of establishing mental contact with another” (1993: 5). In the domain of person deixis specifically, the reference point organization of phoric relations between noun phrases relies crucially on the different measures to which different kinds of noun phrases – for instance pronouns vs. proper names – are “accessible” in the discourse (Ariel 1988, 1990, 2001). I will discuss these notions briefly in section 2.1 and subsequently sketch how they apply in the reported clauses of DST and IST to establish reference to speech participants in the current or represented speech situation (2.2) and to third parties (2.3). Section 2.4 deals with reflexives in DST and IST. Throughout the sections on person deixis and temporal deixis, it will become clear what the overall advantage is of an approach in terms of refer-

66 Deixis and expressivity in DST and IST ence points and accessibility. In a sense, as pointed out by Van Hoek (1995: 333), a reference point which defines a ‘dominion’ in which newly introduced participants or situations are phorically related to this reference point forms a schematic template for the relationship between a ‘viewer’ and ‘what is viewed’. Thus, whereas issues of point of view in the traditional binding approaches to pronominal anaphora were treated separately and usually relegated to ‘discourse’ rather than ‘syntax’, they can be naturally incorporated in a cognitive grammar account as special cases of a more general “image-schematic ability” (Langacker 1993: 24).

2.1. Reference point organization and accessibility The reference point model was first discussed by Langacker (1991: 167– 180, 1993, 1995) in relation to possessive constructions, the different uses of which all evoke a reference-point relationship. In a simple example such as Sally’s dog, the possessor Sally is invoked as a reference point for establishing mental contact with one of her possessions, viz. her dog. In a less obvious use of possessives, their periphrastic use in nominalizations, ownership is not at issue, but a reference point relation is: in Lincoln’s assassination, for instance, Lincoln functions as a reference point for accessing one of the events saliently associated with him, viz. his assassination. From these examples of possessive constructions, we can already see some of the relevant aspects of the reference point model: the entity functioning as reference point has “a certain cognitive salience, either intrinsic or contextually determined” (Langacker 1993: 6) which makes it easier to conceptualize and as such forms a suitable ‘gateway’ for accessing another entity that is less easily conceptualized: the target of the reference-point relationship. This target belongs to a more broadly defined dominion, “the conceptual region (or the set of entities) to which a particular reference point affords direct access (i.e., the class of potential targets)” (Langacker 1993: 6). Thus, for instance, Sally as a reference point can give access not only to items possessed by Sally (Sally’s dog, house, car, etc.) but also to other entities associated with her terms of kinship or relationships (Sally’s mother, lover, etc.): the entities dog, house, car, mother, lover, and so on, all belong to the dominion of the reference point Sally. The asymmetry between the initially more salient and more easily conceptualized reference point and the less salient target is fundamental to reference point constructions, but at the same time it is in a sense a tempo-

Person deixis in DST and IST 67

rary asymmetry. Once the target has been accessed via the gateway provided by the reference point, it is established as a discourse referent and can itself function as a reference point for reaching some other target. Thus, an initial reference point’s salience has a dynamic nature (Langacker 1993: 6). For instance, in Sally’s dog’s pregnancy, Sally’s dog in its turn provides access to the pregnancy associated with it. The reference point model has been applied to a variety of other linguistic phenomena, including “nested locative” constructions, metonymy, or, at the discourse level, the notion of topic as a reference point paving the way for the description of some process “about” this topic (Langacker 1993). Van Hoek (e.g. 1992, 1995, 1997) has successfully applied Langacker’s reference point model to the domain of pronominal anaphora.6 The central issue in many approaches, notably from Government and Binding (e.g. Chomsky 1981; Reinhart 1983; Reinhart and Reuland 1993; Zribi-Hertz 1989, 1995) but equally from more functional angles (e.g. Kuno 1987, Baker 1995, König and Siemund 2000), has been to determine under which conditions coreference is acceptable between a pronoun and a full noun phrase (a proper name or a descriptive noun phrase).7 The notions of reference point and dominion provide a natural account for this problem, because the salience of a referent point correlates with accessibility levels as defined in the work of Ariel (1988, 1990, 2001), Ward et al. (1991), Givón (1992), and Gundel et al. (1993). The central idea in Van Hoek’s approach is that a lexically full noun phrase may not appear in the dominion of a coreferential reference point, as this would clash with the low accessibility marking of the full noun phrase (Van Hoek 1995: 313–314). Thus, in He likes John’s mother, John appears in the dominion of the reference point he, which on a coreferential reading conflicts with the low accessibility coding of John. If we simplify Ariel’s (1990: 73, 2001: 31) detailed accessibility marking scale, we can represent the main types of noun phrases from low to high accessibility as in (4):

6

‘Anaphora’ is used here in its broader sense of ‘phoricity’ without any particular linear direction; in Halliday and Hasan (1976) and Martin (1992) the term is reserved for phoric relations to prior discourse referents, and the term ‘cataphora’ refers to phoric relations to ensuing referents. 7 For discussion of the merits of Van Hoek’s reference point model compared to binding approaches, see Van Hoek 1997: 6–11 in which inconsistencies as well as descriptive gaps in binding approaches are pointed out.

68 Deixis and expressivity in DST and IST (4)

LOW proper name descriptive noun phrase

HIGH pronoun

The use of a pronoun thus conventionally signals to the hearer that the referent talked about is assumed to be highly cognitively activated and hence easily retrievable by him or her. This may be the case because this referent has already been established as a discourse referent in prior discourse, or because it is directly (‘ostensibly’) identifiable in the ongoing speech event. On the other hand, a proper name or a descriptive noun phrase can be used to introduce a new referent in the discourse since such forms do not conventionally code high accessibility and retrievability. One important caveat is in order to prevent an overly strict application of the accessibility scale. While it is natural to use a full noun phrase to introduce a new referent in ongoing discourse, it is not always necessary to use a pronoun to refer to an already established one: after a discourse boundary (e.g. a new paragraph or a new development), speakers may reintroduce referents by means of full noun phrases (even if no ambiguity would result by using a pronoun; see Van Hoek 1997: 132–145). Van Hoek (1992, 1995, 1997) distinguishes four factors determining the extent of a reference point’s dominion: conceptual connectivity, prominence, linear order, and point of view. Thus, noun phrases are more likely to be construed as belonging to the dominion of a reference point if they are more strongly connected to it or if they are less prominent than it. For instance, the subject and object of a verb are strongly conceptually connected by virtue of both being a complement of the same verb. In addition, since the subject is ‘what the clause is about’, it is more prominent than the object, and is therefore a reference point in relation to the object and other complements of the verb. Such principles explain why he in He likes John’s mother (already discussed above) is a reference point with John’s mother in its dominion, as a result of which coreference between high accessibility he and low accessibility John is anomalous (Van Hoek 1995: 322). In His mother loves John, on the other hand, coreference need not be ruled out because his is only a modifier to mother and therefore not prominent in the “composite conception” his mother, of which the profile is mother rather than his (Van Hoek 1995: 323).8

8

This link between reference point organization and ‘the complement chain’ in terms of prominence and connectivity is one of the reasons why the c-command model and the reference point model partially overlap descriptively.

Person deixis in DST and IST 69

If neither conceptual connectivity nor prominence provide relevant indications to determine the reference point organization, linear order may come into play. Examples include afterthoughts (Bolinger 1979) or mental space builders (Fauconnier 1985) such as in Kathleen Turner’s latest movie (5). The linear order of (5a) rules out coreference, whereas (5b) on a coreferential reading exhibits a fully acceptable move from low (proper name) to high (pronoun) accessibility. (5a) (5b)

She falls in love with Tom Cruise in Kathleen Turner’s latest movie. (Van Hoek 1995: 327) In Kathleen Turner’s latest movie, she falls in love with Tom Cruise. (Van Hoek 1995: 327)

Besides conceptual connectivity, prominence, and linear order, point of view can explain certain special cases as well as serve as an underlying explanatory principle for reference point organization as such. The difference in coreference acceptability between the underlined pronouns and proper names in (6) and (7) below results from a difference in point of view. The pronoun his in (6) does not designate the ‘viewer’ of the mental space construed in the that-clause, since the ‘viewer’ is the mother rather than Tom. Because of this, coreference between his and Tom is unproblematic. In contrast, the pronoun her in (7) does designate the ‘viewer’ of the that-clause and thus functions as a reference point for it, thereby barring a coreferential reading of the high accessibility pronoun and low accessibility proper name: (6) (7)

His mother believes that Tom is a genius. (Langacker 1997: 21) Her wish is that Sally’s daughter will become a physicist. (Langacker 1997: 21)

As noted above, a point of view with an associated mental space is basically an instantiation of the reference point–dominion schema. In this sense, as clarified by Van Hoek (1997: 59–60), point of view is really a kind of reference point (one involving, with Kuno’s [1987] term, empathy, Van Hoek 1995: 333) rather than merely a fourth factor determining the selection of reference points. In the following sections, we will look at the effects of point of view on the selection of nominal forms referring to speech participants and third parties in contexts of DST and IST.

70 Deixis and expressivity in DST and IST 2.2. Reference to speech participants in DST and IST The reported clause in DST is conceptualized as construed entirely from the point of view of the represented speaker. Thus, all the principles and applications described by Van Hoek apply in the DST reported clause as they apply in straightforward, non-reported discourse, but at a secondary level, that of the represented speech situation or “surrogate ground” (Langacker 1985). The full deictic and expressive shift to the represented speaker evidenced in the DST reported clause translates into the fact that participants in the represented speech situation are viewed by the represented speaker. In terms of mental space theory (Fauconnier 1985) Sanders and Redeker have captured this by analysing the mental space construed by a reported clause of DST as a new base space (1996: 296). The represented speaker and addressee in the reported clause of DST are referred to pronominally, with first and second person pronouns respectively (as in He said: “I love you”): the participants assuming speaker and hearer roles in interaction are by definition highly accessible and can as such not normally be coded by means of noun phrases with lower accessibility values such as proper names or descriptive noun phrases. The apparent exceptions to this correspond to those contexts in non-reported speech in which proper names are exceptionally used self-referentially. Thus, in reporting solemn oaths or requests, a reported speaker’s proper name may be used in apposition to the first person pronoun (8). As well, when words normally used as proper names (“proprial lemmas”, Van Langendonck 1999) are in fact used as common nouns, they can also be used by a reported speaker bearing that name without resulting in an accessibility clash (9): (8) (9)

As is well known, as soon as Emerson heard of the slave act he said firmly “I, Ralph Waldo Emerson, will not obey the slave act!”. Bill Clinton looked straight into the camera and said “No Clinton will ever lie to you, the American public.”

Even more infrequent special cases in which a proper name or a descriptive noun phrase is used by someone to refer to themselves are those in which usually famous people speak of themselves in the third person, as in

Person deixis in DST and IST 71

(10),9 and those in which people refer to themselves by means of some descriptive noun phrase ironically echoing some designation applied to them by others, as in the constructed example (11): (10)

(11)

– What would your best case scenario be? – “Past the Wall [a famous landmark in a Flemish cycling classic] in the lead together with my friend and enemy Van Petegem. A grim struggle and then a decisive breakaway of Museeuw.” (De Standaard 6/04/2002; translation mine)10 When I asked him whether he could help me finish my essay he grinned broadly and said: “But of course the laziest sod of your class will help you!”. Frankly I had forgotten I had called him that, but he helped me anyway.

All these apparent exceptions can be extended to original, represented addressees in DST as well (e.g. And then he looked at me solemnly and said: “Will you, Sarah Westwood, be my wife?”), but outside such contexts represented addressees will also be referred to exclusively by means of second person pronouns rather than full noun phrases. In sentences of IST, it would follow from the lack of a full deictic shift that the speech participants in the original, represented speech situation are referred to from the current speaker’s viewpoint: the mental space construed in the IST reported clause does not serve as a new base space. This is certainly true as far as grammatical person is concerned, which is always geared to the current speaker’s deictic centre. Thus, for instance, in (12) the represented addressee is at the same time the current speaker and is therefore referred to by means of a first person pronoun. In the situation in (13) in which someone’s alibi is being probed, the you in the IST reported clause is the current addressee (and hence second person); in the original speech situation this person was a third party (‘he’) being talked about: 9

According to Bolinger (1977b, 1979), a proper name tends to highlight the conception of the person it refers to as he or she inherently is (see also Van Hoek 1997: 35–37). Conceivably, people who speak of themselves using their proper name aim to highlight characteristics they regard as central to and inherent in their nature (e.g. “the cyclist ‘Museeuw’ is the kind of person who tends to be involved in decisive breakaways leading straight to victory”). 10 The Dutch original reads as follows: “– Wat is het droomscenario? – ‘Na de Muur samen vooruit met vriend-vijand Van Petegem. Een verbeten strijd en dan een beslissende demarrage van Museeuw.’”

72 Deixis and expressivity in DST and IST (12)

(13)

Then he said that I should go to Florence because it was a post my service merited and because he didn’t know how much longer he had to live. (CB, ukbooks) “No one mentioned murder at all. I was just wondering what you were doing at Amber’s that night.” “I was not at Amber’s that night. I was with Brent.” “We just came from his apartment. He said you didn’t show up until real late. You were frightened. You smelled bad. He was afraid to ask where you’d been. So, now I’m asking where were you?” (CB, usbooks)

With non-pronominal reference to the speech participants of the represented speech situation, the usual case is that in which in the reported clause proper names or descriptive noun phrases are disallowed on a coreferential reading with the subject (14) or ‘addressee object’ (15) in the reporting clause: (14)

(15)

Ralphi said that Mary wanted to divorce himi. vs. *Hei said that Mary wanted to divorce Ralphi. (Van Hoek 1995: 323) Mary told Johni that hei should find a better job. vs. *Mary told himi that Johni should find a better job. (Van Hoek 1995: 328)

Both the represented speaker (Ralph in 14) and the represented addressee (John in 15) can be treated as viewers of the material contained in the reported clause.11 As the high accessibility pronouns he and him in the ungrammatical options in (14) and (15) code reference points vis-à-vis the reported clause, a clash results with the coreferential low accessibility proper names Ralph and John. Observations of this sort are of course not new, but what is new is that the reference point model allows one to capture the facts associated with the distribution of pronouns and full noun phrases coherently in semantic terms. Using Kuno’s (1972) description of pronominalization, for instance, 11

Van Hoek (1995) in fact relates only (15) directly to point of view, and explains (14) in terms of conceptual connectivity in the complement chain instead. I prefer to analyse both in terms of point of view because this allows one to capture an important commonality deriving from speaker and hearer’s shared status as speech participants, and also because my view of the complementation relation in STR differs from the traditional one assumed by Van Hoek (see Chapter 2).

Person deixis in DST and IST 73

essentially the same facts can be captured, but the rule of “Indirect Discourse Formation” (1972: 164) developed by him relies rather heavily on the sort of “transformation fallacy” discussed previously (section 1). In “Indirect Discourse Transformation”, an original pronoun I is transformed into he and hence, “since the subject of the complement clauses […] is a pronoun from the beginning, it can never be realized as John [i.e. as a proper name]”. As a final note, I would like to point to a set of potential de dicto–de re ambiguities in IST, flowing directly from those cases discussed for DST above in which proper names or descriptive noun phrases are exceptionally used by speakers to refer to themselves or their addressees.12 In such cases, examples very much like the unacceptable sentence in (14) may in fact be acceptable. Thus, it is possible to construe an IST alternate (16) of the authentic example (10) above in which the occurrence of the proper name Museeuw in the reported clause is to be understood as a de dicto designation: the cyclist effectively referred to himself by means of his proper name. This suspends the clash in accessibility specifications between the pronoun he and the proper name Museeuw which would ordinarily result, as the latter is in the dominion of the former. Similarly in (17), the designation his little princess is only acceptable on a de dicto reading, in which the represented speaker he is supposed to have asked something like ‘What does my little princess want for breakfast’: (16)

(17)

When I asked Museeuwi what his best case scenario was, hei said that ideally, Museeuwi would break away from Van Petegem at some point past the Wall. Hei asked herj what hisi little princessj wanted for breakfast.

A form such as his little princess as in (17) is a kind of hybrid form: grammatical person indicates that it is geared deictically to the current speaker’s deictic centre, as one would expect in IST, but the de dicto reading suggests that a partial shift in point of view has taken place. Alternatively, one might 12

The classic distinction between de dicto and de re derives from Quine’s work (1956) on belief attributions. For contexts of STR, it can be understood informally as follows. A de re reading obtains when a given designation is referentially equivalent to the (presumed) original designation, but does not correspond linguistically to it. A de dicto reading, on the other hand, obtains when there is full referential and linguistic correspondence between the designation currently used and the one originally used. (See also Partee 1973, Reinhart 1975, Coulmas 1986.)

74 Deixis and expressivity in DST and IST say that a partial quote (with deictic adjustment) from the presumed original utterance is involved. In any case, the effect of designations which allow only of a de dicto reading is that they revive some of the feel of a ‘recreated’ enactment of the utterance that is only fully achieved in DST reported clauses (see sections 3–5 below for similar effects in other domains of deixis and expressivity).

2.3. Reference to third parties in DST and IST Accompanying the deictic and expressive shift which takes place in the reported clause of DST, there is, one might say, a ‘disruption’ in the information structure of the unfolding discourse: essentially, a new accessibility distribution is set up in the DST reported clause, which implies that referents which have already been introduced in the current speaker’s discourse may in fact be introduced anew (i.e. by means of a full noun phrase with low accessibility level), as in (18): (18)

[Crime report about a girl who killed her sexually abusive grandfather] She hatched a plot to kill Perkins, 71, while he was at his home near Newport Gwent. Roger Thomas, prosecuting, said: “Mr Perkins sexually abused her from the age of three.” (CB, today)

That Mr Perkins is referred to by means of a proper name in the reported clause in (18) is due to the fact that in the secondary ‘base space’ of the prosecutor’s speech, he was discoursally introduced or re-introduced, and not anaphorically referred to. Conversely, if a discourse referent is presumed to have already been activated in the discourse at the point when the DST report ‘cuts in’, pronouns may be used to refer to third parties (i.e. people separate from the represented speaker and their addressee talked about in the represented speech situation), as in (19). Usually the referent of such a pronoun can be retrieved easily from the context, but it is possible for the current speaker to exploit the distinct accessibility organization of a stretch of DST. Thus, in the constructed example (20), the current speaker recreates the uncertainty he or she experienced as Frank’s addressee in the represented speech situation, and only subsequently reveals the identity of her.

Person deixis in DST and IST 75

(19) (20)

Then he was introduced to Andrea. “I couldn’t get over how lovely she is,” he told me. (CB, sunnow) Just as I wanted to go in, Frank left the apartment, his eyes red with tears, and all he said in passing was “I’ll make her sorry for that!”. Little did I know who he was talking about; apparently he had just found out that Sonia had been gossiping about his divorce.

The kind of potential confusion evidenced in (20) can only occur with third parties: the represented speaker is always given as the subject of the reporting clause, and the represented addressee is necessarily implied or given explicitly (as in he told me). As we will see in Chapter 5 (section 4), confusion as to the identity of third party referents may also be exploited in sentences of FIST. In IST, referents are introduced and anaphorically referred to according to the same accessibility principles discussed in the previous section. Thus, we can assume that ‘third party’ referents of pronouns will always be recoverable from the context, and those of proper names and descriptive noun phrases are used to (re-)introduce referents into the discourse. A classical problem in relation to third party designations in the reported clause of IST is that pertaining to de dicto vs. de re readings, as in the equally classical example Oedipus said that his mother was beautiful. The very specific context of Oedipus unknowingly killing his father and marrying his mother is not, of course, a very common one. Our knowledge of the legend forces a de re reading in this specific example, whereas in most cases the question whether or not the represented speaker really used a given designation (such as his mother) cannot be determined and is usually not particularly important either. In her corpus study of backward anaphora, Van Hoek (1995: 329–332, 1997: Ch. 5) discusses one example instantiating IST which does not follow the unmarked progression from low accessibility coding ‘full’ noun phrases to high accessibility marking pronouns (21); a similar example from the Cobuild corpus is (22). (21) (22)

Even his admirers admit Mandela is no miracle worker. (Title of newspaper article, qtd. Van Hoek 1997: 119) As he was about to leave, the waiter called out: “Hey, didn’t you used to be Bruce Springsteen.” The 41-year-old singer turned, shook his head and drawled: “I was and I still am.” These days though, even his biggest fans could be forgiven for thinking that

76 Deixis and expressivity in DST and IST Bruce the sweaty, working-class hero has disappeared for good. (CB, today) In general terms, Van Hoek explains backward anaphora as resulting from a “pronounced asymmetry of prominence between the pronoun and the full noun phrase” (1995: 330). In particular, in examples like (21), Van Hoek argues that backward anaphora serves to focus on the “central assertion of the sentence” (Van Hoek 1997: 119), which in (21) is that Mandela is no miracle worker. Van Hoek relates the discoursal foregrounding of Mandela is no miracle worker to an intonation break between reporting and reported clause, but this is debatable as, according to Halliday (1994 [1985]: Ch. 8), a sentence of IST is typically spoken on one intonation unit. It does stand to reason, however, that Mandela is no miracle worker can function on its own, without the reporting clause, whereas clearly he is no miracle worker cannot if the reference of he is unclear. It should be noted that even though cases like (21–22) do not show the typical progression from low to high accessibility coding, they do not as such clash with the general reference point mechanism as it usually applies in the “complement chain”. Recall that the reported clause complement falls within the dominion of the reporting clause subject as viewer of the reported clause. In subjects such as his admirers or his biggest fans, the referent of his (Mandela and Bruce Springsteen in these examples) is, however, not profiled since it is part of the base of the expression: “nominals within modifying relations are excluded from the composite profile” (Van Hoek 1995: 323). The profile of his admirers or his biggest fans is admirers and fans respectively, not his (let alone he). Whereas profiled, prominent nominal conceptions such as he in he loves John’s mother are necessarily construed as reference points, non-profiled ones such as his in his admirers admit… are only optionally thus construed (Van Hoek 1995: 323). Thus, much in the same way as in his mother loves John coreference is acceptable, so it is in examples (21–22).

Person deixis in DST and IST 77

2.4. Reflexives in DST and IST In the literature on STR, reflexives have mainly been dealt with in connection with FIST, in which ‘non-anaphoric’ or ‘locally free’ reflexives can occur (see Chapter 5, section 5). In this section, I will consider reflexives briefly in general terms as well as in their occurrence in contexts of DST and IST. The two most typical uses of reflexives are the marking of coreference between subject and object (as in I cut myself while shaving, cf. Faltz 1985, Reinhart and Reuland 1993, Deane 1992, Kemmer 1993) and the expression of emphasis (Gorbachev himself uses a Mercedes-Benz owned by his foundation [CB, oznews]) in contrastive contexts. Van Hoek (1997: Ch. 7) refers to the coreference marking reflexive as the prototypical reflexive, even though it is historically an extension of the now ‘secondary’ emphatic type (cf. Faltz 1985, Baker 1995). What distinctively characterizes the prototypical reflexive is its ‘semisubjective’ viewing arrangement (Van Hoek 1997: 174): partly objective, in the sense of ‘onstage’ (Langacker 1985), in asmuch as the participant coded by the reflexive is the object of conception, but also partly subjective, because this object of conception that is focused on in the onstage region is at the same time the subject of conception. Less technically, one cannot ‘view’ oneself as objectively as one can view other people or entities. The effect of the different viewing arrangements of pronouns and reflexives is illustrated in example (23), in which the reflexive refers to the father as he sees himself, whereas the pronoun codes him as seen by the speaker of (23): (23)

I can understand a father wanting his daughter to be like himself but I can’t understand that ugly brute wanting his daughter to be like him. (Cantrall 1974 qtd. Van Hoek 1997: 176)

Several “point of view reflexives” can be analysed as extensions of the prototypical reflexive (Van Hoek 1997: Ch. 7) because they share the semisubjective perception of the reflexive’s referent. These include the well-known “picture noun reflexives” (Cantrall 1974, Kuno 1987) as in (24), in which a story about Gerard can be seen as a kind of ‘viewing of himself’ or ‘depiction of himself’, as well as logophoric (“locally free”) reflexives, whose antecedent is a point of view conceived as viewing himor herself, as in (25), and finally reflexives referring to the current speaker or addressee (Ross 1970, König and Siemund 2000: 187–188), mainly in modifying phrases and elliptical expressions, as in (26):

78 Deixis and expressivity in DST and IST (24) (25) (26)

Gerard also had the habit of recounting all sorts of stories about himself, and never telling them the same way twice. (CB, usbooks) He still belonged to herself, she believed. (Lawrence, Sons and Lovers, p. 325 qtd. Banfield 1982: 91) What about for older people like yourself who’ve been out of the education system and then come back in? (CB, ukspok)13

In DST, all types of reflexives can occur in the reported clause as they can in non-reported discourse. For IST, prototypical coreference marking (27), emphatic (28) and picture noun reflexives (29) are also easily distinguished: (27)

(28) (29)

The Irish Foreign Minister, Mr Gerry Collins, said Mr Yasser Arafat had not disassociated himself from the attack as strongly as Europe would have wished. (CB, bbc) And he said that he himself er had tried it and erm when he saw what was happening of course he kicked it. (CB, ukspok) Oceonics sub-contractor Dai Stephenson, 44, whose Merthyr Tydfil firm specialised in designing and fitting hotel ceilings, said that Mr Starkie used to produce a picture of himself with the duchess in business deals. (CB, today)

The distinction between logophoric reflexives and discourse participant reflexives, however, is not an easy one to make in IST reported clauses.14 While Van Hoek does discuss examples of the discourse participant reflexive in IST reported clauses, she does not really consider the possibility of having logophoric reflexives (of her more narrow kind) outside of FIST. At the same time, she seems to suggest that discourse participant reflexives, or at least “the use of polite yourself” could be logophoric (1997: 190). One 13

As Van Hoek (1997: 189–190) points out, the use of yourself is often more ‘nonoffensive’ or polite than the use of you. In (26), the touchy subject of age and potentially feeling excluded because of one’s age is broached and to use yourself is more considerate of the addressee’s viewpoint than to use you. 14 In fact, picture noun reflexives have also been analysed as logophoric reflexives, for instance by Cantrall (1974) and Kuno (1987). However, the fact that a picture noun inherently invokes a relation between a person and a representation of this person means that picture noun reflexives are more narrowly defined and more explicitly coded than logophoric reflexives which may occur in sentences in which the antecedent is not even named.

Person deixis in DST and IST 79

example of a discourse participant reflexive in IST is Mary said this book was written by Tom and herself. In such an example, Van Hoek contends that the “conception of a speech-act participant may be invoked as an antecedent for a reflexive in reported speech (indirect quotation) even though the referent of the reflexive is not a participant in the speech event in which the entire sentence is uttered” (1997: 191). In other words, Mary in this example is the represented speaker (in the represented speech situation or surrogate ground) but not a speaker nor an addressee in the current speech situation, and functions as antecedent for herself. In distinguishing this type of example from non-reported cases of discourse participant reflexives, she further remarks that the implied point of view is located in the surrogate ground construed in the reported clause. It seems to me that this is precisely what brings these ‘discourse participant reflexives’ in which the discourse participant is a represented (‘original’) rather than a current discourse participant, into the domain of logophoric reflexives as defined narrowly (“reflexives whose antecedent is a conceived POV [point of view] in a narrative […] possible if the text is construed as representing the thoughts or perceptions of one of the characters in a narrative”, Van Hoek 1997: 186). In examples of logophoric reflexives stricto sensu, such as (25) above (He still belonged to herself, she believed), the antecedent is a represented discourse participant (viz. the represented speaker) just as much as in the example discussed in the previous paragraph (Mary said this book was written by Tom and herself). Consequently, I would consider those examples of IST reported clauses with a reflexive coreferential with an ‘original’, represented discourse participant as representative of a ‘fused’ class, if you will, of discourse participant and logophoric reflexives. Examples (30–31) are cases in point:15 (30)

15

The leader of the Liberian rebels, Mr Charles Taylor, who is trying to overthrow President Samuel Doe, has given the first indication of the people he has in mind for an interim government. He’s also said he plans to hold a presidential election, with himself as a candidate. (CB, bbc)

In a small, informal corpus extraction, I looked at IST sentences with said as a reporting verb and himself in the reported clause. 50 out of a total of 70 occurrences instantiated the prototypical reflexive or near extensions thereof, 14 the emphatic and its extensions, only 1 had a picture noun reflexive (example 29 above), and 5 belonged to the ‘fused’ class of discourse participant–logophoric reflexives proposed here (examples 30–31 among them).

80 Deixis and expressivity in DST and IST (31)

The Ch[m]ancellor of the Exchequer John Major has said there is no disagreement between himself and the Prime Minister over joining the Exchange Rate mecha[n]ism at the earliest sensible date. (CB, bbc)

Arguably in each case, the logophoric use of the reflexive renders the construal of the reflexive’s referent more subjective: using a pronoun instead would result in a more objective construal (viewing from the offstage region) from the point of view of the current speaker, rather than from the represented speaker. What was not envisaged explicitly by Van Hoek is that in principle, it is possible that ‘non-represented’ discourse participants are encoded reflexively in an IST reported clause as well, viz. when the reflexive in the reported clause refers to one of the current discourse participants. Thus, for the constructed example (32a) a context as in (32b) can be imagined: (32a)

(32b)

[A speaking to B and referring to C]: IA told himC that people like yourselfB need help, but heC still militates against the social security system. In the presumed original speech situation, A spoke to C about B: The social security system is not a luxury; people like BillB for instance need help!

A final point to be noted is that the reflexives can be incorporated within a reference point account: the reflexive’s antecedent is its most prominent reference point (Van Hoek 1997: 172–174). This section has thus shown that the main features of person deixis in DST and IST are amenable to a reference point analysis. As the next section will show, tense use similarly allows of a reference point interpretation.

3. Temporal deixis in DST and IST In this section, I will discuss the use and functions of tense in DST and IST.16 A general point that will be made throughout this section is that the ‘metaphenomenal’ nature of STR should be taken into account in analysing tense in reported clauses of DST and IST: the fact that situations conceived 16

For many discussions on how best to capture the involvement of the represented speaker in the analysis of tense in DST and IST, I am indebted to Kristin Davidse.

Temporal deixis in DST and IST 81

of by the represented speaker are positioned temporally vis-à-vis the speech act description given by the current speaker has important interpretive consequences for tense analysis. The model of tense that will be adopted here (but modified on the point raised above) is that developed in a series of publications by Declerck (e.g. 1991a, 1995, 2006, Declerck and Depraetere 1995) and that has also been applied by him to the issue of tense in sentences of IST (Declerck and Tanaka 1996, Declerck 1999). I will summarize its main tenets in section 3.1, in which it will also be argued that the model as developed by Declerck can be reinterpreted in terms of a reference point model, suggesting a fundamental commonality in the functioning of major deictic devices. In the next section (3.2), I will argue that the role of the represented speaker in interpreting tense in STR sentences has been underestimated and should be incorporated explicitly. Next I will discuss tense in DST (3.3) and IST (3.4–3.6). Particular attention will be paid to the question of the distribution and use of relative (‘phoric’) and absolute (‘deictic’) tense in IST.

3.1. Declerck’s model of tense in English Tense is viewed, in Declerck’s (1991a, 2006) theory, as a system of temporal deixis locating the situations referred to by clauses in time vis-à-vis the temporal zero-point (a term borrowed from Lyons 1977: 682). The temporal zero-point (t0) is the time to which all the situations referred to in the sentence are directly or indirectly related; it is usually the time of encoding (speaking or writing; for some rare exceptions, see Declerck 2006: 110– 112). Absolute tenses relate the time of a situation directly to t0, whereas relative tenses are referred to the “orientation time” of another situation (Declerck 2006: 16). Given these two types of tenses, the basic choice on introducing a new situation in the unfolding discourse is between either ‘subordinating’ that new situation temporally within an already established temporal domain, or ‘shifting’ the domain to a new one. In the latter case, the new situation is related directly to the temporal zero-point of the speaker and the resulting new domain is typically established by an absolute (‘deictic’) tense. Relative (‘phoric’) tenses, on the other hand, serve to temporally subordinate situations within existing domains. As an illustration of this fundamental option, consider examples (33–34) below. Both examples involve an after-clause which inherently construes a situation that is anterior to the matrix clause situation. In (33), this relation

82 Deixis and expressivity in DST and IST of anteriority is coded explicitly in the tense form: the past perfect had turned 60 is a relative tense indicating anteriority vis-à-vis the absolute past tense became which establishes a past temporal domain, and which is the central situation time in that domain. In (34), in contrast, the after-clause does not contain a past perfect but rather a preterite which, like the matrix clause preterite began sleeping, establishes its own past temporal domain. The fact that the past domain established by turned 14 is anterior vis-à-vis that established by began sleeping is not coded by the tense form, but can be inferred from the semantics of after. (In other cases, other semantic or pragmatic information, including our general knowledge of temporal or cause–effect relations in the world, will guide our interpretation.) (33) (34)

After he had turned 60 he became a star again, this time with the Royal Shakespeare Company. (CB, times) Nicola became friends with David at school when she was 11 and he was 15. They began sleeping together just after she turned 14. (CB, sunnow)

As these examples suggest, the choice between shifting to a new temporal domain (absolute tense) and binding within an existing temporal domain (relative tense) has a meaningful effect. In the case of shift of domain a situation is located in a specific time zone (see below), without explicit information being encoded about this situation’s chronological relation (anteriority, posteriority, simultaneity) to other situations. In the case of relative tense, on the other hand, the reverse holds: only the relative position vis-à-vis another situation is expressed. According to Declerck (1991a, 2006), English conceptualizes time in terms of two time-spheres: the past time-sphere, located wholly before the temporal zero-point t0, and the present time-sphere, including t0. The present time-sphere further divides into three zones: one centering on t0 (the present zone), one lying before t0 (the pre-present zone), and one following t0 (the post-present zone). These three together with the past time-sphere define the four absolute zones, and the preterite, present perfect, present, and future tense are the absolute tenses locating situations in the corresponding zone.17 This is represented on a time line in Figure 5, in which

17

Declerck does not deny that will in English is a modal auxiliary (as carefully demonstrated in Huddleston 1995), but holds that there is no reason to assume that tense cannot also be expressed by means of auxiliaries (Declerck 2006: 100–106).

Temporal deixis in DST and IST 83

(following Declerck’s [1991a, 1995, 1997, 2006] conventions), the dotted line indicates that the past time-sphere does not incorporate t0. past

pre-present

t0

post-present

present

Figure 5. The four absolute zones according to Declerck (2006: 149)

Using representations on a time-line divided up as in Figure 5, we can diagram examples (33–34) above as in Figure 6 and 7 respectively. Absolute tenses are marked by crosses on the timeline; temporal relations within a temporal domain (coded by relative tense forms) are indicated by means of lines branching downward; and a temporal domain is represented as an oval. Whereas in (33), represented in Figure 6, there is only one past temporal domain, within which a relation of anteriority (represented as leftward branching) holds between had turned and became, in (34) represented in Figure 7 there are two past temporal domains. The temporal relation between turned and began sleeping is to be inferred from the location of one domain vis-à-vis the other on the time line. became x

t0

x had turned

Figure 6. Temporal subordination

turned x

began sleeping x

t0

Figure 7. Shift of domain

As an example of temporal relations obtaining within a given temporal domain, consider sentences (35–37) below, all of which are cases of IST involving past temporal domains established by the preterite said. In a past

84 Deixis and expressivity in DST and IST temporal domain, simultaneity is conveyed by means of a preterite (35),18 anteriority by means of a past perfect tense (36), and posteriority by means of what Halliday (1994 [1985]: 202) calls the ‘future in past’ would (37): (35)

(36)

(37)

Police said it was a traffic offence to flash headlights except when overtaking or warning of danger, with a penalty of a $ 40 fine. (CB, oznews) In his first comment since Mr Ridley’s resignation, Mr Hurd said he had been amazed by the Spectator article, calling it a very curious interview and a bit of a ramble. (CB, bbc) After criticising the girl’s character, the judge said he would not jail Karl Gambrill of Southampton but put him on two year’s probation instead. (CB, ukmags)

In (35), for instance, was has to be understood as simultaneous with the (past) moment the police said the content of the reported clause, rather than as an ‘absolute’ past – the latter interpretation clashes with the notion that it still is a traffic offence to flash headlights except in special circumstances. As stressed in Declerck (1995, 2006) the crucial enrichment of his theory compared to more traditional ones lies in the concept of temporal domains. The idea of absolute tenses establishing a domain can be likened

18

The existence of a relative past is not uncontroversial (e.g. Comrie 1985; see also Janssen 1996, Boogaart 1996, and Depraetere and Vogeleer’s [1998: 1014–1019] reply to Janssen’s en Boogaart’s criticisms). For extensive argumentation in favour of a relative past tense in English, see Declerck (1995, 1999: 99–108, 2006: Ch. 8); as an example in which a strict absolute meaning “event took place before speech time” fails, consider the preterite felt in Mary told me on the phone last night that at the dinner party tomorrow she would suddenly say that she felt sick (Declerck 2006: 385–386); at speech time the situation referred to by felt in fact lies in the post-present. However, as Boogaart (1996: 217–220) has shown, since examples like Piet said he was sick allow of both absolute and relative readings depending on context, it cannot be maintained that, on the relative reading of such cases, “the simple past as such expresses simultaneity” (1996: 218); it is more correct to say that the simultaneity reading is pragmatically inferable. Boogaart (1996: 218–219) further argues that in the case of non-states, simple vs. progressive aspect correlates with ‘absolute’ vs. ‘relative’ readings (compare Sue suspected that Bill left to Sue suspected that Bill was leaving). For further discussion, see Davidse and Vandelanotte (subm.).

Temporal deixis in DST and IST 85

to Van Hoek’s (1995, 1997) approach to pronominal anaphora,19 in the sense that an absolute tense establishing a temporal domain within which temporal relations can be expressed vis-à-vis the central (‘absolute’) situation time is like a nominal reference point which can have coreferential noun phrases within its dominion.20 Put differently, absolute tenses may allow access to less readily accessible other situation times (coded by relative tenses); the latter are the ‘targets’ of the reference point relation. In like manner, nominal reference points may allow access to other nominally coded referents (the targets) which are less easily accessed. The salience characteristic of reference points in general (Langacker 1993: 6) also applies to absolute tenses compared to relative ones, since only the former relate directly to t0, as reflected in their position ‘on the time line’ in Figures 6 and 7. As regards the dynamic nature of reference point organization, a parallel can also be drawn, since in both nominal (38) and temporal (39) anaphora an initial ‘target’, once accessed via the reference point, can itself come to function in its turn as a reference point for other targets associated with the latter (rather than the initial) reference point. (38)

(39)

John takes good care of his mother. For instance, she had a problem with her cat which had climbed into a tree but wouldn’t come down again, and he managed to bring it down again. He said he had been very unhappy when he was in London. He was living in a real dump back then while he was working on his PhD.

In (38), John initially functions as a reference point for accessing his mother; once activated this referent subsequently functions as a reference point allowing access to a new target, her cat. In similar vein, in (39) the situation times had been and (when he) was in London are accessed via the absolute tense ‘reference point’ said. Once activated in the discourse, this

19

Against rather different theoretical backgrounds, Partee (1984) also links “nominal and temporal anaphora”. 20 It should be noted that ‘reference point’ is used here exclusively in the sense defined by Langacker (1991, 1993) as discussed above in section 2.1. This use is different from the way the term has been used in Reichenbach’s (1947) tense theory, in which ‘reference point’ (R) is one of three components of tense meanings, together with ‘event time’ (E) and ‘speech time’ (S), as in the analysis of the past perfect encoding the meaning E_R_S.

86 Deixis and expressivity in DST and IST situation time is itself used as a reference point coded by an absolute tense (was living) with the relative tense was working in its domain.21 In tense use there is another level of dynamicity which does not have an immediate parallel in the realm of nominal deixis. This is the level at which the relative tense had been in (39) functions as a binding orientation time for was (in London): had been is directly a ‘target’ of said within the dominion of said, whereas was is only indirectly a target of said, via the intermediate step of a binding time also belonging to the dominion of said. This does not mean that had been has itself come to function as a reference point. The fact that was conveys simultaneity vis-à-vis had been is determined ultimately by said, the reference point, because had been belongs to a past temporal domain established by said. Thus, all relative tenses related directly or indirectly to one and the same absolute tense belong to the same ‘dominion’ or temporal domain. A further difference between nominal and temporal deixis is that the nature of the ‘coreferentiality’ involved in the reference point organization of person and temporal deixis is not the same. In (38), the referents designated by John and his mother are linked in terms of the strictly coreferential proper name John and pronoun his. The absolute and relative tenses said and had been in (39), on the other hand, do not refer to the same situation time in the way that John and his refer to the same person. What they do share is their belonging to the same past domain, either by virtue of establishing it (said) or by being subordinated in it (had been). Although the conceptual correspondence between nominal and temporal deixis is thus certainly not one to one, it is too striking to be ignored. In the realms of nominal and temporal deixis, more salient noun phrases and tenses establish reference points allowing access to initially less salient and less easily accessible other referents and situation times. The application of the reference point model to nominal and temporal deixis may serve as an illustration of Langacker’s assessment that reference point organization is “so basic a cognitive ability that there may indeed be no linguistic phenomenon that does not involve it in some way” (1993: 35). The general principles of absolute tenses, temporal domains, and relative tenses will be applied to DST and IST in the following sections. The 21

In enabling the ‘cotemporal’ reading for was in London and was living, the temporal circumstance back then is no doubt important, just as in interclausal relations temporal adverbials may be important to enable an absolute reading (e.g. in he said he was ill in his teens, in his teens indicates that the relative reading of was (ill) is not the correct one here).

Temporal deixis in DST and IST 87

main point that I will make is that, even though all the principles that obtain in non-reported speech can be used to explain tense use in DST and IST, in modelling tense the perspective of the represented speaker should be given explicit recognition.

3.2. What is remarkable about tense in STR? One of the points stressed throughout Salkie and Reed’s (1997) paper on tense in IST is that “There is no need to single out tense in IRS [indirect reported speech = IST] for special treatment” (1997: 331). While Declerck (1999) disagrees with Salkie and Reed’s “pragmatic hypothesis” for tense in IST on all other points, this is one he says he “could not agree with […] more” (1999: 91).22 However, in this and subsequent sections I will argue that tense in STR (including IST) is different because there are two distinct deictic centres from which temporal locations and relations can be plotted: the current speaker’s and the represented speaker’s. By its very nature, STR constructions involve a represented speaker’s “original” t0 coinciding temporally with the time of the reporting verb, which is itself located vis-à-vis the current speaker’s t0.23 Needless to say, there need not always be an ontologically ‘real’ original utterance (see Chapter 4, section 1), but as soon as something is represented as someone’s speech or thought, this invokes the represented speaker’s t0 as the latter’s moment of speaking or thinking (irrespective of whether this has ‘really’ occurred or not). In my view this represented speaker’s t0 should always be represented in the analysis of tense in STR, and any tenses which are absolute with respect to the represented speaker’s t0 are placed on a separate represented 22

One respect in which Salkie and Reed (1997) and Declerck (1999) are also similar is in their rejection of Comrie’s (1986) sequence of tense rule (see for instance Declerck 1990b, 1991a: 164–182; see also Van der Wurff 1996: 263–268 for discussion, and Van der Wurff 1996 and Squartini 2003 for attempts to apply Comrie’s and Declerck’s theories to IST in Bengali and Old Italian respectively). 23 At least, in the typical case it is; it is not impossible that the reporting verb itself is in fact a relative tense only indirectly related to the current speaker’s t0. Thus, in the following example, had said is itself related to an implicit orientation time, and not directly to the current speaker’s t0: Often, during my stay in the autumn I had said that if I searched a hundred years I should never chance on a place I liked more […](CB, ukbooks).

88 Deixis and expressivity in DST and IST speaker’s time line. In this way, it becomes possible to keep in view the contribution of the represented speaker’s t0 to the meaning of the absolute or relative tense in the reported clause. In the next section, I illustrate this first for DST, which involves not just a shift of domain, but also a shift in the deictic centre from which the domain is plotted.

3.3. Tense in DST From the observation that in DST, an entire ‘deictic shift’ from the current speaker’s to the represented speaker’s deictic centre takes place, it follows logically that tense is plotted directly and ‘deictically’ vis-à-vis two distinct temporal zero-points (t0) in the reporting and the reported clause.24 In the reporting clause, the relevant t0 within the current speech situation is that of the current (reporting) speaker, whereas in the deictically shifted reported clause, situations are located temporally vis-à-vis the represented speaker’s t0 in the represented speech situation. Thus, in principle, the reported clause of DST shifts the domain using absolute tense, but this absolute tense is not determined with respect to the current speaker’s t0, but rather with respect to that of the represented speaker.25 In John said: “I will be late”, for instance, there is next to the current speaker’s absolute past (said) the represented speaker John’s absolute future (will be). In order to represent this analysis diagrammatically, it is necessary to enrich Declerck’s diagrammatic representations with a second, ‘independent’ timeline on which an absolute tense can establish a domain. Such a representation is presented in Figure 8 below. The abbre24

Declerck (2006) deals only with IST, but Declerck’s (2003: 99) account of DST in terms of two “experiencer-point of views” (Exp-PoVs) is compatible with the analysis proposed here (and earlier in Vandelanotte 2002c). 25 While it is always true that the reported clause of DST shifts the temporal domain, it is not strictly true that this can only involve absolute tense forms, since a relative tense form might occur which is temporally related to an implied ‘absolute’ orientation time (see also note 23 above for the reporting verb tense). The point is that in such cases as well, the implied orientation time is situated vis-à-vis the represented speaker’s, not the current speaker’s t0. The past perfect had happened in the following example (discussing the case of an unfortunate drunk who collapsed and died in a pub) provides a case in point: Fellow ferryman Samuel Glen, 36, said no one batted an eyelid when Peter collapsed. He said: “It had happened before. It was his trademark.” (CB, sunnow).

Temporal deixis in DST and IST 89

viations ‘cur’ and ‘rep’ serve to clarify whether it is the current speaker’s (cur) or the represented speaker’s (rep) t0 which is involved. The cotemporality of the current speaker’s past said and the represented speaker’s original t0 is indicated by means of a dotted line. said x

t0 (cur)

will be x t0 (rep)

Figure 8. Absolute tense in direct speech or thought

It will be noted that this type of representation allows one to implicitly situate the absolute location of the absolute ‘reported’ tense (will be in this case) vis-à-vis the current speaker’s time line as well; thus, in the interpretation given in Figure 8, will be is also ‘post-present’ to the current speaker. This is not necessarily the case; the constructed context in (40), for instance, prompts an interpretation in which will be is future vis-à-vis t0(rep) but present vis-à-vis t0(cur): (40)

– There’s John, finally! Why is he so late anyway? – Well, I wouldn’t know, he only said to me “I will be late”, but he didn’t give a reason.

It is important to note that this line of analysis sets absolute tense in DST apart from ‘ordinary’ absolute tense – that is to say, absolute tense in discourse that is not in one way or the other ‘reported’. In a sentence such as (34) They began sleeping together just after she turned 14, for instance, there is only one t0 (the current speaker’s) to which the two absolute past locations can be referred (as represented in Figure 7 above). From this fairly basic situation in DST, we can now turn to the more complicated picture which emerges in IST. I will first deal with relative tense in IST (3.4) and turn subsequently to the distribution (3.5) and functions (3.6) of absolute tense in IST reported clauses.

90 Deixis and expressivity in DST and IST 3.4. Relative tense in IST At first sight, if relative tense is used in the reported clause of IST, this seems to be due straightforwardly to the current speaker’s deictic centre: it is in relation to the temporal domain established by the reporting verb (or the domain to which this verb belongs; see note 23 above) that the reported clause’s tense is ‘relative’. Viewed from this perspective, there is indeed nothing remarkable about relative tense in IST, and representations similar to those given in Figure 6 (for example [33], After he had turned 60 he became a star again) can be used to interpret tense in IST as well. Thus, for instance, Declerck (2006: 373) represents the sentence John said that he had worked hard all day in precisely the same way he would represent John moved to Leuven after he had spent a few years in Brussels (Figure 9). said x

t0

x had worked

Figure 9. Relative tense in IST: Declerck’s (2006: 373) analysis However, to do this crucially ignores the fact that a secondary deictic centre (and hence a secondary t0) is involved (Vandelanotte 2002a: 385 n3, 2002c). While Declerck (2003) does not speak of a secondary t0 in the case of relative tense in IST, he does recognize the represented speaker’s involvement more generally in indicating that “the reporting speaker adopts the Exp-PoV [experiencer-point of view] of the reported speaker” (2003: 99). In order to clarify in what way the represented speaker’s t0 is ‘involved’, I propose to make use of the notion of intensional domain, which Declerck and Tanaka (1996) adopted from Rigter (1982). Rigter defines an intensional domain as “a domain of interpretation which has its own set of presuppositions and truth conditions, in terms of which propositions can be evaluated and interpreted” (1982: 96). Verbs of saying or thinking create such intensional domains (in other words, they are ‘mental space builders’ in Fauconnier’s [1985] terms). In order to broaden the applicability of the notion of intensional domain to examples of IST containing reported questions, I propose it should be understood in terms of speech functional

Temporal deixis in DST and IST 91

responsibility (Halliday 1994 [1985]: 76) rather than in terms of truth conditions, as Rigter and Declerck and Tanaka do. In an example such as John asked Mary when she was planning to come out of the bathroom, for instance, what is at stake is not whether the proposition ‘when is Mary planning to come out of the bathroom’ is true in John’s past intensional domain, but rather whether in this domain, it is John who is responsible for asking the question as to when Mary was planning to come out of the bathroom. In other words, the relevant issue is that the original speech function ( ‘interrogativity’) is John’s, and not the current speaker’s. Let us now see how the notion of intensional domain, understood in relation to speech functional responsibility, can help to grasp the involvement of the represented speaker’s t0 in a simple example, John said he would be late. As I see it, in this example the ‘future in past’ would be is ‘future’ in the represented speaker’s intensional domain. In other words, the interpretively relevant futurity involved is that vis-à-vis the represented speaker’s t0, interpreted as a past orientation time within the intensional domain. In this sense, the ‘intensional perspective’ is shifted from the current speaker to the represented speaker: it is the represented speaker, in his past intensional domain, who is responsible for the past claim as to his expected late arrival. The notion of a shift of intensional perspective (Davidse and Vandelanotte subm.) allows one to keep in view the fact that a relative tense in IST is ‘relative’ to some situation time related to the current speaker’s t0, while at the same time recognizing the fact that the posteriority, simulaneity, or anteriority involved is interpreted vis-à-vis the represented speaker’s t0. This double effect is a result of the fact that a speech or thought act description such as John said not only locates a situation (just as John left does), but also (unlike John left) defines a second reference point, viz. the time of John’s speaking, t0(rep). This line of analysis is represented for John said he would be late in Figure 10, in which the cotemporality of the current speaker’s past said with the represented speaker’s t0 is indicated. This t0(rep) is then intensionally reinterpreted as a past orientation time in the intensional domain (with t0(INT) as implied temporal zero-point), and the relative tense would be is related to this intensional past orientation time, represented as t0(rep). It should be stressed that the shift of intensional perspective adds a level of interpretation, but does not change the type of tense mechanism involved, which is still relative tense. Intensionally, however, John’s past

92 Deixis and expressivity in DST and IST belief world is conjured up in which his arrival is future with respect to his speech time.26 said x

t0 (cur)

t 0(rep) t 0(rep) x

t0(INT)

x would be

Figure 10. Relative tense in IST: shift of intensional perspective

As was noted previously in connection with tense in DST (Figure 5), the fact that the future in past is also future with respect to the current speaker’s t0 in Figure 10 need not necessarily hold. An example analogous to (40) above can easily be constructed in which the future in past is ‘present’ in terms of t0(cur): (41)

– There’s John finally! Why is he so late anyway? – Well, I wouldn’t know, he only said to me he would be late but he didn’t give a reason.

The notion of a shift of intensional perspective adds weight to the claim that tense in STR is not altogether as unremarkable as Salkie and Reed (1997) would lead one to believe. The fundamental orientation towards another discourse originating with another deictic centre characteristic of STR, combined with the insight that tense is a primary deictic resource, suggests that the influence this secondary t0 has on the interpretation of tense should be included into its analysis. In the next section, I turn to the distribution of relative vs. absolute tense in the reported clause of IST. 26

Note that would be in Figure 10 can of course not be related directly to t0(rep); as a relative tense expressing posteriority in a past domain, it has to be related to an (implied) past orientation time, the intensionally shifted t0(rep). See Davidse and Vandelanotte (subm.) for discussion of how this analysis handles the traditional notion of ‘backshift’ of tenses.

Temporal deixis in DST and IST 93

3.5. The distribution of absolute vs. relative tense in IST reconsidered Declerck and Tanaka (1996) have argued that relative tense, as in the relevant reading of John said that Bill was ill, is the unmarked option in IST, whereas absolute present tense is a marked option which is not always available (e.g. John said that Bill is ill). According to Declerck and Tanaka, in the case of relative tense, the propositions contained in the reported clause have to be true in the represented speaker’s intensional domain, “but not necessarily in any other possible world” (1996: 287), including the current speaker’s intensional domain. If absolute present tense is used, on the other hand, those propositions are not only true in the represented speaker’s intensional world, but are also necessarily “interpreted as true in a ‘t0-world’, i.e. in a world that holds at t0” (1996: 287). Typically, Declerck and Tanaka contend, this ‘t0-world’ simply is the current speaker’s world as in (42) below, in which both the represented speaker and the current speaker are committed to the truth of the proposition Bill is ill. In (43), on the other hand, the t0-world involved cannot be the current speaker’s, lest an internal contradiction with but that’s not true result: (42) (43)

John said that Bill is ill. (Do you know what John said yesterday?) He said I am gay, but that’s not true! (Declerck and Tanaka 1996: 287)

An alternative t0-world in terms of which the absolute tense in (43) can be interpreted is, however, readily available, viz. ”the world of John’s present belief” (Declerck and Tanaka 1996: 287), i.e. the world of the represented speaker at the current speaker’s t0. It is only in the absence of such a suitable t0-world that absolute tense will be disallowed. For instance, in example (44), wrongly indicates that the current speaker cannot be committed to the truth of the proposition her name is Mary, and the past tense of believed implicates that the represented speaker John has in the mean time adjusted his faulty belief: (44)

??John wrongly believed that her name is Mary. (Declerck and Tanaka 1996: 291)

Since Declerck and Tanaka (1996) make no mention of any t0 other than that of what I call the current speaker, confusion may arise as to the t0 involved in their notion of t0-world. For clarity’s sake, therefore, I will replace this notion by that of “t0(cur)-world”, that is to say, a world holding

94 Deixis and expressivity in DST and IST at the current speaker’s t0. This should not be confused with ‘the current speaker’s t0-world’; a t0(cur)-world can also be someone else’s belief world at t0(cur), as in (43) above. Stated in these terms, Declerck and Tanaka’s assessment of tense use in IST can be summarized as follows. The choice for relative tense is claimed to have a default status (1996: 284), and for those cases where absolute present tense is used, cases in which the relevant t0(cur)-world is that of the current speaker (as in 42 above) are likewise assumed to have the status of the default option over exceptional cases (as in 43) (see Declerck and Tanaka 1996: 287 and Declerck 2003: 100– 101). On the basis of corpus data, these two assumptions were challenged in Vandelanotte (2005a), in which a random sample of 500 sentences with said that was extracted from the COBUILD corpus. No a priori source bias was involved in this extraction: the search was executed throughout different subcorpora and thus includes examples from informal, spoken language as well as from more formal registers. The 500 tokens extracted for this study were labelled in terms of tense patterns using the computer tool Abundantia Verborum (Speelman 1997), and its main quantitative findings are given in Table 1 below. Percentages are given in italics and detail the distribution of absolute vs. relative tense in the overall corpus, the distribution of absolute past vs. absolute present, and the distribution of the involvement of the current speaker’s t0(cur)-world vs. that of another t0(cur)world in the case of absolute present tense. Table 1. Absolute and relative tense in IST (data from Vandelanotte 2005a) Data set considered: Relative Absolute (total) Absolute past Absolute present: current speaker-related Absolute present: non-current speaker-related Total number of tokens

all 274 54,8% 226 45,2% 90 24 112 500

absolute

39,8% 60,2% 226

absolute present

17,6% 82,4% 136

What is immediately striking in these results is the fact that relative tense is not as pervasive as might have been expected: nearly half of the tokens in this random extraction instantiate absolute tense use. Admittedly,

Temporal deixis in DST and IST 95

the way Declerck and Tanaka (1996: 284, 286) understand relative tense as the “default option” or “unmarked choice” (1996: 284) is not in terms of frequency, but in terms of selection restrictions: relative tense is always possible, whereas the “marked” choice for an absolute tense form “must be well-motivated, and it is subject to certain restrictions” (1996: 186). However, if absolute tense forms make up nearly half of the uses at least in this extraction, it turns out that this good motivation is not at all difficult to come by, and to call relative tense the default is perhaps an overstatement. Within the cases of absolute tense, more than half of the examples have absolute present tense, but absolute past tense examples form an important minority of about 40 %. For this fairly large group of absolute past tense forms, no motivation is discussed by Declerck and Tanaka (1996), since they focus on absolute present tense. In discussing some introductory examples which do have an absolute past tense, they merely comment that “the use of an absolute past tense in an RST complement is only allowed if the temporal order of the situations […] is clear from a temporal adverb, from the context or from the hearer’s pragmatic knowledge of the world” (1996: 286). This echoes Declerck’s (1991a: 182–192) earlier discussion of what he terms “tense simplification”, i.e. the use of a simpler tense, the preterite, instead of the more complex and cumbersome past perfect tense, allowed only “if it does not obscure the temporal relations between the relevant situations” (Declerck 1991a: 183). Considering the quantitative significance of absolute past tense forms in my data, however, the notion of tense simplification offers only a relatively weak motivation. In the following section, I will try to establish a stronger motivation for the use of absolute tense forms, both present and past. 3.6. The functions of absolute tense in IST27 In this section, I will propose that in the large majority of cases, the function of absolute tense in IST is to lay the responsibility for the reported speech act squarely with the represented speaker and not, as Declerck and Tanaka (1996) claim, with the current speaker. Instead of foregrounding the current speaker’s belief world in the current speech situation, I claim that absolute tenses typically foreground the represented speaker’s belief world

27

This discussion of absolute tense in IST is based on Vandelanotte (2005a) but expands on and refines the argument made there.

96 Deixis and expressivity in DST and IST in the represented speech situation, and in so doing bring the report a bit nearer to the ‘re-enactment’ of the represented speaker’s utterance which you get fully in the deictically shifted DST construction. I will first discuss this in relation to absolute present tense and then extend my analysis to absolute past tense. Contrary to what Declerck and Tanaka (1996) predicted, the situation in which it is not the current speaker’s t0(cur)-world in terms of which the absolute present tense can be interpreted as ‘true’ turns out to be the unmarked case at least as far as frequencies go (about 82 % of cases of absolute present tense after said that in my corpus extraction). What this means is that in most cases, it is incorrect to say that the reported utterance is true in the current speaker’s belief world (or, more generally, that the current speaker assumes speech functional responsibility over it). Even in the textbook example John said that Bill is ill, positing the current speaker’s commitment to the truth of the proposition Bill is ill seems to overstate the case. Such a meaning does not square well with the reportative nature of STR, which is prototypically concerned with saying things without being held to them. What I propose instead is this: the function typically fulfilled by absolute tense is not to induce current speaker commitment but rather to lay full responsibility for the content of the reported clause with the represented speaker. Technically, this means that the alternative t0(cur)-world in these cases is that of the represented speaker’s present belief, as was the case in the rather specific context conjured up in (43), He said I am gay, but that’s not true! What absolute tense in IST usually does is thus to indicate that the reported utterance ‘represented and continues to represent’ the represented speaker’s view, without providing an indication of the current speaker’s evaluation of the contents of the reported utterance. In leaving any current speaker endorsement out of the picture, then, the main use of absolute tense in IST does not differ from relative tense use. It does differ, however, in coding this absence of endorsement more explicitly, and by the same token in more explicitly laying full responsibility with the represented speaker. This use of the absolute tense can be called ‘intensionally absolute’, by analogy with the notion of a ‘shift of intensional perspective’ in the case of relative tense, because it is absolute with respect to the represented speaker’s t0. A number of lexicogrammatical features can be discerned in the data which contextually promote this reading, because they too are interpreted as emanating from the represented speaker and in this sense heighten the sense of ‘re-enactment’ of the original utterance. These in-

Temporal deixis in DST and IST 97

clude ‘intensional’, represented speaker related spatiotemporal deictics, as with now in (45) below,28 evaluative lexemes (46) and modals (47), ‘marked’ and therefore more expressive word order typical of the spoken discourse of the presumed original (48) and partial direct quotes within the indirect representation (49): (45)

(46)

(47) (48)

(49)

[…] and then the Government suddenly changed the rules and said that they [sic] you’ve now got to get a licence for any boiler. (CB, ukspok) One lead attorney in the Texas case said that with all the contradictory findings around the country, the plaintiffs will definitely appeal to the Supreme Court to determine, once and for all, whether the Voting Rights Act applies to judges. (CB, npr) He basically has said that he wanted Gates to quit, but it really wasn’t until tonight that he said that he must quit. (CB, npr) However, one’s Ministers have decided, in their wisdom, that Britannia is soon to be taken from us, so I’m afraid we have thrown something of a royal huff and said that if that’s their attitude we won’t use it, so there. (CB, today) In a statement broadcast by Sarajevo radio, the Bosnian government said that all decisions made by what it called the self-styled Croat community of Herzeg-Bosnia are illegal and illegitimate. (CB, npr)

For these examples, it is not the case that the presence of one or other ‘reenactment feel’ enhancing feature immediately prompts an ‘intensional’, represented speaker related interpretation of the absolute tense. Rather, the phenomena exemplified in (45–49) are themselves such features, and therefore offer circumstantial evidence suggesting the ‘intensional’, represented speaker related interpretation of the absolute tense. Apart from these specific lexicogrammatical resources tending towards re-enactment of the presumed original utterance, there may also be broader discoursal effects which promote an intensional reading of the absolute tense form. In example (50), for instance, two clearly opposing views are voiced in two consecutive sentences of IST; these cannot both be assumed 28

As we will see in section 4 below, it is also possible for an intensionally absolute deictic to occur in combination with a relative tense in IST, to produce the type of “WAS–NOW paradox” (Adamson 1995) which so far has been strongly connected with FIST in the literature (notably in Banfield 1982, Adamson 1995).

98 Deixis and expressivity in DST and IST to be true in the current speaker’s t0(cur)-world, whereas a reading in terms of the belief worlds of two opposing represented speakers is unproblematic: (50)

He has also said that there is no evidence the attack was racially motivated, other than that the officers were all white and the victim was black. But members of civil rights, civil liberties and labor groups have said that the excessive use of force is not uncommon among LA police officers, and that minorities are the most frequent targets. (CB, npr)

A similar case, this time from spoken discourse, is given in (51). The clause he will be one of the first to be tested uttered at t0(cur) makes it clear that it is the current speaker’s belief, in the current speech situation, that the pupils will be tested. In the report of what the head teacher said, the use of the absolute present tense can thus certainly not be interpreted in terms of the current speaker’s current beliefs, which contradict the headmaster’s claim as to their not being tested: (51)

Erm my little boy’s now seven and he will be one of the first to be tested and we went to a meeting today at school er for the head teacher to explain what was being done and he said that they’re not being tested as such but we were told to take it as an assessment. (CB, ukspok)

In all of the cases discussed above, lexicogrammatical or contextual indications support an interpretation of the absolute present tense as ‘intensionally absolute’, that is to say, as expressing the represented speaker’s current belief. The large amount of intensionally absolute tenses points up the fact that the contexts in which the t0(sp)-world Declerck and Tanaka (1996) talk of need not be as ‘specialized’ as in their original example (43), He said I am gay, but that’s not true!. The point is in these cases not that the current speaker could not possibly commit him- or herself to the represented state of affairs lest a contradiction result (but that’s not true in 43), but rather more basically that the current speaker does not want or need to position him- or herself. The predominant discourse function of an intensionally absolute present tense in IST is to focus on the represented speaker’s interactive and modal position, which is presented as continuing into the present. This also entails that an intensionally absolute present tense is located squarely on the represented speaker’s time line.

Temporal deixis in DST and IST 99

We may represent this analysis as in Figure 11 below, in which the first sentence of (50), He has also said that there is no evidence…, is diagrammed. Figure 11 is not unlike the diagram for absolute tense in DST (Figure 8) because in both diagrams the absolute tense of the reported clause is located on the represented speaker’s timeline. The difference lies in the implicature in the IST case that an absolute present tense can only be used for situations which, in Huddleston’s (1969: 794) words, last “long enough to be present both for the original speaker [represented speaker] and for the reporter [current speaker]”. To take a simple example, in DST it is possible to have a report like (52a), but an IST rendering of this report with absolute tense (52b) is infelicitous: (52a) (52b)

When I met him last week, he said “God, I’m feeling thirsty!”, so we went for a drink. ??When I met him last week, he told me he is feeling thirsty, so we went for a drink. (adapted from Declerck and Tanaka 1996: 293)

This implicature is represented in Figure 11 by the dotted line connecting an area within the present temporal domain established by is and centered around t0(rep) to t0(cur). has said t 0 (cur) x

x t 0 (rep) is

Figure 11. Absolute present tense in IST: intensionally absolute tense

I would like to point out that what I have presented here as an implicature seems not to have been so considered by Huddleston (1969). In my view, it is an implicature which can be cancelled in cases like (53): (53)

– Jo had to give a talk in front of class the other day, so she talked about our trip to Australia. Apparently she said that Sydney is the capital of Australia, and illustrated this with pictures of Canberra! – Well, at least she got the pictures right!

100 Deixis and expressivity in DST and IST Since the proposition that Sydney is the capital of Australia has never been true to the current speaker at all, Sydney’s being the capital of Australia is not in any way ‘present’ to the current speaker. While (53) thus illustrates the cancellation of the implicature discussed above, it also underscores once more the ‘naturalness’ of an explanation in terms of focusing on the represented speaker’s belief world. In the data considered here, then, the case in which an absolute present tense in IST is ‘intensionally’ absolute, that is to say, is to be interpreted with reference to the represented speaker’s present belief, is the natural case.29 However, in about 18% of absolute present tense use in my data a purely ‘intensionally absolute’ interpretation is not entirely successful. Even in these cases, the discoursal effect obtained is not so much that of the speaker ‘subscribing to the proposition’, in Declerck and Tanaka’s (1996) terms. Rather, the type of context I have in mind is that in which the reporting clause functions more like an evidential marker vis-à-vis the reported utterance, especially in the context of news reports. Consider example (54): (54)

Corey Flintoff, newscaster: A study released today said that as many as five and a half million American children suffer from hunger. (CB, npr)

It seems too strong to claim for examples like (54) that the use of absolute tense results in a heightened ‘re-enactment’ feel, and that they focus strongly on the represented speaker’s present beliefs. Rather, the journalist’s or reporter’s main aim is to communicate salient news items to the public, in this case that ‘as many as five and a half million American children suffer from hunger’. By convention, the reporting clause indicates the official source of the news, but its use does not seem to ‘displace’ the reported content as ‘only’ a report. The absolute tense in these cases is not just expressive of the represented speaker’s current belief, but especially signals the current relevance of the reported utterance to the current addressee. A similar example is (55): (55)

29

The president said that all short-range nuclear arms will be taken off US submarines and ships around the world. Mr. Bush also said that plans are under way for the US to streamline its command and control procedures. (CB, npr)

Corpus extractions specialized for register (e.g. exclusively spoken language) or reporting verb could further refine the description proposed here.

Temporal deixis in DST and IST 101

Here too, the purpose is not so much to re-live the original speech act as closely as possible within the limitations of IST. Rather, the communicative goal of sentences like (54–55) pertains to providing noteworthy information to the current addressees. The focus in these evidential cases is thus less on the represented speaker, who is only specified as the (authoritative) source of the news, and more on the current speech situation and in this sense, on the moment of speech exchange between current speaker and current addressee, viz. t0(cur). This is why, in Figure 12 which represents the relevant part of (55), I locate the domain established by the absolute present tense are around t0(cur) rather than around t0(rep) extending to a point cotemporal with t0(cur) (as in Figure 11). At the same time, however, as in the case of intensionally absolute present tense, in these evidential contexts it remains understood that the reported utterance is also still ‘present’ for the represented speaker. This is represented in Figure 12 by the dotted line, which indicates that t0(cur) is cotemporal with a point or area within the understood present domain centering around t0(rep), likewise represented in dotted lines: said x

t0 (cur) x are

x t0 (rep)

Figure 12. Absolute present tense in IST: current noteworthiness in evidential contexts

Unlike in intensionally absolute cases, which focus on the represented speaker’s present beliefs, the focus in evidential cases like (54–55) is thus on the exchange between current speaker and addressee, and the effect is that the situation coded by the absolute present tense is presented as noteworthy to the current addressee. This analysis differs from Declerck and Tanaka’s (1996) approach in terms of ‘truth’ in the current speaker’s present belief world: the current speaker does not personally endorse or commit to the original utterance, but merely transmits it as a news item. A related type of absolute tense use in IST which can be incorporated into this notion of evidential absolute tense is that discussed by Blackstone

102 Deixis and expressivity in DST and IST (1962: 17) in terms of “immediacy of interest”. Consider the contrast in tense choice in (56a–56b): (56a) (56b)

John told me last night I am the prettiest girl he has ever met. I told Clarissa last night she was the prettiest girl I had ever met.

Blackstone comments that in the case of (56b), John may still feel that Clarissa is the prettiest girl he has ever met, “but for him the compliment is less immediate than it is for her: she is interested in the substance of what he said – she treasures the compliment and she hears him saying it” (Blackstone 1962: 17). A similar example discussed by Blackstone is The doctor told me that my blood group is B, in which the blood group is what is conversationally immediately relevant, because it is the current speaker’s blood group that is talked about (compare The doctor told Mrs Smith her blood group was B, in which this is not the case). In these cases of ‘immediacy of interest’, as in the evidential uses in news reports discussed above, it is the current relevance in the current speaker–hearer exchange that is focused on. I now turn to the use of absolute past tense, which makes up nearly 40% of absolute tense cases in the data (Table 1). The crux with the analysis of past tense forms in a reported clause of IST lies in the fact that they are potentially ambiguous between a relative and an absolute reading.30 When considering actual corpus data, it often appears that a relative reading is rather strained because a simultaneity relationship between the saying and the reported state of affairs is irrelevant or does not make much sense. Consider example (57) : (57)

30

The Commerce Department said that factory orders fell by 1.7 percent, reflecting the weaker demand brought on by the recession. (CB, npr)

The role of Aktionsart (mainly states vs. non-states) and aspect (simple vs. progressive) in promoting absolute or relative readings was briefly pointed out in note 18 above. It is particularly in the case of states that both readings may be available (e.g. he said plans were underway), and, as pointed out to me by Elizabeth Traugott (p.c.), the use of absolute present tense discussed above (and exemplified for instance in [55] Mr Bush also said that plans are underway) cancels this problem.

Temporal deixis in DST and IST 103

To read fell as a relative tense expressing simultaneity vis-à-vis said one needs to assume an original simple present tense, which seems unlikely (??Factory orders fall by 1.7 percent). This leaves only the option of considering fell to be an absolute tense, of which the temporal anteriority vis-àvis the saying is pragmatically derived rather than explicitly coded. As indicated above (section 3.5), the motivation offered by Declerck (1991a: 182–192) for using an absolute past tense in cases like (57) is that of tense simplification. This is a rather mechanical ‘reason’ which seems poorly motivated in semantic and pragmatic terms. There are reasons to believe, however, that the alternative I have proposed for the majority of absolute present tense cases is also valid for absolute past tense cases. In other words, in my view the natural function of absolute past tense is to create a sense of re-enactment of the original utterance. Adopting this proposal means that a real function can be ascribed to the use of an absolute past tense, rather than viewing it as a simplified version of a ‘deep structure’ relative past perfect tense. Here, as for absolute present tense, support for this position comes from lexicogrammatical features that independently suggest a tendency towards such re-enactment. Elements which bring the IST reported clause a bit closer to the original utterance include the occurrence of directly quoted bits of text within an indirectly represented clause (58) and various ‘dislocated’ clauses such as preposed adverbials (58) or clauses (59). (58)

(59)

He said that on Tuesday and Wednesday allied jet fighters, quote, ‘deliberately attacked a convoy of civilian vehicles on the highway from Baghdad to the Jordanian border.’ (CB, npr) One man said that once he saw the looting and burning begin, he lost all sympathy for blacks in Los Angeles. (CB, npr)

That absolute tenses are involved in each case is clear because simultaneity between the saying with the attacking (58) or with the losing of sympathy (59) does not make sense. This is all the more clear because of the temporal expressions which clearly point to the past (on Tuesday and Wednesday, once he saw the looting and burning begin). That the absolute tenses are intensionally absolute is supported by the various ‘re-enactment recreating’ structures. There is nothing to suggest that the current speaker is held to the ‘truth’ of the past attacks or loss of sympathy: the focus is fully on the represented speaker’s original utterance and attendant beliefs. I conclude from this section that the function of absolute present tense in IST cannot easily be understood as in most cases concerned with the truth

104 Deixis and expressivity in DST and IST of the proposition in the current speaker’s current belief world, as Declerck and Tanaka (1996) contend. I have argued that in most cases, absolute tense, both present and past, is ‘intensionally’ absolute, that is to say, focuses on the represented speaker’s belief world, and serves as one of various lexicogrammatical resources which code a heightened ‘reenactment’ of the original utterance, bringing the report a bit closer to the type of full re-enactment which only DST allows (see also Chapter 4). In evidential contexts, on the other hand, absolute present tenses signal the current noteworthiness or interest raised by the contents of the reported clause, and as such are interpreted primarily in terms of the current speakerhearer interaction at t0(cur). Furthermore, the combined quantitative findings about absolute tense – that it occurs almost as often as relative tense in my data,31 and that of these many occurrences it is overwhelmingly ‘intensionally’ absolute and hence linked to the represented speaker – point in the same direction as my analysis of relative tense in terms of an intensional shift in showing that the represented speaker’s role in IST is greater than is usually recognized in mainstream approaches which view IST as a kind of ‘summary’ or ‘paraphrase’ emanating entirely from the current speaker. In the remaining sections of this chapter, similar observations will be made in the areas of adverbial deictics and expressive resources.

31

The claim that absolute tense in IST may occur more often than has hitherto been assumed has also been made by Sakita (2002a: Ch. 6, 2002b). However, her analysis raises a number of problems. First, some of her analyses are debatable: in the sentence remember I told you the first couple days a class was kind of a weird game situation (Sakita 2002b: 178), for instance, was is considered an absolute tense. A relative reading, implying a (gnomic) present tense in the original utterance, is more likely, especially considering the generic use of the indefinite article in a class (rather than, say, this class or my class). Second, Sakita maintains that in some cases the past perfect in IST is “used as an absolute tense simply because of a discourse functional necessity” (2002b: 184). If past perfects can be interpreted as absolute tenses, the conclusion that more absolute tense is used in IST than previously recognized follows logically. However, this claim directly contradicts not only Declerck’s (1991a, 2006) analysis of the past perfect as intrinsically relative, but also more traditional understandings of the past perfect.

Other deictics in DST and IST 105

4. Other deictics in DST and IST In a broad sense, deixis extends to many more language resources than those discussed in the preceding sections (see, for instance, Fillmore 1997 [1975], Lyons 1977: Ch. 15, Jarvella and Klein 1982, Rauh 1983, Fuchs 1992, Duchan, Bruder and Hewitt 1995, Huang 2007: Ch. 5), including among other domains “social” and “textual” deixis (Fillmore 1997 [1975]) as well as “emotional” deixis (R. Lakoff 1974). In this broad sense, phenomena such as accent or prosody are considered deictic because they index, for instance, social class or emotive involvement. Like Hanks (1992), I focus only on a “more restricted class of referential usages of lexical deictics” (1992: 46) which establish reference on the basis of their relation to the ongoing speech event. Within the set of deictics thus defined, I would like to address briefly in this section the issue of spatiotemporal adverbial deictics. These have traditionally figured prominently in ‘transposition exercises’. Thus, for instance, to the non-reported discourse The president will deliver his speech right here on the balcony would typically correspond IST She said the president would deliver his speech over there on the balcony. However, as follows from the general discussion of speech situation and deictic centre in section 1, if the current speaker him- or herself were also on the balcony at t0(cur) he or she could use right here in the report just as in the nonreported version. This is because in this case, the current and the represented speech situations share their location. Apart from shared aspects across current and represented speech situations, corpus examples show that some ‘shifted’ deictics, which are the rule in DST, can occur in IST as well. This will form the main topic of this section, in which it will be shown that absolute deictics (directly related to a t0) can be related to the represented speaker’s t0 in the reported clause of IST, in which case they are intensionally absolute in the same way that absolute tenses in IST typically are (section 3). As a first illustration of this, consider the ‘proxal’ deictic adverbial now which can occur in the reported clause of IST as not the current speaker’s, but rather the represented speaker’s now cotemporal with t0(rep), as in (45) above (and then the Government […] said that you’ve now got to get a licence for any boiler). That intensionally absolute deictics are possible at all in IST is not usually recognized, and was even explicitly assumed to be impossible by Banfield:

106 Deixis and expressivity in DST and IST Because deictics occurring in indirect speech do not refer to the time and place of the quoted speech, they cannot be considered transforms of deictics in direct speech. (Banfield 1982: 26; my emphasis)

Whereas in the earlier example (45) the ‘intensionally absolute’ now cooccurs with an intensionally absolute present tense, examples like (60–61) below are even more striking since they combine an absolute deictic, now, tied to the represented speaker’s t0, with a relative past tense. Such a ‘NOW in the PAST’ (Banfield 1982) has traditionally been viewed as an important index of FIST and, considering Adamson’s (1995) term ‘WAS–NOW paradox’, as something of an anomaly. The occurrence of this very combination in the more commonplace type of IST already suggests that nothing particularly exceptional is going on in such cases. (60)

(61)

Pete Domenici, the ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, said that the problem now was on the spending side, that more spending cuts were needed because the package was still about $ 10 billion short. (CB, npr) Gorbachev says he has reached a large measure of agreement with the leaders of nine Soviet Republics on the plans for economic reform he is taking to the meeting of seven leading industrialised countries later this month. He told Soviet television he now had a mandate from the republics to take to the London talks. (CB, bbc)

If, following the discussion of tense in the previous section, one recognizes the involvement of the represented speaker’s t0 in IST, the occurrence of a now referring not to t0(cur) but to t0(rep) is not as anomalous as Adamson’s term ‘paradox’ suggests. The relative tenses in (60–61) convey simultaneity with said and told respectively, but via the mechanism of a shift of intensional perspective this simultaneity is also understood in relation to the represented speaker’s speech time. The absolute deictic now, on the other hand, relates directly (and only) to t0(rep). In fact, having a then instead of a now would be problematic on the relative tense reading we get in (60), as witnessed by (60a). It is only if an absolute past reading can be envisaged for was that then can occur (60b): (60a) (60b)

??Pete Domenici said that the problem then was on the spending side,… . Pete Domenici said that the problem then was on the spending side; by now, however, it was on the revenue side.

Other deictics in DST and IST 107

An intensionally absolute now cotemporal with a reported, past t0(rep) as in (60–61) is one of several options the current speaker has to introduce aspects of the represented speech situation ‘directly’ into IST (see also other such options discussed in section 3.6 above). The behaviour of now confirms the proposal that IST does allow of a number of hook-ups with the represented speaker, bringing the report somewhat closer to the feel of direct interaction, and removing it further from mere ‘paraphrase’ or ‘summary’. In similar vein, an intensionally absolute proxal place deictic here can occur, referring not to the current speaker’s location in space, but to that of the represented speaker: (62)

(63)

The dollar closed at 133.82, up .39 yen from the overnight Tokyo close, but down 0.07 from today’s opening quote. The Tokyo close was also virtually unchanged from New York, and analysts said action here was simply catch-up. (CB, npr) They even began brightly despite Owen waiting almost six minutes for his first touch of the ball. When it came it told you here was an 18-year-old with no fear or inhibition. (CB, sunnow)

That no mention has been made of any ‘paradoxes’ in relation to spatial location is arguably due to the fact that no apparent clash between a distal location in space and a proxal one occurs. This in turn is related to the fact that temporal location is always encoded in a finite clause (viz. on the finite verb) whereas place is not. A further complexity in the realm of adverbial deictics is formed by expressions which include a scalar value, such as the next day compared to tomorrow. In a fundamental sense, the next day is like a relative tense in that it needs to be positioned vis-à-vis some ‘intermediate’ reference point rather than directly vis-à-vis t0. If I say tomorrow, this immediately means something (by reference to t0); if I say the next day, I need to know at what day the counting up to the next begins. Consider, in this regard, the constructed set of alternates in (64a–f) below. (64a) is a sentence of DST in which in view of the deictic shift in the reported clause, tomorrow is interpreted directly in relation to the relevant t0 in the reported clause, viz. t0(rep). In other words, it is absolute vis-à-vis the represented speaker’s deictic centre. Out of context, a DST sentence such as (64b) is anomalous; the next day is not automatically interpreted in terms of t0(rep) at all but apparently needs some other reference point to which it can then be subordinated. Such a reference point is given in (64c): there, the next day is interpreted relative to tomorrow, which is itself located ‘absolutely’ vis-à-

108 Deixis and expressivity in DST and IST vis t0(rep), as in (64a). One might very well extend the reference point model to cases such as these, and say that the next day in (64c) is in the dominion of tomorrow, itself a reference point. (64a) (64b) (64c)

A week ago, John said to me, “My wife is leaving for France tomorrow.” ??A week ago, John said to me, “My wife is leaving for France the next day.” A week ago, John said to me, “My daughter is leaving for China tomorrow and my wife is leaving for France the next day.”

If we now turn to IST reports of the original speech event in which John said to the current speaker of (64a), “My wife is leaving for France tomorrow”, we can note that only (64d), and not (64e), means the same thing. The next day in (64d) is interpreted relative to t0(rep) (and hence relative to a week ago); in this sense, the next day provides additional evidence for the deictic relevance of t0(rep) and supports the notion of an intensionally ‘shifted’ relative tense proposed previously (section 3.4). On the other hand, tomorrow in (64e) is most naturally interpreted directly vis-à-vis the ‘main’ t0, t0(cur), and (64e) could be understood as an indirect report of a presumed original as given in (64f).32 Like a relative tense, then, the next day in IST (64d) is temporally ‘subordinated’ to the absolute time established by the reporting verb, cotemporal with t0(rep). Like an ‘evidential’ absolute tense, tomorrow in IST (64e) is related directly to the primary t0, t0(cur). (64d) (64e) (64f)

32

A week ago, John told me his wife was leaving for France the next day. ≠A week ago, John told me his wife was leaving tomorrow. A week ago, John said to me, “My wife is leaving in eight days.”

The precise semantic or pragmatic factors influencing why tomorrow is interpreted vis-à-vis t0(cur) in (64e) whereas now, for instance, is interpreted vis-à-vis t0(rep) in (60–61), fall outside my present concerns. Presumably the lexical meaning of tomorrow ‘the day after t0’ compared to that of now ‘t0’, as well as the position within the reported clause, play a role; arguably now can also receive a current speaker-absolute meaning in a sentence like He had promised it would all be over by now. My main point here is that ‘absolute’ deictics can hook up not only with t0(cur) but also with t0(rep) in the reported clause of IST.

Expressivity in DST and IST 109

I conclude that in DST, the deictic grounding of the reported clause is ‘reset’ to a new default, the represented speaker’s deictic centre. Any overlap in terms of spatiotemporal location between designations in the reported clause of DST and places and times in the current speech situation is coincidental and results from the sharing of such places and times between the current and the represented speech situation. IST shows a more complex picture, with some deictics re-enacting the represented speaker’s deixis (‘intensionally absolute’ as with now in 60–61 and here in 62–63), some relating to the current speaker’s deictic centre (‘current speakerabsolute’ as with tomorrow in 64e), and some being subordinated to a reference point established vis-à-vis the current speaker’s deictic centre, but intensionally involving the represented speaker nonetheless (‘intensionally shifted relative’ as with the next day vis-à-vis said in 64d).

5. Expressivity in DST and IST In Chapter 2 (section 4), it was pointed out that there exists a link between syntagmatic structure and expressivity, inasmuch as the more strongly autonomous reported clause of DST allows all the expressive resources that can occur in non-reported discourse, whereas there are some resources which the more weakly autonomous reported clause of IST does not allow, such as interrogative clause structures or incomplete sentences. In terms of whose expressivity is involved, expressivity can be linked with deixis. As I argued in section 1, a ‘deictic centre’ can profitably be viewed as the linguistic representation of a ‘person’ or ‘character’. Hence, in contexts in which two deictic centres interact, it becomes important to determine to which of these two expressive elements are to be referred for interpretation. The main point I want to develop in this section is that, as was the case for deixis, in terms of expressivity IST has more resources linked to the represented speaker than has traditionally been assumed. Turning to DST first, by its very nature all expressive elements in its reported clause are geared to the represented speaker. The only kind of current speaker irruption possible in DST is that of ‘nonreferential’ placeholders like so and so and such and such, which are not particularly expressive (see Chapter 4, section 1.1). As for IST, Banfield has made the categorical claim that any expressive elements occurring in the reported clause of IST are necessarily interpreted as the current speaker’s. She discussed this claim not only in connection with deictic elements like tense

110 Deixis and expressivity in DST and IST and adverbials, of which the preceding sections have already demonstrated that represented speaker related interpretations certainly do occur, but also with regard to “certain well-defined classes of lexical items whose full interpretation entails a reference to the speaker” (1982: 54), viz. kinship terms such as Momma and expressive lexemes such as that idiot of a doctor or those damned oil companies. In an example like (65), damned is, according to Banfield, “referred to the main E [‘Expression’] rather than to the quoted S [‘Sentence’] for interpretation” (Banfield 1982: 57), which “must mean that the quoting speaker so assented to the quoted speaker’s opinion that he ‘expressed’ similar ones” (1982: 56): (65)

The Republican candidate told the nation that the damned oil companies should not be taxed. (Banfield 1982: 56)

The idea that damned in (65) has to express the current speaker’s emotional response seems to run counter to the general characteristic of STR that it allows one to utter things without asserting them (cf. Davies 1979, McGregor 1997: Ch. 6.5) or, more generally, without being held speech functionally responsible for them as a speaker. Nothing warrants Banfield’s claim, which is dictated by the demands of her grammar of narrative sentences: the reported clause of IST has to be noncommunicative (‘SPEAKER-less’) and nonexpressive (‘SELF-less’) since in IST sentences, there is only one ‘E’ node (versus two in DST). Further illustrations of the untenability of Banfield’s position are furnished by the following examples. In (66), bloody well clearly does not express the current speaker’s irritation. Likewise, there is no reason to assume that the current speaker in (67) is responsible for expressing a negative opinion as to his own sexual performance (lousy). (66) (67)

So he said briskly that he would bloody well go inside himself and did. (CB, times) Dear Jane, ALL my girlfriend does when we have sex is lie there like a lump of wood. Yet she reckons I’m a lousy lover. (CB, sunnow)

It should be noted that Leech and Short (1981: 331) as well as Semino and Short (2004: 85–86, 180–181) would categorize examples like (66–67) as FIST precisely because they contain “linguistic features that mark a move away from narratorial control towards the evocation of the reported voice, whether they relate to grammar, vocabulary, or whatever” (Semino

Expressivity in DST and IST 111

and Short 2004: 86). Leech and Short consider an example like He said that the bloody train had been late (1981: 331) as FIST on account of the occurrence of bloody, and Semino and Short suggest that it is “theoretically possible” to analyse the underlined part in (68) below as IST because it “begins with a reporting clause and the subordinator ‘that’”, but go on to claim that “in retrospect it too can be said to contain a feature that could be associated with the character’s verbal style – namely the emphatic and colloquial expression ‘couldn’t possibly’” (2004: 85). (68)

[…] and with an echo of the earlier hysteria was saying that she couldn’t possibly sleep in the private car, […] (Dick Francis, The Edge, p. 131 qtd. Semino and Short 2004: 85)

There are several reasons for disagreeing with this position. An obvious question that arises is where one is to draw the line: if in Leech and Short’s example one drops the bloody (He said that the train had been late) or in (68) the possibly, do we then already have IST? In my view, the assumption that IST cannot bear any trace of the “words and structures used in uttering the propositions concerned” (Short 1988: 70) is unfounded. Secondly, considering the many deictic hook-ups with the represented speaker discussed in this chapter, such as intensionally absolute tenses and adverbial deictics (now, here), these would all have to be classified as FIST as well. Against this, the data discussed in this chapter have amply illustrated the occurrence of represented speaker related resources in IST. Finally, the syntagmatic structure of the examples involved allow only of an analysis as IST. To ignore this is to ignore all corollaries of the distinction between juxtaposition and incorporation, such as the ability to have complementizers only in the case of incorporation, or the ability to have interrogative or exclamative clause structures only in the case of juxtaposition. My disagreement with Leech and Short’s and Semino and Short’s position on this point can be related to the discussion between Banfield (1973, 1982) and McHale (1978, 1983) on expressive features disallowed in IST. For some of the features on Banfield’s (1982: 28–34) list McHale produced textual (literary) examples which in his opinion disproved Banfield’s claims. I believe some, but not all, of the phenomena discussed by Banfield can indeed be observed in IST as expressive ‘re-enactment enhancing’ devices related to the represented speaker, without this having to result in an analysis of FIST. Examples include different kinds of marked word order such as topicalization (69) or ‘right dislocation’ (70), exclama-

112 Deixis and expressivity in DST and IST tive interjections (71), hesitation phenomena (72) and the use of a different dialect (73). (69) (70) (71) (72)

(73)

Henry declared that never had he had such a wonderful holiday. (Fludernik 1993: 244) She replied that they might be parted for years, she and Peter. (Banfield 1982: 30; starred as ungrammatical by her)33 He […] told himself that, whew, Gilly had talked the leg off of everybody. (Farrell 1977: 37 qtd. McHale 1983: 25) It was on the tip of Eveline’s tongue to ask her if Major Moorehouse was her… her… but she couldn’t think of a way of putting it. (Dos Passos, 1919, 222 qtd. McHale 1978: 255) To which Mr. Bailey modestly replied that he hoped he knowed wot o’clock it wos in gineral. (Charles Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit qtd. Clark and Gerrig 1990: 791)

The counterexamples which McHale (1978) provided for inversion (74) and exclamatory sentences (75), however, represent a different case: (74)

(75)

Mr Smith asked Eleanor wouldn’t she eat lunch with them as she was mentioned in the will [...] (Dos Passos, 42nd Parallel, 230 qtd. McHale 1978: 254) But Eveline said what could be more exciting than to be in Paris right now […] (Dos Passos, 1919, 303 qtd. McHale 1978: 254)

Following the model of syntagmatic structure developed in Chapter 2, the incorporation characteristic of IST imposes restrictions as to the clause types that can occur in its reported clause. Because examples (74–75) show interrogative and exclamative clause structure, they invite a classification of FIST rather than IST. In my view, use of this syntagmatic criterion allows a more consistently linguistically motivated analysis than the slippery slope of ‘coloured’ lexis walked by Leech and Short and Semino and Short (and also, following in their tracks, by Ikeo 2007: 370–371).34 33

Arguably the dislocation also (but not only) permits a current speaker-related interpretation, in which she and Peter serves as a current speaker’s clarifying gloss for they. 34 This is not to deny that genuinely transitional cases can occur. In the context of the present discussion, for instance, it seems to me that if some of the phenomena illustrated in (69–73) ever did occur in the absence of an overt complementizer that

Expressivity in DST and IST 113

From this discussion I conclude that full justice can only be done to the meaning of IST if it is recognized that expressive language in its reported clause may (and as far as I can judge, typically does) refer to the represented speaker’s deictic/expressive centre, and not to the current speaker’s. In this sense, the de dicto–de re ambiguity may extend to “attitudinal or value loaded expressions”, as proposed by Coulmas (1986: 4), who notes that in some cases it is the de re reading which is preferred, as in John asked me to dance with his hysterical wife. Arguably, the tighter syntagmatic integration of the non-finite reported clause in comparison with a finite reported clause promotes the current speaker-relatedness of hysterical; compare John said that his hysterical wife never stops dancing or John said his wife was hysterical. Even though the expressive potential of IST reported clauses has thus been underrated by Banfield and others, it does remain the case that some types of expressive elements occur less frequently or less easily in IST, such as sentence chunks and subjectless imperatives (see Chapter 2, section 4).35 Another candidate for ‘exclusion’ from IST might be interjections which, according to Wilkins (1995: 383–384), have to be rendered more “objectively” and descriptively in IST: A direct quote like “‘Shit, I’m bored,’ Sally said,” would need to be rendered in an indirect quote in something like the following manner: ‘Sally said that she had just come to the unpleasant realization that she was bored.’ (Wilkins 1995: 383–384)

This shows that, even though some expressive and deictic hook-ups can be made with the represented speaker (especially expressive adjectives and deictic adverbials), IST remains ultimately oriented towards the current

or if, this would diminish their acceptability on a reading as IST, and a reading as FIST with a sentence-initial reporting clause (see Chapter 2, section 5.2) becomes more felicitous. For instance, if a complementizer-less alternate of Fludernik’s constructed example (69), Henry declared, never had he had such a wonderful holiday, is possible at all, a FIST reading seems more likely. 35 As a purported counterexample to Banfield’s claim that incomplete sentences do not occur in IST, McHale (1978: 255) cited a case from Dos Passos, The company doctor said he couldn’t get any compensation because he’d already given notice, and, besides, not being a Canadian… This does not involve an incomplete sentence in the sense intended by Banfield (1982: 33), viz. a sentence chunk that can serve as a short response or retort (compare *The company doctor said being a Canadian), but rather an idiomatic use of suspension points.

114 Deixis and expressivity in DST and IST speaker’s deictic centre. Thus the incorporation of the reported clause with the reporting one in IST is tighter not only syntagmatically, but also deictically. It appears, in conclusion, that IST is certainly not bereft of expressive potential, even though this potential is limited compared to DST. A similar conclusion was reached by Bolkestein (1990: 74) who, working within a Functional Grammar framework, criticized the representation of IST that was proposed by Hengeveld (1989: 145–146) in which the reported clause is captured with an X-variable, referring only to the propositional content of the presumed original speech act. Bolkestein points out that the IST reported clause should be captured by something higher than an X, but still lower than the speech act variable E used for DST reported clauses,36 because it incorporates indications of the communicative strategy and interpersonal attitudes of the represented speaker, as in this constructed example (for further discussion, see De Roeck 1994: 332–334): (76)

She said that finally, as far as John was concerned, if he really wanted to know, frankly, surely he might have left, since his car was gone. (Bolkestein 1992: 398)

The use of interpersonal or expressive resources interpreted in terms of the represented speaker’s deictic-expressive centre ties in with the nominal and spatiotemporal deictic mechanisms which may be referred to the represented speaker’s deictic centre, such as the de dicto use of proper names in IST (section 2.2), intensionally shifted relative tenses and intensionally absolute tenses (sections 3.4–3.6), and intensionally absolute uses of spatiotemporal deictics.

36

The use of E for DST reported clauses has also been questioned, viz. by Vet (1998), who proposes to treat these not as speech acts but as utterances (i.e. the products of speech acts): you cannot ‘say a speech act’, whereas you can say an utterance (Vet 1998: 9). For an implementation of the difference between DST and IST in the current version of Functional Discourse Grammar, see Keizer forthcoming.

Conclusion 115

6. Conclusion In this chapter, I have described the main deictic characteristics of DST and IST, focusing mainly on person deixis and tense but dealing briefly with other deictics and expressive features as well. In DST, the complete deictic and expressive shift from the current speaker’s to the represented speaker’s deictic centre results in a kind of ‘reset’ of reference point organization and nominal and temporal choices. Thus, first and second person pronouns in DST reported clauses refer to the represented speakers and their addressees, and third parties which may be referred to by means of (high accessibility) pronouns may in fact, from the point of view of the current speech situation, not be highly accessible at all. Tense in DST is established independently from that in the surrounding speaker discourse, which means that a new temporal domain is established with reference not to the current speaker’s t0 but to that of the represented speaker. As for expressive devices, there is no limit to their use in the reported clause of DST as expressive of the represented speaker’s attitudes. In IST, the situation is more complex. First and second person pronouns in its reported clause refer to the current speaker and their addressee; represented speakers and their addressees in the represented speech situation are referred to in the third person. This is usually done by means of (high accessibility coding) pronouns: because the reporting clause subject (designating the represented speaker) and (if present) the indirect object (designating the represented addressee) are both ‘viewers’ of the reported clause, noun phrases referring to the original speech participants fall within the dominion of the reporting clause. To the exceptional cases in which people refer to themselves or their interlocutors by means of proper names or descriptive noun phrases correspond cases of IST in which a noun phrase in the reported clause receives a de dicto reading. As for reflexives, point of view reflexives are interesting in IST because they have as ‘point of view’ antecedent the represented speaker, and thus form another illustration of the presence and significance of this point of view in IST, which tends sometimes to be overlooked. Regarding tense in IST, it was argued that the choice for a relative tense is accompanied by a shift of intensional perspective, allowing one to interpret the temporal relations involved not just vis-à-vis the current speaker’s orientation time, but also vis-à-vis an orientation time resulting from an intensionally shifted t0(rep). Absolute tenses in IST are usually ‘intensionally absolute’, i.e. located on the represented speaker’s timeline, focusing

116 Deixis and expressivity in DST and IST on his or her belief world, and enhancing the feel of re-enactment of the original utterance. Less frequently, absolute present tenses may function in evidential contexts to focus on the noteworthiness of the reported content to the current speaker–hearer interaction. Furthermore, I have argued that spatiotemporal deictics such as now and here can be coreferential with the represented speaker’s t0 or spatial location and can hence be ‘intensionally’ absolute instead of current speaker-absolute. This means that the so-called ‘NOW in the PAST’ is not restricted to FIST, nor as exceptional as claimed by Banfield (1982) or Adamson (1995). In terms of expressive features as well, I have argued that even though there are certain restrictions, there are several ways in which the represented speaker’s expressivity can come to the fore in IST reported clauses. In all, an important conclusion to be drawn from the description of deictic and expressive features of IST presented in this chapter is that there is more scope than is sometimes recognized to enhance the feel of ‘reenactment’ which is accomplished more fully in DST. Such devices as now or here cotemporal or cospatial with the represented speaker’s t0 or location, the use of intensionally absolute tenses and the mechanism of a shift of intensional perspective with relative tense, and de dicto readings of referential noun phrases as well as expressive elements can all be exploited to invest the reported clause with ‘directly’ represented speaker related meaning, combining with the overall current speaker construal obtained in IST. This conclusion is similar in spirit to that drawn by Rosier (1999) who studied a different set of phenomena in French STR, such as the use of IST with quotation marks, and who argues that such devices serve to pull IST in the direction of the effect of faithfulness (I would prefer to speak of ‘reenactment’, see Chapter 4, section 1.1) associated with DST (Rosier 1999: 245).

Chapter 4 The grammatical semantics of direct and indirect speech or thought

The aim of this chapter is to arrive at a linguistically sound characterization of the general semantics of DST and IST in English. The discussion of the main proposals that have been put forward to capture the difference between DST and IST will necessarily be selective (section 1): especially in philosophy, “quotation” opens up many questions pertaining to truth values and the ‘logical form’ of quoted sentences which I will not go into.1 Instead, I will focus on three broad tendencies which are typical of traditional thinking on the functions of DST and IST, viz. verbatimness, mention–use, and demonstration–description. In each case, the question will be discussed how well these proposals capture empirical linguistic properties of DST and IST constructions. In section 2, I will suggest in which direction a grammatical or ‘constructional’ semantics of DST and IST should, in my view, be sought, viz. in a way which incorporates the syntagmatic, deictic and expressive properties described in the previous chapters (2–3) and brings them to bear on the nature of the secondary ‘ground’ or speech event in the two types. Before turning to distinctive characteristics of the meaning of DST and IST, it is useful to keep in mind the fundamental commonality that they share. This commonality lies in what can be called a speech functional ‘dissociation’: the speech functional responsibility for the assertoric, interrogative, exclamative or directive force of the presumed original utterance as reported in the reported clause rests with the represented speaker, not with the current speaker. Or, in McGregor’s formulation, Framing P as a quote provides a means whereby the speaker can utter P without asserting, questioning, proposing, etc. that P: instead, what they specify is that someone else would assert, propose, question, etc. that P. (McGregor 1997: 265)

1

See Cappelen and Lepore 2007 for a discussion of various philosophical theories of quotation (use theories, proper name and definite description theories, as well as Davidson’s influential demonstrative theory) in the light of their own proposed ‘minimal disquotational theory’.

118 The grammatical semantics of DST and IST The many rhetorical uses to which this general feature of STR can be put will not be studied here. Suffice it to illustrate, with one striking example, to what length the relaying of speech functional responsibility can be taken: (1)

I know that you believe that you understood what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant. (Robert McCloskey, State Department spokesman [attributed]; www.quotationspage.com)

1. Traditional approaches to the meaning of DST vs. IST In this section, I will discuss three popular views that have been around for some time to describe and explain the difference in meaning between DST and IST constructions: verbatim versus non-verbatim rendering of a (presumed) original utterance (1.1), mention vs. use of that utterance (1.2), and its demonstration vs. its description (1.3). For each of these theories, I will adduce arguments demonstrating the problems they raise. Since at least in some forms the latter two approaches tend to imply the first, I start with the verbatimness view.2

1.1. Verbatimness One idea that remains widespread in popular thinking about “quotation” is that in DST, the words of the represented speaker are reproduced (i.e. given literally), whereas in IST, only the content of what was originally uttered or thought is given, in the words of the current speaker him- or herself. This popular idea can also be found in stylistic and linguistic writing about STR (e.g. Leech and Short 1981: 318, Thomson and Martinet 1986: 269). Even though this position is intuitively appealing, it poses many problems. One problem that was already envisaged by Leech and Short is that this approach cannot be extended to cases of thought representation: since 2

Note that these important theoretical strands can combine in specific proposals; for instance, in Coulmas’ (1986: 11–13) exposition on the ‘sameness’ involved in DST reported clauses, both the demonstrative theory and a version of the mention– use distinction are embraced. For detailed treatment of some specific analyses (both more traditional and more recent), see Noh 2000: 21–60.

Traditional approaches to the meaning of DST vs. IST 119

“[w]e cannot see inside the minds of other people”, “the representation of the thoughts of characters, even in an extremely indirect form […] is ultimately an artifice” (1981: 337). However, the problem is more fundamental than this, and ultimately, in fact, any speech or thought representation, whether direct or indirect, is in a sense “an artifice” (cf. Fludernik 1993, 1995), as the ensuing discussion will demonstrate. An obvious example of the ‘constructed’ nature (Tannen 1986) of speech as well as thought representation is that of fictional works, in which there is usually no ‘original utterance’ of which the words could then be quoted verbatim. As for non-fictional representations, there is the theoretical problem of determining what ‘level’ of verbatimness is to be understood as ‘sufficient’ for something to ‘count as’ a direct quote. Clark and Gerrig (1990: 775) have drawn up a detailed list of different aspects of utterances which people could in principle ‘repeat’ when quoting someone’s actual utterance, including aspects of delivery (such as pitch, speech defects), language (including different dialectal and register features) and levels of linguistic acts (e.g. the mere propositional content vs. the illocutionary act). It is quite clear that rarely all of these aspects are reproduced in DST reported clauses; as Clark and Gerrig have argued, only nonincidental aspects get to be ‘depicted’ (1990: 777). For instance, in reporting what the Russian president has said on some topical issue, English-language newspapers will use English even though, conceivably, the president’s comments were uttered in Russian. For the purposes of news reporting, the language used in such a case is incidental. Even if one disregards incidental aspects, research has shown that verbatim recall of nonincidental aspects is both very hard to achieve and rarely required or relevant. As to the first, empirical memory research has shown conclusively that people have the greatest difficulty, even after just a few seconds, to recall an utterance precisely word for word (see, for instance, Sachs 1967, Jarvella 1971, Anderson 1974, Stafford and Daly 1984, Hjelmquist and Gidlund 1985a/1985b, Lehrer 1989). In addition, however much our daily discourses are fraught with ‘quotation’, it is only in specific institutional settings, such as academic writing and legal transcripts, that strict verbatimness requirements hold, typically with regard to written text. In news reports as well, as Short et al. (2002) have shown, a high level of faithfulness to an original may be required, for instance to avoid libel suits on the basis of ‘misquoting’ crucial phrases. From a linguistic point of view, the most fundamental objection to be raised against the notion of verbatimness in DST is the existence of forms

120 The grammatical semantics of DST and IST of DST (as well as IST) which include clear markers of their nonverbatimness. To my knowledge, von Roncador was the first to have made this claim in an explicit and detailed way in his (1980) paper suggestively entitled ‘Gibt die Redewiedergabe Rede wieder?’ (Does speech or thought representation represent speech or thought?), and in his (1988: Ch. 3) chapter on ‘nichtwörtliche direkte Rede’ (‘non-literal DST’).3 As he points out (1988: 89–90), the more interesting cases compared to intentional or unintentional ‘failures’ to comply with any verbatimness norms are those in which in one way or another this non-compliance is signalled in the reporting or the reported clause. Examples include things which will only be said some time in the future (X will say Y), negated quotes which never occurred (no one has ever said Y), hypothetical quotes which might but need not be said (if X were to say Y), typified quotes attributed to a generic subject such as one or an arbitrary instance of a class of people (in such a case, a psychologist would say Y), and counterfactual quotes which did not in fact take place (I could have said Y, but I didn’t) (see von Roncador 1988: 89–102 for German examples and discussion). In such cases, what is missing is the certainty that there is, at the time of the ‘reporting’, an original that can be ‘reproduced’ at all. In cases with so and so or such and such as in (2a–3a) below, the case is even stronger: any presumed original of such cases cannot normally contain these ‘placeholders’, as von Roncador calls them (1988: 106) (2b–3b): (2a)

(2b) (3a)

3

Erm the lieutenant colonel had been a lecturer in Birmingham in erm oil engineering. When he saw I was from Birmingham he started How’s Doctor so-and-so? How’s my friend so-and-so? (CB, ukspok) *Tell me, how is Doctor so-and so? And how is my good friend soand-so? If I could say for example today on your programme then fine because I’m sure if you sat and explained to everybody that if you are sitting thinking Well somebody valued my house back in nineteen-eighty-eight at such and such a figure therefore why can’t I get it now life isn’t like that. We’ve all had to take a drop. My personal house has dropped in value fifty thousand pounds. (CB, ukspok)

Since ‘die wörtliche Rede’ (‘the literal mode of representation’) is a German alternative for the term ‘direct speech/thought’, ‘die nichtwörtliche direkte Rede’ is a clever coinage that is difficult to translate.

Traditional approaches to the meaning of DST vs. IST 121

(3b)

*My house was valued at such and such a figure in 1989 but now that I want to sell it, it is worth £ 50,000 less than such and such.

Von Roncador (1988: 103–104) credits Harweg (1970, 1972) for having noted for corresponding German expressions like der und der, da und da and so und so that these are not possible in non-reported discourse.4 As appears from (2b–3b), they are clearly not amenable to a de dicto reading, but as von Roncador (1988: 108) suggests, a de re reading is also problematic, because they do not appear with the same kind of function in nonreported discourse. Indeed, so and so and such and such refer neither to the words that were used nor to the ‘content’, as there is nothing in these expressions that contains the meaning of, for instance, ‘a person’s name’ (2) or ‘a certain amount of money’ (3). Their status as ‘placeholders’ suggests that they mainly indicate that some stretch of speech occurred; what kind of speech this was is filled in on the basis of contextual knowledge (the apposition with relational noun phrases like Doctor and my friend in 2, the talk about the value of houses in 3). Being neither de dicto nor de re expressions, it could be argued that these items ‘suspend’ reference,5 and leave it to be contextually but only ‘schematically’ inferred: ‘this is where a name goes’, ‘this is where a value goes’. The most extreme illustration of non-verbatimness is offered by cases in which no more than the mere occurrence of ‘some speech’ is represented, referred to as “quotations without propositional content” by Clark and Gerrig (1990: 780–781). Consider, for instance, (4): several possible reactions people might have against art are condensed into one enumeration ending in blah-blah (meaning roughly ‘put any other silly comment here’), 4

At least for English, this is surely an overstatement; for instance, use of so and so as a politeness strategy in a lucky old so and so (in avoidance of sod) is wellestablished, and use as a stand-in for a proper name when talking in a general way about a type of person is also possible, as in the following description of a scene of country life, a cold damp cottage where dear Mrs So and So from the village has not been able to switch on the heating as she had to take her husband into Bristol with his leg (CB, ukmags). Even so, non-reported use of these forms is rather restricted, and functionally different from their use in contexts of DST and IST. 5 I borrow the notion of ‘suspension of reference’ from the so-called Pronominal Approach (e.g. Van den Eynde et al. 2002), in which words like who?, where?, when? as in I don’t know who you’re talking about or in Who said that? are categorized as ‘suspensives’, although these at least do contain certain higher-order specifications of the sorts of things they stand in for (people, places, times, etc.)

122 The grammatical semantics of DST and IST and this condensation of multiple potential speech events is attributed to a non-specific, potential or imaginary interlocutor. (4)

I’m trying to express inner feelings in the most honest way possible. If you feel something reprehensible, you say it. I get very heated up when somebody comes along and says, ‘That’s looksist, or ageist, or sexist, or blah-blah.’ It reveals total lack of comprehension of what art’s really about (CB, ukmags [interview with Edmund White in Vogue])

All these types of ‘non-literal DST’ clearly contradict any ‘verbatimness’ theory. In addition, the fact that hypothetical or counterfactual representations (5) as well as typified and ‘suspensive’ forms (6) may occur in IST as well suggests strongly that the distinction between DST and IST should not be sought in this direction: (5)

(6)

Donald believes that in focusing closely on Lincoln himself […] he has been led to paint him in different colours from earlier biographers. A less modest man might have said that the colours were not just different, but truer. (CB, times) You know all these letters they send out telling you you can get such-and-such now but on such-and-such a date it will change to this amount and then it will change again. (CB, ukspok)

The idea that verbatim rendering in DST is generally unattainable has caught on and spread in more discourse-oriented studies (e.g. Tannen 1986, 1989; Short 1988; Mayes 1990; Caldas-Coulthard 1994; Mathis and Yule 1994; Myers 1999; Collins 2001; Vandelanotte 2002a: 410–412, 423) as well as in more theoretical work (e.g. Clark and Gerrig 1990; Fludernik 1993, 1995).6 Anthropological work reported in Hill and Irvine (1993) has provided further illustrations of the often ‘constructed’ nature of DST, as in

6

In this connection, Perridon (1996) has pushed the argument too far. In confusing verbatimness and the notion of de dicto interpretation (which need not involve verbatimness, but merely what one might call ‘intensional’ appropriateness or accuracy), he (1996: 165) has claimed that DST allows of de re readings, such that that fool in She said, “I don’t want to see that fool again” can reflect the current speaker’s opinion. Whatever the opinion of the current speaker might happen to be, the function of the DST sentence is to represent that of the represented speaker.

Traditional approaches to the meaning of DST vs. IST 123

the case of direct reports of the words of ancestral spirits (Kuipers 1993) or of feigned quotes in American teenagers’ ‘fight stories’ (Shuman 1993).7 The arguments presented above have shown that the key to the semantics of DST versus IST does not lie in the notion of verbatimness. A final point worth stressing is that it is ultimately always the current speaker who is responsible for the wording with which a (presumed) original speech event (or indeed a hypothetical, future, or counterfactual one) gets to be represented. Sometimes literary critics express their misgivings about the stylistic appropriateness of represented utterances, because they feel there is an ‘idiomatic’ clash between the language used for the report and the language expected of a given character (see for instance Pascal 1977: 79– 86, Mey 1999: Ch. 7). Even in such cases, however, the stylistically ‘inappropriate’ stretches of speech or thought representation are precisely this: represented as the speech or thought of a represented speaker. This is what STR constructions confer upon their reported clauses, even if the attribution of words or thoughts may sometimes be unlikely, as in the nonsensical constructed example (7): (7)

Would he belch now or later, the baby pondered for a while. After which he belched.

Apart from the fact that not much deliberation usually goes towards such a naturally occurring thing as belching, it is quite impossible that a baby would think in the vocabulary used in (7); even so, this is the ‘illusion’ or ‘fiction of language’ (Fludernik 1993) conjured up through the use of an STR construction.

7

Short, Semino, and Wynne (2002) have argued for a ‘context-dependent’ approach to faithfulness claims, recognizing the kind of evidence discussed here, but maintaining that in “formal serious written reports of writing using the direct presentational forms”, faithfulness “strongly affects the behaviour of writers and the likely expectations of readers” (2002: 331). I agree that faithfulness can play an important role in the sorts of contexts Short et al. discuss, but they do not seem to fully appreciate the consequences of all the evidence pertaining to contexts in which this is not so. Particularly, the fact that the categorization of types of STR proposed by Leech and Short (1981) and adhered to by Short et al. (2002: 332) and Semino and Short (2004) is founded on differences in terms of ‘layers of faithfulness’ is rendered problematic in the face of this evidence, and this is a problem they do not address (see also Chapter 7, section 2).

124 The grammatical semantics of DST and IST 1.2. Mention vs. use If the verbatimness view derives from the popular notion that DST repeats ‘the actual words spoken’, a second line of thought takes its cue from Quine’s (1940: 23–26, 1960: 146–156) philosophical distinction between words which are “used” vs. words which are merely “mentioned”. For instance, in (8a) the name Cicero is truly used to refer to the famous Roman orator and because of this, replacement of Cicero by his other name Tully (referring to the same person) is possible without affecting the truth of the original statement (8b). In (9a), however, nothing is said of the historical person, but instead Cicero is mentioned as a linguistic entity (a word) the properties of which can be referred to. Replacement by Tully (9b) in this case results in an untruth: (8a) (8b) (9a) (9b)

Cicero was a famous Roman. Tully was a famous Roman. Cicero’s name has three syllables in it. *Tully’s name has three syllables in it.

The notion of ‘mention’ as illustrated in (9), in which it is linguistic form rather than semantic content and pragmatic reference that is at stake, has been applied to DST; the typical view is then that DST reported clauses are mentioned whereas IST reported clauses are used (see e.g. Haiman 1985: 224, Davidson 2001 [1979]: 79). What is mentioned, on this view, in the reported clause of DST is argued by Coulmas (1986: 12–13) not to be the same physical “token”, since this is impossible; what can be repeated is a different token of the same type (see also Lyons 1977: 17, and Cappelen and Lepore’s [1997] notion of sametokening). Many problems are raised by the mention–use approach to the semantics of DST versus IST. For one thing, as Clark and Gerrig (1990: 801) suggest, it crucially involves the verbatimness assumption argued against above. Since a ‘mention’ presupposes that there is something to mention, some prior, ‘original’ speech event is presumed to be involved in each case. An interesting example in this connection is that of ‘suspensive’ items such as so and so, such and such, and blah blah blah, which allow neither a de dicto nor a de re reading. Surely such items do not ‘mention’ a token of the same type as one uttered by the represented speaker. These items also pose a problem for Mosegaard Hansen’s (2000) modification of mention–use theory. In her approach, verbatim rendition need not be involved, but DST reported clauses are analysed as a grammaticalized form of code-switching

Traditional approaches to the meaning of DST vs. IST 125

(2000: 310–318): in them, a switch is performed from the current speaker’s to the represented speaker’s code. While this approach can handle reported clauses in another language well and views the reported clause as coding something, thus not reducing it to just “mentioned sounds” (Haiman 1985: 224), it cannot handle the suspensive items, for these cannot be understood as part of the represented speaker’s code. Apart from the general problem that often no original ‘token’ is around to be ‘sametokened’ or mentioned, there are at least three more sorts of problems, relating to the discourse level use of DST, the theoretical status of the notion of mention, and the limitations on a wider typology of STR constructions imposed by a dichotomous view such as the mention–use distinction. Turning to discourse level problems first, Partee (1973) has convincingly shown that there are several ways in which the content of a DST reported clause is interacted with in the discourse. This counts as strong evidence against a view which takes the reported clause of DST to consist merely of ‘mentioned sounds’. Partee gives examples of three phenomena suggestive of a syntactic and semantic integration between DST reported clauses and following discourse: pronominal anaphora (10), ellipsis (11), and “semantic anaphora” (12): (10) (11) (12)

The sign says, “George Washington slept here,” but I don’t believe he really did. (Partee 1973: 417) “I can talk better English than both of youse!” shouted Charles, thereby convincing me that he didn’t. (Partee 1973: 417) Actually he said “It’s clear that you’ve given this problem a great deal of thought,” but he meant quite the opposite. (after Partee 1973: 417)

Although it has its own problems, Mosegaard Hansen’s (2000) codeswitching view allows one to incorporate such cases: it is not because the code is switched to that of the represented speaker that the current speaker may not understand that other code as well. For any strict mention–use distinction, however, examples like (10–12) pose serious problems, since even in a purported prime context of mention, apparently “use” can be made of the mentioned ‘sounds’ after all. In fact, a similar misunderstanding of IST results from a use/mention dichotomy. Proponents of a ‘use (and not mention)’ view of IST may end up claiming that an IST reported clause is ‘used’ just like any non-reported clause; Haiman, for instance, speaks of indirect speech as “refer[ring] to the

126 The grammatical semantics of DST and IST world at large” (1985: 224). This position cannot be subscribed to without qualification: while one can certainly talk about whatever is in a reported clause of IST, it is also the case that a reported clause of IST is in the first place a ‘metaphenomenon’ (Halliday 1994 [1985]: 252). This means that any reported clause, be it of DST or of IST, does not directly represent experiences in ‘the world at large’, but rather represents such a representation (cf. Relevance Theory’s notion of ‘metarepresentation’, e.g. Wilson 2000). DST and IST both construe ‘metaphenomena’ or ‘metarepresentations’, but they also both allow the kinds of ‘use’ phenomena Partee (1973) has shown for DST. This complex nature is not captured by the use/mention theory. A theoretical problem related to the features of ‘use’ which DST allows is that there is, arguably, no such thing as pure mention (Garver 1965; see also Lucy 1993: 11–14). One candidate for pure mentionhood might be cat in “Cat” is a noun. Just as John in John is my friend is on Quine’s view a name of a person, “cat”, if it instantiates pure mention, should be merely and purely the name of the word “cat”. However, whereas the relation between the name John and its referent is arbitrary (there are no predicational properties making up ‘Johnness’ and thus determining which people are called John), the relation between the alleged ‘name’ cat and its referent is not; instead it is conventional. It is because we recognize by convention the combination of sounds (or graphemes) making up ‘cat’ as a word (more specifically, a noun) that we can call it a noun. Now if we conclude with Garver (1965) that there is no pure mention, then the premise of the mention theory turns out to be problematic. As a final problem for mention theory as applied to DST and IST, it should be noted that there is no easy way of incorporating other types of STR in a wider typology of STR constructions. For instance, the question should be considered how mention theory can accommodate FIST, which is deictically ‘intermediate’ between DST and IST and syntagmatically like DST. One might venture to capture the mixed nature of FIST in terms of “mixed use/mention”, but this term is normally reserved for partial quotations (as in Davidson’s example Quine says that quotation “…has a certain anomalous feature”, 2001 [1979]: 81). Binary oppositions such as use/mention cannot readily describe a wider variety of types including FIST. An approach in which all types of STR can be defined semantically in terms of the same concepts is preferable.

Traditional approaches to the meaning of DST vs. IST 127

1.3. Demonstration vs. description The notion of demonstration in connection with DST is due to Davidson’s work in philosophy (2001 [1968], 2001 [1979]). In his “demonstrative theory of quotation” (2001 [1979]: 90), it is maintained that the “words within quotation marks are not, from a semantical point of view, part of the sentence”: they do not refer to anything, but rather “it is the quotation marks that do all the referring, and they help refer to a shape by pointing out something that has it”. These quotation marks may be read as “the expression a token of which is here” or “the expression with the shape here pictured”. In this way, Davidson’s demonstration theory combines the idea that quotation ‘points to’ a shape with the idea that this shape is a picture or token of something else. It will be noted immediately that the idea that the quoted material is not semantically part of the sentence is difficult to maintain in the light of the discoursal integration of DST with its context, as in the cases of pronominal and semantic anaphora described by Partee (1973: 417). In his analysis of IST, Davidson (2001 [1968], “On Saying That”) elaborates the ‘demonstrative’ nature of his theory in regarding the IST complementizer that as a demonstrative pronoun, and a “tiny orthographic change, a change without semantic significance” (2001 [1968]: 106) is all that is required to go from Galileo said that. The earth moves to Galileo said that the earth moves. I have indicated the linguistic problems raised by this approach previously (Chapter 2, note 1). For instance, that in IST cannot be viewed as a demonstrative for various reasons (one of which is the impossibility of phonological reduction of true demonstrative that) (Segal and Speas 1986), and Davidson’s paratactic ‘parse’ cannot deal adequately with negative polarity items as in He didn’t say that there was any beer in the fridge (Hand 1991, 1993).8 Furthermore, since both IST and DST come under a ‘demonstrative’ analysis, it is difficult to see where the difference between the two types resides. Although Davidson does not address the difference very explicitly, a contrast seems to emerge in terms of what precisely the current and represented speakers come to ‘samesay’ in IST and DST: IST is described as using words “the same in import here and now as his then and there”

8

For a formal implementation of a revised version of Davidson’s theory in terms of Token Dependency Semantics, which takes the arguments of Segal and Speas (1986) and Hand (1991) into account, see Dahllöf (2002).

128 The grammatical semantics of DST and IST (2001 [1968]: 104), whereas a DST reported clause is seen as “the expression of which this is a token” or “the expression with the shape here pictured” (Davidson 2001 [1979]: 90), and hence as a token of the same type as the original utterance token. This suggests a difference not unlike that traditionally assumed between ‘paraphrase’ and ‘verbatim reproduction’ or indeed ‘use’ and ‘mention’, and thereby invokes the problems discussed in the preceding sections. Note, in this regard, that when X said “Y” is interpreted as X said the expression a token of which is here: Y, this unjustifiedly requires the existence of some prior expression. Despite the similarity of names, Clark and Gerrig’s (1990) influential demonstration theory of quotation takes a different stand on DST. As they stress in their brief discussion of Davidson (1990: 801), whereas for the latter quotation is a mode of ‘pointing’ (or, as they call it, indication), their interpretation of quotation is that it is a ‘demonstration’ in the sense of a ‘depiction’ or “illustrat[ion] by exemplification” (1990: 764 n2): “indicating locates things, whereas demonstrating depicts them” (1990: 801). Clark and Gerrig (1990) define demonstrations (and hence, ‘quotations’, i.e. DST reported clauses) as nonserious actions and selective depictions. Thus, for instance, much in the same way as one can actually or ‘seriously’ have a limp but also imitate or act out someone’s limp (i.e. limp ‘non-seriously’), it is possible to ‘actually’ do things with words but also to imitate or act out things others have done or might do with words. Such imitations depict or ‘show’ those other-oriented speech acts rather than describe them, as IST does, and they are selective in what they imitate or depict because only salient, non-incidental aspects effectively get to be depicted.9 One important advantage of Clark and Gerrig’s cogent analysis of DST as involving demonstrations (understood as selective depictions) is that it does away with the verbatimness assumption in a principled way, since only non-incidental aspects are depicted. A drawback from the present constructional point of view is that their notion of ‘quotations as demonstrations’ is rather broad, and includes cases such as the following: 9

Although Clark and Gerrig make only passing reference to this (1990: 765 n5), their distinction between demonstration and description can be traced back to Plato’s distinction between mimesis (showing) and diegesis (telling). McHale (1978) likewise took his cue from this Platonic typology (and from Hernadi’s [1972] extension of it) in proposing a scale from diegetic to the mimetic, with IST nearer the diegetic end and DST at the mimetic end. For an extensive discussion of different ways in which the notion of mimesis has been applied to STR mainly in poetics and stylistics, see Sternberg 1982b.

Traditional approaches to the meaning of DST vs. IST 129

(13)

(14)

Jack Anderson pooh-poohs that assumption, but Jack Anderson pooh-poohs everything these days. (Richard K. Morse, San Francisco Chronicle qtd. Clark and Gerrig 1990: 773) So I walked softly up to the door. [Demonstration of three gentle taps at the door.] “Who is it?” “It’s me.” “Well, then, please come in.” (Clark and Gerrig 1990: 782)

While indeed a form of demonstration is involved in these examples, they do not instantiate DST constructions with the syntagmatic and deictic properties described in preceding chapters: (13) involves an onomatopoeic verb, and (14) involves a demonstration that does not involve in any obvious way a human being’s language faculty (the speech organs or writing systems). It may still make sense to include humanly produced nonlinguistic quotes as in The car went brrrbrrr as a reduced form of DST (lacking any deictic categories), but to include noises such as doorknocks into the DST construction is debatable. Of course it is perfectly justified to look for broader accounts, like Clark and Gerrig do, and define ‘quotation’ as any kind of ‘nonserious selectively depicting action’, in which case indeed onomatopoeic words as well as any imitated sound can fall under this definition. For my present purposes, however, such a broad approach cannot provide a maximally meaningful semantics for DST constructions, in contrast with IST and other STR constructions. A more theoretical objection was raised by McGregor (1994: 77–81) whose ‘framing’ approach shares Clark and Gerrig’s basic ‘demonstration’ intuition, but expands it to include DST as well as IST: Both types demonstrate their referents, the words uttered by speakers, albeit from different viewpoints. On the other hand, the quotations themselves also refer to, and describe some state of affairs, or some world. Although demonstration and description are fundamentally different, as Clark and Gerrig 1990 argue, both are involved in different aspects of the complex process of quotation. (McGregor 1994: 81)

McGregor’s comment voices concerns similar to those observed in the previous section in connection with use vs. mention: the reported clauses of both DST and IST are ‘demonstrations’, that is to say, ‘metaphenomena’ or ‘metarepresentations’, but at the same time this does not make them impermeable to ‘descriptive’ understanding, in other words, what they construe can sensibly be talked about, referred back to, and so on, in the discourse context of the direct or indirect representation. The difference, as McGregor explains, relates to the viewpoint from which DST and IST

130 The grammatical semantics of DST and IST reported clauses ‘demonstrate their referents’, viz. from the observer’s point of view in the case of IST, but from the character’s in DST. Two further arguments related to McGregor’s objection can be raised against Clark and Gerrig’s theory. First, it is not clear how, in their theory, the commonality which DST and IST share in terms of speech functional dissocation can be captured. If, perhaps, the ‘non-seriousness’ of DST can be understood to imply the lack of current speaker responsibility for the contents of the reported clause, how can the same point be made for the ‘serious’ type of IST? Noh (2000: 56–57) makes a similar point, and puts the concept of ‘nonserious actions’ under further scrutiny by observing that in a case like I say, “I didn’t do that”, the current speaker is engaging in a ‘serious’ action of denial. In McGregor’s words, “the fact that we choose to demonstrate the act at all indicates our seriousness” (1994: 90). Second, the description of the deictic characteristics of IST in Chapter 3 provides further evidence against a strict ‘demonstration–description’ divide. Those deictic phenomena which are linked directly to the represented speaker’s deictic centre, such as intensionally absolute tense forms, adverbials, and expressive features, can be viewed as elements of ‘demonstration’ rather than of ‘description’. Ultimately, if not only DST and IST but also other types (FIST and DIST) have to be described, no single set of two opposing concepts will be wholly satisfactory.10 Instead, if it is determined in which way these different types behave with respect to a single constructionally defined parameter, it becomes possible to differentiate all types insightfully. To find such a parameter is the goal of the next section.

10

Admittedly demonstration vs. description is not conceived of as mutually exclusive by Clark and Gerrig: in so-called “incorporated quotations” – partial quotes such as You seem to forget how ‘haste makes waste’ (1990: 789) – demonstration and description are combined. FIST is not dealt with in terms of any combination of demonstration and description, but rather as a demonstration just like DST. It is, according to Clark and Gerrig, “just that free indirect quotations take the vantage point of the current instead of the source speaker” (1990: 787). Apart from being nondistinctive in its characterization of DST and FIST, this line of analysis presents an oversimplication, since many deictic-expressive resources in fact take the “vantage point” of the “source speaker” or represented speaker (see Chapters 5–6).

Towards a constructional semantics for DST and IST 131

2. Towards a constructional semantics for DST and IST In this section, I will first discuss McGregor’s “framing” approach (1990b, 1994, 1997: Ch. 6.5) in which the difference between DST and IST is defined in terms of (deictic) perspective. This has the advantage of being crosslinguistically adequate (like von Roncador’s [1988] similar proposal in terms of deictic shift), and of being based not on a general philosophical notion, but on grammatical properties of the construction. However, I will argue that for a language-specific description of English, this proposal is insufficiently precise, and needs to be supplemented with ‘input’ from the syntagmatic as well as the deictic lay-out of DST and IST constructions. I will propose in section 2.2 that it is in terms of the secondary ground of DST and IST, the characteristics of which are determined by the combination of deictic and syntagmatic properties, that the most explicit account of their grammatical semantics can be couched.

2.1. McGregor’s “framing” proposal As we have seen in Chapter 2, McGregor’s notion of framing is defined as a syntagmatic relationship involving two ‘wholes’, one encompassing the other and leaving its mark on the entirety of the latter’s domain, indicating that it is to be taken not as a first-order state of affairs, but rather as a second-order, ‘framed’ or semiotic reality, set apart from direct experiential description as a linguistic rather than a representational entity. The relationship between reporting and reported clause is characterized as follows: […] the former FRAMES the latter, much in the way that a frame or border frames a painting or picture. Like a frame around a picture, the representing clause delineates the represented clause from its context, the surrounding clauses, indicating that it is to be viewed or evaluated in a different way. (McGregor 1997: 253)

The nature of this different way of viewing the reported clause is specified as a demonstration or a depiction. Although, as we have seen in section 1.3 above, both demonstration and ‘description’ can be said to be involved in both IST and DST to some degree (McGregor 1994: 77–81), the very fact that demonstration is involved is the significant observation here, as this is not the case in ordinary non-reported discourse. While in Chapter 2 I have argued against a fully interpersonal interpretation of the syntagmatic structure of STR constructions, the semantic side

132 The grammatical semantics of DST and IST of McGregor’s notion of framing merits further attention. The semantic contrast between DST and IST relates, on his view, to perspective: “direct speech reports represent an utterance from the perspective of the RSS, indirect speech reports represent it from the point of view of the PSS [present or ‘current’ speech situation]” (McGregor 1997: 254). This is further described by McGregor (1997: 255) in terms of deictic resources as well as clause type (‘mood’ in the Hallidayan use of the word) falling “within the frame” in DST, but standing “outside of the frame” in IST. One important advantage of this approach is that it is well equipped to deal with other types of STR; specifically, the ‘mixed bag’ that constitutes the category of FIST can be handled adequately in terms of a ‘mixed perspective’, with certain deictic resources standing outside of the ‘frame’, and the remaining ones, construed from the represented speech situation, falling within it. As well, to define the semantics of STR constructions in terms of perspective meets the requirement of typological adequacy which McGregor’s ‘Semiotic Grammar’ sets out to meet (1997: 15–17): irrespective of the specific forms STR constructions may take crosslinguistically, it will always be possible to determine which resources are determined from the current speech situation, and which ones from the represented speech situation. This same striving for typological adequacy informed von Roncador’s view of DST as involving a deictic-expressive shift and realizing what he called an unmediated representation of another’s inner self (“unvermittelte Darstellung von Fremdinneren”, 1988: 119). However, for the language-specific description of DST and IST in English, I believe this approach is not entirely satisfactory. The complex deictic and expressive features of IST presented in Chapter 3 cannot be adequately captured by the box diagrams used to represent the framing analysis (cf. Chapter 3 section 1 Figure 3 and section 6). In particular, it is not the case that in IST spatiotemporal deixis is always construed from the current speech situation, as McGregor (1997: 255) assumes. There are two types of data that support this: one is that of deictic and expressive resources which are construed from the represented speech situation after all (what were called ‘intensionally absolute’ forms in Chapter 3), another is that of relative tense which, although determined from the current speech situation, interpretively involves the represented speaker as well. IST with intensionally absolute forms can in fact be accommodated within a framing approach much in the same way as FIST, viz. as involving some resources falling within the frame, and others standing outside of it. However, this would multiply the number of “subtypes” of IST, or perhaps

Towards a constructional semantics for DST and IST 133

rather “types” of STR: because of its ‘mixture’, an example of IST with, for instance, an intensionally absolute now would have to be relegated to a distinct type of STR compared to cases of IST in which all resources are construed from the perspective of the CSS. While there is nothing against this in principle, I prefer to constrain the proliferation of subtypes on the basis of the other fundamental grammatical parameter of IST, viz. its incorporated syntagmatic structure (Chapter 2). Within the category of IST, conceived of as a prototype category (cf. Taylor 2003), examples showing intensionally absolute forms can then profitably be viewed as close extensions of the more fully current speaker-oriented prototype. As far as intensionally absolute resources are concerned, maintaining the framing analysis leads to a proliferation of subtypes. The problem posed by relative tense in IST is more serious, as its interpretation involves both the current speaker’s location of the speech or thought event and the represented speaker’s t0. If it is semantics we want to capture, then how do we analyse relative tense in McGregor’s model: as falling within the frame (construed from the RSS) or as falling outside of it (construed from CSS)? The complex semantics of relative tense in IST cannot be adequately captured in terms of either the CSS or the RSS; both are involved. Apart from problems associated with intensionally absolute forms and relative tense, there is a further problem in that the importance of expressivity seems not to find a natural place in an approach in terms of perspective. Mayes (1990) has convincingly shown that the maximal potential of DST to express “affective information” (1990: 345) constitutes an important reason for opting for DST over IST. As an illustration of this point, consider (15a), an attested dialogue about passengers being rude on a plane, and (15b), a constructed IST alternate which, as Mayes (1990: 344–345) argues, misses the point of (15a) completely because it cannot accommodate the same amount and kind of affective information: (15a)

O: So when you say they’re demanding beer, .. they didn’t say, M: No. O: “Flight attendant may I –” M: They said “I want it –”. ((EMPHATIC GESTURE)) Yeah. They didn’t say “Can I please have a beer.” No. O: Yeah they didn’t s– They didn’t ring the little bell and say, “May I have a beer please”. M: No no. (attested data qtd. Mayes 1990: 344)

134 The grammatical semantics of DST and IST (15b)

O: So when you say they’re demanding beer, they didn’t call the flight attendant – M: No. They just said they wanted it. Yeah. They didn’t ask if they could please have a beer. No. O: Yeah they didn’t s– They didn’t ring the little bell and ask if they might please have a beer. (Mayes 1990: 344)

If affective or expressive information, coded not only in basic clause types but also in, for instance, vocatives, interjections and discourse markers (well, oh), incomplete syntax, and so on,11 is so important in determining conversationalists’ choice for DST over IST, a semantic notion which can incorporate this somehow is preferable over one which cannot. Moreover, since the syntagmatic structure of DST, with its more autonomous complement clause compared to that of IST, has an ‘enabling’ function with regard to these expressive elements, it has at least an indirect influence on the semantics. Since no different syntagmatic structure is distinguished for DST in English in McGregor’s approach, there is no way for him to include this in a constructional semantics of DST versus IST. In the next section, I will argue that what is shaped in STR constructions by perspective or deixis on the one hand, and by syntagmatic structure on the other hand, is the nature of the secondary ‘ground’ or speech event in them (cf. Vandelanotte 2004a).

11

In this connection, it can be pointed out that McGregor claims there is no contrast between DST and IST for “such items as interjections and non-linguistic vocables such as brr, hm, and so forth” (1997: 257). In his framing approach, there can be no difference, since a report such as Max said ‘Aha!’ (Haiman 1985: 222– 223) contains no deictic resources nor mood indications which can be related to either the CSS or the RSS. Haiman has argued that the unacceptability of Max said that ‘Aha!’ shows that Max said ‘Aha!’ instantiates DST, to which McGregor has replied that “the unacceptability of Max said that aha can be explained by virtue of the fact that there is no evidence that aha is indirectly quoted” (1994: 82 n7). As far as I can see, it is only the strongly autonomous complement of DST which can accommodate an interjection like Aha! or a ‘non-linguistic vocable’ like brr, in much the same way as it is only DST and not IST which can handle ‘incomplete sentences’ (see Chapter 2, section 4).

Towards a constructional semantics for DST and IST 135

2.2. Towards a “grounding” semantics for DST and IST In order to provide a maximally adequate description of the grammatical semantics of DST and IST, insights from the deictic and expressive as well as the syntagmatic characteristics should be combined. In trying to elaborate how this can be done, I will first point out that one way of abstracting away from the concrete meaning of utterances is in terms of the speech function they enact. In a second step, I will call to mind the point made at the beginning of this chapter that both DST and IST constructions involve a speech functional dissocation effected through the separation of ‘current’ and ‘surrogate’ ground. I will then try to define the specific meanings of DST versus IST in terms of the different nature of their respective surrogate or secondary grounds. Consider (16–17): if we abstract away from the different representational content they have, what remains as a fundamental meaning difference between them is that (16) ‘gives information’ (in this case, an opinion), whereas (17) ‘asks information’ (in this case, a reason): (16) (17)

You look wonderful in that dress. Why didn’t you call me yesterday?

The different speech functions enacted by (16) and (17), statement and question, form an important part of their meaning: it is what is ‘done’ with the representational content of ‘looking wonderful in a dress’ and ‘calling someone at some time’. For these general event types to really mean something, they are tied down to, or ‘grounded in’ (Langacker 1987, 1991), a specific speech event; thus, the personal and demonstrative pronouns you and that along with the present tense ground the situation of ‘looking wonderful in a dress’ in (16). In STR, of course, there are two ‘grounds’ or speech events: the current taking place between the current or ‘reporting’ speaker and their interlocutor, and the ‘surrogate’, ‘represented’ one. The grammatical integration of such a secondary speech event as a reported clause complement of a reporting clause is accompanied by what I have called a speech functional dissociation, that is to say, a dissociation of speech functional responsibility for the statement, question, command, or whatever speech function originally enacted in that secondary speech event. This ‘speech functional dissociation’ is an obvious, but important semantic commonality between DST and IST.

136 The grammatical semantics of DST and IST The way in which DST and IST can be characterized distinctively lies in the specific nature of the secondary ground in them: the deictic and expressive ‘reset’ which occurs in the reported clause of DST, co-enabled by its syntagmatic structure allowing a higher degree of autonomy of the reported clause, results in a secondary speech event with full communicativity, that is to say, one which includes a fully addressed ‘represented’ you independent from the ‘primary’, current speaker’s interlocutor.12 Thus, we might say that DST is characterized by full speech function re-enactment: in the reported clause, a surrogate ground is established independently, and a new I–you communicative axis is set up in terms of which the surrogate speech function is interpreted. Whereas speech functions are enacted in non-reported discourse, they are thus ‘dramatically’ (Wierzbicka 1974) re-enacted in DST. This analysis of DST can be represented as in Figure 13 below. The enactment or reenactment of speech function is symbolized by means of an arrow going from a speaker to an addressee. If such an arrow is associated with a current speaker, as in the outer box representing the current speech situation, enactment is involved; if it is associated with a represented speaker, reenactment is involved. The possibility of addressing an addressee in the surrogate ground is represented by means of a dashed returning arrow. The represented speech situation (RSS) is indicated by means of bold type, as in the McGregor-style box diagrams introduced in Chapter 3 (section 1).

current speaker

represented speaker

represented addressee

Figure 13. Full speech function re-enactment in DST

12

In defining the distinctive nature of the secondary ground of DST in terms of a secondary I–you axis that is set up, I am drawing on Banfield’s (1982) notion of ‘communicativeness’: according to her, the defining characteristic of ‘noncommunicativeness’ (exemplified in her view of FIST) is the absence of a SPEAKER, i.e. an I in a communicative I–you relationship. What is, then, effectively missing is an addressed you.

Towards a constructional semantics for DST and IST 137

Let us now turn to a characterization of IST in terms of “communicativity” in its secondary ground. We have seen in Chapter 3 that certain deictic and expressive hook-ups with the represented speaker can be made in the reported clause of IST. However, what is crucially missing in IST is the reenactment of a separate or ‘independent’ speech function in its reported clause.13 This is due to the fact that clause type is entirely determined by the current speaker in IST, because the incorporated syntax of the reported clause does not allow all basic clause types expressive of speech function (such as interrogatives or exclamatives), leaving only a choice between finite and non-finite (see Chapter 2, section 4), as in Lesley said that the job in Milan was only for 18 months to 2 years (CB, ukephem) vs. I have told them not to expect the same deal (CB, sunnow). As a consequence, the reported clause of IST forms an integral part of the single speech function enacted by the current speaker, which in an example of an indirectly reported question such as He asked me why I didn’t call him is a statement, not a question. In similar vein, Matthiessen (1995: 386–387) has noted that a ‘bound’ (i.e. non-main) clause “is removed from contributing to the development of the discourse as a direct move” (386). Any you occurring in the reported clause of IST is then not addressed in the secondary, but in the primary ground, by the current rather than by the represented speaker. For instance, in (18) the person designated by you is the current addressee, and was a third party being talked about rather than a speech participant in the (presumed) original speech event: (18)

He said you didn’t show up until real late. (CB, usbooks)

IST is diagrammed according to the conventions outlined above in Figure 14. Since no speech function re-enactment can hold in the surrogate ground of IST, there are no arrows in the surrogate ground, nor is there even a potential addressee. Even though, as discussed in Chapter 3, some expressive as well as deictic resources may be related directly to the represented speaker’s deictic centre, in terms of speech function IST is entirely current speaker-oriented, and this is a distinctive feature compared to DST and, as we will see in Chapter 7, compared to FIST as well. The speech 13

Note that this line of analysis does not apply to what McGregor (1994: 70) has discussed under the heading of ‘performative’ IST, as in his example I’m telling you (that) you should piss off. Such a case can be treated on a par with ‘modally’ performative, subjective uses of I think to be discussed in Chapter 8, in which no distinction can be made between a current and a represented speech situation.

138 The grammatical semantics of DST and IST functional ‘impotence’ of the represented speaker should be correctly understood: what I mean by this is that no separate speech function is reenacted (e.g. no separate question asked or exclamation made) in the reported clause. It not mean that resources which sometimes accompany the performance of a speech function may not occur: adverbs like frankly for instance, as in (19), can be used in the reported clause of IST as ‘reenactment enhancing’ devices (just like intensionally absolute deictics and expressive features can). If these occur, they are used as it were in isolation, bereft of direct exchange potential: (19)

She said that, frankly, she would just be glad when the whole project was completed and behind her. (http://techrepublic.com.com/5100-6330-1028247.html)

current speaker

represented speaker

Figure 14. No speech function re-enactment in IST

By characterizing IST as a form of STR which does not have speech function re-enactment in its surrogate ground, and DST as one which does, I believe a schematic description of their meaning is offered which is closely correlated with their syntagmatic and deictic-expressive properties rather than based on philosophical aprioris. What enables the ability of DST to re-enact (or perhaps, ‘pseudo-enact’) speech function in its reported clause is its higher syntagmatic autonomy, allowing all basic clause types expressive of its own speech function (statement, question, exclamation, etc.), together with a full deictic and expressive shift to the represented speaker. To say that IST has no speech function re-enactment does not disallow it from having several deictic and expressive “shifts” to the represented speaker, but it does disallow a full, indepentent establishment of a ‘new’ set of speech participants with full expressivity. This is effected through the lower degree of syntagmatic autonomy of the reported clause, which equally disallows a distinct speech function assignment in the reported clause. This approach avoids imputing too many restrictions in terms

Conclusion 139

of what is possible deictically and expressively, but does manage to capture the central requirements. DST, then, can be defined constructionally as an STR construction with full speech function re-enactment in its reported clause, and IST as an STR construction without speech function reenactment in its reported clause. As we will see in Chapter 7, FIST will be characterized as an STR construction with only partial speech function reenactment. This proposal, in terms of the secondary ground and the degree of speech function re-enactment allowed in it, has no problems with ‘nonverbatim’ (including ‘virtual’, counterfactual or negated) forms of STR: the secondary speech function which is either re-enacted (DST) or not (IST) may well be future, hypothetical, or whatever; there is nothing in my constructional definitions that excludes this possibility. The only peculiarity of such cases then lies in the ‘non-actualization’ of the secondary speech function. Similarly, it does not make any claims as to whether the reported clause is “used” or “mentioned”, or “described” or “shown”. It does imply that the secondary speech function is either fully re-enacted, as if it were a real, straightforward speech act (whereas in fact, it is a ‘dramatic’ construction of such a speech act in a metaphenomenally ‘displaced’ context), or not re-enacted but speech functionally subordinated to the current speaker’s speech act. Finally, it does not try to place all deictic resources in the secondary ground of IST ‘outside of the frame (viz. the secondary ground)’, as construed by the current speaker, but specifies simply that the represented speaker does not independently re-enact speech function, leaving open the question whether certain deictic and expressive resources are not linked to the represented speaker instead of the current speaker.

3. Conclusion In this chapter, I have argued that DST involves speech function reenactment in its secondary ground, whereas IST does not. This rather abstract constructional property correlates with a number of grammatical properties: the re-enactment of DST is enabled by its combination of a complete deictic and expressive ‘reset’ and a higher degree of syntagmatic autonomy for its reported clause complement. Conversely, the absence of speech function re-enactment in IST results from a lower degree of syntagmatic autonomy for its reported clause, and a current speakerrelatedness of basic deictic resources (e.g. grammatical person in the re-

140 The grammatical semantics of DST and IST ported clause is determined from the current speaker’s deictic centre). This analysis further leaves open the possibility of represented speaker involvement in deictic as well as expressive resources, a possibility that has hitherto been underestimated or overlooked. These fairly abstract semantics for DST and IST avoid the many problems met by traditional approaches, and also capture, in my view, a very fundamental feature of DST and IST. In focusing on the constructional semantics of DST and IST, I have not considered the pragmatically distinct uses to which they may be put. Mayes (1990: 348–356), for instance, has shown that DST in spontaneous conversation tends to be used for providing evidence or to “evaluate and dramatize the important action” (1990: 353), and McGregor’s study of STR in Gooniyandi (1990a: 421) has shown that thoughts are usually represented indirectly because very often a contrast is involved “between the content of the report and present reality, or present knowledge of (or views about) present reality” (1997: 260).14 My aim in this chapter has been to show the problems inherent in various previous proposals, and in focusing on constructional properties of DST and IST I have tried to formulate a consistent proposal for the grammatical semantics of these types. In Chapter 7, I will build on this proposal in order to characterize the semantics of FIST and DIST, the types to which the next chapter turns.

14

See also among others Haiman (1990), Hill and Irvine (1993), Lucy (1993), Holt (1996), Baynham and Slembrouck (1999), Holt (2000), and Holt and Clift (2007).

Chapter 5 Distinguishing free from distancing indirect speech or thought: Person deixis

In this chapter, I explore issues of person deixis in the realm intermediate between or ‘beyond’ DST and IST. At least implicitly, mainstream approaches have tended to subsume examples combining the more autonomous, juxtaposed structure of DST with deictic features of IST into one category, that of FIST. The argument that will emerge from this and the following two chapters shows that this category of FIST is too broadly defined and needs to be divided into a more narrowly defined category of FIST, strongly expressive of a represented speaker’s attitudes and emotions but deictically linked to the current speaker, and a newly introduced category of ‘distancing indirect speech or thought’ (DIST), in which the current speaker appropriates and echoes the speech or thoughts of others (cf. Vandelanotte 2000: 100–126, 2002a, 2004a, 2004b). In narratological terms, one might call DIST a ‘narrator-oriented’ counterpart to the more ‘character-centred’ type FIST. The present chapter focuses exclusively on the area of person deixis, because this is where the distinction between FIST and DIST is most apparent. Chapter 6 will then broaden the discussion to include spatiotemporal deixis and expressivity. Across both chapters, it will be argued that DIST is characterized crucially by the constructional combination of having two speech situations, current and represented (characteristic of all types of STR), but of being construed overall from the deictic centre of the current speaker. In contrast, FIST combines two speech situations with a deictic and expressive construal involving the current speaker’s as well as the represented speaker’s deictic centre. Because of its more autonomous reported clause complement compared to IST, however, there is more scope for the represented speaker’s expressivity in FIST than in IST.

1. Deictic centre in FIST and DIST: Introduction The commonsensical understanding is that FIST is ‘intermediate’ between DST and IST, be it as a “mixture” of the two, as Tobler described it as early

142 Distinguishing FIST from DIST: Person deixis as 1887 (qtd. Vološinov 1973 [1930]: 142), or even as an “anomaly” as Halliday has called it (1994 [1985]: 261). Adopting McGregor’s (1997: Ch. 6.5) box diagrams to represent a “framing” analysis as we did for DST and IST (Chapter 3, section 1), we can represent a simple example of FIST as in Figure 15 below, which makes it immediately clear that some resources fall “within” the frame, while others stand outside of it. However, as we have seen in Chapter 3, IST too allows a number of deictic and expressive resources to be ‘intensionally absolute’ vis-à-vis the represented speaker’s deictic centre. In FIST, however, due to its different syntagmatic structure, there are no restrictions as to what expressive structures can occur in the reported clause, as witnessed by the interrogative mood of the example in Figure 15. PA

3 INTER

Was

he

certain,

Henry asked.

Figure 15. Diagrammatic representation of a simple example of FIST

The interrogative clause structure in Was he certain is expressive of the represented speaker’s (i.e. Henry’s) interrogativity, and not that of the current speaker, hence ‘interrogative mood’ (INTER) in Figure 15 falls within the frame, i.e. it is geared to the represented speaker’s deictic centre. On the other hand, the grammatical person (third) of the pronoun referring to the represented speaker (he) is determined by the current speaker’s deictic centre, and the tense choice as well is not related directly to the represented speaker’s t0 (compare a presumed original Am I certain?). However, as we have seen in connection with relative tense in IST, the represented speaker’s t0 in FIST is interpretively (or ‘intensionally’) involved; this will be discussed further in Chapter 6. What is important to note at this point is that FIST is strongly expressive of the represented speaker’s interpersonal stance, even down to clause structure distinctions which are not open to the reported clause of IST, whereas deictically at least two basic resources – grammatical person of noun phrases referring to the ‘original’ speech participants and tense choice – are tied to the current speaker’s deictic centre. Let us now turn to an initial categorization of the deictic set-up in DIST, the category which I believe needs to be distinguished from FIST. Concrete

Deictic centre in FIST and DIST: Introduction 143

examples of this type have been discussed in the literature, but have usually been grouped with FIST unquestioningly (for examples, see Vandelanotte 2004a: 502–508, and further sections and chapters). The reason for this interpretive confusion lies, conceivably, in the fact that the grammatical distinctions, although very real, are also very subtle. Consider, as a first example, the following: (1)

So I suggested we dine. But Priscilla wasn’t hungry. She had eaten too much of the smoked salmon at the reception. I proposed we visit a few of the places we had known together, have a few drinks, perhaps dance. Dancing, she claimed, would exhaust her utterly. Did I want that? No, I didn’t. And as for drinks, she had no wish to be left tossing restlessly, while I snored my way into a hangover. Did I snore by the way? No, I didn’t. (qtd. from the LOB corpus in Vanparys 1996: 153)

Apart from the introductory ‘narrative’ statement, what is presented in (1) is a dialogue which originally took place between the current speaker of (1) and his interlocutor Priscilla. As for the form in which this dialogue is represented, the fourth sentence (I proposed we visit…) is easily recognized as IST, and the rest was analysed by Vanparys as FIST. The syntagmatic structure as well as expressive features of these parts clearly indicate that they cannot be analysed as IST (e.g. Did I want that?), and the past domain tenses as well as the grammatical person of the pronouns render an interpretation as DST impossible (compare e.g. Did I want that? to the presumed original Do you want that?). At first sight, an interpretation as FIST seems not to clash with the above initial characterization: both represented speakers, Priscilla and the current speaker, are referred to in the ‘correct’ grammatical person from the current speaker’s point of view, viz. third and first respectively, and one might say that the interrogativity in Did I want that? is Priscilla’s, and not that of the current speaker. Let us concentrate on the two designations underlined in (1) above, the proper name Priscilla and the pronoun I in Did I want that?. In the original dialogue between Priscilla and the current speaker of (1), these two people were interlocutors (alternatingly speaker and hearer) in an ongoing conversation. Even apart from from the fact that it is a cultural convention (Kuno 1972: 164, Reinhart 1975: 161) not to refer to oneself by means of one’s proper name (except when taking solemn oaths etc., see section 2.2 in Chapter 3), it follows from the speech participant status of Priscilla and her interlocutor that both were fully ‘accessible’ and identifiable in this conver-

144 Distinguishing FIST from DIST: Person deixis sation, and hence that Priscilla did not refer to herself as Priscilla in this original conversation, but rather as I. For a FIST representation to be based on a presumed original utterance such as But I’m not hungry, all that is required is a deictic adjustment (But she wasn’t hungry), not a change in grammatical resource (from a pronoun, coding full mental accessibility of the referent in the discourse, to a proper name, which can be used to introduce a new referent into the discourse). In my view, the proper name Priscilla in (1) is a designation on the part of the current speaker, who introduces a new referent or re-introduces a referent after some break (e.g. a paragraph break). On the other hand, a she instead of Priscilla would remain compatible with a FIST reading in which a person who is fully identifiable and accessible in the represented speech situation (viz. the represented speaker) is coded by a pronoun. Turning to I in Did I want that?, a similar process of drawing a ‘report’ into the current speaker’s domain can be discerned. Since in the original conversation, the presumed original question must have been something like Do you want that?, the I in Did I want that? in fact designates a represented addressee, who is at the same time the current speaker. If Banfield’s (1982) view of the absence of a fully communicative I–you relationship in the reported clause of FIST, adhered to by among others von Roncador (1988) and Ehrlich (1990), is maintained, this is problematic for a reading of the sentence as FIST. What seems like a normal FIST representation in such a case is, in fact, Did he want that?, for instance in a context like that given in the constructed example (2): (2)

“If you want to accept that job in New York, fine. We can get a divorce and in a few years’ time, the children will barely remember you. Is that what you want?” He didn’t answer that, but left in a rage. Did he want that, in fact? Was it the children that made him tired of their life together? Or had he lost interest not only in his job, but also in her? The questions kept her awake all night.

The difference between (2) and (1) is, crucially, that the he in (2) unlike the I in (1) does not designate the current speaker. In (1), an alternative FIST representation such as Did he want that (she asked me), with he and me coreferential, seems highly implausible because of a universal tendency for speakers to avoid referring to themselves in a grammatical person other than the first (cf. von Roncador 1988: 122). At any rate, the occurrence of a first person I in non-first person FIST (i.e. Did I want that [she asked]

The problem of proper name reference to speech participants 145

rather than Did I want that [I wondered]) is at the very least an ‘irregularity’ that tends to go unnoticed. The general assumption, which I would endorse for FIST, is that an I only occurs in first person FIST (see e.g. Banfield 1982), that is to say, FIST representing the inner thoughts or utterances of a first person.1 This is not the case with Did I want that (she asked), in which the I refers to the current speaker in the current speech situation. I will discuss the deviant occurrence of proper names and first (and second) person pronouns in reference to original speech participants in more detail in sections 2 and 3 respectively. In my interpretation, the reportative sentences in (1) do not instantiate FIST but DIST, in which all deictic resources are geared to the current speaker’s deictic centre, but in which the involvement of a represented speech situation indicates that the reported clause echoes another’s utterance (see further Chapter 7 on the semantics of DIST, and on the meaning of the term ‘distancing’ in the name given to this category). On this interpretation, then, the ‘interrogativity’ of Did I want that?, while obviously originating with the character Priscilla, is appropriated and echoed by the current speaker (on the notion of echo, see further Chapter 6, section 3.1 and Chapter 7, section 3).

2. The problem of proper name reference to speech participants In order to further clarify the significance attached to the occurrence of a proper name in a stretch of STR as in (1) above, I will first discuss in section 2.1 two simple, contrastive examples in terms of their reference point and accessibility organization, and then move on to discuss some more complex, attested examples (2.2).

1

Von Roncador (1988: 240) stipulates merely that an I can only occur in the reported clause of FIST if this I is “an already introduced I” and hence if Inarration is involved. This is insufficiently precise since the whole of example (1) forms part of an I-narration. What is crucial is that the consciousness represented in FIST should be the ‘I-narrator’, which is not the case in Did I want that (she asked).

146 Distinguishing FIST from DIST: Person deixis 2.1. Pronouns, proper names, and accessibility Reinhart (1975) distinguished between two types of “sentences containing parentheticals”, exemplified in (3a–b), in their coreferential reading for he and John: (3a) (3b)

Hei would be late, Johni said. (Reinhart 1975: 136) Johni will be late, hei said. (Reinhart 1975: 136)

According to Reinhart, (3a) instantiates the class of ‘parenthetical subject oriented sentences containing parentheticals (SCPs)’ in which the initiating clause expresses the point of view of the subject of the ‘parenthetical’ (reporting) clause (the represented speaker John in my terminology). In contrast, (3b) belongs to the class of ‘speaker oriented SCPs’, in which the initiating clause expresses the point of view of its speaker (technically, its ‘current speaker’). She did not approach this difference from the angle of STR, but she did at one point identify (3a) as the sentence type occurring in FIST.2 As for the speaker oriented variety (for which no real text examples are adduced, and no constructed ones with any further complexity), Reinhart argues that in saying (3b), it is the current speaker who in effect makes two claims: that John will be late, and that he or she knows this because John told him or her something to that effect (e.g. I will be late, I’m working late tonight, I’ll be coming by bus and not by car). In other words, whereas (3a) implies that John said something more or less like I will be late and lays the responsibility for the information pertaining to John’s expected late arrival squarely with the represented speaker John, (3b) is first and foremost a claim (or a juxtaposition of two claims) on the part of the current speaker. The meaning of (3b) as described by Reinhart (1975) could be summarized as follows: “John said something that makes me say he will be late”. This makes it clear that some verbal act of John is ultimately involved, but the claim (or, more broadly, the speech act) currently being made is the current speaker’s (makes me say). The “speaker oriented SCP” is an idea that seems not to have caught on on the linguistic scene. Both Banfield (1982) and Ehrlich (1990) do refer to Reinhart’s description, but neither pursued the description of the speaker 2

“Sentences of this type [viz. ‘narrated monologue’ or FIST] show exactly the same peculiarities as what I have so far called parenthetical-subject oriented SCP.” (Reinhart 1975: 157–158). The term ‘narrated monologue’ is in fact Cohn’s (1978) term for FIST, which Reinhart adopts.

The problem of proper name reference to speech participants 147

oriented variety much further, nor did they use this category to confront more complex STR data with. As I see it, Banfield (1982) used the contrastive description offered by Reinhart mainly to add to the characterization (ex negativo) of FIST (her “represented speech and thought”). In this sense, it seems to me she neglected the interest potentially raised by the other type of “SCP” distinguished by Reinhart, and at one point downplays its importance when she states that the difference between the two “types of parentheticals” is “an interpretive and not a syntactic one” (1982: 87). In Vandelanotte (2000, 2002a, 2004a), I have used Reinhart’s original insights and developed them further in the area of STR, and her notion of “speaker oriented parentheticals” has served for me as an important eye-opener to the existence of a constructionally distinct, noncanonical type of STR other than FIST (viz. DIST). Let us now return to the contrastive examples (3a) and (3b), and see how the different distribution of proper names and pronouns can be interpreted. In the FIST alternate (3a), a represented speaker’s utterance is represented obliquely and, with a number of deictic restrictions (third person he, future in past would), that represented speaker’s perspective is (re-)construed. He is an oblique FIST construal of a presumed original I, and within the represented speech situation, this choice for a pronoun is self-evident since the represented speaker was referring to himself, the most highly accessible of all possible referents for any speaker. However, because this accessibility obtains only in the represented speech situation, it is not necessarily the case that the referent of he is highly accessible in the current speech situation as well. This is why the use of the proper name John in the reporting clause, even though it occurs after the pronoun in the linear order, does not cause an accessibility clash with he. Note that in an IST sentence with the same linear ordering of the pronoun and the proper name, ungrammaticality does result on a coreferential reading of he and John: He said John would be late tolerates only a noncoreferential reading for he and John. This is because the represented speaker is, in IST, construed as a ‘point of view’ vis-à-vis the reported clause, which entails that the choice of the type of noun phrase used to refer to the ‘original’ speech participants is the represented speaker’s prerogative (Chapter 3, section 2.2). When the represented speaker determines the choice of noun phrase type, I will say that he or she determines the accessibility organization: referents which are highly accessible to the represented speaker will be coded as pronouns, and only less highly accessible referents may be coded as proper names or descriptive noun phrases. Since the

148 Distinguishing FIST from DIST: Person deixis represented speaker and the represented addressee are always highly accessible within the represented speech situation, they thus have to be coded as pronouns if the represented speaker is construed as the point of view vis-àvis the reported clause. Accessibility organization has to be distinguished from mere deictic alignment, i.e. the choice of grammatical person (first, second, third), which in IST is always geared to the current speaker’s deictic centre. Hence, technically, while the third person of he in John said he would be late is referred to the current speaker’s deictic centre, the fact that it is a pronoun and cannot normally be a proper name is due to the represented speaker’s perspective. If, as stated above, the coreferential reading is not available in He said John would be late, whereas it is for (3b), John will be late, he said, apparently the reporting clause subject in (3b) is not construed as a point of view. That this is possible relates to the different syntagmatic structure involved: in IST, the incorporated syntax creates a high level of connectivity between reporting and reported clause, and the former always precedes the latter, such that the ‘viewing’ reporting clause subject always has the reported clause in its dominion. In the juxtaposed types FIST and DIST, on the other hand, the reporting clause, if it is indeed present, typically (though not always) appears sentence-medially or sentence-finally; if it does appear sentence-initially it tends to be marked off typographically (Chapter 2, section 5.2). This syntagmatic ‘rupture’ translates into a measure of conceptual ‘separation’ (cf. Van Hoek 1997: 61) whereby the reported clause is no longer automatically in the dominion of the reporting clause subject. My claim is essentially that FIST constitutes a choice to construe the represented speaker as a point of view, whereas DIST constitutes a choice for the current speaker’s accessibility organization and overall reference point organization. Let us look once more at examples (3a) and (3b) to see how this works out. In the case of FIST (3a), the determining factor is the distinct point of view of the distinct represented speaker in the reported clause: the represented speaker’s accessibility scale is separate from the current speaker’s and determines the distribution of pronouns and proper names. DIST (3b), on the other hand, constitutes a choice for the current speaker’s point of view. As a result, what is left in DIST as discriminating factor in the reference point organization is the linear order in which the current speaker develops his or her discourse. In John will be late, he said, the proper name establishes or re-introduces a discourse referent in the current speaker’s

The problem of proper name reference to speech participants 149

discourse, and in the reporting clause he anaphorically refers to this referent made accessible by the proper name. Because the designations John as well as he both originate with the current speaker’s point of view and follow a normal reference point pattern from low accessibility on (re-) introduction to high accessibility on referring back, no accessibility clashes result. If we try to construe an alternate to (3a) with a reversed order of pronoun and proper name, a coreferential reading becomes very difficult: a FIST reading of John would be late, he said suggests that in the represented speech situation the represented speaker’s identity was initially of low accessibility to the represented speaker himself, which makes little sense. If we reverse the order in the DIST example (3b) to produce He will be late, John said, the initial high accessibility pronoun he linearly precedes the low accessibility proper name John, which is unusual and as such can be expected not to occur. However, the acceptability can be improved by changes in pitch and intonation: having a long pause between the reported and reporting clause and a rising pitch on said (4a), for instance, can give the reporting clause the quality of an “afterthought” (Bolinger 1979: 298) similar to that of the afterthought in Bolinger’s example (4b): (4a) (4b)

He will be late – John said (so)! He lied to me – something that John was rather fond of doing. (Bolinger 1979: 298)

Another way of enlarging the conceptual ‘distance’ and hence the “afterthought” effect is to add I think (He will be late, I think John said). In addition, it should be borne in mind that reporting clauses are not always present, in which case no accessibility clashes can result between pronouns and proper names in DIST. The interim conclusion at this point is as follows. In FIST, the reported clause construes the point of view of the represented speaker, even if some basic deictic resources remain tied to the current speaker (grammatical person of the represented speaker, tense choice). It is thus the represented speaker’s perspective which determines the accessibility organization. This means, as in DST, that the represented speaker in a FIST reported clause is not normally designated by means of a proper name, except in special cases that can occur in non-reported speech as well, such as solemn oaths (He, Ralph Waldo Emerson, would not obey the slave act!) or ‘proprial lemmas used as common nouns’ (No Clinton would ever give up just like that). In DIST, where the reported clause construes the perspective of the current

150 Distinguishing FIST from DIST: Person deixis speaker, a proper name can unproblematically occur to refer to the represented speaker in the represented speech situation. Once a proper name has established the represented speaker as a discourse referent, pronouns can be used to corefer with the proper name. The above may seem like a lot of theory about very few sentences which, on top of their relative simplicity, are constructed rather than attested. However, in the linguistic literature as well as in primary sources, many more complex attested examples can be found that illustrate these basic principles, as subsequent sections and chapters will demonstrate. Let us first turn to just a few attested examples to illustrate the preceding discussion, but also to expand it in two directions, viz. from proper names to descriptive noun phrases, and to the use of proper names and descriptive noun phrases to designate not only the represented speaker, but also their original addressee(s).

2.2. Attested examples of the proper name problem In the following excerpt from Forster’s Room with a View, the introductory narrative sentence makes it clear that a dialogue is being represented. The dialogue in the represented speech situation took place between Miss Bartlett and Lucy; what is peculiar about the way in which it is represented linguistically is its consistent use of the proper names to refer to these two original interlocutors (represented speaker and addressee, with alternating role assignments): (5)

A conversation then ensued, not on unfamiliar lines. Miss Bartlett was, after all, a wee bit tired, and thought they had better spend the morning settling in; unless Lucy would rather like to go out? Lucy would rather like to go out, as it was her first day in Florence, but, of course, she could go alone. Miss Bartlett could not allow this. Of course she would accompany Lucy everywhere. Oh, certainly not; Lucy would stop with her cousin. Oh no! that would never do! Oh yes! (A Room with a View; Forster, p. 20 qtd. Banfield 1982: 207)

In my view, the sentences making up the represented conversation in (5) (i.e. all but the first of the excerpt) cannot be read as FIST on account of the occurrence of proper names to refer to the represented interlocutors: reading Miss Bartlett was, after all, a wee bit tired, for instance, as FIST and hence as construing Miss Bartlett’s point of view would involve the repre-

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sented speaker Miss Bartlett referring to herself as Miss Bartlett. As discussed in the previous subsection, whereas a speaker-controlled pronoun she can be taken as the ‘oblique’ form of a presumed original I, a proper name referring to the represented speaker cannot because one does not normally refer to oneself by means of one’s proper name. The argument pertaining to proper names can be extended to include represented addressees: in a conversation, although it is possible to address your interlocutor with their proper name (using a vocative as in Lucy, would you rather like to go out?), you do not refer to them with their proper name: *Would Lucy rather like to go out? cannot normally be used in a direct interaction with the person designated as Lucy. This can, again, be approached in terms of accessibility levels: in a speech event, the addressee is inherently as highly accessible as the speaker since both speech participants are at the heart of it, and hence using a low accessibility noun phrase such as a proper name is incongruent. In example (5), there are two examples of representations involving Miss Bartlett as represented speaker, in which her addressee Lucy is referred to by means of her proper name, thus illustrating the “proper name problem” as applied to addressees: …unless Lucy would rather like to go out? and Of course she would accompany Lucy everywhere, for which as presumed originals can be proposed …unless you’d rather like to go out and Of course I will accompany you everywhere respectively. The proper name problem, relating to both represented speakers and represented addressees, thus shows that the ‘echoic’ dialogue in (5) exemplifies DIST, with the current speaker (or narrator) relating from his deictic centre Miss Bartlett’s fatigue, Lucy’s preference for going out, and their exchange of courtesies in the process of arriving at a plan of action. The only alternative to an interpretation as DIST would be an interpretation as ‘objective’ narration not involving speech or thought representation, but this is invalidated by the occurrence of exclamations clearly originating with the characters, as in Oh, certainly not… Oh no! that would never do! Overall, it is the movement to and fro of speech exchanges in this extract that suggests that the sentences are not simply part of objective narration, but that speech is being represented. In addition it is the occurrence of proper names (unproblematic on a DIST reading) which invalidates a reading of them as FIST with alternating represented speakers. Note, finally, that there are no reporting clauses, but descriptions of Miss Bartlett’s and Lucy’s speech acts can be interpretively supplied: e.g. Lucy would rather like to go out (she said).

152 Distinguishing FIST from DIST: Person deixis The reason why FIST is not used in the representation of this exchange may be conjectured to be connected intimately to the ‘proper name problem’. If a FIST rendering of (5) without explicit reporting clauses is attempted (5a), unintelligibility results, since there is no principled way to determine the referent of the different occurrences of the third person female pronouns. Adding explicit reporting clauses (5b) does mend this problem, but it results in a cumbersome style: (5a)

(5b)

She was, after all, a wee bit tired, and thought they had better spend the morning settling in; unless she would rather like to go out? She would rather like to go out, as it was her first day in Florence, but, of course, she could go alone. She could not allow this. Of course she would accompany her everywhere. Oh, certainly not; she would stop with her cousin. Oh no! that would never do! Oh yes! She was, after all, a wee bit tired, and thought they had better spend the morning settling in; unless she would rather like to go out? Miss Bartlett said. She would rather like to go out, as it was her first day in Florence, but, of course, she could go alone, Lucy said. She could not allow this. Of course she would accompany her everywhere, Miss Bartlett said. Oh, certainly not; she would stop with her cousin, Lucy said. Oh no! that would never do! Miss Bartlett said. Oh yes! Lucy said.

In commenting on example (5), Fludernik has made a similar remark as regards (5a): The proper names in this passage are used partly because the interlocutors are both female and the pronominal reference might therefore have been misleading, but, additionally, this is of course a spoken exchange, and therefore necessarily outside a character’s individual consciousness. (Fludernik 1993: 136)

This is not taken by Fludernik as evidence that the excerpt does not instantiate FIST, however. According to her, “[f]ree indirect discourse representations of utterances […] frequently employ a proper name, or even a descriptive NP to designate logophoric as well as other referents” (1993: 136). The idea seems to be that pronouns are the usual choice in FIST (as has been noted in narratology as well, e.g. Dillon and Kirchhoff 1976, Stanzel 1984 [1982]), but if necessary, proper names or full noun phrases can be used. Thus not constraining the referential resources that can be used ignores, in my view, the fundamental idea behind reference point organiza-

The problem of proper name reference to speech participants 153

tion and accessibility in discourse. If a current speaker in an example like (5) chooses to use proper names ‘to avoid ambiguity’, then this is the current speaker effectively making a deliberate choice to code a referent as not highly or immediately accessible. By the same token, this entails that the represented speaker is not construed as a point of view vis-à-vis the reported clause, as in FIST. In my view, FIST allows only the represented speaker’s accessibility organization and the referential choices flowing from it. As a final remark on example (5), I would suggest that the sustained current speaker control typical of DIST strengthens the ironic effect achieved by this passage: in a FIST rendering (5a–b) the irony can only be suggested by the reader’s knowledge of the characters and situations. However, in the DIST version, since the narrator is seen to pull the strings in construing an echo of the characters’ words, the reader’s impression of irony is confirmed by a narrator who is, as it were, chuckling in the background. As a further example, consider the extract from Woolf’s novel Mrs Dalloway in (6), considered an example of FIST by Ehrlich (1990:75).3 In it, the introductory narrative sentence sets the scene for the speech exchange subsequently represented between the doctor, Sir William, who holds the floor for most of the excerpt, and Mrs Warren Smith, whose reply to Sir William’s question is represented in the final clause of (6): (6)

3

Shortly and kindly Sir William explained to her the state of the case. He [Septimus] had threatened to kill himself. There was no alternative. It was a question of law. He would lie in bed in a beautiful house in the country. The nurses were admirable. Sir William would visit him once a week. If Mrs. Warren Smith was quite sure she had no more questions to ask—he never hurried his patients— they would return to her husband. She had nothing more to ask— not of Sir William. (Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway, 107 qtd. Ehrlich 1990: 75)

See also Jahn (1992: 363–364), who argues that Ehrlich misses the point that Sir William would visit him once a week represents ‘heard speech’. Von Roncador (1988) similarly distinguishes a category of (over)heard speech (wahrgenommene Rede), the status of which is not very explicitly addressed, although in several places it becomes clear that the notion is seen as part of FIST and not as a distinct category (see, e.g., von Roncador 1988: 155–156, 231–234).

154 Distinguishing FIST from DIST: Person deixis In the representation of Sir William’s speech, use of Sir William and Mrs. Warren Smith illustrates the proper name problem for represented speakers and addressees, respectively (compare the direct counterpart I will visit him… If you are quite sure…); similarly use of Sir William in Mrs Smith’s response illustrates the same phenomenon for represented addressees (compare a direct counterpart …not of you, perhaps more likely combined with a vocative …not of you, Sir William). Proper names referring to represented speakers as well as their represented addressees can, then, under the right circumstances come to signal a DIST interpretation rather than one as FIST. The so-called proper name problem is in fact not even limited to proper names but extends to descriptive noun phrases: like proper names, descriptive noun phrases encode a low degree of accessibility and can be used to introduce new referents into the discourse (or to re-introduce referents after some sort of break). Thus, for instance, in the following example (analysed by Redeker as instantiating FIST in a newspaper report), the minister whose response is obliquely represented is unlikely to have used the designation the minister to refer to him- or herself. Rather, this is the current speaker’s designation in an echo of the original dialogue: (7)

The draft will be abolished then? Well, that far the minister wouldn’t go. Clarity will only come in the priorities memorandum, in a few months. (de Volkskrant 11 November 1992 qtd. Redeker 1996: 226; translation hers)4

The following generalization suggests itself: proper names (not used in oaths or common noun constructions) as well as descriptive noun phrases used to refer to a represented speaker or their addressee in ‘juxtaposed’ reported clauses (hence, excluding reported clauses of IST) are strong signals of their echoic DIST status. FIST reported clauses, on the other hand, do not appropriate and echo a represented speaker’s utterance or thought, but represent it expressively fully from the represented speaker’s point of view. It is only to the basic deictic options – grammatical person of the represented speaker and tense choice – that the shift to the represented speaker is not extended, so as to avoid the ‘bluntness’ or ‘outspokenness’ of DST. Sometimes thoughts are 4

The Dutch original reads as follows: “De dienstplicht wordt dus afgeschaft? Nou, zo ver wilde de bewindsman niet gaan. Duidelijkheid komt er pas in de prioriteitennota, over enkele maanden.”

The problem of proper name reference to speech participants 155

too intimate, and words spoken more to oneself than to anyone else, to be represented fully, expressively and deictically, from the represented speaker’s perspective. It is this unique blend of represented speaker’s expressivity and indirectness that is at the core of the success of FIST in modern fiction. To confuse this with the current speaker’s echoic grip on a represented speaker’s utterance or thought, sometimes resulting in narrative irony, creates an undifferentiated, broad, and hybrid category of FIST. In my view, the only principled solution is to accept the category of DIST as a constructionally distinct type of STR, distinct from FIST in its overall current speaker construal. Subsequent sections and chapters will provide further exemplification and argumentation to support this position, against that of von Roncador (1988: 238–239) and Fludernik (1993: 136), who include cases involving the proper name problem within a broadly conceived category of FIST,5 as examples which in von Roncador’s view evidence a higher degree of authorial intervention. On the basis of Reinhart’s (1975) description, Banfield (1982: Ch. 5) has also explicitly addressed the proper name problem: in order to accommodate such examples, she introduced a separate category of sentences representing “non-reflective consciousness”, as distinct from the reflective consciousness represented in FIST (Banfield’s ‘represented speech or thought’). Like FIST, sentences representing nonreflective consciousness feature the combination of past tense and present temporal deictics (the ‘NOW in the PAST’) as well as certain subjective elements. Proper names referring to the represented consciousness are unique to non-reflective consciousness, whereas exclamations, direct questions and overt reporting clauses force a reflective reading as FIST (Banfield 1982: 203–205). As an illustration of some of the problems raised by the category of nonreflective consciousness, let us consider Banfield’s discussion of the dialogue between Lucy and Miss Bartlett given in (5) above. While the philosopical notion of ‘non-reflective’ consciousness, relating to things not actively noticed, but merely experienced, is interesting, it is not clear how it 5

In von Roncador’s work, the category corresponding to FIST is referred to as ‘erlebte Rede’ (experienced speech), the most widely spread term for FIST in German, originating with Lorck (1921). The term “freie indirecte Rede” is reserved by von Roncador for a very specific ‘indirect’ form of STR in German that can only be marked by the use of the “Konjunktiv” (subjunctive) as such and that need not be formally subordinated by a complementizer nor by an explicit reporting clause (1988: 147).

156 Distinguishing FIST from DIST: Person deixis applies to an example such as (5): how can we take the consciousness of, for instance, Miss Bartlett, to be non-reflective? To say that in a represented dialogue like (5), “it is speech which is represented, but not, strictly speaking, in represented speech; rather, speech is represented grammatically in a nonreflective form” (Banfield 1982: 208) does not help to clarify the claim: what does it mean to say that speech is represented but not in represented speech? More fundamentally, it is difficult to reconcile Banfield’s observation that (5) represents speech with her contention that “to speak of something always implies reflective consciousness of it” (1982: 198). In descriptive terms, an analysis of (5) as representing consciousness non-reflectively by definition ought to disallow exclamations, direct questions and reporting clauses. However, this claim is belied by (5): Oh no! that would never do! Oh yes! is a series of exclamations, and unless Lucy would rather like to go out? is a direct question.6 The ungrammaticality judgement Banfield attaches to a reporting clause in the first sentence of (5) (Miss Bartlett was a wee bit tired, she said is starred by Banfield 1982: 208) can also not be maintained. It is inconsistent with the fact that Banfield does not view Reinhart’s example John will be late, he said as problematic in this regard (Banfield 1982: 81, 207), and also with the fact that attested examples like (8) appear which do have a reporting clause. (8)

Prof. Nowé has taken a few days off, he says, so he won’t be there. (attested from e-mail, April 12, 2000)

For a fuller discussion of theoretical and descriptive problems raised by the category of non-reflective consciousness, I refer to the detailed critique in Vandelanotte (2005b: 192–200).7 Apart from such problems, the cate6

Although Banfield does not clarify the meaning of “direct”, it is clear that she does not mean by direct questions ‘questions as they might occur in DST’ nor ‘questions as they might appear in direct communication’, as witnessed by the examples which she gives and which include among others was Clifford on crutches? (Lawrence, The First Lady Chatterley, p. 159 qtd. Banfield 1982: 204) and Hadn’t Mrs Dempster always longed to see foreign parts? (Woolf, Mrs Dalloway, p. 31 qtd. Banfield 1982: 311 n19). 7 Among the issues addressed there are the rather divergent sorts of examples used as illustrations, including examples of narrated perception and of FIST (also noted by Fludernik 1993: 377–378, 430) and the misinterpretation of important aspects of Reinhart’s (1975) description of ‘sentences containing parentheticals’.

Pronominal reference to speech participants in FIST and DIST 157

gory of DIST under elaboration here differs from that of non-reflective consciousness in its extension of the proper name problem to include represented addressees as well as descriptive noun phrases (the latter possibility was in fact explicitly denied by Banfield, 1982: 209). The class of examples of DIST to be studied in the next section was likewise not included in non-reflective consciousness by Banfield. As we will see, due to the overall speaker relatedness of deixis in DIST it is possible for the current speaker to refer to him- or herself and to the current addressee with first and second person pronouns in the reported clause of DIST,8 a possibility excluded in FIST because it imposes the current speaker’s perspective.

3. Pronominal reference to speech participants in FIST and DIST The distinction between FIST and DIST as it was introduced in the previous section revolved around the notion of accessibility: the reason why the proper name problem is a ‘problem’ resides ultimately in the fact that the low accessibility value of a proper name is incompatible with the perspective of the represented speaker. The speech participants in the represented speech situation are inherently maximally accessible and should thus be coded as pronouns, if the represented speaker’s point of view remains intact. The aim of this section is to see whether any distinctions between

8

In those few places where Banfield has noted the use of first and second person pronouns in complex cases of STR, her description is ad hoc. Thus, of a sentence like Why couldn’t she have you for a friend she merely states that the “sentence must then be read as a question posed by some unannounced first person” (Banfield 1982: 119), and leaves the precise status of the example unaddressed. Of the example Did I really know the road? Ralph asked me, Banfield claims it instantiates a special case of FIST in which the first person is one of the original speech participants (1982: 123). In such cases, she claims, “the SPEAKER may relinquish his prerogative as SELF and the referent of the heard interlocutor may be coreferential with the SELF” (1982: 128). This ad hoc revision of earlier principles is criticized by Yamaguchi (1989: 585–588), who shows that by incorporating such examples within FIST, Banfield misses the point about echoed expressivity, viz. that it is appropriated for the current communicative purposes of the current speaker. In the next section I argue that the consistent current speaker construal defining DIST is fully compatible with the inclusion of cases such as those quoted above into the category.

158 Distinguishing FIST from DIST: Person deixis FIST and DIST can be pinpointed in the realm of pronominal reference to the ‘original’ or ‘represented’ speech participants (the represented speaker and addressee). At first sight, it might seem as if no problem can pose itself here: the choice for a high accessibility resource, the pronoun, to designate the represented participants can be compatible both with the current speaker and with the represented speaker, and hence pronouns designating the original speech participants can occur in both FIST and DIST. However, there is one important difference in the realm of pronominal reference to original speech participants: the reported clause of FIST cannot contain an I addressing a you (Banfield 1982). Because grammatical person is determined with respect to the current speaker’s deictic centre in FIST, the represented speaker (the original I) and addressee (the original you) are coded as third persons in third person narrative contexts. Consider, in this regard, (9a) as a FIST representation of the direct thought in (9): both the represented speaker and his ‘original’ addressee are ‘third person’ with respect to the current speaker (narrator) in the current speech situation. In the context of a first person narrator representing his or her own thoughts or utterances, the represented speaker remains coded as a first person (even though the first person represented speaker is spatiotemporally remote from the current speaker-I), but the represented addressee is also coded as a third person (9b) because in the current speech situation the represented female interlocutor is no longer an addressee. (9)

(9a) (9b)

His wife smiled at him, unsuspecting and gentle as she had always been. He smiled back, no longer feeling what he used to feel. I don’t love you any more, he realized. He said nothing and went back to work. [DST] He didn’t love her any more, he realized. [third person FIST] I didn’t love her any more, I realized. [first person FIST]

In regard to pronominal reference, DIST is special in that its overall deictic singularity across reported and reporting clause enables current speakers to speak on their own behalf (I) to their own (current) addressees (you) in the reported clause. Consider example (10), repeating the relevant bit from example (1) from this chapter, and (11). In (10) the underlined occurrence of I is coreferential with the current speaker, but the current speaker is also the represented addressee (compare DST Do you want that?). The you in (11) is coreferential with the current addressee; in the

Pronominal reference to speech participants in FIST and DIST 159

represented speech situation this was not a speaker or interlocutor but a third party being talked about. (10)

(11)

Dancing, she claimed, would exhaust her utterly. Did I want that? No, I didn’t. […] (qtd. from the LOB corpus in Vanparys 1996: 153) He mailed you earlier today, he said, so please do answer him. (attested from e-mail, 4 February 2000)

The reason why in (10) I have only underlined the first of the two occurrences of the first person pronoun is that the represented speaker of Did I want that? is third person (viz. the Priscilla of this example, see [1] at the beginning of this chapter), whereas the represented speaker of No, I didn’t is the current speaker (hence a first person right from the start, so to speak). In other words, if we provide explicit reporting clauses, the subject of the reporting clause is third person for the question (Did I want that? she asked me) but first person for the answer (No, I didn’t, I said). In first person narration, there is no problem for FIST to have a first person in the reported clause: taken on its own, No, I didn’t, I said could instantiate FIST as well as DIST. For Did I want that? she asked me, however, a FIST interpretation is not available. If such an interpretation is attempted, the first person coreferential with the current speaker clashes with the fact that in FIST, the represented speaker’s consciousness is represented. As with the use of proper names to designate original speech participants, using a first person to designate the current speaker in the reported clause of what superficially may seem to be FIST draws the report into the current speaker’s domain and calls for a reading as DIST. With this understanding, I follow an essential claim of Banfield’s, viz. that the current speaker does not speak as an I to a you in FIST. However, she did not translate this claim into a principled method of classifying examples in the realm beyond clear cases of DST and IST as involving either FIST or as instantiating a separate category, which I call DIST. The terms in which Banfield stated her theory caused her to regard the absence of a fully addressed you as central: after all, as indicated above, in first person FIST an I can still occur. This last observation has led to some ad hoc machinery in her theory in terms of “skaz” and the definition of a “narrator” as a SPEAKER without ADDRESSEE/HEARER (Banfield

160 Distinguishing FIST from DIST: Person deixis 1982: 171).9 As to the exclusion of you, it should not be taken to mean that a sentence such as Why couldn’t she have you for a friend? is uninterpretable or awkward, as suggested by Banfield’s comment that this “sentence must then be read as a question posed by some unannounced first person” (Banfield 1982: 119). A sentence such as (11) provides an attested example of such cases, only they do not instantiate FIST but rather DIST, in which with you the current speaker addresses the current addressee. Before considering the pronouns used to refer to speech participants in more detail, it is useful to first examine Banfield’s central claim pertaining to the absence of an addressed you in FIST.

3.1. No addressed “you” in FIST: beyond Banfield’s bans To Banfield, the defining characteristic of the ‘noncommunicativeness’ characterizing both expressive (FIST) and nonexpressive (narration per se) sentences of narration is the absence of a SPEAKER, defined as an I in a communicative I–you relationship.10 In other words, what is really missing is an addressee. Because FIST as well as ‘pure’ narration lack a SPEAKER in this technical sense, they are ‘SPEAKERless’ or ‘unspeakable’, which explains the title of her study, Unspeakable Sentences. I agree that a truly addressed you is absent in the reported clause of FIST, but it should be pointed out that Banfield applied this restriction too mechanically by banning several construction types claimed to have an underlying you, as well as the occurrence of the pronoun you as such. Thus, forms such as honestly in Honestly, she was so pleased to see him – delighted! cannot, according to Banfield, be read as expressing the represented speaker’s position but must be read as a “statements by an inexplicit first person” (1982: 117), i.e. the current speaker. Other features disallowed by Banfield include subjectless imperatives, forms of direct address and

9

See Yamaguchi’s (1989) review for a critique of some of the ad hoc modifications in the development of Banfield’s (1982) theory. Note further that Banfield in fact distinguishes between “first person narration” (where “a narrator narrates, but addresses the story to no one”), and “skaz”, in which “the first person addresses a second and the story is told formally as a communication” (1982: 171). 10 As far as I can judge, Banfield’s eventual definition of a narrator as a SPEAKER with no ADDRESSEE/HEARER (1982: 171) contradicts this understanding of SPEAKER.

Pronominal reference to speech participants in FIST and DIST 161

indications of pronunciation, but examples (12–14) respectively provide attested counterexamples to these bans:11 (12)

(13)

(14)

Love destroyed too. Everything that was fine, everything that was true went. Take Peter Walsh now. There was a man, charming, clever, with ideas about everything. […] It was Peter who had helped her; Peter who had lent her books. But look at the women he loved – vulgar, trivial, commonplace. Think of Peter in love – he came to see her after all these years, and what did he talk about? Himself. Horrible passion! she thought. (Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway, 113 qtd. von Roncador 1988: 165) He could not grip the floor with his feet and sat heavily at his desk, opening one of his books at random and poring over it. Every word for him! It was true. God was almighty. God could call him now as he sat at his desk, before he had time to be conscious of the summons. […] There was still time. O Mary, refuge of sinners, intercede for him! O Virgin undefiled, save him from the gulf of death. (James Joyce, “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man”, Ch. 3 qtd. von Roncador 1988: 162) He [Big Boy] remembered the day when Buck, jealous of his winning, had tried to smash his kiln. Yeah, that ol sonofabitch! Naw, Lawd! He didn’t go t say tha! Whut wuz he thinkin erbout? Cussin the dead! Yeah, po ol Buck wuz dead now. N Lester too. (“Big Boy Leaves Home”, Wright, 1979: 584 qtd. Fludernik 1993: 233)

None of the features exemplified in (12–14) need be read as involving direct address of a you. Example (12) provides an oblique rendering of the kind of dialogue one can have with oneself, as suggested strongly by the way in which the represented speaker towards the end of the excerpt asks a question and responds to it herself (what did he talk about? Himself.). In like manner, the imperatives in (12) (take, look, think) do not directly address any current addressee, but form part of the build-up of an inner argument about Peter Walsh addressed to no one except to the represented character herself. The “epic apostrophe” of the Mother Mary in (13) forms 11

For further discussion, see McHale (1983: 22–32) and Vandelanotte (2004a: 508–511). Another item on Banfield’s list of items banned on account of their being “linked to the I–you relation” (1982: 113) is (non-historic and non-generic) present tense; on present tense FIST, see Chapter 6, section 1.1.2.

162 Distinguishing FIST from DIST: Person deixis part of the character’s religious thoughts and does not involve a direct address in the current speech situation, but rather a kind of expressive exclamation (von Roncador 1988: 163). The use of “eye dialect” (Traugott and Pratt 1980: 43) to mimic the represented speaker’s nonstandard pronunciation in (14) arguably adds to the expressiveness of the FIST representation, and shows (against Banfield 1982) that nonstandard, dialectal features can occur in FIST. Features such as those discussed in relation to (12–14) can thus be accommodated in FIST without this entailing the direct address of a represented addressee: as will be argued in Chapter 7, FIST is characterized by a ‘self-expressive’ re-enactment of speech function, which does not reach the represented addressee precisely because of the ‘displaced’, non-direct person deixis. Even the form you as such can in fact occur in FIST, albeit only in the restricted context of second person narratives, as argued by Yamaguchi (1989: 591–592). Second person narrative is a highly infrequent and rather complex form of narration, in which the protagonist is referred to in the second person (cf. Traugott 1999: 169–170). This second person should not be mistaken for a current addressee: the current addressee in a narrative is, in the final analysis, its reader, and not its protagonist. Because the protagonist is consistently referred to in the second person, one might view him or her as a kind of ‘story-internal’ addressee, who is in contexts of STR as in the underlined sentence in example (15) neither a current nor an ‘original’ addressee: (15)

She looks at you as if you had just suggested instrumental rape. “I do not speak English,” she says, when you ask again. “Français?” She shakes her head. Why is she looking at you that way, as if tarantulas were nesting in your eye sockets? (J. McInerney, Bright Lights, Big City, qtd. Yamaguchi 1989: 591)

The direct equivalent of the underlined sentence might be something like Why is she looking at me that way (you wonder): the pronoun you thus corresponds to a presumed original I, i.e. the represented speaker, and not the represented addressee. You also does not designate the current addressee/reader, but rather the story-internal protagonist. The whole point about second person narration is thus that the protagonist is by convention referred to by the ‘current speaker’ (the narrator) as you, just as in third person narration he or she is referred to in the third person, and in first person narration in the first.

Pronominal reference to speech participants in FIST and DIST 163

Second person narration is odd and infrequent because a character is normally assumed to be either a ‘third party’ vis-à-vis the narrator (third person narration), or a character who at the same time narrates (first person narration). In terms of pronominal reference in FIST, however, it follows the pattern of first and third person FIST whereby the represented speaker is always of the same person as the subject of the reporting clause (compare How stupid I had been! I thought to How stupid he had been! he thought and to How stupid you had been! you thought). In DIST, as we have seen in connection with (10) above, this generalization does not obtain (Did I want that? she asked). I conclude from this discussion that in the special case of second person narrative, a second person designating the represented speaker (but not the original nor the current addressee) can occur. What is excluded from the reported clause of FIST is a you designating the represented addressee (this is the prerogative of DST), and also a you referring directly to the current addressee (but this can be accommodated in DIST). If we view FIST as the oblique representation of the represented speaker’s full expressivity, we cannot accept the current speaker speaking for him- or herself, nor directly addressing their current addressee, in the reported clause of FIST. First person pronouns can still be accommodated in FIST provided that they represent the represented speaker’s consciousness, and not the current speaker’s: in first person FIST (How my heart was beating now, I thought at that moment), the two instances of “I” are referentially identical (hence “coreferential”), but deictically distinct. In DIST, in contrast (Did I want that? she asked me), the I in the reported clause designates referentially as well as deictically one and the same instance, viz. the current speaker. As for second person pronouns, where they address the current addressee (the reader or listener of the entire sentence), DIST is involved, since from the current speaker’s perspective which in DIST construes reporting as well as reported clause, the current addressee is indeed second person. With this basic distinction in mind, we can take a closer look at some text examples in order to illustrate the different behaviour of DIST compared to FIST in terms of pronouns referring to original speech participants (3.2). Special cases involving idiomatic expressions will be briefly discussed in the section 3.3.

164 Distinguishing FIST from DIST: Person deixis 3.2. Grammatical person of pronouns designating speech participants in FIST and DIST One striking case of DIST is that in which the represented addressee in the represented speech situation is coreferential with the current speaker in the current speech situation, and is referred to in the first person (and hence from the current speaker’s point of view). This situation obtained in the Priscilla example (1) discussed earlier, for instance with Did I want that? as a DIST report of a presumed original Is that what you want?. Similar examples are given in (16–17) below. On the relevant reading, (16) and (17) both construe a sarcastic echo of what the represented speaker in the represented speech situation said about or to the current speaker:12 (16) (17)

Pierre holds an incredible grudge against me: I’ve always hated him, I always will hate him. (Ducrot 1991: 17) Every time I see him he ridicules me. Oh, I could never repair the car myself. What was I doing lying in the middle of the road? No, that wasn’t the way to go about it. Here, he’d show me. (Banfield 1982: 299 n10)

Ducrot correctly points out that in (16) “it is certainly not the person (in this instance, Pierre) whose viewpoint is expressed in the utterance containing the word I” (Ducrot 1991:17). In my view, this observation cannot be reconciled with an analysis of (16) as FIST, as proposed by Ducrot. This is because the reported clause of FIST is impermeable to the current speaker’s expressive attitudes but rather preserves the represented speaker’s expressivity, while at the same time being aligned in a few deictic respects to the current speaker’s deictic centre. Instead, (16) is in my analysis a DIST report of a presumed original You’ve always hated me, you always will hate me, which it represents sarcastically from the current speaker’s point of view. Turning to (17), a constructed example given in a footnote, Banfield (1982: 298–299 n10) did not settle on a clear analysis, arguing that the 12

If (16) and (17) are not read as a sarcastic echo, but as the represented speaker’s own thoughts about Pierre (I’ve always hated him, I thought rather than …he said) or as the represented speaker’s negative appreciation of their own skills (I could never repair the car myself now, I thought despairingly rather than …he said), then a reading as FIST does obtain. However, the context of reporting Pierre’s grudge against the current speaker and of reporting a complacent critic’s ridicule of the current speaker respectively make this a very unlikely reading.

Pronominal reference to speech participants in FIST and DIST 165

example looked in some respects like FIST and in others like echo questions, but was neither. In my view, (17) instantiates DIST: the clause he ridicules me signals the fact that an echoic rendering of another person’s mockery is involved, and the category of DIST as defined in this chapter offers a principled solution to the problem posed by the pronominal behaviour in it. As an attested example of the same phenomenon discussed in relation to the constructed examples (16–17), consider example (18). In this passage, the current speaker recounts an experience in a sauna in which all of a sudden he starts to realize that a middle-aged man (referred to as the character) sitting outside the sauna is watching him. The current speaker imagines the dialogue he might have with this man: (18)

In my head, I hear snatches of dialogue: the character is asking me questions (‘Do I come here often, where do I live, what kind of music do I like; do I have a phone number’, and so on), and I listen to myself providing non-committal, evasive answers (‘No, not really; down in South Evanston; no particular preferences; no, I don’t have a phone’, etc.). (Mey 1999: 149)

The questions which the current speaker imagines the ‘character’ asks him are clearly not represented directly (compare Do you come here often?); rather, they are represented in DIST because the current speaker, coreferential with the represented addressee, is referred to in the first person in the reported clause.13 An analysis as DIST can also handle the ‘clustering’ of several questions into one series, finished off by the ‘suspensive’ placeholder and so on: this is a type of condensation which betrays rather manifestly the current speaker’s construal. It is these explicit markers of condensation, together with the clear DIST status of the represented ques-

13

A rendering as FIST, Did he come here often?, would typically be used in contexts in which the current speaker is not also the represented addressee (Did he come here often, he wondered about him); in theory one could imagine it also being used in contexts such as (18) where current speaker and represented addressee are one and the same (Did he come here often, he wondered about me), with he coding this single person not as the current speaker sees himself, but rather in his role as represented addressee. However, because of a universal tendency for current speakers to avoid non-first person reference to themselves (von Roncador 1988: 121–122), this seems highly strained and therefore unlikely.

166 Distinguishing FIST from DIST: Person deixis tions, that suggests that the represented answers (‘No, not really; down in South Evanston; …’) are best analysed as DIST as well. The type of case represented by examples (16–18) can naturally be extended to the first person plural, as in examples (19–20). In (19), the Inarrator Max recalls a scene in which Carlo Grace questions him about how he spends his vacation with his parents in a chalet. To the DIST representation What did we cook on? corresponds a presumed original what do you cook on; the pronoun we thus functions inclusively to refer to Max along with his parents. Example (20), cited by Clark and Gerrig (1990: 777) as an example of FIST, features an oral narrative in Scottish dialect, in which the question-answer pair what were we looking for and we’re looking for somewhaur to stay the night is, under the present analysis, DIST rather than FIST, with the we in the question corresponding to a you (as shown in the ensuing DST representation in the example):14 (19)

(20)

Now and then from the other end of the table Carlo Grace, chewing vigorously, would bend a lively gaze on me. What was life like at the chalet, he wanted to know. What did we cook on? A Primus stove, I told him. ‘Ha!’ he cried. ‘Primus inter pares!’ (John Banville, The Sea, 2005: 208) so we’re stauning [i.e. standing], looking at this, when this wuman came along and said, what were we looking for, and we’re looking for somewhaur to stay the night, ‘Where do you come fae?’ ‘Scotland,’ ‘You’re no feart of coming here withoot somewhere to stay,’ so she gi’en us half a dozen addresses (Macaulay 1987: 19 qtd. Clark and Gerrig 1990: 777)

Turning to cases where the represented addressee is not the current speaker, in these the grammatical person of the pronoun referring to the represented addressee in DIST is not distinctive vis-à-vis FIST: in both, it is third person. Other deictic or contextual indications can of course help to decide which category is involved: (21)

14

I’m going to third. Where’s he going? “Basement,” he says. He’ll wait while I go up, then he’ll go down. (from M.D. Browne’s “Philip Larkin”, Browne 1999: 3)

What is also of interest in relation to (20) is that it illustrates for DIST a point developed with regard to FIST in Chapter 2 (section 5.2), viz. the possibility of having a sentence-initial reporting clause (and said, what were we looking for).

Pronominal reference to speech participants in FIST and DIST 167

In this passage from a poem, the dialogue between the I-persona and the poetically revived poet Philip Larkin (now part of the maintenance crew at the former’s university) is rendered obliquely. In the first line, the represented addressee Larkin is designated by means of a third person pronoun he (Where’s he going?), which clearly excludes an interpretation as DST (compare Where are you going?). That what is involved is DIST and not FIST is suggested not only by tense, but also by the last sentence of (21), He’ll wait while I go up, then he’ll go down: in this sentence, the represented speaker is Larkin and the represented addressee is the current speaker (viz. the I-persona of the poem). This represented addressee-cumcurrent speaker is referred to in the first person, which signals DIST. In a FIST rendering, the current speaker would have been designated (in his role as represented addressee) as he (e.g. He’d wait while he went up, with the two occurrences of he non-coreferential). Example (21) as well as previous examples such as the ‘Priscilla example’ (1) and the sauna anecdote (18) also illustrate the fact that a represented speaker coreferential with the current speaker is referred to in the first person (I’m going to third (I said), No, I didn’t (I answered), I don’t have a phone (I said)). Since any pronoun coreferential with the current speaker in DIST is, by the very nature of DIST, first person, this means that in represented dialogues, in which the speaker–hearer roles alternate, a first person is used for the current speaker-as-represented addressee as well as for the current speaker-as-represented speaker, as in the exchange Did I want that? (she asked). No, I didn’t (I said) in (1). The DIST case in which the represented speaker is not coreferential with the current speaker is exemplified by cases such as (16), I’ve always hated him, and (17), Here, he’d show me, in which the current speaker is the represented addressee, and the represented speaker is from the current speaker’s perspective (now speaking to a current addressee different from the represented speaker him/he) third person. A final case worth mentioning here is that in which the represented speaker is directly addressed as you by the current speaker. Recall from the previous section that direct address of a you is excluded from FIST. A currently addressed you as in (22–23) thus does not involve FIST (against Fludernik 1993: 117–118), but DIST. The case for a DIST reading of (22– 23) is more complex than that for (11), He mailed you earlier today, he said, so please do answer him, in which the you was in the original speech situation a third party being talked about, whereas in (22–23) the you is both current addressee and represented speaker (compare You wasn’t goin’

168 Distinguishing FIST from DIST: Person deixis to do wonders [you said] or Some people were fooled but not you [you said]). In (22), the you directly addressed by Mrs Zero is her husband, whom at the beginning of the play she elaborately condemns for not having lived up to the expectations he had raised. In (23), it is the current speaker’s parents who are being voiced and directly addressed as you. (22)

(23)

[Mrs Zero:] I was a fool for marryin’ you. […] I wish I had it to do over again, I hope to tell you. You was goin’ to do wonders, you was! You wasn’t goin’ to be a bookkeeper long – oh no, not you. Wait till you got started – you was goin’ to show ‘em. There wasn’t a job in the store that was too big for you. Well, I’ve been waitin’ – waitin’ for you to get started – see? It’s been a good long wait too. […] (The Adding Machine; Rice 1965: 5, qtd. Fludernik 1993: 117–118) You [the narrator’s parents] taught me that, no matter what I thought, it was probably wrong. The world is fundamentally deceptive. The better something looks, the more rotten it probably is deep down. Some people were fooled but not you. You could always see the underlying truth, and the truth was ugly. […] (Lake Wobegon Days, ‘News’; Keillor 1987: 325, n57, qtd. Fludernik 1993: 118)

What distinguishes (22–23) from second person FIST (discussed in section 3.1 above) is that the you addressed in both examples is not the story’s protagonist designated as you by the story’s narrator: (22) involves a character directly addressing her husband, and (23) involves the narrator directly addressing part of his readership, viz. his parents. By not taking fully into account the implications of having first and second person pronouns referring to current speech participants in a reported clause that might otherwise be interpreted as FIST, analysts have hitherto missed an opportunity to define FIST coherently as the form of STR in which the represented speaker has all the expressivity they have in DST, but without the latter’s directness which may in literary contexts often be perceived as too outspoken or even stylistically blunt. The deictic hook-ups of FIST to the current speaker’s deictic centre are there to ensure the obliqueness typical of FIST, not to bring in the current speaker’s perspective. In short, a sentence of DIST serves the current speaker’s communicative goals, even though it makes reference to an ‘original’ or represented speech situation. By contrast, a sentence of FIST yields the floor to the represented speaker’s expressivity (see further Chapter 7).

Pronominal reference to speech participants in FIST and DIST 169

3.3. Pronouns designating speech participants in FIST and DIST: special cases Following Ross (1970: 241–242), Banfield has pointed to the fact that first person pronouns in idiomatic expressions with a figurative meaning do not normally allow the use of other persons, lest a literal, non-figurative meaning result (1982: 91–92). Thus, for instance, cases like That really killed me or I cannot for the life of me think what lose their figurative meaning in their non-first person counterparts That really killed her or She cannot for the life of her think what. However, within contexts of speech or thought representation, precisely such cases do occur, without producing the anomalous, literal reading: (24)

(25)

What was really funny was the idea of Mr Cheatam or Alonzo Myers beauing them around. That killed her. (O’Connor, “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, p. 68 qtd. Banfield 1982: 92) But she could not for the life of her think what. (Woolf, To the Lighthouse, p. 52 qtd. Banfield 1982: 92)

The fact that in (24–25) the idiomatic expressions are not interpreted literally can only be made sense of if it is recognized that the idioms are deictically adjusted reflections of the represented speaker’s expressivity. Because of this, examples like (24–25) instantiate FIST, not DIST. The consistent current speaker’s perspective of DIST would force a literal reading, which makes no sense. Von Roncador (1988: 152–159) has also discussed the occurrence of idiomatic expressions in which the opposite situation obtains, viz. that in which first or second person pronouns are used, which is not normally allowed in the reported clauses of FIST with third person represented speaker referents. (In first person FIST, of course, first persons are unproblematic if they refer to the represented speaker.) For instance, an exclamation like my God, in She is dead, my God! How could he go on living without her, he thought may occur in a representation of a represented speaker’s inner thoughts. Such a form does not, however, imply any form of direct address, and can thus be accommodated in FIST as a kind of

170 Distinguishing FIST from DIST: Person deixis partial quote of a fixed expression. Similar remarks obtain for the second person in you bet in (26):15 (26)

Her calm reply was that she still thought as she had but that she needed some money and he must supply it. He wasn’t going to get off so easy, you bet. The very least he could do was to give her enough to live on. (Th. Dreiser, “Women” qtd. von Roncador 1988: 159)

A final case worth mentioning here is that of represented imperatives. In order to determine whether a case like take her to Julia Mills in (27) instantiates FIST or DIST, one needs to retrieve the implied subject of the imperative: (27)

I fell upon my knees before the sofa, caressing her [Dora], and imploring her not to rend my heart; but for some time, poor little Dora did nothing but exclaim Oh dear! Oh dear! And oh, she was so frightened! And where was Julia Mills! And oh, take her to Julia Mills, and go away, please! until I was almost beside myself. (Charles Dickens, David Copperfield, Ch. 37 “A little Cold Water”, Penguin pb., p. 603 qtd. von Roncador 1988: 166)

Considering the first person narration within which the represented utterances are embedded, the implied subject of take her is best understood as first person: I (should) take her to Julia Mills (cf. Steinberg 1971: 222f) gives a full representation of a presumed original [you] take me to Julia Mills, addressed by the represented speaker Dora to the current speaker of (27). On this reading, (27) instantiates DIST on account of the first person referring to the represented addressee/current speaker.16 What further supports this reading is the way in which the current speaker can be seen at work in concatenating the exclamations made by “poor little Dora”: the repeated use of the conjunction “And” prefacing each new exclamation is 15

Von Roncador (1988: 159) considers why some idioms like my God use first or second person pronouns, while others like That killed her use third person pronouns. The main idea is that the more fully expounded the syntactic structure of an idiom is, the easier it allows third person pronouns in a FIST representation. 16 Von Roncador (1988: 166–167) explicitly mentions the term ‘echo construction’, compatible with my own understanding of DIST, in order to explain this example, although within his framework it still falls under ‘erlebte Rede’ (FIST).

Pronominal reference to speech participants in FIST and DIST 171

something which is not easily understood as originating with the represented speaker. Instead, it seems to be a way for the narrator to explicitly stack up several melodramatic exclamations and thus to subtly undermine the seriousness of them. In other contexts, when the understood subject of the imperative is not a first person coreferential with the current speaker, represented imperatives in FIST are possible. A FIST reading of Fuck him, I decided in (28) below, for instance, suggests itself, as it coherently represents the represented speaker’s exasperation over the unhelpfulness of a service station attendant: (28)

He looked alarmed when I volunteered to mount it [a tyre] myself, or to watch the pumps while he did it, and mumbled something about insurance problems. Fuck him, I decided. (Jim Dodge, Not Fade Away, 2004 [1987]: 268)

In the next section, I will briefly discuss some indications that can help guide the interpretation of complex examples of FIST or DIST when clear pronominal indications are lacking.

3.4. Pronouns and the ambiguity between FIST and DIST As we have seen in the preceding sections, the distinction between FIST and DIST in terms of pronouns revolves essentially around the possibility of having first and second person pronouns referring to the current speaker and current addressee in the reported clause of DIST, but not in that of FIST. With regard to non-current (‘original’) interlocutors, pronoun distribution is essentially the same in DIST and FIST, with the grammatical person of represented speakers and their addressees being determined with respect to the current speaker’s deictic centre. Only if the represented speaker is a (deictically distinct) manifestation of the current speaker does FIST allow first persons in its reported clause, as in How my heart was beating now, I thought. The similarity in terms of pronominal deixis between FIST and DIST in cases which do not involve a current speaker’s I or a current addressee’s you in the reported clause may pose interpretive problems. However, there are a number of other grammatical, as well as more semantic and pragmatic indications which can help to eliminate one reading or the other. Grammatically, it is other deictic phenomena which may guide the classification and interpretation of examples: if the ‘proper name problem’

172 Distinguishing FIST from DIST: Person deixis occurs, for instance, or if an absolute (non-gnomic) present tense is used in a past narrative context (as in He will be late, he said; see further Chapter 6), this will argue for a reading as DIST and against one as FIST. Another potential giveaway of a DIST reading is constituted by markers which evidence the current speaker’s express manipulation of a discourse representation, for instance by concatenating several questions into one long sentence (as with the sauna anecdote in example 18 above) or by containing placeholders such as etc. etc., and so on, and so forth. Such interventions on the part of the current speaker are not compatible with a reading as FIST, but unproblematic on a DIST reading. In (29) below, pronominal deixis already indicates a DIST reading for the mother’s reply (where demand, did I? represents a presumed original demand, do you?); a DIST reading for the part in which the I-narrator’s rant against his mother is represented (Where were they,… my son’s future) is motivated both by the unambiguous DIST status of the reply part and by the occurrence of and so on. In an example like (30), the occurrence of and so on and so forth likewise signals a DIST reading. (29)

(30)

That did it. I shouted, I waved my fists, I stamped about stifflegged, beside myself. Where were they, the pictures, I cried, what had she done with them? I demanded to know. They were mine, my inheritance, my future and my son’s future. And so on. […] She let me go on like this for a while, standing with a hand on her hip and her head thrown back, contemplating me with sardonic calm. Then, when I paused to take a breath, she started. Demand, did I? – I, who had gone off and abandoned my widowed mother, who had skipped off to America and married without even informing her, who had never once brought my child, her grandson, to see her […] (John Banville, The Book of Evidence, 1998 [1989]: 59) He [the Pharaoh] was going to speak to them, using his own sacred voice and lips. They had done nothing to deserve such a great blessing. It just went to show how very kind and gentle and gracious great Pharaoh was. Always considering others before he did himself, and so on and so forth. Then Pharaoh himself rose to speak. (Moses, Man of the Mountain, iv; Hurston 1984: 31 qtd. Fludernik 1993: 403)

More generally, the overall semantic effects of FIST and DIST, to be discussed in more detail in Chapter 7, are quite different. The reported clause of FIST is impervious to any immediate manipulation on the part of

Pronominal reference to speech participants in FIST and DIST 173

the current speaker, but consistently represents (with minimal deictic adjustments) the represented speaker’s perspective. If the ‘sincerity’ of the represented speaker’s expressivity is tampered with, however, and current speaker’s communicative goals take over, DIST will be involved. One prominent case is that of irony and sarcasm, as in the case of Pierre’s incredible grudge in example (16) above, or (more mildly) in the Lucy and Miss Bartlett example (example 5). Finally, contextual and pragmatic considerations may often come into the picture as well. If in an internally coherent stretch of speech or thought representation one part is clearly deictically signalled to be DIST, it will make sense to regard the rest of that stretch as DIST as well. In the Priscilla example (1), for instance, it is only some parts that contain clear deictic indications of their DIST status, but these suggest a DIST reading for the other parts as well. Similarly in the example of the sauna anecdote (18), the clear DIST status of the barrage of questions is one of the elements contextually supporting a DIST reading of the series of answers as well. As I have shown previously in connection with the Lucy and Miss Bartlett example (5), DIST is pragmatically the most suited non-direct mode of representation for dialogues of which the current speaker wants to represent both sides. Apart from possible interpretive problems as to the reference of pronouns in FIST renderings, a FIST representation of both sides of a dialogue would have to alternate the separate ‘silenced’, ‘intimate’ representations of discrete represented speakers. The choice for one consistent perspective, that of the current speaker, echoing both sides of the dialogue is pragmatically preferable for such cases. The study of concrete instances of DIST in different text types should lead to a kind of inventory of pragmatic knowledge about DIST, which can further aid the interpretation of difficult cases (see further Chapter 7, section 4). At this point, a note is in order with regard to the notion of ‘currency’ in ‘current speaker/addressee’. It should be borne in mind that this is a technical notion: particularly in the context of ‘nested’ examples of speech or thought representation, there may be different levels of so-called ‘current’ speakers and addressees (compare Semino and Short’s notion of “embedded speech, writing and thought presentation”, 2004: Ch. 7.3). Consider the following example from Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, in which he refers to James’s father: (31a)

James kept dreading the moment when he would look up and speak sharply to him about something or other. Why were they lagging

174 Distinguishing FIST from DIST: Person deixis about here? he would demand, or something quite unreasonable like that. And if he does, James thought, then I shall take a knife and strike him to the heart. (Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse, 208 qtd. Ehrlich 1990: 71) The underlined part of (31a) gives the FIST representation of James’s thoughts in which he imagines what his father might say to him.17 The nesting in this example can be made explicit as in (31b): (31b)

Why were they lagging about here? he would demand, or something quite unreasonable like that [James thought].

The ‘current speaker’ of all of (31b) is the narrator of To the Lighthouse, whereas the ‘current speaker’ of the underlined question is James and its represented speaker James’s father. Overall, (31b) involves FIST because it is James, and not the narrator, who imagines what the father might say, and who believes that whatever he will say will always be “quite unreasonable”. That FIST and not DST is involved in (31b) as a whole is suggested by the use of the relative tense would demand instead of an absolute will demand. The question Why where they lagging about here? is thus a hypothetical representation of the father’s speech nested within the ongoing FIST representation of James’s thoughts. This nested speech representation, construing a possible future question on the part of James’s father, is itself a FIST representation, nested within the overall FIST representation of James’s deliberations. This can be gleaned from the pronoun used in this ‘FIST-within-FIST’ part, viz. they, referring to James himself along with his sister Cam. A DST-within-FIST representation would look something like (31c), with you referring to James, the ‘nested current speaker’, and Cam in their joint role as addressees. A DIST-within-FIST representation, on the other hand, would have as pronoun we (31d), i.e. a first person pronoun in the reported clause that is coreferential with the ‘nested current speaker’ (we = I + others). (31c)

17

Why are you lagging about here? he would demand, or something quite unreasonable like that. (adapted from 31a)

The last sentence of (31a) involves DST, not FIST, on account of the absolute present time-sphere tenses (does, shall) and the first person referring to the represented speaker in a third person narrative context (I shall).

Reference to third parties in FIST and DIST 175

(31d)

Why were we lagging about here? he would demand, or something quite unreasonable like that. (adapted from 31a)

Note that from the ‘upper level’, that of the narrative in which the novel’s narrator is the ‘current speaker’, a pronoun like we to refer to James and some other people associated with him as in (31d) makes no sense. It is thus important in complex discourse contexts as in (31) not to lose sight of the level at which current speakers (and addressees) are ‘current’ in the technical sense of the term. In conclusion, even though grammatical features such as the use of pronouns and proper names to refer to represented speakers and addressees are of central importance, the types of STR are categories of discourse as much as of grammar. It is only through the filter of concrete discourse contexts that the grammatical descriptions proposed here can produce accurate categorizations and sensible descriptions of pragmatic effects and functions of the use of one rather than the other type of STR.

4. Reference to third parties in FIST and DIST In Chapter 3 (section 2.3), we saw that the referent of third person pronouns in the reported clause of DST is not always immediately clear to the current addressee in the current speech situation: in the reported clause, the accessibility organization is the represented speaker’s, and third party referents which are highly accessible to the represented speaker and therefore coded as pronouns need not be ‘known’ or ‘given’ to the current addressee (say, the reader or listener). This kind of indeterminate reference can also occur in FIST (Fludernik 1993: 143, see also Pascal 1977: 127–128, Fillmore 1981: 157f). Whereas, as we have seen, represented (‘original’) speakers and addressees in FIST have to be referred to pronominally, on account of their inherent high accessibility, for third party referents this is not the case. Crucially, the determining principle involved is the same: the choice of noun phrase type in the case of third party reference as in that of represented speaker and addressee reference is the represented speaker’s, but from the latter’s perspective third parties may, at the time of the original speech event, have been judged highly accessible or not, which means they may be coded as pronouns or as full noun phrases.

176 Distinguishing FIST from DIST: Person deixis Fludernik (1993: 144) discusses (32) below as an example of “indeterminate reference” in FIST: because James is in a boat with his father and his sister Cam, the pronoun she may initially be interpreted as referring to her rather than to the dead Mrs Ramsay, the correct reference to whom is only clearly signalled at the end of the excerpt. (32)

It was his father now. The strain became acute. For in one moment if there was no breeze, his father would slap the covers of his book together, and say: ‘What’s happening now? What are we dawdling about here for, eh?’ as, once before, he had brought his blade down among them on the terrace and she had gone stiff all over, and if there had been an axe handy, a knife, or anything with a sharp point he would have seized it and struck his father through the heart. His mother had gone stiff all over. (To the Lighthouse III, viii; Woolf 1985: 172 qtd. Fludernik 1993: 144)

In similar vein, Pascal remarked that in FIST a represented speaker “does not need to make explicit something of which he is aware and which he may, for various reasons, prefer to suppress” (1977: 127–128). Nothing, of course, is in any purposeful sense “suppressed” by using a pronoun rather than a full noun phrase; it is only from an ‘external’ interpretive perspective that the precise reference may seem unclear or “suppressed”. It follows from the overall singularity of perspective in DIST that truly indeterminate reference is not to be found in DIST. This is not to say, of course, that third parties may not be referred to by means of pronouns; rather, it means that in such cases, the reference of the pronouns will be clear from the preceding context or, in speech, from the non-linguistic context. However, use of descriptive noun phrases to refer to third parties where the coding of low accessibility is inconsistent with the represented speaker’s perspective will point to a DIST reading. Consider, in this regard, (33), in which the main character Laura Brown is making plans for the rest of the day, which is her husband Dan’s birthday: (33)

[…] She washes the dishes. She thinks about the rest of the day. She will make the beds, vacuum the rugs. She will wrap the presents she’s bought for her husband: a necktie and a new shirt, both more expensive and elegant than the ones he buys for himself; a boar-bristle brush; a small pungent leather case that contains nail

Reference to third parties in FIST and DIST 177

clippers, a nail file, and tweezers, for him to take with him when he travels, as he does occasionally, for the agency. (Michael Cunningham, The Hours, 1998: 100) It is psychologically not very likely that the represented cognizer she has any difficulty accessing the referent her husband, nor is there, in private musings such as those in (33), any need to present this referent explicitly to a hearer so as to jointly focus on one and the same third party. Informally, we might say it is unlikely that Laura thinks to herself I will wrap the presents I’ve bought for my husband. More likely original thoughts include I will wrap the presents I’ve bought {for him; for Dan; for my sweetheart} since, in thinking of people close to oneself, one can think of them in terms of pronouns, proper names or pet names, but not normally in terms of ‘explanatory’ descriptive noun phrases such as her husband. I conclude that her husband in (33) betrays the current speaker’s perspective, and therefore invites a reading of the second paragraph of (33) as DIST. What is important in an example like (33) is thus not so much the level of accessibility per se, but rather the psychological appropriateness of the designations used to refer to third parties. If rather than private musings, direct address of an interlocutor is represented, a designation like her husband may of course be entirely consistent with the represented speaker’s intention of introducing a referent to the represented addressee, as in the constructed alternate (33a): (33a)

He went up to the door and just when he was about to press the door bell, he saw Laura in her kitchen and waved at her. She was just wrapping up the presents she had bought for her husband, she exclaimed. She would be with him in a minute.

In such a case, the descriptive noun phrase her husband does not introduce the current speaker’s perspective, and an interpretation as FIST remains plausible (and, in this case, pragmatically preferable, since there is nothing to suggest the current speaker’s manipulation, irony, or whatever). A striking example illustrating the different designations preferred by current and represented speakers is (34), in which the narrator, after initially opting for my mother, makes it clear that Dolly was the actual designation used by a girl he has only recently learned is living in with his mother:

178 Distinguishing FIST from DIST: Person deixis (34)

The tea, however, was not for her, but for my mother – for Dolly, she said. Well! I thought, Dolly, no less! (John Banville, The Book of Evidence, 1998 [1989]: 57)

In (34), the partial direct quote for Dolly (provoking a surprised, almost outraged direct thought Well! Dolly, no less on the part of the I-narrator) prompts a reading of the first clause as speech representation, specifically DIST, since the represented speaker’s designation Dolly has been replaced by the current speaker’s. In conclusion, the question for the analyst in connection with third party designations is whether or not the choice of designation is psychologically appropriate from the point of view of the represented speaker. If this is indeed the case, then nothing hampers an interpretation as FIST, but if it is not, an analysis as DIST rather than FIST comes into view.

5. Reflexives in FIST and DIST 5.1. Binding and ‘non-anaphoric reflexives’ The problem of the distributional behaviour of reflexives is one of long standing in linguistics, and a considerable amount of literature has been published on it. At least since Cantrall’s (1969/1974) PhD dissertation, a large portion of these publications have focused on reflexives occurring outside the minimal syntactic contexts in which they are normally expected to occur according to the principles of Binding Theory. The occurrence of “non-anaphoric” or “non-locally bound” reflexives in the reported clauses of FIST in particular has constituted one of the main problems for standard Binding Theory (Chomsky 1981), since according to its ‘principle A’, a reflexive should be bound (i.e. co-indexed with and ccommanded by its antecedent) in its local domain. Brinton (1995: 177–178) has distinguished two ways in which FIST reflexives may violate this locality constraint (see also Zribi-Hertz 1989: 707): firstly, they may not be c-commanded by their antecedents, as in (35) below, and secondly, they may still be c-commanded, but fail to be locally bound. These cases can be divided further into two groups, according to whether “the reflexive and its antecedent are not clause-mates, but occur in different clauses of the same sentence” (as in 36a below) or whether the antecedent is even “not present in the sentence at all” (as in 36b below):

Reflexives in FIST and DIST 179

(35)

(36a)

(36b)

She was not clever at all. She thought Ursula clever enough for two. Ursula understood, so why should she, Gudrun, bother herself? […] For herself, she was indifferent and intent as a wild animal, and as irresponsible. (Lawrence, The Rainbow, 270 qtd. Brinton 1995: 177)18 He hadn’t had the gift of making the most of what he tried, and if he had tried and tried again – no one but himself knew how often – it appeared to have been that he might demonstrate what else, in default of that, could be made. (James, The Ambassadors, 50–51 qtd. Brinton 1995: 178) Wild and frail and beautiful she looked, and thus the women of the Greek were, Jacob thought; and this was life, and himself a man and Florinda chaste. (Woolf, Jacob’s Room, 78 qtd. Brinton 1995: 189)

Subsequent versions and elaborations of Binding Theory have sought to work their way around the problem posed by non-anaphoric reflexives. Thus, in Reinhart and Reuland’s (1993) Revised Binding Theory, they are said to be exempt from binding conditions because they do not occupy an argument position, and reflexivity is defined in terms of the coindexing of a predicate’s arguments. In fact, however, as for instance König and Siemund (2000: 193) point out, there are occurrences of non-anaphoric reflexives in argument position. Consider (37) in this regard: (37)

They would talk of himself, he thought fondly. (David Lodge, Paradise News, p. 322 qtd. König and Siemund 2000: 193)

(37) should be covered by Revised Binding Theory because himself is directly an argument of the predicate to talk of (something). However, they and himself are obviously not coindexed; the grammaticality of (37) is thus not accounted for by Revised Binding Theory. In an influential paper, Zribi-Hertz (1989) has pursued earlier suggestions made by Cantrall (1969/1974) and Kuno (1987) in arguing for her socalled Logophoricity Theory: a non-anaphoric reflexive, like those in (35– 37) above, is “logophoric” or bound by a minimal subject of consciousness 18

It will be noted that in the represented self-address or self-musing, a proper name occurs in apposition to a pronoun. This kind of distribution can occur in a presumed original as well (why should I, Gudrun, bother myself?), hence the proper name does not render a FIST reading problematic.

180 Distinguishing FIST from DIST: Person deixis (normally the nearest NP to the left of the reflexive) within its discourse (i.e. within its ‘domain of point of view’).19 It is thus not locally bound at the level of syntax, but rather at that of discourse. In his (1995) paper, Baker has argued that not all occurrences of ‘nonanaphoric’ or ‘locally free’ reflexives admit of an analysis in terms of logophoricity. Thus, for instance, the occurrence of himself in (38) below cannot be related to the point of view domain of the subject of consciousness Sir William Lucas, lest he be assumed to deem his own mental faculties very limited (as empty-headed as himself): (38)

Sir William Lucas, and his daughter Maria, a good humoured girl, but as empty-headed as himself, had nothing to say that could be worth hearing, and were listened to with about as much delight as the rattle of the chaise. (Pride and Prejudice 188 qtd. Baker 1995: 67)

The characterization of both father and daughter as empty-headed makes an interpretation of this passage as a FIST representation of the father’s thoughts impossible, and prompts a reading as ‘omniscient’ narration. On the basis of examples such as (38), Baker (1995) proposes to replace Logophoricity Theory with a theory of intensification, according to which it is intensification which licenses the occurrence of locally free X-self, subject to the discourse constraints of contrastiveness and discourse prominence. Intensive NPs are thus appropriate in contrastive or emphatic contexts, and can only be used to mark characters with high discourse prominence, owing to such features as high status, discourse-internal prominence (for instance the fact that one entity is defined in terms of another; this ‘other’ is then more prominent),20 the character’s agency or affectedness, and logophoricity in the sense of Zribi-Hertz (1989). While Zribi-Hertz (1995) accepts Baker’s claim that locally free reflexives are not always logophoric, she argues in her turn that they can be logophoric without being contrastive nor intensive. In examples (39–40), for instance, a contrastive reading is dispreferred and unlikely, and a noncontrastive reading is certainly possible and even natural:

19

It will be noted that the interpretive model as well as the terminology used here bears some resemblances to the reference point model. 20 Again, one will note the similarity with Langacker’s (1993) notion of reference point (vis-à-vis target).

Reflexives in FIST and DIST 181

(39) (40)

Johni’s face turned red despite himselfi. (Zribi-Hertz 1995: 338) Slowly, strangely, consciousness changes, and Petworth can feel the change taking place within himselfi. (M. Bradbury/Zribi-Hertz 1989 qtd. Zribi-Hertz 1995: 339)

The conclusion Zribi-Hertz reaches is that apart from the locally bound uses (‘reflexive’ uses covered by Binding Theory), locally free uses are either logophoric or intensive. With this necessarily selective introduction to the anaphora literature in mind, it becomes possible to see that Van Hoek’s (1997) cognitive approach to reflexives, which was briefly sketched in Chapter 3 (section 2.4), integrates the main points of previous analyses. Van Hoek proposes to analyse reflexives in terms of a constructional network of prototypes (the prototypical (coreference) reflexive and the emphatic reflexive) and extensions (including the logophoric reflexive, as an extension of the coreference marking reflexive). Apart from proximity between reflexive and antecedent, another shared feature of the two reflexive prototypes is prominence: the antecedent of the reflexive is the most prominent reference point in relation to the reflexive. Even though this incorporates one of Baker’s central tenets, Van Hoek, like Zribi-Hertz (1995), also points out difficulties in Baker’s ‘intensification only’ approach, pertaining mainly to differences between British and American English (see Van Hoek 1997: 187– 190). The main advantage of Van Hoek’s network of reflexive constructional schemas is that it captures the important descriptive facts about reflexive usage in English without positing any strict dichotomy between syntax and discourse as is assumed in most ‘binding’ approaches to the problem. Whereas point of view phenomena are radically different from syntactic binding conditions in terms of c-command and coindexation, within the cognitive grammar approach they are in fact a specific instantiation of the more general image schema underlying pronominal anaphora, viz. that of reference points. A point of view is a kind of reference point, and hence to have a point of view function as reference point or ‘antecedent’ of a reflexive pronoun is natural, whereas it is almost shockingly ‘non syntactic’ in strict binding approaches. As we have seen in Chapter 3 (section 2.4), the two prototypical values of reflexives (coreference marking and emphasis) are distinctively characterized in terms of the semisubjective viewing of the referent of the coreference marking reflexive on the one hand, and in terms of the contrast

182 Distinguishing FIST from DIST: Person deixis between the referent selected and potential alternatives in the case of the emphatic reflexive. It is from the former, the coreference marking reflexive, with its subjectified view of the referent, that extensions exist towards point of view reflexives: picture noun reflexives, logophoric reflexives, and discourse participant reflexives (Van Hoek 1997: 182–192). As argued in Chapter 3, discourse participant reflexives and logophoric reflexives (defined by Van Hoek as reflexives “whose antecedent is a conceived POV [point of view] in a narrative”, 1997: 186) cannot be strictly separated in contexts of IST, since the represented speaker and addressee (the ‘original discourse participants’) are also inherently ‘viewers’ of the content of the reported clause. This “fused” discourse participant/logophoric category which I proposed for IST contexts can be extended to FIST. In the next subsection, I will briefly consider the relevance of logophoric (and ‘represented’ discourse participant) reflexives for FIST and for anaphora theory, and I will consider the question of their occurrence in the context of DIST.

5.2. Reflexives in FIST and DIST Brinton (1995: 187) has argued that non-anaphoric reflexives are “an important linguistic marker of free indirect style” because they “require the reader to identify the character whose consciousness is being represented”. Strictly speaking, a fused class of represented discourse participant and logophoric reflexives can also be distinguished in IST. The special effect rightly described by Brinton ultimately relates, in my view, to the different syntagmatic structure of IST and FIST: it is the absence of a tightly incorporated, obligatorily present introductory reporting clause in FIST which produces the ‘immediate’ effect these reflexives have in it. In IST, even though a discourse point of view rather than a linguistic antecedent ‘binds’ the reflexive, the reporting clause minimally sets the scene for the introduction of a point of view, and often even names it, viz. when it is the represented speaker’s or addressee’s point of view that antecedes a reflexive in the reported clause. In the first case, the represented speaker is named as subject of the reporting predicate in the reporting clause (as in He said there is no disagreement between himself and his colleagues); in the second case, the represented addressee may (with communication verbs) be named as direct object of the reporting clause predicate (as in He told her that he loved none other besides herself) (compare Kuno’s discussion in terms of his direct discourse analysis, 1987: Ch. 3).

Reflexives in FIST and DIST 183

Viewed from one perspective, then, the ‘unpreparedness’ as to the occurrence of a reflexive in FIST poses a challenge to readers. By the same token, however, such occurrence can help to prompt the correct reading, as Brinton (1995) has also argued. Against Zribi-Hertz (1989: 712–715), however, I would not conclude that the reverse also holds. From the nonacceptability of the reflexive option, Zribi-Hertz (1989) concludes that ‘objective’ narration rather than FIST has to be involved. Consider, in this regard, her example (41): (41)

She [Kitty Lasswade] was not pretty, no, her size was against her (*herself). (Woolf, The Years, p. 46 qtd. Zribi-Hertz 1989: 713)

According to Zribi-Hertz, the alternate with the reflexive is not acceptable, and as a reason for this she states that the clause her size was against her embodies an “independent objective DPV [domain of point of view]” (1989: 715), and not a subjective one. A domain of point of view is said to be “objective, if it describes facts as if they are part of objective reality, and subjective, if it describes facts as filtered by a subject of consciousness” (714–715). Applied to example (41) above, this means, still according to ZribiHertz, that the clause her size was against her “describes a state of affairs that belongs to the external physical world, as opposed to being a projection of Kitty Lasswade’s mental world” (1989: 714). This is claimed to be crucial for a correct understanding of (41): “unfortunately for Kitty Lasswade, her size is an aspect of herself over which she has no control” (1989: 714). While I obviously accept this last point, I fail to see why it prompts an ‘objective’ reading of (41): there is no reason why Kitty could not realize this unfortunate feature of hers privately to herself (I am not pretty, no, my size is against me) and thus, there is no reason why this could not be “filtered by a subject of consciousness”. If one looks at some more context than that provided by Zribi-Hertz, it soon becomes clear that (41) can in fact be interpreted as FIST, itself surrounded by two directly represented thoughts (Am I pretty? and What did Mrs Fripp think of me?): (41a)

Am I pretty? she asked herself, putting down her comb and looking in the glass. Her cheek-bones were too prominent; her eyes were set too far apart. She was not pretty; no, her size was against her. What did Mrs Fripp think of me, she wondered? (Virginia Woolf, The Years, 1965 [1937]: 64)

184 Distinguishing FIST from DIST: Person deixis The most natural interpretation of the underlined parts in (41a) is one as FIST, not one as ‘objective’ narration: it is Kitty herself, and not the narrator of The Years, who finds her cheek-bones too prominent, her eyes too far apart, and so on. If it is the case that her size was against her (41) is not necessarily (and, in my interpretation, most probably not) ‘objectively’ construed in Zribi-Hertz’s sense, then the explanation in terms of an objective domain of point of view cannot be maintained, and other reasons for the reduced acceptability of the reflexive herself must be sought. An alternative motivation can tentatively be proposed along the following lines. Point of view reflexives are analysed by Van Hoek as extensions of the prototypical coreference marking reflexive. Such reflexives bear a feature of unexpectedness in that they tend to mark co-reference among two arguments where these are normally referentially distinct (cf. Faltz 1985, Kemmer 1995). While logophoric reflexives no longer mark coreference among co-arguments, arguably the feature of unexpectedness still applies, viz. to the coreference between the reflexive and its discourse antecedent. In speaking of one’s size, however, it is difficult to see how this could ever ‘be against’ someone other than oneself. In this sense, there is nothing unexpected about the coreference between her in (41) and its discourse antecedent (Kitty), and this could explain why herself is not sanctioned. The main points that I have stressed with regard to non-anaphoric, logophoric reflexives in FIST are the following. First of all, whereas the “source of the subjectivity depicted” (Brinton 1995: 188) is not essentially different compared to IST, the striking difference in effect perceived, viz. the higher level of ‘immediacy’ or ‘unpreparedness’ in FIST, is due to the different syntagmatic structure of FIST and IST. In the latter, there is an introductory reporting clause which already names the antecedent of the logophoric reflexive, whereas in the former there is not. Secondly, the occurrence of logophoric reflexives may serve as an important signal of FIST, as it indicates the involvement of a represented speaker’s consciousness, distinct from that of the current speaker. However, the reverse need not be true: it would be precipitate to conclude from the ungrammaticality of a reflexive alternate of a pronoun that no represented speaker’s consciousness may be represented. Turning to DIST now, the notion of logophoric reflexive used here (viz. one having as discourse antecedent a non-speaker point of view) logically entails that DIST has no true logophoric reflexives, although it may still have non-anaphoric non-logophoric reflexives as well as ordinary anaphoric reflexives. Thus, for instance, discourse participant reflexives which

Reflexives in FIST and DIST 185

are not logophoric can occur in DIST. Such reflexives refer to current discourse participants rather than to represented ones. I have pointed out previously that this is one of the options in IST (see example 32 in Chapter 3). The same sort of configuration can obtain in DIST as well, as illustrated in (42), in which A and B are the current speaker and addressee respectively, and C is the represented speaker in an earlier discussion between A and C. (42a) (42b)

If people like yourselfB need help, yourB neighbours or relatives should help out, heC said, not social security. In the presumed original speech situation, C spoke to A about B: If people like Bill need help, his neighbours or relatives should help out, not social security.

In (42a), represented speaker C’s statement about Bill’s need for help is now echoed by C’s original addressee A (the current speaker) to Bill (the current addressee). Yourself in (42a) is a discourse participant reflexive, but it is not logophoric in the more narrow sense of a reflexive having as discourse antecedent a non-speaker point of view. The point of view is that of the current speaker and the appearance of the reflexive is licensed by virtue of its referring to one of the current discourse participants (i.c. the current addressee). A similar example, this time with a current speaker discourse participant reflexive (myself), is given in (43), in which the bracketed part echoes the father’s reprimand and thus instantiates DIST: (43)

– How did your parents react to your school results? – Well, my mom cried, as usual, and my dad gave me a good dressing-down, as usual. [He had no intention of continuing to pay for my education if I did no demonstrable effort whatsoever to make it pay off. He worked hard for his money all day long and could think of better things to spend his money on. As for myself, how much longer would I insist on wasting my precious time watching endless reruns of The Simpsons?]

The reflexive prototypes (coreference marking [44] and emphatic [45]) as well as picture noun reflexives (46) can likewise occur in DIST since they do not involve the representation of a secondary represented speaker’s consciousness:

186 Distinguishing FIST from DIST: Person deixis (44) (45) (46)

He considered himself as my mentor, he told me. You can imagine the trouble I had to keep a straight face. Amanda herself would personally see to it that I had everything I wanted placed immediately at my disposal, she reassured me. I shouldn’t believe a word of the story they ran about himself in the newspapers, he said. I don’t know who to believe now; could he really be involved in fraud?

It will be clear from this that pronouns referring to current speech participants in the reported clause form a more reliable basis for discrimination between DIST and FIST than reflexives, which essentially occur in both. The restriction with regard to these, however, is that in DIST only current discourse participant reflexives occur, as well as coreference marking, emphatic, and picture noun reflexives. Hence, what is excluded from DIST is represented discourse participant reflexives, which I have argued are in fact logophoric in contexts of IST and FIST.

6. Conclusion: Deictic duality vs. singularity in FIST and DIST In this chapter, I have proposed to ‘separate out’ DIST from the prevalent, undifferentiated ‘one intermediate category fits all’ conception of FIST on the basis of differences pertaining to person deixis. A first important area of divergence is that of proper names used to refer to represented speakers or represented addressees. Since in DIST no new point of view is introduced in the reported clause, it is the current speaker who determines accessibility organization in both component clauses of DIST. If for the current speaker’s purposes and in the linear development of the current speaker’s discourse it is useful to use a proper name or a descriptive noun phrase to refer to the represented speaker or addressee, this can thus be accommodated unproblematically in DIST. In FIST, however, the point of view in the reported clause is that of the represented speaker, with only minimal deictic adjustments to the current speaker’s deictic centre, thus combining expressiveness and ‘non-outspokenness’. Even though grammatical person of noun phrases referring to the original speech participants is determined by the current speaker in FIST, I have argued that accessibility organization remains the represented speaker’s prerogative, such that a third person such as her in How her heart was beating now (she thought) is a form that faces both ways: to the current speaker, because of its third person, and to the

Conclusion: Deictic duality vs. singularity in FIST and DIST 187

represented speaker, because of its pronounhood (coding high accessibility). Since from the latter’s point of view, the original speech participants (represented speaker and addressee) are inherently highly accessible, the use of a proper name or a descriptive noun phrase is not normally licensed. As regards pronominal reference in FIST and DIST, my starting point has been Banfield’s (1982) claim that no addressed you can occur in FIST. While I essentially agree with this point, I have shown that Banfield has applied this ‘ban’ on you too restrictively. At the same time, however, I have applied Banfield’s original claim more strictly to exclude from FIST (and include within DIST) those cases in which the original speech participants are coreferential with current speech participants and are referred to by first and second person pronouns. In such cases, the current speaker has appropriated and echoed the represented speaker’s utterances. FIST and DIST further differ in that the former, but not the latter, can have indeterminate reference to third parties: if from the represented speaker’s point of view a referent is perfectly accessible, that referent may be referred to pronominally even if from the point of view of the current addressee (say, the reader) it is not. This once more illustrates the fact that accessibility organization remains the represented speaker’s prerogative in FIST. Regarding reflexive usage, I have argued that logophoric reflexives in FIST are particularly striking compared to those in IST due to the syntagmatic differences between these two types. The consistent current speaker construal of DIST prevents it from having truly ‘logophoric’ reflexives with a represented speaker as discourse antecedent, but it can still have non-logophoric non-anaphoric reflexives, for instance reflexives which have the current speaker or addressee as their discourse antecedent. If we compare the situation as regards deictic centre of DIST and FIST with DST and IST (Chapter 3), the following generalizations obtain (Table 2). All forms contain two speech situations (see Chapter 3, section 1): the very point about STR is precisely that from one speech situation, the current one, a second, represented one is opened up.21 In terms of the number of deictic centres that can be distinguished in each construction overall (across reporting and reported clause), it is DIST which stands out as the 21

As we will see in Chapter 8, this is a fundamental difference with subjectified forms of speech or thought representation, in which there is effectively only the current speech situation, and no longer a represented one. The reporting clause then does not construe a speech situation distinct from that in the reported clause, but overlays the utterance with an (inter)subjective meaning.

188 Distinguishing FIST from DIST: Person deixis only one typically having only one deictic centre from which the representation is construed, that of the current speaker (indicated as “cur” in Table 2). In DST, there are two deictic centres, but they are strictly divided among reporting clause (current speaker’s deictic centre) and reported clause (represented speaker’s deictic centre, “rep” in Table 2). Finally, the distinction that can be made in the realm of deixis between FIST and IST is one of degree: the operativity of the second, represented speaker’s deictic centre in FIST is markedly higher than in IST. As discussed in Chapter 3, it is only an important but limited number of resources that can be tied directly to this deictic centre in IST, whereas in FIST all expressive and important aspects of deictic resources (viz. accessibility organization) are geared to it. Table 2. Deictic centres in the four types of speech or thought representation

DST FIST IST DIST

Speech situations 2 2 2 2

Deictic centres 2 2 2 1 (cur)

Deictic centres in reported clause 1 (rep) 2 2 1 (cur)

Operativity of represented speaker’s deictic centre full high low (not applicable)

Together with tense choice, which I will discuss for FIST and DIST in Chapter 6, I consider the choice of grammatical person of expressions referring to the represented (‘original’) speech participants as part of what I call basic deictic control: it is these choices that define the nature of FIST compared to the ‘expressive prototype’, DST. FIST in principle has all the expressivity of DST, but it is removed from full re-enactment (cf. Chapter 4) by means of the current speaker-relatedness of these ‘basic’ deictic resources. Figure 16 represents the basic deictic control in FIST: the choice of grammatical person of pronouns referring to the represented speaker and their addressees as well as tense choice is not determined directly vis-à-vis the represented speaker’s deictic centre in the represented speech situation (diagrammed as {I–you, here–now}rep), but rather with respect to the current speaker’s deictic centre in the current speech situation (diagrammed as {I–you, here–now}cur). In DIST, on the other hand, the current speaker’s

Conclusion: Deictic duality vs. singularity in FIST and DIST 189

deictic centre determines the deictic resources in both component clauses (Figure 17).22 {I-you,here-now} rep

reported clause [RSS]

{I-you,here-now} cur

reporting clause [CSS]

Figure 16. Basic deictic control in FIST {I-you,here-now} cur

reported clause [RSS]

reporting clause [CSS]

Figure 17. Basic deictic control in DIST

22

How this is to be understood with regard to (echoed) expressivity is discussed in Chapter 6 (section 3.1); the notion of echo in relation to DIST is further explored in Chapter 7 (section 3).

Chapter 6 Spatiotemporal deixis and expressivity in free and distancing indirect speech or thought

This chapter aims to expand the description of FIST and DIST arrived at in the previous chapter on the basis of different behaviour in the realm of person deixis. Section 1 looks at tense, and argues that FIST typically has relative tense, involving a shift of intensional perspective to the represented speaker, whereas tense in DIST is more strongly current speaker-related, with some types even allowing (current speaker-related) absolute tense. Sections 2 and 3 study other deictic and expressive features of FIST and DIST, and section 4 concludes that the two types can broadly be described in terms of deictic ‘duality’ versus ‘singularity’.

1. Temporal deixis in FIST and DIST In Chapter 3 (section 3), Declerck’s (1991a, 2006) model of tense in English was introduced and applied to tense in DST and IST. It was argued that Declerck’s model in terms of temporal domains established by absolute tenses, and temporal relations expressed by relative tenses, can be interpreted as a reference point system. An absolute tense functions as a reference point providing access to less directly accessible, relative tenses within the ‘dominion’ or temporal domain established by the absolute tense. The higher salience or accessibility of absolute tenses lies in their being directly related to a temporal zero-point t0; relative tenses are only indirectly related to the t0. In this section, I will discuss tense in FIST and DIST. The underlying idea will be that FIST and DIST contrast in roughly similar ways in terms of temporal deixis as they do in terms of pronominal deixis. That is to say, in FIST, the represented speaker’s intensional perspective is prominent in the interpretation of tense, whereas in DIST tense is more strongly current speaker-oriented. For FIST (section 1.1), this involves an extension of the relative tense analysis proposed in Chapter 3 for IST. In DIST (section 1.2), apart from relative also absolute (non-gnomic) tenses can sometimes occur, which are not ‘intensionally’ but ‘current speaker’-absolute.

Temporal deixis in FIST and DIST 191

1.1. Tense in FIST 1.1.1. Tense in FIST: Past time-sphere In this section, I will deal with typical tokens of FIST, viz. those that occur in the context of a past tense narrative; I will argue that in this type of context, relative tense is used in FIST except in one well-defined and motivated exception which allows absolute tense. Section 1.1.2 will then briefly consider FIST in present tense contexts. With regard to typical cases of FIST like his example (1), Declerck has argued that clauses of FIST are “still temporally subordinated” even though they are “no longer syntactically subordinated” (2003: 102): (1)

[He was still worrying about Sarah.] Was she safe now? Or had she been abducted by the soldiers two days ago? But there was not really any point in worrying. Tomorrow he would know the answer. (Declerck 2003: 102)

Declerck’s (2003) analysis is supported by those cases which do have an explicit reporting clause (2), although such cases are not considered by Declerck (see Chapter 2, section 5.2). In FIST as much as in IST, the tense forms in the reported clause are temporally subordinated to the central orientation time, which is cotemporal with the represented speaker’s original t0. In IST, this central situation time is coded on the reporting verb; in FIST it may be, as in (2), or it may remain implicit, as in (1). (2)

Wild and frail and beautiful she looked, and thus the women of the Greek were, Jacob thought; and this was life, and himself a man and Florinda chaste. (Woolf, Jacob’s Room, 78 qtd. Brinton 1995: 189)

That the central situation time of a temporal domain remains implicit is by no means exceptional, 1 and can occur outside contexts of FIST as well, viz. when past perfect tense forms occur without their binding orientation 1

It is also not implausible in the more general terms of the reference point model: implicit reference points are involved, for instance, in logophoric reflexives (Chapter 5, section 5) and in the “implicit antecedent” use of emphatic reflexives (Kemmer 1995: 60), as in How was the banquet? – The dinner itself was fine, but after that it was all downhill, where dinner is implied in banquet.

192 Spatiotemporal deixis and expressivity in FIST and DIST time being explicitly coded on a tense form within the same sentence. In such cases, the orientation time is implied and will be clear from the context. As an example, consider (3), in which the past orientation time which binds hadn’t made is contextually defined as in 1978: (3)

So, in 1978, Travolta’s career was poised on the edge of oblivion. He was Mr Flares, he was Mr Musical, he was Mr Silly Charttopper. His millions of teenage fans, as befits teenage fans, were ready to turn on him. He hadn’t made an impact with older audiences. (CB, oznews)

I thus conclude that FIST set in a past narrative context involves a past binding orientation time, which may be explicitly coded on a verb form in an overt reporting clause or merely implied in the absence of one, to which the situation times in the reported clause are related. This means that the analysis of relative tense in IST, in which the represented speaker’s intensional perspective is incorporated via a ‘shift of intensional perspective’, is extended to FIST, such that in an example like He would be late, John said, the futurity of the future in past tense is intensionally (interpretively) a futurity vis-à-vis the represented speaker’s original t0. Applying this analysis to examples (1–2) above yields the following results. The past time-sphere tenses in Declerck’s example (1) are not the current speaker’s ‘descriptive’, absolute past tenses, but rather ‘reported’, relative tenses with as implied binding orientation time the represented character’s past moment of reflection. To this past binding time are related all the tense forms in the stretch of FIST: was is simultaneous with it, had been anterior to it, and would know posterior. In (2), there is an explicit reporting clause, at least for its first sentence, and it is to the past time of thought that the other preterites are related in terms of simultaneity.2 This analysis in terms of relative tense is compatible with Ehrlich’s (1990) account in terms of “temporal linking” (1990: Ch. 4), which she discusses in its cohesive functions. Her main tenet is that the tenses of FIST passages are “temporally linked” to either a reference time established in a 2

This analysis applies straightforwardly to looked and was in (2), but perhaps not to the were of thus the women of the Greek were. If Greek women at the time of thinking are intended, the same analysis as for the other preterites can be maintained but if, and this is the more likely interpretation, ancient Greek women are intended, were is presumably best analysed as a ‘lazy’ preterite used instead of a past perfect expressing anteriority (see further below in this section).

Temporal deixis in FIST and DIST 193

reporting clause in the same sentence or in a neighbouring sentence, or even to a neighbouring sentence which is not a reporting clause but which at least contains a “character-oriented predicate” (1990: 78) whose temporal location can serve as a reference time for the tenses in a FIST passage. Such character-oriented predicates include not only verbs of communication or consciousness, but also verbs denoting characters’ perceptions and characters’ physical activities (1990: 75). Thus, for instance, Ehrlich argues that the sentence underlined in (4) below has no cohesive links to the surrounding text other than the temporal link with the reference time established in the reporting clause of a neighbouring sentence (she thought). (4)

That man, she [Lily] thought, her anger rising in her, never gave; that man took. She, on the other hand, would be forced to give. Mrs Ramsay had given. Giving, giving, giving, she had died – and had left all this. Really, she was angry with Mrs Ramsay. (Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse, 170 qtd. Ehrlich 1990: 67)

Ehrlich’s notion of a reference time is equivalent to Declerck’s (1991a, 2006) notion of a binding orientation time, and the idea of “sharing” of reference times in extended temporal structures borrowed from Smith (1978, 1980) can be interpreted as capturing the idea of a temporal domain. There is, however, a sense of uncertainty and hedging in Ehrlich’s account. Thus, for instance, she claims that the “sharing principle” can be used “to account for the interpretation of many sentences of RST [FIST]”, or that it “plays a role” (1990: 67; my italics); one is left to wonder for which sentences it does not account. In addition, the reliance not only on “neighbouring” reporting clauses for supplying the appropriate reference time, but also, if these are missing, basically anything else as long as a character-oriented predicate is involved, seems slightly ad hoc, particularly the extension of “character-oriented” to include predicates describing characters’ activities. Particularly problematic on this approach might be the case of a new chapter starting off with FIST, as this would not feature a preceding sentence with some “character-oriented” predicate which can subsequently be analysed as the reference time. Whereas Ehrlich seems to avoid positing a unitary explanatory principle to account for tense use in past time-sphere FIST, I believe such a principle can be found: the time of the represented speaker’s speech or thought act is interpreted as the binding orientation time of the relative tenses of FIST. Positing this orientation time, which interpretively evokes the represented speaker’s t0, for relative tense in FIST yields a solution for all cases, not

194 Spatiotemporal deixis and expressivity in FIST and DIST just for “many” of them. What Ehrlich seems to avoid is to posit anything that is not there – an underlying reporting clause for every sentence of FIST – but the binding time provided by the represented speaker’s speech or thought act is something that is there, even though it need not be coded in an overt reporting clause. In addition, this solution avoids taking recourse to just any surrounding sentence which is made to fit the “characteroriented” criterion as a source for an appropriate reference time. The relative tense of FIST has been recognized as one of the potential ‘signals’ helping one to recognize a passage as FIST rather than ‘narrative’, current speaker text: if a temporal relation is expressed which does not make sense in relation to the narrator’s t0 this may in fact involve a character’s t0 used as a past binding orientation time. Thus, for instance, the two occurrences of would in (5) are not to be understood as the narrator’s predictions, but rather as futures in past vis-à-vis the represented speaker’s past moment of thinking. In (6), the preterite was is not an absolute tense denoting a state of affairs consecutive to that expressed by said, but rather a relative past tense simultaneous with the saying: (5)

(6)

Already when he [Lydgate] was re-entering the town after that ride taken in the first hours of stinging pain, he was setting his mind on remaining in Middlemarch in spite of the worst that could be done against him. He would not retreat before calumny, as if he submitted to it. He would face it to the utmost, and no act of his should show that he was afraid. (Middlemarch lxxiii; G. Eliot 1986: 796 qtd. Fludernik 1993: 191) Lucy, for the third time, said that poor Charlotte would be sopped. The Arno was rising in flood, washing away the traces of the little carts upon the fore-shore. (A Room with a View I, iii, Forster 1977: 33 qtd. Fludernik 1993: 192)

An even more striking case, as von Roncador (1988: 223–224) and Fludernik (1993: 182) have shown, consists “in passages where idioms otherwise reserved for direct discourse are incorporated into free indirect discourse and shift their tense” (Fludernik 1993: 182). In (7) below, for example, the idiomatic phrase God knows is expressed with a relative tense, God knew, simultaneous with the time of the represented speaker’s thinking. (7)

Eternity, timeless experience of good, time as the substance of evil – it was bad enough, God knew, in books; but, fired at you like

Temporal deixis in FIST and DIST 195

this, point-blank, by somebody who really took it seriously, why, it was really frightful. (After Many a Summer I, viii; Huxley 1950: 106 qtd. Fludernik 1993: 182) Like relative past tenses betraying a FIST reading, modals have been considered a possible signal of FIST, not just because the modal position they express may have to be read as that of a character, when it does not make sense to read it as the narrator’s, but also because of their limited deflexion, which means in some cases that a past tense form is simply not available (Fludernik 1993: 186). An example of the ‘signalling’ function of modals in FIST is that of deontic must (Fludernik 1993: 186–187). As a deontic modal, must is speaker–hearer oriented (Declerck 1991b: 382–383): in statements, it expresses the speaker’s obligation, in questions it inquires into the hearer’s obligation (‘do you want me to’). For a normal ‘descriptive’ past rendering of must, another predicate normally has to be used for lack of a past tense form of must. Thus, the past counterpart of you must hand in your essay by Thursday is you had to hand in your essay by last Thursday, in which the past form had to expresses a less specific type of modality than must because the speaker–hearer orientation is lost (though not, pace Fludernik 1993: 186, the deontic meaning as such). Tops (1999) has shown, however, that must can sometimes occur in past time contexts where one would expect a shift to have to. (8) below is a case in point: (8)

On a higher level, the British marched onto the Anfa scene in intellectual unity. Clearly, the Allies must choose for 1943 between two main possibilities. (Thomas Parrish [1989] Roosevelt and Marshall: Partners in Politics and War (New York: William Morrow & Co., p. 325) qtd. Tops 1999: 446).

On the basis of numerous examples like (8) which he adduces, Tops suggests that the extension of this usage to FIST may be natural.3 What ultimately helps to betray a FIST reading in examples like (9) below is not the mere occurrence of must, but also (as indicated above) the fact that must cannot be read as expressing an obligation imposed by the current speaker 3

The evidence presented by Tops (1999) thus calls for another line of analysis than Fludernik’s (1993: 187), according to whom must “remains unshifted in free indirect discourse”. Apparently must can occur as a relative past in STR contexts, and even, in present-day English, as an absolute tense in non-reportative contexts.

196 Spatiotemporal deixis and expressivity in FIST and DIST (9a). The source of the obligation is unequivocally the represented speaker, who experiences a strong inner compulsion to do something (viz. get her boat into the current) (9b): (9)

(9a) (9b)

She must get her boat into the current of the Floss, else she would never be able to pass the Ripple and approach the house: this was the thought that occurred to her, as she imagined with more and more vividness the state of things round the old home. (Mill on the Floss VII, v; G. Eliot 1986: 507 qtd. Fludernik 1993: 187) ≠ ‘I (current speaker) want her (represented speaker) to get her boat into the current of the Floss…’ ≈ ‘I (represented speaker) have a strong inner compulsion to get my boat into the current of the Floss…’

Applying the model developed for IST to FIST raises the question of the possibility of absolute tense in FIST. Declerck states that “[t]ense forms that relate past situations directly to [the current speaker’s] t0 are not interpreted in terms of FIS” (2003: 103), but he does not explain in any generally statable terms why this should be the case. In the abstract, one might consider the possibility of absolute tenses interpreted in terms of the represented speaker’s current belief world to be possible. As will be recalled from Chapter 3, such ‘intensionally’ absolute tenses form the typical use of absolute tense in IST. It could then be thought that bringing in the represented speaker’s current belief world does not clash with the represented speaker’s perspective characteristic of FIST. In fact, I believe it does. To bring in an absolute tense, even an intensionally absolute one, brings in a present perspective which disrupts the oblique representation of the represented speaker’s (‘then’) belief world. After all, the represented speaker’s ‘current’ belief world is a so-called t0(cur)-world, which is ‘current’ with respect to the current speaker’s t0. It would be inconsistent to disallow, on the one hand, the current speaker taking control of the accessibility organization in the FIST reported clause, while on the other hand allowing tense forms interpreted in a t0(cur)-world which by implicature are not only still ‘present’ to the represented speaker, but also to the current speaker. If we want to reserve FIST for those cases which are fully expressive of the represented speaker’s construal, but which through minimal deictic adjustments avoid the outspokenness of DST, we should allow only those very minimal deictic adjustments, and none other. The absolute instead of relative relation of represented situation times to the current speaker’s t0 is one bridge too far for FIST, and leads one into the

Temporal deixis in FIST and DIST 197

realm of DIST. This is the case for Declerck’s (2003: 103) example (10), for which he correctly excludes a reading as FIST: (10)

??[When I met John, he immediately started asking me questions about Bill.] Where has Bill gone, and when will he come back? (Declerck 2003: 103)

Declerck (2003: 103) deems (10) “hardly acceptable” because on account of the tense usage in it “the questions are attributed to the present speaker, not to John”, which is “a strange thing to do”. To the extent that naturally occurring cases like (10) can be found, however (see section 1.2 below), this type of appropriation on the part of the current speaker is wholly compatible with my understanding of DIST. Returning to FIST, it should be pointed out that the above remarks need not exclude the possibility of absolute tenses in FIST entirely. In one very specific context, they can occur in past time-sphere FIST without this in any way disturbing the ‘privacy’ of the represented speaker’s speech or thoughts. This is the context of gnomic statements, that is to say, statements which have a general validity not bound to any particular period of time. Such a present is, in terms of absolute and relative tense, ‘absolute’, but since it is a kind of ‘timeless’ present it need not be understood with particular reference to the current speaker’s t0. Therefore it is a possible ‘exception’ to the general idea that past time-sphere FIST does not allow absolute tense. Consider the constructed example in (11): (11)

He would never learn to ask the right questions, he thought. Yes, God exists and yes, the earth is round, but what if God didn’t exist and the earth weren’t round? Would it make any difference, really?

This exceptional use of a ‘timeless’ absolute present, expressing a general truth, was not envisaged as a possibility in FIST by Declerck (1991a, 2003). Arguably, its occurrence is rather exceptional, all the more so since precisely these gnomic truisms can, along with formulaic expressions normally used with present tenses, be expressed with a relative tense in contexts of FIST. Consider in this regard the case with but necessity had no law in example (12) below: (12)

Jeanie sighed heavily to think that it should be her lot on the Lord’s day, and during kirk-time too, to parade the street of an inhabited village with so very grotesque a comrade; but necessity had no law,

198 Spatiotemporal deixis and expressivity in FIST and DIST since, without a positive quarrel with the madwoman, which, in the circumstances, would have been very inadvisable, she could see no means of shaking herself free of her society. (Walter Scott, The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Ch. 31 qtd. von Roncador 1988: 224 and Pascal 1977: 48–49) This passage starts off as a sentence of IST but because of the many interposed subclauses suggestive of ‘online processing’ on the part of the represented speaker it can be argued that it slips into FIST after the semi-colon.4 The universal truth that ‘necessity has no law’ is rendered in the relative tense, along with the other, ‘non-universal’ situation times. According to Pascal (1977: 49), the relative tense in (12) “inevitably” gives the gnomic statement a “temporal meaning; it now seems to be a thought of the character devised in this particular situation, and therefore almost an excuse; it loses its claim to absolute truth”. It is interesting to note that von Roncador argues in precisely the opposite direction: he claims that the “transposition” (hence relative tense) is preferred when proverbial, generally applicable formulae are involved (as in example 12 above), whereas “non-transposition” is used for more personal, less generally applicable judgements or prejudices of a character who (unjustifiedly) believes these to be general (von Roncador 1988: 224). As an example of this second tendency, 5 von Roncador cites a long excerpt from Musil’s The Man without Qualities, from which I quote the relevant part below: (13)

4

Then he remembered the night. This was no longer merely defamation, this was utter eradication of his honour! At night man only wears his nightshirt, and underneath it soon appears his character. Neither skill nor wisdom shield him. One puts one’s entire being at stake. Apart from that, nothing else. What, if a Christian-Germanic understanding were involved, was the meaning of Klementine pulling faces at him as if he were a savage? (Robert Musil, Der Mann

Von Roncador seems to regard this example unquestioningly as FIST (or ‘erlebte Rede’). Pascal discusses it as an example of authors, in the “early period” of FIST, “feel[ing] it to be advisable to help out the FIS[T] with a ‘he thought’, “he felt’, etc.” (1977: 47). 5 Some of the examples von Roncador gives of the first tendency (“transposition” in the case of proverbial truths) in my view instantiate DIST, not FIST (see further section 1.2).

Temporal deixis in FIST and DIST 199

ohne Eigenschaften, vol. 2, 51: “Das Haus Fischel” qtd. von Roncador 1988: 225 and Steinberg 1971: 228; translation mine)6 In this passage, in which Leo Fischel remembers the night during which he was humiliated by his wife, a philosophical reflection is made as to the way in which man’s true nature is exposed at night, when “neither skill nor wisdom shield him”. These sentences do not form an entrenched, idiomatic expression, but the present tense used for them conveys, following von Roncador’s rationale, the universal meaning attached to them by Leo Fischel. Faced with these radically opposing views, how can we decide in favour of one or the other? At this point it is useful to recall the description given in Chapter 3 of the functions of absolute tense in IST. It was argued there, against Declerck and Tanaka (1996), that absolute tense is most often not used to express the current speaker’s subscribing to the represented speaker’s views. On the contrary, its prevailing function is to lay speech functional responsibility squarely with the represented speaker. It seems reasonable to expect that those exceptional cases in which an ‘eternal truth’ (be it universal or only presented as universal) can be expressed with an absolute tense in FIST follow the general tendency of absolute tense use in IST. In other words, in the predominantly ‘intensional’ function of absolute tense in IST I find support for von Roncador’s proposal to associate absolute tense use in (pseudo-)gnomic statements in FIST with the represented character’s personal beliefs. One final point that needs to be raised in connection with past timesphere tenses is that of so-called ‘lazy’ preterites in longer passages of FIST. After an initial use of a past perfect tense, expressing anteriority visà-vis the past binding time of the represented speaker’s speech or thought act, it is possible that the use of cumbersome past perfects is abandoned in favour of so-called ‘lazy’ preterites. Consider example (14):

6

I thank Geert Brône for his help in translating and interpreting this passage. The German original reads as follows: “Er erinnerte sich dann der Nacht. Das war schon nicht mehr Ehrabschneidung; das war die Ehre mit der Wurzel abgraben! In der Nacht hat der Mensch nur ein Nachthemd an, und darunter kommt gleich der Charakter. Keine Fachkenntnisse und -klugheit schützen ihn. Man setzt seine ganze Person ein. Nichts sonst. Was sollte es also heißen, daß Klementine, wenn von christlich-germanischer Auffassung die Rede war, ein Gesicht machte, als ob er ein Wilder wäre?”

200 Spatiotemporal deixis and expressivity in FIST and DIST (14)

“I knew nothing about it till I looked up,” he explained, hastily. And that’s possible, too. You had to listen to him as you would to a small boy in trouble. He didn’t know. It had happened somehow. It would never happen again. He had landed partly on somebody and fallen across a thwart. He felt as though all his ribs on his left side must be broken; then he rolled over, and saw vaguely the ship he had deserted uprising above him, with the red sidelight glowing large in the rain like a fire on the brow of a hill seen through a mist. “She seemed higher than a wall; she loomed like a cliff over the boat… I wished I could die,” he cried. (Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim, Ch. 9 qtd. von Roncador 1988: 194)

In (14), the FIST passage starts with He didn’t know and continues for several sentences, until the narrator shifts back to DST in the last sentence of the excerpt. The initial tense forms in the stretch of FIST are clearly relative: didn’t, had happened, and would convey simultaneity, anteriority, and posteriority in a past domain respectively. The remainder of the represented speaker’s ‘explanation’ is a flash-back to the situation that is obviously past vis-à-vis the represented speaker’s speech time and starts out with relative past perfect tenses (had landed, had fallen) to continue with past tenses (felt, rolled over, saw). Under Declerck’s (1991a, 2006) analysis,7 these preterites would have to be considered as absolute tenses in a non-gnomic context, which is problematic for the reasons explored above. In my view, the alternative is to take Fludernik’s (1993: 181) suggestion seriously that with ‘lazy’ preterites no “deictic reorientation” takes place. Phrased in Declerck’s terminology, this means that felt, rolled over, and saw do not establish new temporal domains, but are incorporated in one and the same past temporal domain, along with the other tense forms in the FIST passage. This is consistent with the semantic intuition that a flashback as in (14) forms a kind of temporal ‘unity’ which as a whole is past with respect to the moment of telling. Technically, this line of interpretation means that felt, rolled over, and saw in (14) are relative past tenses expressing simultaneity in the past temporal domain established by the implied past binding time of the represented speaker’s moment of speaking. Thus, felt can plausibly be interpreted as simultaneous with respect to the binding

7

In particular his notion of tense simplification, according to which simpler preterite forms can replace past perfects if their use does not obscure the temporal relations involved (Declerck 1991a: 183)

Temporal deixis in FIST and DIST 201

time provided by had fallen: at the moment of the falling, the represented speaker experienced pain. The remaining preterites rolled over and saw can be interpreted as simultaneous with a different implied past orientation time within the same temporal domain, or even as ‘sloppily’ simultaneous with had fallen. ‘Sloppy’ simultaneity is defined by Declerck (1991a, 2006) for non-reportative contexts as the use of a tense form expressing simultaneity although, strictly speaking, the temporal interpretation is in terms of sequence. For instance, in a sentence like When John comes home, I will tell him about the accident (Declerck 2006: 496), in which comes expresses simultaneity vis-à-vis the post-present orientation time will be, strictly speaking the telling only occurs after John comes home.8 For past time-sphere FIST, easily the most common kind, we can conclude that relative tense, interpretively evoking the intensional perspective of the represented speaker, is the usual scenario. Especially with past tense uses of (normally present tense) idiomatic phrases and of modals, relative tenses may help to determine the status of a passage as FIST. In gnomic contexts, absolute present tense may exceptionally crop up in FIST without disrupting the represented speaker’s belief world and perspective. In fact, if the so-called gnomic present tense is used, this tends to be with judgements which are only believed by the represented speaker to have general validity, which reinforces rather than disrupts the represented speaker’s perspective. In longer passages of FIST, it may occur that an initial past perfect is abandoned in favour of a ‘lazy’ preterite so as to avoid a cumbersome style. In such cases, no new temporal domain is established, but the preterites are related in terms of simultaneity (whether strict or sloppy) to a past orientation time within one and the same temporal domain. In the next section, I consider FIST in present tense narratives.

8

Alternatively, one could suggest that the preterites in this passage are the relative tense counterparts of presumed original historic presents (He landed partly on somebody and fell across a thwart. He feels as though all his ribs on his left side must be broken; then he rolls over, and sees vaguely the ship he had deserted uprising above him …).

202 Spatiotemporal deixis and expressivity in FIST and DIST 1.1.2. Tense in FIST: Present time-sphere Arguably, present tense FIST is rare because present tense narrative itself is rather marked: one of the elements making up the “narrative norm” is precisely the use of past time-sphere tenses (Fleischman 1991: 78f), with the preterite functioning as narrative ‘present’, i.e. the tense in which events take place. The examples I will be concerned with in this section, however, illustrate the existence of present tense FIST in the context of present tense narratives. It is crucial to note that the present tense passages of FIST are surrounded by narrative (‘objective’, current speaker’s) sentences equally in the present tense.9 This is not to say that the events related are present; it is the very nature of narration that usually only things that have happened are narrated. Using the present tense, however, creates the illusion that the events unroll as you read. Consider example (15), which exemplifies first person, present tense narration. After an introductory narrative sentence, the narrator shifts to a representation of the represented speaker-I’s reflections, interrupted only by a reporting clause (I cry to myself): (15)

I shake my head in a fury of disbelief. No! No! No! I cry to myself. It is I who am seducing myself, out of vanity, into these meanings and correspondences. […] There is nothing to link me with torturers, people who sit waiting like beetles in dark cellars. How can I believe that a bed is anything but a bed, a woman’s body anything but a site of joy? I must assert my distance from Colonel Joll! I will not suffer his crimes! (Waiting for the Barbarians; Coetzee 1982: 44 qtd. Fludernik 1993: 187)

In an example such as (15), it is only pragmatic considerations that can decide between a reading as FIST or as DST, since neither tense nor person deixis can be relied on in first person, present tense reports. Arguably, the use of DST for thought representation, especially with a present tense reporting verb, is rather marked. In past narrative contexts, as in the underlined sentences in (16), discussed for different reasons in Chapter 5 (section 5.2), DST can serve to vividly conjure up a thought as it (purportedly) actually occurred: 9

Even more exceptional is, of course, the future tense novel. For a discussion of tense in narrative, see among others Bronzwaer (1970), Fleischman (1990) and Fludernik (2003).

Temporal deixis in FIST and DIST 203

(16)

Am I pretty? she asked herself, putting down her comb and looking in the glass. Her cheek-bones were too prominent; her eyes were set too far apart. She was not pretty; no, her size was against her. What did Mrs Fripp think of me, she wondered? (Virginia Woolf, The Years, 1965 [1937]: 64)

In present tense contexts (15), however, there is no contrast in tenses, and the illusion of present tense narratives that the events unroll as you read (rather than being related retrospectively) seems to place the act of thinking on a par with ‘deliberate’ actions such as the head shaking in (15): ‘first I shake my head, then I think to myself…’. In other words, it seems to me that a reading as DST of the reports in (15) threatens to ignore the spontaneous nature of the occurrence of thoughts. To read them as FIST, on the other hand, separates the thoughts off (so to speak) from the temporal succession of events and through this lack of ‘immediacy’ preserves the spontaneous nature of thoughts. If one thing is clear from the discussion of (15), it is that making a distinction between FIST and DST in first person present tense narrative is a difficult and subtle thing. In third person present tense narrative, on the other hand, clear deictic indications are available. In (17), the first sentence is a present tense narrative introduction of Laura Brown’s musings, and the subsequent sentences present Laura’s thoughts in the form of FIST (compare e.g. why…does it seem that she could… to a rendering as DST why does it seem that I could…). (17)

10

[…] She washes the dishes. She thinks about the rest of the day. […] Why, she wonders, does it seem that she could give him anything, anything at all, and receive essentially the same response. Why does he desire nothing, really, beyond what he’s already got? He is impenetrable in his ambitions and satisfactions, his love of job and home. This, she reminds herself, is a virtue. It is part of his loveliness […]. It is good, she reminds herself […] that his happiness depends only on the fact of her, here in the house, living her life, thinking of him. (Michael Cunningham, The Hours, 1998: 100)10

In Chapter 5, section 4 on third party reference in FIST and DIST, I argued for a passage in between She thinks about the rest of the day and Why, she wonders… that it instantiates DIST, for reasons discussed there. In (17), the use of here in the

204 Spatiotemporal deixis and expressivity in FIST and DIST How are we to analyse tense use in present tense FIST? Because the domain established by a present tense is centered around, and thus includes, t0, a situation related to a present tense is automatically related to t0; the domain is thus necessarily shifted (Declerck 2006: 485). Thus, the will of I will not suffer his crimes! (15) or the does of why does it seem (17) are absolute tenses. In the case of past time-sphere FIST, as we have seen in the previous section, non-gnomic absolute tenses cannot occur because they bring in the current speaker’s perspective on account of the implicature that the situations they code last long enough to be present or future for both the represented and the current speaker. In the marked context of present timesphere FIST, however, by convention no time lapse is coded between the represented speaker’s time of speaking or thinking and the current speaker’s time of reporting on these utterances or thoughts: t0(rep) is cotemporal with t0(cur), and hence the above implicature becomes meaningless. In this sense, unlike in past tense FIST, an intensionally absolute tense in present tense FIST does not inferentially evoke the current speaker’s perspective as well as the represented speaker’s. I conclude that the absolute tenses in present time-sphere FIST can be analysed as intensionally absolute, relating directly to t0(rep), by convention cotemporal with t0(cur). Examples of ‘genuine’ present tense FIST were not envisaged by Banfield, who allowed only generic and historic present tense in FIST, without however exemplifying these two exceptions. As to examples like (15) and (17), it should be pointed out that they do not involve historic present tenses: they occur in narratives that are told entirely in the present tense and hence do not, like historic present tenses, involve a shift of temporal perspective (Declerck 2006: 176) from a narrative past context to a ‘metaphorical’ present for reasons of vivacity, liveliness, and so on. As for the historic present tense, arguably it is used mainly in oral narrative, although some instances of its use in written narratives can be found. Osselton (1982), for instance, has argued that the perfect in present tense narrative is used to indicate “divided attention or a kind of wilful distractedness” (1982: 64). house is consistent with the represented speaker’s perspective, which supports a reading as FIST. This line of interpretation is supported by the overall pragmatic difference between the two parts, the first of which deals with Laura’s plans, intentions, and predictions, allowing more readily for an ‘external’ rendering from the narrator’s (current speaker’s) viewpoint, while the second part, given in (17), focuses on Laura’s thoughts about why her husband acts the way he does.

Temporal deixis in FIST and DIST 205

Whether the historic present tense can figure in passages of FIST seems doubtful on pragmatic grounds. The historic present, it seems to me, has a strongly ‘hearer-oriented’ function: it is used purposefully by the current speaker to liven up the narrative and thus to capture the hearer’s attention. The reported clause of FIST by its very nature is not a ‘hearer’-oriented form of STR: in FIST, as we have seen, there can be neither an addressed ‘original’ you nor a current one. The use of the historic present in reported clauses (in a surrounding past reporting context) can only be understood as the current speaker’s means to spice up his or her narrative directly vis-àvis the current interlocutor. The current addressee-directedness of a historic present tense is therefore more compatible with a reading as DIST, since its use then betrays the current speaker’s use of grammatical resources to serve his or her own, current communicative purposes while echoing another’s discourse. This is why I believe (18) below, a passage Fludernik quotes (after Steinberg 1971: 259) as an example of the historical present in FIST, in fact instantiates DIST: (18)

He fought his way over and under the bodies blocking the corridor to the only first-class carriage, sat down in it, mopped his brow, looked out of the window. His porter. Oh, where is his porter? His porter! He looks out up and down, down and up. Out through, over and under the bodies he fights his way once more! Where is his porter? Where his bags? He runs up and down, here, there, everywhere. No porter anywhere. Good heavens! The train is going! A whistle blows! Someone shouts! The train is going! The train is moving. The train is gone. (Hugh Walpole, The Silver Thorn qtd. Steinberg 1971: 259 qtd. Fludernik 1993: 90)11

That historic present tenses are instantiated in (18) is strongly suggested by the surrounding past tenses which show that the narrative as a whole is told in the past tense. That the historic presents are entirely the current speaker’s prerogative to use within this surrounding past tense context is suggested by the fact that they are used in the speech reporting and non-speech reporting parts alike (see, for instance, looks, fights, runs up). This current speaker’s grip on how the text is presented, viz. as lively and current 11

Underlining follows Fludernik’s italicization of purported FIST passages, analysed as DIST by myself. Arguably, in the last few sentences different inclusions within the passage of STR can be argued for (e.g. including A whistle blows! Someone shouts! within the stretch of STR).

206 Spatiotemporal deixis and expressivity in FIST and DIST hearer-directed, I take to argue against a reading as FIST, and for one as DIST. Before turning to a further treatment of tense in DIST, a note on the use and function of progressive aspect is in order.

1.1.3. A note on progressive aspect Progressive aspect in general has been ascribed a subjective function, although the precise nature or source of this subjectivity is not yet fully understood. For instance, while Killie (2004) in her corpus study of progressives occurring with adverbs of the always type accepts subjectivity as a meaning component of the progressive, or even a basic meaning besides aspect, she does conclude that “subjectivity in the English progressive remains a vague notion” (2004: 43). In the context of FIST specifically, the use of the progressive has been considered one of its typical indices on account of this subjective nature, described as a ‘consciousness’ function by Banfield (1982). In a paper focusing on the ‘past + now’ construction contributing to FIST interpretations, Nikiforidou (subm.) has argued that the meaning of the progressive amplifies the “zooming on the event” effect achieved by combining a past narrative tense with a present time adverb. The aspectual meaning of the progressive ties in well with this description: its “focus on the middle part of the situation” (Declerck 2006: 84) produces the effect “as if one is watching it unfold rather than viewing it holistically as a unitary entity” (Langacker 1991: 208). In this sense, both the use of present adverbials against a past narrative background and the use of the progressive bring events to the foreground and create a sense of involvement or experience: a zooming in on a character witnessing the unfolding of an event. The way in which the progressive can help to signal the FIST status of an otherwise ‘unmarked’ passage was studied by Ehrlich (1990: Ch. 5), who argues that when events in progressive aspect overlap with predicates of communication or consciousness […] they are interpreted as part of a character’s RST [FIST] (1990: 89)

This she contrasts with sentences with simple aspect, in which the same events “would take place after the thought events of the preceding sentences” (1990: 89). Thus, compare (19a), the sentence with a past progres-

Temporal deixis in FIST and DIST 207

sive which in Woolf’s original directly followed (19), with its simple aspect counterpart (19b): (19)

(19a)

(19b)

[…] for she thought, looking at James who kept his eyes dispassionately on the sail, or glanced now and then for a second at the horizon, you’re not exposed to it, to this pressure and division of feeling, this extraordinary temptation. Her father was feeling in his pockets; in another second, he would have found his book. (Woolf, To the Lighthouse 192 qtd. Ehrlich 1990: 84) Her father felt in his pockets and brought out a book.

Since indeed (19a) invites a reading as FIST whereas (19b) does not, it seems likely that the progressive, because of the kind of “zooming in” effect described by Nikiforidou (subm.), contributes significantly to this. Arguably the other change from (19a) to (19b) is also relevant, however, even if left undiscussed by Ehrlich: the use of would have in (19a) clearly helps to mark the sentence as representing a thought.12 The conditional perfect tense not only expresses a complex temporal relationship (combining posteriority and anteriority in a past domain; Declerck 2006: 457–458) but also marks the event as nonfactual in the past, as opposed to the past fact described by brought in (19b).13 From this short discussion I conclude that the subjective or consciousness function of the progressive can be related to its ‘involvement’ or ‘zooming in’ function. Although progressive aspect on its own does not signal FIST, its use in combination with relative past tenses bound to the past time of speech or thought, and possibly also with present temporal adverbs, can help to establish or maintain a FIST reading of an otherwise ambiguous passage.

12

I thank Elizabeth Traugott for drawing my attention to the potential ‘reportative’ value of would have. 13 Even though this is not immediately relevant to the point developed here, it should be pointed out, against Ehrlich (1990: 84) who considers the last sentence of (19), you’re not exposed to it, to this pressure and division of feeling, this extraordinary temptation, as part of the passage of FIST, that this stretch of STR in fact instantiates DST, not FIST, as indicated by person deixis as well as temporal deixis (compare a FIST rendering as He was not exposed to it, she thought).

208 Spatiotemporal deixis and expressivity in FIST and DIST 1.2. Tense in DIST At the end of Chapter 5 on person deixis in FIST and DIST, I have tried to provide a general ‘template’ for the choice of grammatical person of expressions referring to the original speech participants (compare Figures 16– 17 in the chapter’s conclusion). In order to determine grammatical person as well as tense in the reported clause of FIST, information has to be retrieved from the current speaker’s deictic centre construing the reporting clause. This does not mean, as we have seen, that the current speaker’s perspective really intrudes into the reported clause: even though both tense and grammatical person are ultimately related to the current speaker, the expressive or perspectival aspects of them are geared to the represented speaker (via the intensionally shifted represented speaker’s t0 in the case of tense, and because the choice of grammatical resource – pronouns or full noun phrases – is the represented speaker’s, and not the current speaker’s). For DIST, as we have seen, not only grammatical person, but also the accessibility organization and hence the choice for pronouns or full noun phrases is determined with respect to the current speaker’s deictic centre. In this section, I will investigate tense in examples of DIST so as to see whether this resource is also more strongly geared to the current speaker instead of evoking the represented speaker’s perspective. Section 1.2.1 deals with DIST in the past time-sphere; section 1.2.2 with DIST in the present time-sphere.

1.2.1. Tense in DIST: Past time-sphere In this section, I will discuss tense in two sets of examples, reflecting two pragmatically different usage types of DIST (see further Chapter 7, section 4). As may already have transpired from examples previously discussed, a cline can be distinguished from examples of DIST which have a more ‘narrative’ flavour and in which a narrator expresses his or her attitude towards some character’s thought or utterance, to ones which are more matter-of-fact and serve to perform a current speaker’s speech act in evidential contexts. I will first discuss some examples of the latter type of DIST, in which the prime concern is with making current speaker’s claims (or asking current speaker’s questions, etc.), with subsidiary reference to an ultimate source (the represented speaker) who provided the input for the current

Temporal deixis in FIST and DIST 209

speaker’s speech act. I call this usage type ‘evidential’ because one might say the reporting clause has grammaticalized to some extent into an evidential marker (in subjectified DIST, it has grammaticalized further, as well as subjectified, into a ‘commentative’ (inter)subjective marker; see Chapter 8). Consider the following examples, in which the current speaker is making claims on his or her own account, but with reference to something the represented speaker said previously. (20) (21) (22)

John will be late, he said. (Reinhart 1975: 136) Prof. Nowé has taken a few days off, he says, so he won’t be there. (attested from e-mail, 12 April 2000) He mailed you earlier today, he said, so please do answer him. (attested from e-mail, 4 February 2000)

In an example like Reinhart’s (20) an analysis in terms of relative tense is out of the question since will is an absolute tense. The question is whether the futurity of will is interpreted vis-à-vis the current speaker’s t0, or rather vis-à-vis John’s original t0 which is cotemporal with said. In the latter case, will would be ‘intensionally’ absolute in the same way as absolute tense in DST and in many cases of IST is (Chapter 3, section 3). In my view, an analysis of will as intensionally absolute is semantically anomalous. As we have seen, intensionally absolute tenses imply that the represented speaker is ‘speech functionally responsible’ for the reported clause. For (20), however, it is difficult to maintain that the represented speaker John is responsible for the claim John will be late: the fact that the choice for a proper name (John) is the current speaker’s entails that the speech functional responsibility is assumed by the current speaker as well. In this sense, accessibility organization affects not only the choice of a pronoun vs. a full noun phrase: indirectly it also affects tense interpretation. On these grounds, I reject an intensionally absolute interpretation of will in (20), because the semantic implications of such an interpretation are difficult to accept. On the other hand, to interpret will as an ‘ordinary’ absolute tense, related only to the current speaker’s t0, does make good sense semantically. This is because in ‘evidential’ DIST examples like (20), it is one and the same current speaker ‘speaking twice’, that is to say, making two claims, at the same t0, saying both that John will be late, and that John said something to make the current speaker conclude that he will be late. The actual or ‘ontological’ posteriority of John’s being late vis-àvis the moment of his past ‘saying’ is not expressed by the tense forms (as it would be in the case of relative tense, He said he would be late), but

210 Spatiotemporal deixis and expressivity in FIST and DIST follows from the ordering of the independent temporal domains on the current speaker’s timeline (Figure 18). said x

t0 (cur)

will be x

Figure 18. Absolute tense in DIST

A similar analysis applies to example (21), which like (20) involves the proper name problem, and in which has taken is absolute with respect to the current speaker’s t0, since it is the current speaker who assumes responsibility for the claim about the professor’s absence from office. That it is the relevance to the current speaker’s t0 (in the interaction with the current addressee) that motivates the present perfect can be inferred from the future tense in the rest of the clause as well: the currently relevant fact that Prof. Nowé has taken a few days off implies that he will not be in his office, which in turn implies that there is not much reason for the current speaker (or his addressee) to go up there. Example (22) does not involve the proper name problem, but I propose to extend the ‘current speaker-absolute’ analysis for (20–21) to all evidential cases of DIST, on the grounds that the appropriation of an utterance or thought for making current claims means that the current speaker assumes speech functional responsibility over the reported clause. In the case of (22), this line of reasoning is supported by the fact that the ‘conclusion’ so please do answer him, which is clearly the current speaker’s, uses the claim he mailed you earlier today as a premise in the current speaker’s argumented plea. The important conclusion to be drawn from the examples of ‘evidential’ DIST is that apparently, DIST allows current speaker-related (non-gnomic) absolute tenses even in past time-sphere contexts. As we have seen in the previous section, past time-sphere FIST only allows the odd gnomic present, because non-gnomic presents (even intensionally absolute ones) would inevitably evoke the current speaker’s t0 and thereby disrupt the represented speaker’s perspective. That current speaker-related absolute tense is possible in past time-sphere DIST thus supports the idea that the reported clause of DIST is more strongly ‘current speaker-controlled’ than FIST. Let us now turn to examples of DIST in which the reporting clause (if given explicitly) has not grammaticalized into a marker of ‘source’ or evidentiality, but more straightforwardly represents the speech or thought

Temporal deixis in FIST and DIST 211

act of different ‘characters’ in narratives or narrative-like contexts. As an example, consider (23), part of a longer stretch of obliquely rendered dialogue between the I-protagonist and a “businessman” who is owed money, in which the parts for which I propose a DIST reading are underlined (compare e.g. He hoped I would understand his position to a direct rendering as I hope you will understand my position): (23)

He was a businessman, he said, a simple businessman, not a great professor – and smiled at me and gently bowed – but all the same he knew there were certain rules, certain moral imperatives. One of these in particular he was thinking of: perhaps I could guess which one? […] He hoped I would understand his position. […] He considered. Would I go alone? he wondered. […] He smiled again, twinkling. What was my opinion of the island women? I hesitated. Come come, he said gaily, surely I had an opinion on such an important matter. (John Banville, The Book of Evidence, 1998 [1989]: 21–22)

From the use of would in particular it is immediately clear that an absolute tense analysis is untenable for ‘narrative’ DIST as in (23), since a ‘future in past’ cannot independently establish temporal domains and is thus always a relative tense expressing posteriority in a past temporal domain. Even so, in keeping with the overall deictic set-up of DIST and the current speaker’s speech functional responsibility it involves I would suggest that, unlike in FIST, the represented speaker’s intensional perspective is not prominently evoked. Again, as was the case for the evidential subtype, cases involving the proper name problem most clearly show the shift in speech functional responsibility: in a case like But Priscilla wasn’t hungry. She had eaten too much of the smoked salmon (example 1 in Chapter 5), the use of the proper name is incompatible with a reading of this clause as the represented speaker’s claim (But Priscilla isn’t hungry). The manner in which the current speaker assumes speech functional responsibility over the claim, question, etc. in the reported clause is different in the narrative cases compared to the evidential ones, as in the latter this assumption is associative but in the former it may often be more dissociative (see further Chapter 7). In (23), for instance, it could be argued that a form of irony is achieved through the use of DIST, which highlights the patronising effect of utterances such as He hoped I would understand his position. In general, the narrative uses of DIST play more than the evidential ones on the duality of speech situations (current and represented), in

212 Spatiotemporal deixis and expressivity in FIST and DIST that they typically involve the narrator’s slant (of irony, sarcasm, mild mockery, etc.) from within the current speech situation vis-à-vis the represented one. In this sense, an interpretation of tense use in narrative DIST as current speaker-related, relative tense is compatible respectively with its current speaker-related person deixis features (and the interpretive effects these have) and with the relation or link between the current (reporting) and represented speech situation. That the latter link is of a weaker and more inferential nature in the evidential cases is shown by the use of absolute tenses in (20–22) above. The important commonality between current speaker-related absolute tenses (as in 20–22) and current speaker-related relative tenses (23) is that neither tense pattern evokes the represented speaker’s intensional perspective and speech functional responsibility for the reported clause contents. The difference is that current speaker-related absolute tenses downplay the semantics of ‘reporting’, with a current and a represented speech situation, and situate both component clauses more strongly in the current speaker’s here-and-now, even though an ‘original’ utterance located in a represented speech situation is evidentially involved. Current speakerrelated relative tenses entertain the link with the represented speech situation more explicitly, which accords well with the fact that in more narrative uses of DIST different characters at different times and places may be involved. The choice between current speaker-related absolute or relative tenses is thus functionally motivated. This functional contrast is exploited in example (24). In the first part of the minister’s response (well, that far the minister wouldn’t go), relative tense is used, but this does not evoke the represented speaker’s intensional perspective, since the minister cannot be held responsible for the claim that far the minister won’t go. Instead, the current speaker has appropriated this claim, but by using relative tense its reportative nature remains in focus. In the second part of the response, however, absolute tense is used, which foregrounds the ‘current’ prediction (in the sense of currently relevant to the addressee) that clarity will only come in a few months: (24)

The draft will be abolished then? Well, that far the minister wouldn’t go. Clarity will only come in the priorities memorandum,

Temporal deixis in FIST and DIST 213

in a few months. (de Volkskrant 11 November 1992 qtd. Redeker 1996: 226; translation hers)14 This explanation can account for the initial future tense in the journalist’s question (the draft will be abolished then?) as well: from the point of view of the current speaker, what is currently important (to the readership) is the question whether the draft will be abolished or not.15 In the section on tense in FIST, I have paid special attention to the problem of gnomic statements in past time-sphere narratives. What are the possibilities for the expression of gnomic statements in past time-sphere DIST? Up to this point, I have only come across examples which use a relative past tense rather than an absolute present tense.16 Consider example (25), analysed as ‘erlebte Rede’ by von Roncador but as DIST here on account of the occurrences of the low accessibility marking noun phrases Elsie and Mrs Arb: (25)

14

The two women exchanged more glances. Elsie perfectly comprehended the case of Mrs. Arb, and sympathized with her. Mrs. Arb was being couried. Mrs. Arb had come to a decision. Mrs. Arb desired as much information as possible before coming to a decision. Women had the right to look after themselves against no matter what man. Women were women, and men were men. (E.A. Bennett, Riceyman Steps, qtd. von Roncador 1988: 225 after Meyer 1957: 20)

For the Dutch original, see note 4 in Chapter 5. Grammatically, it is possible to claim a DST reading for the question and for the second part of the answer, but pragmatically this is an unlikely reading, since often journalists do also consciously use clearly signalled DST (with quotation marks or italicization). A reading of all of (24) as consistently echoing (rather than partly quoting and partly echoing) the original dialogue seems more in keeping with the ways in which journalists use different forms of reporting. 16 An example from a Dutch novel is the following, in which “Sandra” is the original addressee who is refused financial support from relatives she has herself on past occasions helped out: They no longer had that money. […] Surely they could hardly ask Sandra’s nieces to send everything back from Guantánamo? A gift was a gift. That went for everyone (from Tom Lanoye’s novel Boze tongen, 2002: 307–308; translation from Dutch mine; the original reads “Ze hadden dat geld niet meer. […] Ze konden Sandra’s nichten toch moeilijk vragen om alles terug te sturen vanuit Guantánamo? Gegeven was gegeven. Dat gold voor iedereen.”). 15

214 Spatiotemporal deixis and expressivity in FIST and DIST In this example, the DIST passage (all but the introductory narrative sentence) uses relative tense, which I would argue is best analysed as current speaker-related. The gnomic statements in the example also use relative tenses and are therefore echoic rather than ‘evidential’, that is to say, their reportative nature is not obscured as it would be to some extent if absolute tenses were used. In the latter case, the link with the represented speech situation would largely be lost and an interpretation of the gnomic statements as a serious current speaker’s statement might arise. By maintaining this link via the use of a relative tense, it remains possible to keep in view the fact that the current speaker is not seriously making the universal statements, but rather expresses his or her (mildly ironic) attitude towards them. I have not come across examples of DIST with (absolute) present tense for gnomic statements. This is not to say that these may not exist, but in cases like (25), the use of an absolute tense would render more difficult the expression of the current speaker’s dissociative attitude, and therefore an absolute tense seems less likely. For past time-sphere DIST, I conclude that there is a choice between current speaker-related absolute tense, which tends to be used in ‘evidential’ contexts in which the current speaker makes a claim on the basis of the input of a prior utterance, and current speaker-related relative tense, which tends to be used in ‘narrative’ contexts in which the link with the represented speech situation remains more important, and a current speaker’s attitude is expressed vis-à-vis the echoed utterance or thought.

1.2.2. Tense in DIST: Present time-sphere A clear example of DIST occurring in a present tense context is contained within the extract of M.D. Browne’s poem “Philip Larkin” given in (26). The DIST nature of this example was discussed previously in Chapter 5 (section 3.2) in terms of person deixis; it is repeated here with added context preceding the underlined DIST parts so as to demonstrate that this poem does indeed instantiate a present tense “narrative”: (26)

Larkin gets on the elevator with me. With one hand he’s wheeling a dolly, boxes piled high; with the other, he’s holding a bucket and a mop with a yellow handle. […]

Temporal deixis in FIST and DIST 215

I’m going to third. Where’s he going? “Basement,” he says. He’ll wait while I go up, then he’ll go down. (from M.D. Browne’s “Philip Larkin”, Browne 1999: 3) The present tense context of this example suggests that the present tenses in the DIST passage are no historic present tenses. The present and future tenses in it allow only of an absolute interpretation: since they relate their situation time to an implied present orientation time says, situations related to this present tense will necessarily be related directly vis-à-vis t0. In keeping with the argument developed in the previous section, I would argue that this absolute tense is current speaker-related rather than ‘intensionally’ absolute: in appropriating the original utterances of both Larkin and himself, the current speaker also assumes speech functional responsibility over the appropriated utterances. While in the stretch of DIST in (26), a present tense reporting verb is understood (and, for the intervening bit of DST, given explicitly [says]), (27) below presents a case where the understood reporting verb tense is future and the reported tenses are the absolute future tense and the so-called ‘absolute-relative’ future perfect (Declerck 2006: 531): (27)

(Whatever happens, it will be no use asking him for details.) He will not have seen anything, he will not have heard anything, and he will not know anything at all. (Declerck 2006: 536)

Declerck (2003: 103–104), in discussing the same example (but with contracted forms won’t instead of will not), considers it an instance of FIST. In my view, the current speaker’s act of concatenating the potential future replies of the represented speaker is an explicit kind of ‘manipulation’ that is incompatible with the latter’s perspective, and therefore with a reading as FIST. Tense use in (27) is clearly current speaker-related: it is fully the current speaker’s prediction that the person talked about will (pretend to) know nothing. A final phenomenon worth noting is that of a shift of temporal focus (Declerck 1990a, 1991a: 80–89, 2006: 581–585). A shift of temporal focus is an operation in which a speaker mentally assumes another temporal location or relation than actually holds. In the utterance That was my brother, for instance, pronounced when someone unknown to your interlocutor has just entered and left the room, the use of the past tense results from a shift of temporal focus back to the past moment when the speaker’s brother entered the room, and the speaker’s interlocutor wondered who the

216 Spatiotemporal deixis and expressivity in FIST and DIST person entering the room was. At the moment of saying That was my brother, the person designated is of course still the speaker’s brother. To say that was my brother is not strictly speaking false, but on a literal reading it seems not to heed the Gricean maxim of quantity: there is more (and more relevant) information which is not given, viz. the fact that the brotherhood relation still holds. The need for maximal informativeness is suspended in favour of the need for a mental ‘flashback’ (or flashforward) to the time when a certain speech act was relevant. An example of a shift of temporal focus in DIST is (28). In this example, the narrative context is present (I see him, he ridicules me). More specifically, the introductory sentence establishes a habitual context, in which one might expect to see a present tense representation: I can never repair the car myself (he says each time). Instead, however, in (28) the temporal focus is shifted back to one particular past instance of a typical, habitual event: (28)

Every time I see him he ridicules me. Oh, I could never repair the car myself. What was I doing lying in the middle of the road? No, that wasn’t the way to go about it. Here, he’d show me. (Banfield, 1982: 299 n10)

The shift of temporal focus in (28) thus applies to the entire representation, that is to say, even though the scene is set for ‘present tense ridicule’ (he ridicules me), the reporting event implied for the underlined part of (28) is past (he said or past habitual he would say). The preterites and future in past (he’d show me) are then best understood as current speaker-related relative tenses, in keeping with the semantics of appropriation and echo. Overall, present time-sphere DIST like past time-sphere DIST differs from tense in FIST in one important aspect: the represented speaker’s intensional perspective is not prominently evoked. Rather, the focus is either on the current speaker’s ‘serious’ claims, based on previous utterances, in evidential uses, or on the current speaker’s attitude towards the appropriated utterance in more narrative uses. Particularly in evidential contexts, current speaker-related absolute tenses can be found, including present tenses in past time-sphere contexts. This is something that FIST does not allow at all. Relative tenses are also possible, particularly in more narrative examples, and gnomic statements tend to be coded by relative tenses as well. The reason why more ‘narrative’ cases of DIST prefer relative tense lies, I have suggested, in the fact that relative tense implies a stronger link between the current and the represented speech situation, and

Other deictics in FIST and DIST 217

this link facilitates the expression of different attitudes, also more dissociative ones, whereas evidential uses are associative. Needless to say, much remains to be learned about tense in complex cases of STR. As well, the distinction between more evidential and more narrative uses of DIST needs to be fleshed out (see Chapter 7, section 4, for some discussion). The survey of tense use in FIST and DIST has shown a more complex picture compared to that of person deixis (or at least the area within person deixis allowing the clearest distinctions, that of reference to represented speakers and addressees). In the absence of a neat divide between, for instance, absolute and relative tense, I have argued that the interpretive effects of a FIST or DIST reading are also felt in the area of tense interpretation, and have thereby confirmed the overall template described for ‘basic deictic control’ in the conclusion to Chapter 5. In the reported clause of FIST, both person deixis and temporal deixis make reference to the current speaker’s deictic centre, even though ultimately the represented speaker’s perspective is preserved even in those areas (via the control over accessibility organization and through the represented speaker’s intensional perspective respectively). DIST, on the other hand, was shown to be a strongly current speaker-controlled type of STR, in which person deixis and temporal deixis relate to the current speaker’s deictic centre. In the next two sections I turn to a consideration of other deictics, particularly spatiotemporal adverbials, and of expressive resources in FIST and in DIST.

2. Other deictics in FIST and DIST As was the case in Chapter 3 (section 4), I will restrict the discussion of ‘other deictics’ to spatiotemporal deictics. In this realm, there is at least one deictic that has received special attention, viz. the adverb now, of which it has been repeatedly observed that it can occur in reported clauses of FIST to indicate the represented speaker’s ‘moment of consciousness’ in conjunction with the past tenses typical of most cases of FIST, as in How my heart was beating now (Banfield 1982: 99). As I have suggested earlier, this ‘NOW in the PAST’ (Banfield 1982) or ‘WAS–NOW paradox’ (Adamson 1995) has been considered as a striking and important index of FIST. While I have shown that this ignores the possibility of having represented speaker related deictics including now and there in IST as well (Chapter 3, section 4), it remains a remarkable possibility of FIST to com-

218 Spatiotemporal deixis and expressivity in FIST and DIST bine intensionally absolute (present) deictics, related directly to the represented speaker’s t0, with relative (past) tenses, which only indirectly evoke the represented speaker’s perspective. Two of Banfield’s examples of the ‘NOW in the PAST’ in FIST are given in (29–30): (29) (30)

To-morrow was Monday, Monday, the beginning of another school week! (Lawrence, Women in Love, p. 185 qtd. Banfield 1982: 98) Where was he this morning, for instance? Some committee, she never asked what. (Woolf, Mrs Dalloway, p. 10 qtd. Banfield 1982: 98)

In FIST, then, it is perfectly consistent to have ‘intensionally’ absolute spatiotemporal deictics referred directly to the represented speaker’s t0. Let us now consider a clear case of DIST (31). In this example, the use of the first person pronoun coreferential with the current speaker (who is at the same time the represented addressee) calls for a reading of the part from As to the settlements onwards as DIST (which incorporates a short DST representation, Yes): (31)

The moment I tried to speak of the business that had brought me to his house, he [Mr. Fairlie] shut his eyes and said I ‘upset’ him. […] As to the settlements, if I would consult his niece, and afterwards dive as deeply as I pleased into my own knowledge of the family affairs, and get everything ready, and limit his share in the business, as guardian, to saying Yes, at the right moment – why, of course he would meet my views, and everybody else’s views, with infinite pleasure. In the meantime, there I saw him, a helpless sufferer, confined to his room. […] (Wilkie Collins, The Woman in White, “The Story Continued by Vincent Gilmore”, I, qtd. von Roncador 1988: 230)17

The spatial deictic there in (31) can only be read as ‘absolute’ vis-à-vis the current speaker’s deictic centre, since in the original speech situation a proxal rather than distal spatial location was involved: a presumed original might have been in the meantime, here you see me, not in the mean time, there you see me. In other words, the location indicated by there is proxal for the represented speaker, but distal for the current speaker who obliquely 17

Von Roncador analyses (31) as an instance of his notion of ‘overheard speech’ (wahrgenommene Rede), which forms part of his category of ‘erlebte Rede’.

Other deictics in FIST and DIST 219

represents the dialogue from the current speech situation. A current speaker-related adverbial deictic cannot, in my narrowly defined category of FIST, be tolerated in FIST, since it would disrupt the represented speaker’s perspective. In DIST, however, it is not problematic, which again supports the view that DIST is strongly current speaker-construed. The fact that there as it occurs in (31) can only be interpreted in terms of DIST should not be understood as entailing any strict apportioning of there to DIST and here to FIST. If a there can be understood as distal with regard to the represented speaker’s deictic centre (hence, one might say, as ‘intensionally distal’), as in (32), a FIST reading remains possible. (32)

When he finally got back from Barbados, he made a firm resolve. He was never going back there, ever!

Since it is clear from the context in (32) that there refers to Barbados, where the represented speaker just got back from, there is distal to the represented speaker at his t0 (‘intensionally distal’) and can hence be read as part of a FIST rendering of his thoughts about never going back there. On the basis of examples like (29–32), I would argue that spatiotemporal deictics in FIST are always interpreted from the represented speaker’s deictic centre, so as to preserve the consistent represented speaker’s perspective in FIST. In DIST, on the other hand, since the current speaker appropriates the original utterance and adjusts person deixis (crucially including accessibility organization) entirely to his or her own deictic centre, spatiotemporal deictics will typically be referred to the current speaker’s deictic centre. Even so, I would not go so far as to exclude the possibility of the odd shifted deictic in DIST; it remains, after all, the current speaker’s prerogative to include a partial shift. The stronger constraint is on FIST, as in it the illusion of being inside the represented speaker’s perspective would be exposed and lost on the occurrence of a current speaker-related deictic. Example (33), which continues the example discussed as (29) in Chapter 5, is the one example I have so far come across of a shifted, intensionally absolute deictic (here) in a clear DIST context:18

18

Exceptions such as (33) mean that the analysis of DIST as always fully construed from the current speaker’s deictic centre (Chapter 5, section 6 and Table 2) is an idealization. Even so, I believe the idealization is justified as DIST is certainly the most strongly current speaker-construed of the four types included in Table 2.

220 Spatiotemporal deixis and expressivity in FIST and DIST (33)

Demand, did I? – I, who had gone off and abandoned my widowed mother, who had skipped off to America and married without even informing her, who had never once brought my child, her grandson, to see her – I, who for ten years had stravaiged the world like a tinker, never doing a hand’s turn of work, living off my dead father’s few pounds and bleeding the estate dry – what right, she shrilled, what right had I to demand anything here? (John Banville, The Book of Evidence, 1998 [1989]: 59)

Now, if people working with a more traditional three-way typology (DST–IST–FIST) encounter deictics which seem unrelated to the represented speaker’s deictic centre, they are prompted to argue that current speaker-related deictics are possible in FIST. For instance, Steinberg (1971: 241f) considers “authorial” time adverbials an option, even if it is then a less frequent option than that of “personal” time adverbials (see von Roncador 1988: 228–229 for further references to likeminded authors). The following is an example discussed by Steinberg as well as von Roncador:19 (34)

Au Postillon is an outlet, at the other side facing the barracks, and everyone seemed to already know what was going on. Mr Benoît sat down there, […] Had all those people, that Sunday evening, lost sight of the fact that the next day was a Monday? And that they had to be at work? (Louis Aragon, La Semaine sainte, Ch. V “Saint-Denis” qtd. Steinberg 1971: 240 and von Roncador 1988: 228; translation mine)20

In a presumed original what would have been said is tomorrow, not the next day (e.g. Have you people all lost sight of the fact that tomorrow is a Monday?). In a rendering as FIST, we would expect to see tomorrow (Had these people all lost sight of the fact that tomorrow was a Monday?), related directly to the represented speaker’s t0. The next day is not directly 19

Interestingly, von Roncador (1988: 229 n128) notes that whenever “relational” rather than “deictic” time indications are involved, this is in “overheard speech”, a phenomenon I incorporate in DIST, not FIST. 20 The French original reads as follows: “Au Postillon est un débit, de l’autre coté, face aux casernes, et tout le monde y semblait déjà au courant de ce qui se passait. M. Benoît s’y installa, […] Est-ce que tous ces gens-là, ce dimanche soir, avaient perdu de vue que le lendemain était lundi? Et qu’ils devraient être à leur travail?”

Other deictics in FIST and DIST 221

related to any t0 but rather to a contextually given reference point other than t0. In my view, (34) can only be made sense of if it is read as DIST in which that Sunday evening is understood as a current speaker’s indication of a reference time vis-à-vis which the next day is interpreted. On the whole, it is no fewer than three deictics in (34) which are interpreted from the current speaker’s perspective: the proxal those in all those people rather than the distal these expected in FIST, the explicit mention of that Sunday evening rather than the implicit involvement of the represented speaker’s t0 in FIST, and the ‘scalar’ deictic the next day referring to this explicit time indication, rather than tomorrow relating directly to the represented speaker’s t0. Again, as was the case for (31), the discussion of (34) should not be read as instating a ban on occurrences of ‘relative’ or scalar deictics such as the next day in FIST. Rather, what transpires from this discussion is that examples in which such a scalar deictic (the next day in 34) is interpreted as belonging to the dominion of a current speaker’s reference point (that Sunday evening in 34) are consistent with an interpretation as DIST, not as FIST. If in a given context the next day allows a reading as belonging to the dominion of a reference point attributed to the represented speaker’s perspective, a reading as FIST remains possible, as in the following constructed example: (35)

In two weeks’ time, he finally had a day off. He would take that day off, and then the next day turn up at work to hand in his resignation. At long last he would be free.

In conclusion, the general pattern that emerges is that spatiotemporal deictics are referred to the represented speaker in FIST, but to the current speaker in DIST. To observe that this is the general pattern does not, however, imply any rigid assignment of specific adverbial expressions to one or the other sentence type. The only strict rule is that current speaker-related deictics are incompatible with the conception of FIST advocated here.

222 Spatiotemporal deixis and expressivity in FIST and DIST 3. Expressivity in FIST and DIST 3.1. The echoed expressivity of DIST Both FIST and DIST have a syntagmatic structure like that of DST, that is to say, a juxtaposition of reported and reporting clause, with a reporting clause which can take different positions within the sentence or which may be left unexpressed (Chapter 2, section 5.2). The reported clauses of all three types, DST, FIST, and DIST, allow all basic sentence types, which is not the case with the ‘incorporated’ reported clause of IST. This juxtaposed syntagmatic structure has an enabling function with regard to some important expressive features, such as different mood options or certain discourse markers such as Oh! or well which are less easily accommodated in IST. Against the idea that FIST and DIST could be considered as ‘subtypes’ or ‘stylistic variants’ of IST, their wider array of expressive features supports the idea of FIST and DIST as main types, along with DST and IST, rather than subtypes. The critical distinction between FIST and DIST in terms of expressivity thus lies not in the features which they allow or disallow, for these are in fact the same, but in the assignment of the expressive ‘source’ for them. Following the narrower definition of FIST and the separate category of DIST advocated here, the expressivity in FIST is understood exclusively with respect to the represented speaker, while expressive features in DIST are interpreted as appropriated and echoed by the current speaker, and thus inherently have a complex ‘double’ parentage involving both the current and the represented speaker. The distinction between FIST and DIST on this criterion is thus necessarily subtle, and expressive features are therefore not the most reliable criterion to rely on in order to decide between different readings. Rather, what will argue for a DIST reading is usually deictic or other features, such as explicit indications of ‘non-mimetic’ reporting (as with condensations of barrages of questions into a single sentence), indications of a current speaker’s irony, or the fact that two sides of a dialogue are represented from a single consistent perspective. Once a DIST reading has been established on the basis of such cues, expressive features get to be interpreted in this light and are understood as echoed.

Expressivity in FIST and DIST 223

Consider, in this regard, the interrogative mood in example (36): (36)

Did I really know the road? Ralph asked me. Were the muleteers to be trusted? Would there be beds and eatable food when we arrived? (Brenan, South from Granada, p. 19 qtd. Banfield 1982: 123)

According to Banfield, the ‘SELF’ or subject of consciousness, to whom expressive resources are referred, in (36) is “the represented speaker, and not the SPEAKER of the E [‘expression’] (1982: 123).21 In Banfield’s treatment, cases of ‘overheard speech’ such as (36) are treated as closely parallel to echo questions, as in (37): (37)

Jim: What a peach of a girl you are! Liz: What a peach of a girl I am? (Yamaguchi 1989: 587)

In echo questions, typically an interlocutor’s prior utterance is wholly or partly repeated so as to ascertain whether the interlocutor was properly understood or, more often, to express attitudes of incredulity, wonderment, annoyance, and so on, towards the prior utterance (see Chapter 7, section 3). Banfield claims that the expressivity in echo questions (Liz’s What a peach of a girl I am? in 37) is that of the echoed speaker (Jim). Yamaguchi justifiedly remarks, however, that [e]ven if Liz is in perfect accord with Jim’s opinion, she does not and can not [sic] express that same feeling by echoing Jim’s words. (Yamaguchi 1989: 587)

What I propose is that, even though the represented speaker’s expressivity continues to shine through in a DIST representation, the act of appropriation and echo by the current speaker cannot leave this expressivity unaffected. 22 Again, in FIST the ‘illusion of alterity’, to borrow Fludernik’s (1993) phrase, is kept intact, but in DIST it is plainly exposed as an illusion, and current speaker concerns such as irony or other attitudes take 21

See also note 8 in Chapter 5 on the revision to Banfield’s ‘priority of SPEAKER’ necessitated by the inclusion of cases like (36) in her category of FIST (‘represented speech or thought’). 22 On the notion of echo, which in Relevance Theory is analysed as involving the expression of an attitude towards a ‘metarepresented’ utterance, see further Chapter 7, section 3.

224 Spatiotemporal deixis and expressivity in FIST and DIST over. In this sense, in echo questions as well as in DIST, the ‘echoed’ expressivity is submerged in this current expressivity, and no longer has its original expressive value. This distancing or echoic effect works in two steps. First, one is under the impression, because of the deictic alignment of the represented material, that it is straightforwardly the current speaker’s speech act. It is only in a second step, when one comes to realize (thanks to an explicit reporting clause or through contextual cues) that two speech situations, current and represented, are involved, that this initial interpretation is corrected and that cognizance is taken of the fact that ultimately, this speech act originates in a distinct represented speaker’s prior utterance. For instance in (36), at the point where one has processed Did I really know the road? one might read this as a current speaker’s feeling locationally challenged, but the reporting clause Ralph asked me and the narrative context soon correct such a reading to produce the echoic interpretation. One advantage of this echoic interpretation is that it allows one to accommodate narrative irony in a way which Banfield’s interpretation does not. In examples such as the Lucy and Miss Bartlett example from A Room With a View (discussed as example 5 in Chapter 5), or in example (38) below from Ulysses, the consistent current speaker’s perspective from which the exchange is represented is instrumental in bringing about the mild irony underlying the passage. (38)

He walked by the tree of sunnywinking leaves and towards him came the wife of Mr David Sheehy M.P. – Very well, indeed, father. And you father? Father Conmee was wonderfully well indeed. He would go to Buxton probably for the waters. And her boys, were they getting on well at Belvedere? Was that so? Father Conmee was very glad indeed to hear that. And Mr Sheehy himself? Still in London. The house was still sitting, to be sure it was. Beautiful weather it was, delightful indeed. Yes, it was very probable that Father Bernard Vaughan would come again to preach. O, yes: a very great success. A wonderful man really. Father Conmee was very glad to see the wife of Mr David Sheehy M.P. looking so well and he begged to be remembered to Mr David Sheehy M.P. Yes, he would certainly call. – Good afternoon, Mrs Sheehy. (Joyce, Ulysses, 1961 [1922]: 219)

Expressivity in FIST and DIST 225

The condensed, echoic nature of the DIST passage (surrounded by two stretches of DST marked by dashes) lends itself more easily to an expression of a mildly dissociative attitude towards the smalltalk being exchanged than a continued DST representation, in which such effects can only be of a more broadly contextual nature and thus less ‘immediate’. In similar vein, the irony in some of the examples involving ‘overheard speech’ can only be understood as emanating from the current speaker’s perspective. Thus, for instance, in cases like I’ve always hated him, I always will hate him (discussed as example 16 in Chapter 5), if following Banfield the SELF or expressive source is really the echoed represented speaker Pierre, then there should be no hint of irony. In order to obtain the correct reading in which the current speaker does not agree with the contention that he or she hates Pierre, it is necessary to read the representation of Pierre’s speech as a current speaker’s ironic echo – ironic inasmuch as the current speaker expresses attitudes not veridically felt. To the more ‘evidential’ uses of DIST, a similar reasoning in terms of appropriation and echo applies, perhaps even more strongly so. In cases like Prof. Nowé has taken a few days off, he says, or indeed in Reinhart’s (1975) example John will be late, he said, the main point (about the professor’s absence and John’s late arrival) is being made by the current speaker, based on something the represented speakers originally communicated. While the current speaker’s expressivity and responsibility thus supersedes or usurps that of the represented speaker, the latter remains ‘visible’ but has been overlaid by the former.23 As a summary to this section, we can state that in DIST, all manner of expressive constructions may occur, but in the current speaker’s act of echoing they supersede the underlying represented speaker’s expressivity. The current speaker appropriates and echoes the represented speaker’s expressivity for his or her own current communicative purposes, viz. the expression of an attitude (ranging from associative to dissociative). I will return to the notion of ‘echo’ and the attitudes involved in Chapter 7. First, in the next section, I briefly survey the resources involved in creating the much acclaimed expressivity of FIST.

23

As pointed out to me by Nicole Delbecque, one can imagine a context in which John’s late arrival is falsified and John in fact arrives on time, in which case it would not only be the current speaker of John will be late, but also the represented speaker John, who would be held to have been mistaken.

226 Spatiotemporal deixis and expressivity in FIST and DIST 3.2. The expressivity of FIST At the heart of the success of FIST as a mode of representation in modern fiction lies its combination of avoiding the explicitness and outspokenness of DST with the possibility of using all expressive resources to express the emotions, attitudes and thoughts of the represented speaker. Those features that remove FIST from DST, while essential to produce the ‘silenced’, intimate representation impossible to obtain in DST (cf. van der Voort 1986), are basic, minimal deictic adjustments which do not disrupt the interpersonal expressivity which remains represented speaker oriented. In terms of person deixis, as I have argued, accessibility organization continues to reside with the represented speaker irrespective of the current speaker’s control of grammatical person, and ‘intensionally’ the temporal relations expressed evoke the represented speaker’s perspective. By separating out the category of DIST from the traditional ‘catch-all’ category of FIST, I have developed a more strictly delineated description of FIST and thereby tried to capture this unique ‘silencing’ nature of FIST (see further Chapter 7 for a translation of these notions into the vocabulary of secondary grounding developed in Chapter 4). In this section, I will only briefly illustrate the main means through which expressive meanings tied to the represented speaker may get to be expressed in the reported clause of FIST; a very detailed overview with ample exemplification is given in Fludernik (1993: Chapter 4). Essentially these resources are the same as for any straightforward (non-reported) clause, but it has to be stressed that in FIST these construe the represented speaker’s interpersonal meanings. Resources which are ‘expressive’ in functional models of language belong to the so-called interpersonal layer of grammatical organization (see earlier Chapter 2 and further Chapter 8) and in Systemic-Functional (Halliday 1994 [1985]) and Semiotic Grammar (McGregor 1997) are claimed to be realized in a fundamentally different way, which can be characterized as ‘non-compositional’. Interpersonal resources do not add bits of representational material to the process–participants–circumstances constellation, but rather disperse their meaning across representational units of varying sizes (McGregor 1997: Chapter 6). On the ‘signifier’ side of the specifically interpersonal form–meaning correlates, interpersonal phenomena often involve ‘scope’ (McGregor 1997: Chapter 6), as we will see in more detail in relation to subjectified forms of speech or thought representation in Chapter 8. Here I want to focus on the different kinds of interper-

Expressivity in FIST and DIST 227

sonal meanings (the ‘signified’ side of the interpersonal sign) and on the resources used in FIST to express these. I will adopt McGregor’s proposal (1997: 210, passim) to distinguish three meaning types for interpersonal relationships: attitudinal or speakeroriented, illocutionary or hearer-oriented, and modal or other-oriented (i.e. relating to the shared context between speaker and hearer with its presuppositions and expectations).24 All three types of interpersonal meaning relate to the specific speech event or “ground” (Langacker 1987, 1991) to which the general type of process gets to be tied. Turning to the modal resources first, the systems of modality and polarity combine to serve the expression of modal assessments on the part of the represented speaker – that is to say, assessments of the degree of likelihood, obligatoriness, ability, and so on. Polarity can be viewed as a modal resource inasmuch as it provides the two extreme values (‘zero’ and ‘one’) in a cline of “occurrence values” (Davies 1979: 67f) occupied in between by modal values. Apart from modal auxiliaries, discussed in relation to tense in section 1.1.1 above, there are many adverbials which may be considered in some way ‘modal’.25 As an example, consider the use of actually, dubbed an ‘intensity’ adjunct by Halliday (1994 [1985]: 82–83), in (39). Clearly, in countering possible counter-expectations the adverb evokes the represented speaker’s (and not the current speaker’s) assessment of probabilities and expectations: (39)

Either they have put him here for a reason, or he’s just here. He isn’t sure that he wouldn’t, actually, rather have that reason. (Gravity’s Rainbow; Pynchon 1981: 434 qtd. Fludernik 1993: 238)

Illocutionary meanings provide indications to the addressee of how the utterance is to be taken as an interactive event. One major category expressing such meanings is that of ‘mood’ in the sense of basic clause types expressive of speech function, that is to say, the way in which subject and finite are ordered and combine with intonation, to produce declarative, 24

For this third type of interpersonal meaning, McGregor in fact uses the term “rhetorical” (1997: 210). 25 Halliday (1994 [1985]: 354f) distinguishes four types of modality, and each of these can be expressed by many different adverbs: obligation (e.g. definitely, absolutely, by all means), inclination (e.g. willingly, readily, gladly), certainty (possibly, probably, certainly, already, of course, evidently, tentatively), and usuality (sometimes, usually, always).

228 Spatiotemporal deixis and expressivity in FIST and DIST interrogative, imperative and exclamative clauses.26 Thus, for instance, in an example like (40), the exclamativity is unequivocally that of the represented speaker, not of the current speaker. (40)

While paying three guineas he caught sight of himself in the glass behind the counter. What a solid young citizen he looked – quiet, honourable, prosperous without vulgarity. On such does England rely. (Maurice, xxx; Forster 1987: 135 qtd. Fludernik 1993: 159)

Even though the exclamativity in (40) is fully the represented speaker’s, I will argue in Chapter 7 that speech function is not fully re-enacted, as it is in DST, but only partly, viz. in a self-expressive way, because the reported clause of FIST has no fully addressed you. Besides mood, intonation, and speech function (in its ‘selfexpressive’ aspects), addressee-oriented adverbials such as frankly and honestly form another illocutionary resource. Such adverbials formed a problem for Banfield, because in her analysis they involve an underlying you, and you is to be banned from FIST. As a result of such a strict ban, within Banfield’s logic adverbs like honestly had to be read as “statements by an inexplicit first person” (1982: 117), i.e. the current speaker. I have nuanced this rather mechanical ban on you previously (Chapter 5 section 3.1). An adverb such as honestly in Honestly, she was so pleased to see him – delighted! expresses the original she-persona’s interpersonal position visà-vis her original interlocutor: what is involved is an honest expression of her feelings, not those of the current speaker. Similar remarks apply to frankly in example (41): (41)

26

Frankly, why shouldn’t she have workmen for friends! (Banfield 1982: 117)

As is well known, there is only a relationship of unmarked realization between, for instance, a declarative and the speech function of statement. For instance, declarative utterances may indirectly acquire the illocutionary force of a question, as when It is cold in here is interpreted as a request for closing the window. Even in such a case, however, as McGregor (1997: 215) argues, the mood choice remains important: it is not as if It is cold in here and Can you close the window please? are illocutionary equivalents, since the difference in directness spells differences in politeness or other illocutionary attitudes.

Expressivity in FIST and DIST 229

Because she had noted the frequent occurrence of frankly in FIST contexts, Banfield proposed an ad hoc recategorization of it as a ‘speaker-oriented’ rather than an addressee-oriented adverbial, “at least for some speakers of English” (1982: 118). Just like honestly, however, frankly serves as an indication to the hearer of how an utterance is to be taken interactively and is thus primarily an illocutionary or addressee-oriented resource. In FIST, it is related to the represented speaker. Resources which may be counted among those expressing attitudinal meaning can be grouped into two categories, viz. word order and attitudinal lexemes. Under word order come various marked patterns of word order which are considered to be in some way ‘expressive’, arguably because the marked word order corresponds iconically to a marked meaning such as emphasis, emotional intensity, insistence, and so on. In the generative literature, the word order phenomena referred to here have been termed ‘root transformations’ or ‘last cyclic transformation’ as they involve things like inversion, wh-movement, and various types of pre- or postposing originally believed to be licensed only in ‘independent’ clauses. It has since been shown that a lot of root transformations can also occur in ‘dependent’ clauses (e.g. Hooper and Thompson 1973) and Fludernik holds that they can occur in any context of what she calls “‘active’ consciousness” (1993: 245). Examples (42–43) exemplify just two of the seventeen types illustrated by Fludernik (1993: 244–256), preposing of a negative constituent and of a verb phrase respectively: (42)

(43)

Never should she forget Herbert killing a wasp with a teaspoon on the bank! (To the Lighthouse I, xvii; Woolf 1985: 82 qtd. Fludernik 1993: 246) Their heads were bent down, their heads were pressed down by some remorseless gale. Speak to him they could not. (To the Lighthouse III, iv; Woolf 1985: 152 qtd. Fludernik 1993: 250)

Under the heading of attitudinal lexemes fall various devices such as words in another language or dialect, hesitations, malapropisms, interjections (e.g. gosh), discourse markers (e.g. oh, well, alas, nay), attitudinal adjectives and adverbials such as awful and regrettably. Some of these resources are illustrated in (44–46): (44)

What he would have liked, she [Mrs Ramsay] supposed, would have been to say how he had been to Ibsen with the Ramsays. He

230 Spatiotemporal deixis and expressivity in FIST and DIST

(45)

(46)

was an awful prig – oh yes, an insufferable bore. (To the Lighthouse I, i; Woolf 1985: 17 qtd. Fludernik 1993: 261) Poor Uncle Jo! she thought, with a rush of affectionate pity for the old gentleman. (After Many a Summer I, iv; Huxley 1950: 48 qtd. Fludernik 1993: 263) Great God! there were floating masses in it, that might dash against her boat as she passed, and cause her to perish too soon. What were those masses? (Mill on the Floss VII, v; G. Eliot 1986: 508 qtd. Fludernik 1993: 239)

The main point with regard to the expressivity of FIST is that clearly, in spite of the basic deictic adjustments made in FIST to the current speaker’s deictic centre, there remains ample room for the expression of the represented speaker’s modal, illocutionary, and attitudinal meanings. On none of these points does the reported clause of FIST tolerate current speaker’s interventions; if such appear to be involved, a categorization as DIST suggests itself.

4. Conclusion This chapter has sought to extend the description of person deixis in FIST and DIST arrived at in Chapter 5 to other areas of deixis and expressivity. Regarding tense use, I have argued that FIST in past time-sphere contexts typically involves relative tense evoking the represented speaker’s intensional perspective. However, in gnomic statements intensionally absolute tense, related to the represented speaker’s t0, can be used so as to signal that what is presented as gnomic or universal is in fact only believed to be general by the represented speaker. Present time-sphere FIST necessarily involves absolute tenses since they relate to a present domain (including t0), but I have argued these too can be interpreted as intensionally absolute. In this way, we find Declerck’s system for expressing the different temporal relations reflected in the tense use of FIST. In DIST, tense is more strongly ‘current speaker related’. Unlike FIST, DIST does allow current speaker-related absolute tense, typically in more ‘evidential’ cases in which the link with the represented speech situation is less prominent. In more ‘narrative’ cases, relative tense is used, also for gnomic statements, because this preserves the link with the represented speech situation, though because of the current speaker’s appropriation of speech function I

Conclusion 231

have argued that the represented speaker’s intensional perspective is not prominently evoked. Spatiotemporal adverbials were shown to conform to the general pattern: they are understood with respect to the represented speaker’s deictic centre in FIST, and typically with respect to that of the current speaker in DIST. Likewise, all expressive resources in FIST construe the represented speaker’s interpersonal meanings, whereas in DIST the represented speaker’s original expressivity is usurped in the act of echoing, through which the current speaker’s communicative and expressive purposes come to overlay the echoed ones. As a result of this, DIST is a suitable locus for the expression of the current speaker’s irony, for the use of others’ discourse to make current speaker’s claims, and for the current speaker’s manipulation in terms of the condensation of another’s discourse. The underlying concern of this and the preceding chapter has been to clarify the rationale for ‘separating out’ DIST from the undifferentiated catch-all conception of FIST which prevails in the literature. It is my belief that the separate postulate of a category of DIST provides a description which is grammatically more accurate as well as stylistically more adequate: it captures essential grammatical features in a more coherent way, and it also allows one to reserve FIST as a more narrow category for the more intimate, silenced, ‘closed circuit’ representation of a represented speaker’s expressivity (devoid of the bluntness of DST for ‘emotional’ discourse representation). DIST, in its turn, thus becomes the locus par excellence for a current speaker’s ‘echoing’ manipulation of a represented speaker’s (presumed) original discourse, ‘infecting’ it for instance with irony or with explicit indications of the illusionary nature of mimesis (i.e. indications of the current speaker’s act of condensation). The next chapter attempts to flesh out these semantic and pragmatic considerations in greater detail.

Chapter 7 The grammatical semantics and the pragmatics of free and distancing indirect speech or thought

This chapter aims to apply the model proposed in Chapter 4 for dealing with the grammatical semantics of STR in terms of the notion of secondary grounding to FIST and DIST. By adopting a construction-based, grammatical approach to defining the semantics of different types of STR, I hope to provide generalizations that are distinctive as well as useful for the study of pragmatic effects of the use of these types of STR in discourse. At the end of this chapter I will try to demonstrate this usefulness specifically with regard to DIST. In the first section of this chapter, I will characterize the manner of speech function (re-)enactment in the secondary ground of FIST and DIST, along the lines proposed for DST and IST in Chapter 4. FIST will be characterized in terms of a self-expressive (non-exchange directed) reenactment of speech function, and DIST in terms of echoic enactment. In the next two sections, these general proposals will be fleshed out further for both types separately. In section 2 I will address the widespread assumption that FIST involves what has been called a ‘dual voice’, i.e. a fusion of the narrator’s and the character’s ‘voice’. This idea will be confronted with the notion of unidirectional or self-expressive re-enactment: it will be argued that with this notion, the pragmatics of FIST can be captured more adequately than in the dual voice approach. Section 3 will be concerned with the characterization of DIST in terms of the notions of ‘echo’, as it has been studied mainly in Relevance Theory, and that of distance. In section 4, this understanding of the echoic or distancing character of DIST will be applied to concrete text examples from different genres and a number of pragmatic usage types of DIST will be distinguished. A concluding section 5 rounds off this chapter.

1. The secondary grounding in FIST and DIST In Chapter 4 (section 2.2), we saw that DST is characterized by ‘full speech function re-enactment’ (or ‘pseudo-enactment’) in its secondary or surro-

The secondary grounding in FIST and DIST 233

gate ground. That is to say, the deictic and syntagmatic properties of DST enable the introduction of a new I–you axis with direct communication between these participants. In IST, it was argued, speech function is not reenacted in the secondary ground, because the deictic and grammatical properties ‘disable’ an addressed ‘represented’ you and even basic clause types such as interrogatives or exclamatives. In section 1.1, I turn to a characterization of the secondary grounding in FIST and in 1.2 I focus on DIST. In section 1.3, I briefly discuss the distinction between the encoded semantics of FIST and DIST, and the pragmatic functions which the types may come to fulfil in actual usage.

1.1. Self-expressive speech function re-enactment in FIST Let us now first turn to a characterization of the secondary or ‘surrogate’ ground in FIST. Because FIST shares with DST its syntagmatic structure (juxtaposition, Chapter 2, section 5.2), its reported clause can have different basic clause types (like declarative vs. interrogative) expressive of speech function. However, in FIST this does not lead to a full ‘dramatic reenactment’ of the original speech act, because the deictic coordinates are not, as in DST, reset to those of the original speech event. Even though the accessibility organization and choice of grammatical resource remains the represented speaker’s prerogative in the reported clause of FIST, grammatical person of noun phrases fulfilling speech roles is determined from the current speaker’s deictic centre (Chapter 5). This means that the reenactment in FIST can only be partial compared to the ‘full’ re-enactment of DST. In what way precisely do the deictic features of FIST enable only a ‘partial’ speech function re-enactment? The key to this problem lies, I believe, in the observation that in FIST neither the represented nor the current addressee can be addressed as you. As we have seen, the only second person that can occur is a you designating the represented speaker (not the represented addressee) in second person narration, as in Why is she looking at you like that [you wonder].1 Ultimately, the absence of a directly

1

As explained in Chapter 5, section 3.1, the ‘addressivity’ one might attach to the represented speaker-you in second person FIST is a story-internal one, between narrator and protagonist, and not one between the represented speaker and his or her original addressee, nor one between the current speaker and addressee.

234 The grammatical semantics and the pragmatics of FIST and DIST addressed you in FIST relates to the basic nature of speech or thought reporting: you report in another speech situation than that in which the original utterance or thought is located. In other words, in the current speech situation the represented addressee is no longer an addressee; if this were the case, you would not report but simply interact directly. In DST, however, a complete deictic shift revives the original speech situation (enabling direct address of the represented addressee in the surrogate ground), and in DIST everything is drawn into the current speech situation and the current speaker’s construal (enabling direct address of the current addressee). With this understanding in mind, it is possible to narrow down what it means to say that the speech function re-enactment in FIST is partial compared to DST. What is ‘lost’ compared to DST is what one might call ‘exchange-directedness’ or even ‘other-directedness’. Because of its deictic-expressive duality, the reported clause of FIST addresses no-one, even though it does code different basic clause types expressive of speech functions. In this sense, the re-enacted speech functions in FIST, having lost their potential for ‘interactive’ exchange with either a represented addressee or with the current addressee, can be characterized as unidirectional or selfexpressive. Statements, questions, exclamations, and so on in a sense only ‘emanate from’ the represented speaker in FIST, and do not reach an addressee (neither in the represented speech situation, as in DST, nor in the current speech situation, as in DIST). In this way, the ‘self-expressive’ speech function re-enactment in FIST loses any orientation towards possible responses, rejoinders, and retorts. Because of this self-expressive character, the reported clause of FIST often has a feel of ‘self-address’ to it (p.c. Eirian Davies): it may represent, for instance, a thought as it privately occurred to the represented speaker in soliloquy (How her heart was beating now!), or also speech only half said, and then more to oneself than to anyone else (Which looked best against her black dress? Which did indeed? said Mrs Ramsay absent-mindedly, Woolf, To the Lighthouse, p. 59, qtd. Banfield 1982: 190). This should not be taken to imply that FIST can only be used to represent soliloquy: in examples like (1) and (2) below, the presumed original speech event did involve ‘other-oriented’ address, but the FIST representation is bereft of exchange potential on account of the non-deictically shifted pronouns: (1)

She didn’t want them now, Primrose said, they would all be wilted before they even reached Dark Rosslyn; perhaps he could pick her

The secondary grounding in FIST and DIST 235

(2)

some on the way back. (Malcolm Lowry, Gin and Goldenrod qtd. Semino, Short and Culpeper 1997: 23) How did she manage these things in the depth of the country? he asked her. (Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse, p. 119 qtd. Oltean 1995: 35)

What does it mean to say that the question in (2) is ‘self-expressive’? As Davies (1979: 51) has argued, a question normally implies a request for a reply which means technically that it is marked for the transference of the speaker role. In other words, questions typically involve the assignment to some addressee of the role of subsequent speaker (viz. the ‘reply giver’). A question like that contained in the reported clause of (2), however, is free of such implications: questions in FIST are not marked for speaker role transference (Davies 1979: 121). A question in the reported clause of DST, on the other hand, is marked for speaker role transference and thus retains the feel of exchange potential within its secondary ground. One way of conceptualizing this distinction further is in terms of ‘repeatability’: if you take reported clauses of DST out of their reportative context, they can function independently as turns in dialogue. If you try to do the same thing with a reported clause of FIST, it soon appears that they cannot function as turns. Thus, the reported clause in He said: “Can I help in any way?” can itself be used independently in non-reported speech as a turn in dialogue. In a FIST sentence such as Could he help in any way? he asked, however, no exchange between the represented speaker and addressee of the offer for help can be set up, and Could he help in any way? cannot normally be used in direct interaction as one’s own offer for help (it could be used in discussing someone else’s offer for help, on a tentative rather than past reading for could). The fact that FIST only has a ‘partial’ speech function re-enactment compared to DST does not render basic clause type distinctions in the surrogate ground uninteresting from the point of view of expressivity. As discussed previously in Chapter 6 (section 3.2), different basic clause types expressive of speech function clearly belong with the expressive (specifically illocutionary) resources of FIST, geared to the represented speaker’s deictic-expressive centre. To take questions as an example once more, the interrogativity of a reported clause of FIST is clearly the represented speaker’s, and not in any way the current speaker’s. The notion of a selfexpressive speech function re-enactment is thus intended to capture both the fact that the re-enactment of speech function is only partial or unidirec-

236 The grammatical semantics and the pragmatics of FIST and DIST tional, and the fact that structures coding different speech functions are nonetheless expressive of the represented speaker’s declarativity, interrogativity, exclamativity, and so on. By way of conclusion to this initial semantic characterization of FIST, consider Figure 19, which offers a diagrammatic representation following the conventions outlined in Chapter 4 (section 2.2).

current speaker

represented speaker

represented addressee

Figure 19. Self-expressive speech function re-enactment in FIST

The difference with the representation for DST (Chapter 4, Figure 13) is evident: the arrow only starts from the represented speaker, but does not reach an addressee. No dashed arrow returns to the represented speaker, symbolizing the fact that no addressee is fully addressed and any exchange potential is lost in the surrogate ground of FIST. At the top level, i.e. in the current speech situation, however, communication does take place between current speaker (‘narrator’) and addressee (‘reader’; see also section 2.2 below). The curious mixture of having the full array of basic clause types on the one hand, but not having full speech function re-enactment on the other hand, sets FIST firmly apart from both DST and DIST. As we will see in the following subsection, the difference with DIST which also has all possible clause type distinctions lies not only in the features ‘full’ vs. ‘partial’, but also in the distinction between enactment and re-enactment.

1.2. Echoic speech function enactment in DIST The constructional properties of DIST as described in preceding chapters (5–6) might initially lead one to believe that the ‘secondary’ grounding in DIST is perfectly straightforward and similar to the ‘actual’ grounding of utterances in direct interaction. On the one hand, like DST and FIST, DIST is syntagmatically characterized by juxtaposition, which means it can have

The secondary grounding in FIST and DIST 237

all manner of clause types and expressive constructions. On the other hand, in DIST there is no whole or partial deictic ‘displacement’ vis-à-vis the current speaker’s deictic centre as there is in DST and FIST respectively, since typically all resources are construed from the current speaker’s deictic centre. The combination of allowing all structures expressive of speech functions and the overall deictic singularity of DIST leads to the conclusion that in DIST speech function is enacted rather than re-enacted. If this is the case, then what is the difference between the enactment in DIST and the enactment of a speech function in direct interaction? The fundamental difference between the former and the latter is that DIST is concerned with two speech situations, a current and a represented one, whereas in direct interaction there is only the current speech situation. The fact that in DIST, unlike in ordinary speech acts, the enactment of speech function is set in the context of a report results in its echoic semantics: the speech function enacted by the current speaker in the reported clause of DIST is not a straightforward speech act, but makes crucial reference to someone else’s or the current speaker’s own previous discourse, which it appropriates. This characterization thus works in two steps: first, formal grounds (syntagmatic as well as deictic) show that in the reported clause of DIST speech function is enacted, and not as in DST or FIST wholly or partially re-enacted from a different deictic perspective, nor as in IST incorporated into a single ‘reporting speech act’. However, the integration of this enacted speech function into an STR construction, with its duality of speech situations (current and represented), signals the complex nature of this enacted (current) speech function, viz. as echoically related to a prior enactment in another (represented) speech situation. While the reported clause of DIST is thus not clearly signalled (deictically or syntagmatically) not to belong to current speaker discourse, it is the very act of reporting itself which creates a ‘distance’ vis-à-vis the reported clause. In echoing a previous speech act, the current speaker both takes a distance and, having taken a distance, expresses an attitude towards the echoed utterance or thought. This attitude can either be more ‘associative’ or more ‘dissociative’. The idea that an echo achieves current relevance by expressing an attitude towards what is echoed derives from relevancetheoretical approaches to phenomena like irony and echo questions. These approaches will be discussed briefly in section 3 below, and further examples of the kinds of associative and dissociative attitudes that may be involved in DIST are discussed in section 4. For now, suffice it to illustrate

238 The grammatical semantics and the pragmatics of FIST and DIST briefly this achieving of current relevance with reference to examples previously discussed. Dissociative attitudes can range from strong, as in sarcastic echoes of a represented speaker’s negative remarks about oneself (I was an absolute moron, he said), to rather weak, as in the gently mocking representation of the fussy discussion between Lucy and Miss Barlett discussed in Chapter 5 (example 5). More associative attitudes are typically involved in ‘evidential’ uses of DIST, such as Reinhart’s (1975: 136) example John will be late, he said, or attested examples like He mailed you earlier today, he said, so please do answer him (example 11 in Chapter 5). This last example and others involving second person pronouns, such as (3) below, provide perhaps the clearest kind of example of the current relevance established by using DIST, on account of the direct address of the current interlocutor. The context of example (3) is that Joyce is talking over the phone to Lesley about a third party (“she”) who was making inquiries about Lesley; in the underlined reported clauses, I refers to the current speaker Joyce and you to the current addressee Lesley. (3)

She said um::n e::m did I know if you were teaching […] She said did I know if you were teaching I said (.) well I know she has been […] (attested data qtd. Holt 1996: 228, also qtd. partly Holt 2000: 433–434; my underlining; original transcription simplified)

Holt (1996: 228–229, 2000: 433–434) analysed this example as DST, but on the present account the underlined parts clearly instantiate DIST,2 in which the current speaker directly addresses the current interlocutor in the reported clause. As the examples show, the notion of echoic speech function enactment proposed for DIST reconciles its overall deictic ‘onedimensionality’ with its ‘twodimensionality’ in terms of speech situations (current and represented). Indeed, DIST involves the appropriation of speech acts originally someone else’s by the current speaker (speech function enactment), but this appropriation takes place for current communicative purposes, viz. the expression of the current speaker’s attitudes towards the echoed utterance or thought (echoic). 2

Note that the last sentence, I said well I know she has been, does instantiate DST because here the current addressee Lesley is talked about in the third person, reflecting the fact that in the represented speech situation she was a third party being talked about.

The secondary grounding in FIST and DIST 239

Figure 20 presents an attempt to capture this complexity of DIST. As a type of speech or thought representation, DIST involves a represented speech situation besides the current one, but unlike the other types typically no resources are construed from the point of view of this represented speech situation.3 This is why in Figure 20, unlike in the diagrammatic representations for the other types, the ‘surrogate’ ground construed by the reported clause is not enclosed within the actual ground. Both ‘grounds’ or speech events, that construed in the reported clause and that construed in the reporting clause, are situated on a par and are construed from the current speaker’s deictic centre. Since this is so, a fully addressed (current) you can occur in both grounds, which is indicated by means of the returning arrow in both actual and ‘surrogate’ ground. However, the semantics of echoing derive from the combination of an overall current speaker construal on the one hand, and the relation of this construal to an ‘original’ speech event in the represented speech situation. In order to represent this diagrammatically, this original speech event (with not the current but the represented speaker as central participant) was added in dotted lines in Figure 20. The current speaker-construed reported clause, enacting a current speech act, is related echoically to this underlying speech event. re p o rt e d c la u s e current addressee

current speaker

re p o rt in g c la u s e current speaker

current addressee

echo re pre se nte d

represented

spe ake r

addressee

Figure 20. Echoic speech function enactment in DIST

With this characterization, a ‘grounding semantics’ has now been provided for all four types of STR constructions which, in my view, need to be

3

The possible exception of a ‘shifted’, intensionally absolute spatiotemporal adverb was discussed in Chapter 6 (section 2).

240 The grammatical semantics and the pragmatics of FIST and DIST distinguished in English.4 DST and FIST both involve the re-enactment of the ‘original’ speech function, but in DST this re-enactment is full whereas in FIST it is no longer ‘exchange-directed’ but only partial or ‘selfexpressive’. In IST the current speaker’s speech act of the reporting clause rules supreme and the speech function originally enacted in the represented speech situation is not even partially re-enacted. All that is left for the represented speaker is some more or less ‘isolated’ indications of his or her expressivity through ‘intensionally absolute’ tenses, spatiotemporal deictics, expressive lexemes, and partial quotes. DIST, finally, has speech function enactment (not merely re-enactment) in its reported clause, but contrary to what is the case for non-reportative current speaker text, this speech function is enacted echoically, drawing on a (presumed) original speech act on the part of the represented speaker. Figure 21 represents these characterizations in terms of secondary grounding on a cline along with a cline from deictic duality to singularity. The two clines do not run entirely in parallel inasmuch as the cline from full over partial to no re-enactment (DST–FIST–IST) cannot readily be ‘continued’ to include DIST, which involves echoic enactment rather than any kind of re-enactment. full speech function re-enactment self-expressive speech function re-enactment no speech function re-enactment echoic speech function enactment

DST FIST IST DIST

deictically dual

deictically singular

Figure 21. Deixis and grounding clines in STR

Before confronting the notions of self-expressive re-enactment and echoic enactment with notions like dual voice (section 2) and echo and distance (section 3) as they have been discussed in the literature, it is useful to briefly reflect on the relation between constructional semantics and discourse pragmatics in relation to FIST and DIST.

1.3. FIST and DIST: from semantics to pragmatics The concepts of self-expressive re-enactment vs. echoic enactment, in terms of which FIST and DIST have just been described, are semantic concepts. By semantics I refer specifically to encoded meaning, derived 4

Chapter 8 will add the subjectified counterparts of two of these, IST and DIST, to the picture.

The secondary grounding in FIST and DIST 241

from the constructional properties: it is the specific combination of deixis and syntagmatic structure within an STR construction which results in a specific type of secondary grounding. By their very nature, grammatical or ‘constructional’ semantics are abstract and general. It is only when the pragmatics of FIST and DIST are studied that the concrete manifestations of these abstract semantics can be understood in actual usage. Pragmatic meanings are not encoded in a construction, but arise in specific discourse contexts through the integration of abstract semantics and contextual meanings and inferences. The different levels at which semantics and pragmatics operate (from general and abstract to fine-grained and more concrete) can be illustrated for DIST as follows. The semantic notion of echoic speech function enactment is encoded by the DIST construction, and as such covers all cases of DIST. Inherent in the notion of echo, as we have seen, is the expression of an attitude towards the echoed utterance. What it means to describe the pragmatics of DIST is to investigate and inventorize the different kinds of ‘attitudes’ (either more dissociative or more associative) that are involved in different instances within different genres. Thus, while the notion of ‘attitude’ forms part of the semantic notion of echo, the specification as to what attitude is involved is essentially pragmatic. Pragmatics also play a role in the analysis of attested instances of a ‘non-canonical’ STR construction, which is neither DST nor IST, but of which it may not always be clear whether it is FIST or DIST (see Chapter 5, section 3.4 on ‘pronouns and ambiguity’). In the absence of clear deictic indications, two options present themselves: either a given example is ambiguous between a reading as FIST or as DIST, or it is vague between them (cf. Geeraerts 1993 on polysemy and vagueness in lexical semantics). In the case of ambiguity, a reading as one or the other entails important interpretive differences. For instance, taken on its own, an utterance like Oh, I could never repair the car myself allows of both a reading as FIST (expressing the represented speaker’s past despair over his or her lack of technical skills) or as DIST (the current speaker’s echo of what someone else said). If no reporting clause is present, the abstract semantic difference between FIST and DIST can only help to distinguish the two potential readings. It is only in a concrete context that it becomes pragmatically clear which of the two meanings is involved. In other cases, the difference between FIST and DIST may be vague rather than ambiguous, and the interpretation cannot be reduced to one or the other. As an example, consider (4):

242 The grammatical semantics and the pragmatics of FIST and DIST (4)

She missed me, she said, and thought of me often and fondly, but even as I read the letter I felt her slipping away. (Jim Dodge, Not Fade Away, 2004 [1987]: 43)

In a case such as (4), there are no grammatical indications that can decide between a FIST or a DIST reading for the underlined sentence. In addition, in terms of interpretation, it does not seem to make much difference whether we read it as plunging us into the represented speaker’s consciousness or whether we see the representation as a current speakerconstrued narrative echo. As analysts working with sets of categories, we tend to want to reach a decision, but in some genuinely vague cases one can at best only be forced. Arguably, however, in most cases the difference between a reading as FIST or DIST does really matter and make good sense. If the difference is important, and if ambiguity exists, what may aid interpretation apart from the specific discourse context is general knowledge of pragmatic functions with which both types typically occur. In this way, the more clear cases can be described in terms of their pragmatics, the larger the inventory will become of pragmatic functions associated with FIST and DIST, and the more chances there will be to disambiguate in case of genuine ambiguity. In section 4, I will begin to describe part of this inventory for DIST on the basis of textual examples from different genres. Here I would like to highlight briefly one specific area in which the ambiguity between FIST and DIST can, in my view, be resolved on the basis of pragmatic considerations. One finds occasional mention in the literature of alleged cases of FIST occurring in non-main clauses (e.g. Bally 1912: 554, Fludernik 1993: 242–243). Consider the examples with a relative clause and a becauseclause in (5) and (6) respectively: (5)

(6)

The Boss was introducing Mr. Duffy, who was delighted to meet Mr. Stark, yes, sir, and introducing the gang who had just come up in the second car. (All the King’s Men, i; Warren 1982: 24 qtd. Fludernik 1993: 243) Pilate was surprised that they were successful, but the captain was not, because there could hardly be many people with such a name. (Song of Solomon, v; Morrison 1977: 151 qtd. Fludernik 1993: 242)

The illocutionary marker yes, sir in (5) leaves no doubt that the relative clause is to be understood as involving a distinct represented speaker’s

The secondary grounding in FIST and DIST 243

discourse in some manner. For (6), the case is perhaps less clear, but a reportative reading is at least a likely one, even with only this little context to start from.5 As to the categorization of these examples as FIST, I would propose to take a different path on pragmatic grounds.6 The very fact that the reported stretches in these examples form part of subordinated clauses in my view has implications which strongly suggest a reading as DIST. The integration of these reported snatches within a current speaker’s sentence reflects the fact that these bits are moulded to fit the current speaker’s construal and communicative (i.c. echoic) purposes. The whole point about FIST is that the current speaker yields the point of view to the represented speaker, whose expressivity is fully conjured up irrespective of the deictic limitations involved. Arguably a subordinate clause forming part of a current speaker’s main clause is not a very good locus for pursuing this central goal of FIST. In contrast, when using DIST the current speaker is seeking to further his or her own current goals, and to echo what some represented speaker originally uttered or thought may provide support to achieve these current speaker’s goals. One such goal might be, for (5), to convey to the readership the current speaker’s attitude vis-à-vis the character of Mr. Duffy, a goal to which the ironic overtones of the ‘reported’ relative clause is clearly ancillary. Before turning to less controversial ‘main clause’ textual examples of DIST in section 4, I will attempt to further clarify the semantic notions of self-expressive re-enactment and echoic enactment in a confrontation with the literature on the ‘dual voice’ of FIST (section 2) and on echoes and distance (section 3) respectively. In this confrontation, as we will see, pragmatic considerations will also figure prominently.

5

An example discussed by Reinhart (1975: 140) in terms of her speaker oriented sentence type, We hired Mary because the chairman likes her, he said is a clear example of a reportative because-clause. The fact that the chairman cannot be the represented speaker’s choice of noun phrase type also provides a clear grammatical indication that DIST is involved in this case. 6 For (6), an alternative interpretation seems possible in which all of (6) is viewed as a condensed dialogue (rather than being essentially an ‘objective’ narrative description with only a reportative because-clause). On such a reading, the proper name Pilate as well as the descriptive noun phrase the captain in (6) illustrate the so-called proper name problem indicative of a DIST reading.

244 The grammatical semantics and the pragmatics of FIST and DIST 2. The ‘dual voice’ of FIST and beyond In Chapter 4, it was suggested that the traditional concepts invoked to deal with the semantics of DST and IST, besides the other problems they raise, are too dichotomous to accommodate FIST and DIST. Of course, one of the characteristics of traditional theories is that they tend to limit their scope precisely to DST and IST alone. In addition, one will not generally find explications of FIST couched in terms of verbatimness/non-verbatimness, mention/use, or demonstration/description.7 The only real exception I am aware of is Leech and Short’s (1981: Chapter 10) model, which in its essence is adhered to in Semino and Short (2004), and in which the entire scale of speech (and writing) and thought representation is defined in terms of increasing or decreasing faithfulness claims (see also Short 1988 and Short, Semino and Wynne 2002). In this model FIST is claimed to represent faithfully the illocutionary force and the propositional content of the original speech act, but it is said to be indeterminate with respect to representing the words and structures originally used. IST, in this view, is clear in this last respect in not representing the ‘original’ words and structures, and DST is equally clear in that it does represent these faithfully as well. As argued in Chapter 4 (section 1.1), the fundamental problems raised by notions such as faithfulness to an original render an endeavour to use precisely such notions for the description of types of STR problematic. Even though Short, Semino, and Wynne (2002) and Semino and Short (2004) mention at least some of these problems, they do not seem to take these as threats to their assumptions about the tenability of a faithfulness theory of different STR types. Of course, it is true that in a limited number of contexts such as legal transcripts or news reports, considerations in terms of faithfulness are relevant and differences do obtain along this parameter. In many other STR contexts, however, such considerations are far less important (as in casual conversation) or do not even come into play at all (as with fictive, hypothetical, counterfactual, or negated reports, and reports of thoughts generally). Finally, even if one puts more fundamental issues aside, it seems to me that a semantics of ‘faithfulness’ is not very revealing when applied to a category such as FIST, which is not only used widely in a context (that of narrative) in which faithfulness is in every sense of the

7

On Clark and Gerrig’s (1990) treatment of FIST in terms of demonstration (like DST), see note 10 in Chapter 4.

The ‘dual voice’ of FIST and beyond 245

word a fiction, but for which it also seems unlikely that it is chosen because of its ‘faithfulness’ characteristics. It can justifiedly be argued that in those contexts where faithfulness is important, DST is opted for because DST is best suited (due to its highly autonomous reported clause and its full deictic shift) for speech or thought representation in such contexts. It is not clear, however, that FIST is opted for instead of another type for the rather vague reason that it is indeterminate with respect to faithfulness vis-à-vis the words purportedly originally used. Overall, then, characterizations of FIST in terms of the traditional dichotomies are few and far between. Apart from more fine-grained pragmatic functions ascribed to FIST such as empathy or irony, which I will discuss briefly in section 2.3 below, what one does find is characterizations in terms of the concept of voice. The predominant view is that FIST involves a ‘dual voice’, i.e. a kind of merging of the narrator’s and character’s voice. I will critically discuss this notion of voice and of a ‘dual voice theory’ in section 2.1 and propose my alternative in section 2.2.

2.1. Dual voice The idea of a ‘dual voice theory’, derived mainly from Pascal’s (1977) The Dual Voice although there are earlier precursors (Vološinov 1973 [1930],8 Hernadi 1972), seems to have gained firm ground in stylistics and literary studies (e.g. Rimmon-Kenan 1983: 110, Bal 1997: 50). According to Pascal (1977: 74–75), FIST serves a “double purpose”: On the one hand it evokes the person, through his words, tone of voice, and gesture, with incomparable vivacity. On the other, it embeds the character’s statement or thought in the narrative flow, and even more importantly in the narrator’s interpretation, communicating also his way of seeing and feeling.

An “authorial tinge or voice” (1977: 29) is always present in FIST, according to Pascal, and the resulting duality may be “heard as a tone of irony, or sympathy, of negation or approval, underlying the statement of the character” (1977: 17). The dual voice thesis has sparked lively disagreements 8

The question of authorship surrounding texts like Vološinov (1973 [1930]), which have been claimed to have actually been written by Bakhtin, remains unanswered. For discussion and further references, see Morris 1994: 1–5. Note also that the translation of Marxism and the Philosophy of Language is based on its second (1930) edition, not its first (1929).

246 The grammatical semantics and the pragmatics of FIST and DIST between proponents (for instance McHale 1978, 1983, Ginsburg 1982 and Ducrot 1984, 1991) and perhaps its most vocal opponent, Banfield (1982, 1991). Discussion of all the positions taken in this debate, and especially of the wider-ranging question of the necessary presence, or not, of a narrator in fiction, is beyond my present concern (for discussion see, among others, Fludernik 1993 and 1995, Galbraith 1995, Vandelanotte 2005b: 280–289). Here I merely want to draw attention to the problematic notion of ‘voice’ and articulate my own view on the dual voice analysis of FIST. Different analysts have justifiedly complained about the vagueness surrounding the concept of ‘voice’ which, as Banfield (1991: 23) pointedly notes, tends to remain conveniently undefined.9 Although it is clear that what the dual voice account seeks to address is the apparent conflict between a character’s subjectivity and the use of, typically, third person and past tense, what ‘voice’ means is not so clearly articulated. To give but a few examples, Pascal speaks of the “subjective function” in relation to the character’s voice but of the “vocabulary and idiom” used (1977: 25) in relation to that of the narrator (see earlier Hernadi’s [1972] notion of substitutionary narration); Vološinov mentions “two differently oriented speech acts” (1973 [1930]: 137) or a combination of the character’s and the author’s “accents” (1973 [1930]: 155); and Ducrot speaks of “visions” or “point of view” (1991: 16–17). In her very thoughtful discussion of the controversy surrounding dual voice, Galbraith (1995: 36–46) convincingly shows that a lot of the misunderstanding between McHale and Banfield results from the different interpretations given to the terminology used. She defines voice as “a widely and casually used term for those stylistic attributes of a linguistic expression which conjure up attributes of a speaker” (1995: 38; see also Aczel 1998 for a useful survey of different conceptions of ‘voice’). Just how casually it can come to be used can be illustrated with Oltean’s (1995, 2003) possible world approach to FIST, which he claims furnishes “evidence of the dual voice associated with FID” (2003: 174). Consider the clause Tomorrow was Monday in example (7):

9

In a detailed study of the flow of voices in narrative texts (Mey 1999), the issue is confounded further by the use of a dazzling plethora of related terms (e.g. voice, perspective, point of view, vocalization, focalization, localization, focality, vocality, a vocalized perspective, a focalizing perspective in which a character is vocalized, a vocal vision,…; see especially Chapter 6, “Voice in focus”).

The ‘dual voice’ of FIST and beyond 247

(7)

Tomorrow was Monday. Monday, the beginning of another schoolweek! (Lawrence 1977 [1921]: 216 qtd. Oltean 2003: 173)

Omitting the technicalities of Oltean’s approach, his analysis can be summarized as follows. In (7), tomorrow and Monday are interpreted relative to “a world compatible with what the character thinks” (w2), whereas was is interpreted relative to “a world in which what the narrator tells is actualized” (the story world w1) (Oltean 2003: 174). That (7) is “about” these two worlds is seen by Oltean as conclusive evidence for a dual voice conceptualization of FIST. In my view, this analysis does not go beyond an observation of the deictic duality of FIST. What is more, this observation is not really distinctive vis-à-vis those cases of IST which show intensionally absolute deictic and expressive resources (Chapter 3), as in those cases IST too is in Oltean’s sense ‘about two worlds’. If all voice is meant to capture were the involvement of two deictic centres, FIST is obviously ‘bivocal’. If, on the other hand, the source of expressivity is considered (Banfield’s notion of the ‘SELF’), I side with Banfield (1982), van der Voort (1986) and Galbraith (1995) in locating this squarely with the represented speaker. As Aczel (1998: 478) notes of the dual voice approach to FIST in general, one of its weaknesses is “its insistence on the necessary presence of the narrator’s voice within the free indirect utterance”. His discussion of voice in FIST in terms of a more broadly contextually construed, readerly reaction seems to me compatible with Fludernik’s (1993, 1995) analysis of dual voice as reflecting readers’ experiences on interpreting FIST passages. Bray (2007) tested this interpretation of dual voice as a readerly effect empirically and concluded that it “needs to be treated with caution” (2007: 48) because he drew very varied responses from his subjects, with for instance fewer than half of the respondents claiming to hear a dual voice in a sentence of FIST from Austen’s Pride and Prejucide (2007: 43).10 In the next section, I return briefly to the problematic notion of voice, and counterpose to it my understanding of FIST in terms of self-expressive speech function re-enactment. I will compare this understanding with a number of proposals that one could characterize as ‘univocal’ rather than dual voice. 10

Comparable results were obtained in Sotirova’s (2006) experimental study of readerly responses to a passage from D.H. Lawrence, with on average one third of respondents favouring dual voice readings (varying from slightly above 30% for less experienced readers to nearly 45% for experienced readers).

248 The grammatical semantics and the pragmatics of FIST and DIST 2.2. Beyond voice: the represented speaker’s self-expressive re-enactment In a very general sense, both a ‘dual voice’ and a ‘single voice’ could be called correct. As to the first, the ‘mixture’ of current speaker related and represented speaker related resources in the reported clause of FIST can be taken as a dual voice (cf. Oltean 1995, 2003), although as pointed out above this is in fact nondistinctive vis-à-vis the reported clause of IST. A similarly nondistinctive single voice understanding can be reached if it is accepted that ultimately any STR construction is a ‘reconstruction’ or ‘representation’ on the part of the current speaker. The represented speaker does not in any actual sense ‘step in and take over’, and if we want to believe that the representation is in some sense true to an original, it is the current speaker we have to believe. Against naïve attempts to determine ‘whose words’ are used, which words are the current speaker’s and which are the represented speaker’s, it is important to recognize that in principle and ultimately, the current speaker gets to ‘choose’ all of the words and expressions. Thus, while it may be interesting from a critic’s perspective to speak of ‘voice corruption’ (Mey 1999) if in FIST a style is used which is judged inappropriate for a character (for instance ‘non-childish’ language used to represent the thoughts of a child), this need not be cause to criticize, as Pascal (1977) tends to, the current speaker (or even the author) for ‘intruding’ into the representation: If on the grounds of such knowledge we come to the conclusion that it is in a real sense unlikely that the hero has spoken or heard or thought in such a way, it does not follow that the author signals in this way his or her presence. The interpreting reader will rather understand the discrepancy between the diction of the FIST passage and the expected hero’s diction as a rhetorical effect […]. (von Roncador 1988: 237; translation mine)11

In this fundamental sense, any type of STR can be called ‘univocal’. As an alternative to ‘voice’ approaches based more closely on grammatical description, I have formulated a functional generalization across the 11

“Wenn wir aufgrund solchen Wissens zu dem Schluß kommen, daß es in einem realen Sinne unwahrscheinlich ist, daß der Held so gesprochen, gehört oder gedacht haben sollte, dann folgt daraus noch nicht, daß der Autor auf diese Weise seine Präsens signalisiert. Der interpretierende Leser wird die Diskrepanz zwischen der Diktion der erlebten Rede und der erwarteten Diktion des Helden vielmehr als rhetorischen Effekt verstehen [...].”

The ‘dual voice’ of FIST and beyond 249

syntagmatic and deictic features of FIST in terms of self-expressive speech function re-enactment. I have argued in Chapter 6 that the expressivity of FIST is the represented speaker’s, and that many deictic resources are also interpreted directly from the represented speaker’s deictic centre. The two ‘basic’ deictic resources which do involve a hook-up to the current speaker’s deictic centre (grammatical person and tense) have been argued not to introduce the current speaker’s expressivity into the representation as important aspects (accessibility organization and intensional perspective) are tied to the represented speaker. This view of the consistent represented speaker’s expressivity in the reported clause of FIST seems to correspond to a certain extent to the early ‘objectivist’ approach to FIST taken by Bally and his pupil Lips, an approach which met strong opposition on the part of the so-called Vosslerites (followers of Karl Vossler, including Lorck, E. Lerch and G. Lerch) whose aim was to investigate the ‘soul’ of language (for discussion see Vološinov 1973 [1930]: 141–159 and Pascal 1977: Part 1). Thus, Bally (1914: 407) contends that the narrator is merely a spokesperson for the character or represented speaker, and does not mix his “personality” with that of the represented speaker. For Lips (1926: 126) as well, the “author”, i.e. the current speaker, remains neutral with respect to the reported clause and clearly attributes its contents to the represented speaker. This is a line of thinking which is more consistent with the description of FIST presented in this book. It is in DIST, and not in FIST, that the current speaker does not remain ‘neutral’ with regard to the represented material, but deploys it for his or her current purposes (be it to present a conclusion, to express irony or sarcasm, to explicitly indicate the condensation of reported material, to signal disagreement, or whatever). In this connection, van der Voort (1986: 247) in his discussion (and rejection) of dual voice approaches poses the rhetorical question whether a narrator can ever interpret the thoughts of a character within the FIST reported clause without the passage ceasing to instantiate FIST or whether, more generally, it is ever possible to intervene in another’s discourse without making it your own. Van der Voort argues convincingly that even though it may seem self-evident, on the basis of deictic indications, to assume, like Cohn (1978: 112) does, “the continued presence of a narrator”, it is far from evident to define what the narrator narrates in this case. Instead, he suggests that grammatical person and tense use in FIST are not symptoms of a narrator (1986: 246) but serve rather to safeguard the silenced, subdued character of the often intimate thoughts and utterances of a character by avoiding “the

250 The grammatical semantics and the pragmatics of FIST and DIST loud ‘I’” of DST (het luide ‘ik’, van der Voort 1986: 251). This captures rather nicely the way in which FIST allows all the expressive resources equally allowed in DST, but steers clear of a full shift to the represented speaker’s deictic centre. The self-expressive, non-exchange directed nature of speech function re-enactment and expressivity in FIST leaves no room for any current speaker’s interference beyond the alignment of the ‘basic’ deictic resources, which do not bring in any expressivity or accessibility choices on the part of the current speaker. In this sense, the following assessment by Dillon and Kirchhoff as to the narrator’s role in FIST goes in the right direction, even if for instance Fludernik (1993: 323) counts them among the proponents of dual voice theory:12 We would argue that FIS is more often a strategy through which the narrator appears to withdraw from the scene and thus present the illusion of a character’s acting out his mental state in an immediate relationship with the reader. Paradoxically, FIS, in which the possibilities of confusing a narrator with his character are greatest, is also the mode through which the character seems freest from the mediating agency of the narrator. And while it is true that this immediacy generally encourages the reader’s empathetic – or at least sympathetic – response to the character, this is no guarantee that the narrator himself experiences a similar response. (Dillon and Kirchhoff 1976: 438–439)

While recognizing the possible readerly confusion between narrator and character, Dillon and Kirchhoff equally recognize in FIST a strong sense of unmediated represented speaker’s expressivity ‘free’ of any narrator’s judgement. In this section, I have tried to capture the semantics of FIST in terms of its constructional properties by functionally interpreting its deictic and expressive properties. On the basis of the notion of self-expressive reenactment, higher-level ‘literary’ characterizations can be devised in a next step, for instance in terms of the silencing of the ‘loud I’ of DST (van der Voort 1986) or the represented speaker’s ‘acting out’ of his or her mental

12

While it is true that Dillon and Kirchhoff question models like Banfield’s (on the basis of her [1973] article), this is done on the grounds of the untenability of any strict, necessary link between expressive features and character discourse: according to Dillon and Kirchhoff narrators too can exhibit expressivity, and may even copy idioms appropriate to their characters, as seems to be a regular technique in Henry James.

The ‘dual voice’ of FIST and beyond 251

states (Dillon and Kirchhoff 1976). This is where we reach the boundary of how far a linguistic approach can be taken: further interpretations and contextualizations of the abstract semantics of the FIST construction will have to be proposed in interaction with literary theory, literary criticism, and stylistics. In the next section, I turn briefly to one line of analysis that has repeatedly been proposed in this connection, viz. the idea that FIST can serve the functions of empathy as well as distancing.

2.3. FIST: irony and empathy? One consequence of making the constructional distinction between FIST and DIST is, in my view, that the distinct uses to which they are put fall into place. In the traditional view, FIST is basically a mixed bag in which anything that is not DST nor IST but some mixture of features of both is included. This approach to FIST has led to a peculiar claim when it comes to the pragmatic functions of FIST, in that it has been said to have as possible effects both empathy and ironic distance (see, among others, Ullmann 1964 [1957]: 117–120, Hernadi 1972: 37, Vološinov 1973 [1930]: 155, Pascal 1977: 43, McHale 1978: 275–276).13 In McHale’s summary of the general view on this, FIST “may serve as a vehicle for lyric fusion with the character or ironic distancing from him” (1978: 275). In this connection, Hernadi already suggested a correlation with the representation of speech versus thought: the narrator’s “ironic distance” tends to be involved in the first case, while in the second case the narrator tends to “empathize with a character’s view of the fictional reality” (1972: 37). Recently still, Semino and Short (2004: 13, 15, 83–85, 124) have subscribed to Leech and Short’s (1981) proposal to explain the different functioning of FIST in speech versus thought. That an explanation was sought shows an awareness of the problematic nature of claiming two strongly diverging usage types for what is at some level of analysis also to them a single type of STR. In fact, as Semino and Short (2004: 124) reveal, “it was this observation which led them [Leech and Short (1981), LV] to distinguish between the speech and thought presentation scales” in the first place. The reason for the different functions of free indirect speech (FIS) and

13

The link between FIST and irony specifically has also been made in Relevance Theory (e.g. Sperber and Wilson 1991 [1981]: 559, Noh 2000: 94, Iwata 2003: 238–239).

252 The grammatical semantics and the pragmatics of FIST and DIST thought (FIT) according to Leech and Short (1981) lies in the different direction in which they deviate from the norms for speech and thought representation respectively. For speech, a direct rendering is said to be typical, whereas for thought an indirect rendering is claimed to be the norm: because we cannot directly perceive thought, we cannot veridically render it directly.14 If, instead of the DS norm, FIS is used, this choice constitutes a move towards the narrator’s end on the cline of speech representation forms (the relevant part of which is IS – FIS Å DS) and away from the character’s end. Conversely, if instead of the IT norm, FIT is used, one moves away from the narrator’s and towards the character’s end (IT Æ FIT – DT). However, it should be borne in mind that, irrespective of what the norm is on the clines for speech and thought, FIS and FIT have the same positioning on these clines (between the indirect and direct forms), with the same grammatical features, and hence they also have the same positioning vis-à-vis both the indirect and direct forms. Thus, for instance, if we were to accept that the use of FIS is associated with a “movement away from verbatim report and towards ‘interference’“ (Leech and Short 1981: 334) vis-à-vis DS, the same should hold true for FIT vis-à-vis DT. Leech and Short’s reply to this is that FIT does not involve a shift vis-à-vis DT but one vis-à-vis IT on account of the latter’s alleged status as the norm. If one attempts to reconstruct what Leech and Short (1981) are ultimately saying, it is that when a current speaker opts for FIS, the current addressee (reader) is expected to decode this along the lines of the paraphrase given in (8). Similarly, if FIT is used, the reader is assumed to decode this in terms of (9). This would mean that the normative status of DS for speech representation, and of IT for thought representation, has psychological reality for a user of the English language. There is nothing in either Leech and Short (1981) or Semino and Short (2004) to support this assumption. (8)

14

‘I am confronted with FIS to represent speech, not DS. Since DS is the norm, I wonder why the current speaker has not given me the precise words since they are knowable/perceivable anyhow. It must

That DS and IT are the norm for speech and thought representation respectively is in fact only partially confirmed by Semino and Short’s (2004) corpus study of written genres (fiction, press, and autobiography): quantitatively, DS turns out to be the norm for speech representation, but for thought representation the most frequent option overall is FIT. This preponderance is due to the fiction part of the corpus, not to the other genres.

The ‘dual voice’ of FIST and beyond 253

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be pragmatically entailed that the current speaker aims to manipulate the representation in one way or another.’ ‘I am confronted with FIT to represent thought, not IT. Since IT is the norm because the current speaker cannot know or have perceived the precise words, I wonder why the current speaker is now pretending to have a pretty good idea of the precise words after all. It must be pragmatically entailed that this is to ensure that I would empathize with the represented character.’

While the rationale devised by Leech and Short to support the ‘irony and empathy’ view of FIST is coherent, it is not, in the final analysis, entirely convincing. If, on the other hand, one replaces the ‘catch-all’ conception of FIST with the constructionally motivated distinction between FIST and DIST, cases of current speaker irony quite naturally come to fall under DIST. In proposing this correlation, however, no strict apportioning of speech and thought to ‘DIS’ and ‘FIT’ respectively, nor of irony to DIST, is intended. I will consider these two provisos in turn. The claim that current speaker irony is consistent with DIST and not with FIST does not mean that cases of DIST have to involve speech representation (in the same way as the ‘ironic category’ in the Leech and Short approach is associated with speech representation). It does seem likely to me (but this is a question for further research) that there is a prototypical correlation between FIST and thought representation, and between DIST and speech representation, in much the same way as DST and IST tend to be used mainly for the representation of speech and thought respectively, as noted among others by Leech and Short (1981), Halliday (1994 [1985]) and McGregor (1997). Even so, DIST can also involve thought representation, as in (10) below, just as FIST can also involve speech representation, as in (11) below. (10)

(11)

[…] She was trying Both times (so I thought) not to laugh. (from Philip Larkin’s poem “Wild Oats”, Larkin 1997 [1988]: 143) How did she manage these things in the depth of the country? he asked her. (Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse, p. 119 qtd. Oltean 1995: 35)

Let us now turn to the long standing problem of irony, to which the construction-based distinction between FIST and DIST will be argued to be relevant. In the literature, it is ironic reported clauses of what was consid-

254 The grammatical semantics and the pragmatics of FIST and DIST ered to be FIST that have constituted the textbook examples of ‘dual voice’ since in these cases the character’s (sincere) and the narrator’s (ironic) voices were assumed to clash. One telling example originally discussed by Banfield (1982: 94) and picked up by McHale (1983) is that of the sentence Yes, she could hear his poor child crying now. Following her 1 E[xpression]/1SELF principle, all expressive elements (Banfield specifically lists yes, poor, now) in this clause are to be referred to the represented speaker or SELF she, apparently borrowing in some way the he-persona’s designation of his child as my poor child. McHale (1983) objects, and he constructs a context in which, according to him, a dual voice reading (and hence a breach of 1E/1SELF) is unavoidable: (12)

She was fed up with both of them, father and daughter. Above all, she was sick and tired of hearing him moan about his poor child. His poor child this, his poor child that: enough already! Yes, she could hear his poor child crying now. (McHale 1983: 35–36)

The adjective poor in this context is, according to McHale, quoted “with ironic intention”, and it expresses “two superimposed points of view – ‘his’ being travestied by ‘her’” (McHale 1983: 36).15 Van der Voort (1986) quite sensibly points out, however, that the resulting meaning is entirely ‘hers’: the woman is not being plaintive about the ‘poor’ child by using this expression; if anything, she is expressing her exasperation at the man’s plaintiveness over this child. In her discussion of the same example, Galbraith (1995: 39) likewise points out that “[h]is attitude is alluded to, but his subjectivity is not the epistemological source of the passage”; rather, the passage constitutes a “subjective context attributable to ‘her’”. There is, then, indeed irony in (12), but the kind of irony involved is the represented speaker’s ironic stance vis-à-vis another character’s designation of his child. This kind of represented speaker’s irony is perfectly possible within the more narrow understanding of FIST adopted in this book, as it does not disrupt the represented speaker’s perspective in any way. As well, at the broader level of the reader’s piecing together of different aspects of characterization, higher-level ironic effects may presumably be achieved by any form of STR. The link proposed above between DIST and irony (as 15

It will be noted that in fact, this kind of ‘dual voice’ is different from the usual understanding of dual voice (as in Pascal 1977) in that the latter involves the narrator’s and the character’s ‘voices’, whereas it seems from McHale’s account that what he has in mind is two competing characters’ voices, ‘his’ and ‘hers’.

The echoic semantics of DIST 255

one of its pragmatic usage modes) is thus not to be understood mechanically as if any involvement of irony immediately signals DIST. What I do claim is that the specific, ‘local’ kind of irony DIST is particularly suited for, and which is not achieved in FIST, is that of the current speaker (or ‘narrator’) vis-à-vis the represented utterance or thought. Examples discussed previously include a current speaker chuckling in the background over the petty concerns or inflated language of the represented speakers, as in the Lucy and Miss Bartlett example (example 5 in Chapter 5), or that of a first person current speaker sarcastically echoing what others have said about him of her, as in Ducrot’s example I’ve always hated him, I always will hate him (example 16 in Chapter 5). From the specific example of irony, the next section zooms back out to the more general characterization of DIST as echoic and distancing.

3. The echoic semantics of DIST In previous sections, I have already used the notion of echo in discussing the expressivity and the secondary grounding in DIST. In relation to expressivity, I have argued that the original expressivity is mimicked, but is overlaid with current speaker concerns and purposes such as irony or making evidentially ‘grounded’ claims. As to the ‘secondary’ grounding in DIST, its deictic properties and syntagmatic structure result in the fact that there is speech function enactment rather than re-enactment in its reported clause. However, the current speaker relatedness of all resources combined with the fact that two speech situations (a current and represented one) remain involved give to this enactment a fundamentally echoic character. In this section, I would like to discuss the notions of echo and of distance further. As a linguistic notion, echo has been widely used within Relevance Theory to deal with phenomena such as irony and echo questions. In section 3.1, I will try to draw from relevance-theoretical accounts a notion of echo which can adequately characterize the nature of the secondary grounding and expressivity in DIST. I will also argue that while ‘echo’ can help to define DIST, it is not the case that all instances of ‘echoing’ involve DIST; the difference between echo questions and DIST in particular will be addressed. Section 3.2 turns to the notion of distance, which has come to be used in linguistics not just in its spatial sense, but also in metaphorically derived temporal, social and epistemic senses. A further type of distance, discourse distance, will be argued to be instantiated not only by

256 The grammatical semantics and the pragmatics of FIST and DIST DIST but by a range of phenomena in grammar and discourse construed from one deictic centre, but borrowing thoughts from another discourse.

3.1. ‘Echo’ as metarepresentation and attitude At the origins of the relevance-theoretical notion of echo is Sperber and Wilson’s influential analysis of irony as involving echoic mention (1991 [1981], also 1995 [1986] and Wilson and Sperber 1992). In their seminal (1981) paper, they convincingly argue against traditional accounts which take recourse to the notion of figurative meaning. In such accounts, irony is basically viewed as literally saying one thing but figuratively meaning another, viz. the opposite of the first. Among the problems faced by the traditional account is, centrally, the question as to why one would go to the trouble of saying the opposite of what one means (and thereby face the risk of misunderstanding) instead of saying directly what one means (Sperber and Wilson 1991 [1981]: 550, 553; 1995 [1986]: 240–241). In the example of ironically uttering What lovely weather in the middle of a downpour, the speaker’s aim is not, according to Sperber and Wilson (1991 [1981]: 553), to communicate the belief that the weather is awful (this belief in fact should already be recognized in order to grasp the irony). Rather, what the speaker wants to get across is an attitude, not about the weather, but about the idea that the weather is or was going to be or could have been lovely. The speaker is thus “expressing a belief about his utterance, rather than by means of it” (1991 [1981]: 554). The utterance What lovely weather, uttered in the cited conditions, thus echoically ‘mentions’ the proposition What lovely weather in order to express the speaker’s attitude towards it, viz. that it is “ludicrously inappropriate or irrelevant” (1991 [1981]: 559). This analysis holds irrespective of any actual prior utterance (for instance uttered briefly before the weather changed): What lovely weather may simply echo the earlier “hope or expectation of good weather” (1991 [1981]: 558). The mention terminology initially adopted was dropped in favour of interpretation in Sperber and Wilson (1986); the term eventually settled for within Relevance Theory is metarepresentation. The notion of echo can be defined as a metarepresentation which achieve[s] relevance by informing the hearer of the fact that the speaker has in mind what so-and-so said, and has a certain attitude to it: the speaker’s

The echoic semantics of DIST 257 interpretation of so-and-so’s thought is relevant in itself. (Sperber and Wilson 1986: 238).

This understanding of echo as the combination of metarepresentation and attitude has informed relevance-theoretical analyses of phenomena such as metalinguistic negation (e.g. Carston 1996, Noh 2000) and echo questions (Blakemore 1994, Noh 1998, Noh 2000, Iwata 2003). Echo questions (EQs) can question the content of a metarepresented utterance, as in (13) below, or its form, as in (14); here again, as for ironic echoes, no real prior utterance need be involved, but something in the immediate context prompts the echo question (15): (13) (14)

(15)

A: I’m leaving on Tuesday. B: You’re leaving on Tuesday? (Noh 2000: 146) A: Pass me the salt. B: Pass you the salt? Johnny, you are old enough to say “Can you pass me the salt?” or “Will you pass me the salt, please?” (Iwata 2003: 200) [Looking at a London map, a freshman at University College says:] The British Museum is near University College? (Noh 2000: 148)

What precisely is questioned by EQs has been argued to be faithfulness (Blakemore 1994) or the illocutionary force of the echoed utterance (Noh 1998, 2000; Ginzburg and Sag 2001). In a cogent analysis, Iwata (2003) has shown that former analyses failed to cover all cases. For instance, ‘metalinguistic’ cases like (14), where the adequacy of the form is questioned, do not readily permit an analysis in terms of the questioning of illocutionary force: the meaning of (14B) cannot be paraphrased as simply Are you telling me to pass the salt? Iwata’s (2003) alternative bases itself on the tripartite distinction proposed by Hare (1971) and Lyons (1977) of phrastic (propositional content), tropic (type of speech act) and neustic (speaker commitment to this speech act). If illocutionary force is conceived of as composed of tropic and neustic, it becomes possible to see that the neustic, or the commitment to the speech act, is suspended in metarepresentations (Iwata 2003: 208–209). In Iwata’s analysis, then, what EQs question is not the illocutionary force but the attribution of the metarepresented utterance. The neustic or speaker commitment is inert, whereas the tropic or speech act type is part of the metarepresentation whose attribution is questioned. Thus, examples (13–

258 The grammatical semantics and the pragmatics of FIST and DIST 14) above can be analysed as in (16–17) below respectively, closely based on Iwata (2003: 208–210), in which the angle brackets enclose the metarepresentation, square brackets enclose the proposition or phrastic, and the neustic is not represented. The difference between (16) and (17) resides in the tropic, as (13B) metarepresents a statement but (14B) an order. (16)

(17)

question attribution tropic proposition question attribution tropic proposition

I ask whether you said

I ask whether you said

The suspension of the neustic (the speaker’s commitment to the speech act) is interesting to the description of DIST in at least two ways. First, it will be noted that this suspension characteristic of metarepresentations generally captures a similar idea to what I have described in Chapter 4 as the ‘speech functional dissociation’ involved in STR. Second, from this suspension it is “only a short step” to expressing attitudes of dissociation or rejection (Iwata 2003: 227), which is what many EQs do. Thus, somewhat paradoxically perhaps, it is only in these frequent cases that EQs are truly ‘echoic’ in the sense of Relevance Theory, as was also recognized by Noh (1998, 2000). EQs need not also express an attitude (of surprise, disbelief, exasperation, and so on) and may thus be concerned only with questioning the attribution of the metarepresentation (did you say…?) so as to establish whether the original utterance was correctly understood (or the original thought correctly assumed, etc.). Unlike EQs, which may but need not be echoic, I submit that DIST is always echoic in the sense of involving a (current speaker’s) attitude towards the metarepresentation. I will return to the implications of this at the end of this section and exemplify the range of attitudes in section 4 below. First it is useful to consider further the differences between DIST and EQs,

The echoic semantics of DIST 259

especially since it has been claimed that EQs are a form of speech or thought representation (Yamaguchi 1994b).16 According to Yamaguchi (1994b), the shared “interactive property” or “dialogic” nature of EQs and STR (1994b: 240–241) allows one to view the former as a case of the latter. In this logic, DIST would arguably be the most likely candidate with which EQs could be said to be coextensive. However, apart from the difference just highlighted in terms of the optional (EQs) or obligatory (DIST) involvement of an attitude being expressed towards the metarepresentation, there are two more important differences: EQs involve not two but just one speech situation, and EQs impose a questioning attitude onto the metarepresented utterance, whereas DIST does not. I will consider each of these briefly in turn. A fundamental constructional distinction between EQs and DIST is that the former involves only one speech situation whereas the latter involves two, the represented (‘original’) and the current speech situation. A formal reflex of this is that only DIST can have, and in any case allows, reporting clauses, whereas if reporting clauses are added to EQs the result is, if not perhaps ungrammatical, at least highly infelicitous: (18)

A: I’m leaving on Tuesday. B: You’re leaving on Tuesday, ??{you said/you say}.

The reason why (18B) is odd with the reporting clause is that it is difficult to see how it is relevant for one to report one’s interlocutor’s speech just after it has been spoken. In this connection, Sperber and Wilson (1986: 238), remarking on Mary’s echo of Peter’s utterance, note that [i]t achieves relevance not, of course, by reporting to Peter what he has just said, but by giving evidence that Mary has paid attention to his utterance and is weighing up its reliability and implications.

While it has been argued convincingly that EQs do not strictly need an actual prior utterance (e.g. Noh 1998, 2000; Iwata 2003), the lack of relevance of (18B) with the reporting clause points to the fact that EQs always have an immediate link, within one and the same speech situation, to something in the immediately preceding or surrounding context that prompts the echo, whether it be an utterance, or a thought assumed to have been enter16

Yamaguchi’s (1994a) entry in the Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, which seems to have been written at an earlier stage than (1994b), is less explicit on the STR status of EQs.

260 The grammatical semantics and the pragmatics of FIST and DIST tained, or some other kind of sign, such as the road map in example (15) above. In contrast, DIST, or any other kind of STR, allows quite a considerable time lapse between the original speech or thought act and its ‘metarepresentation’. The fact that EQs can only be uttered in the same speech situation as that in which the echoed utterance or ‘sign’ was uttered or ‘present’ explains tense use in EQs, which Banfield (1982: 133–135) found hard to make sense of and which caused her to redefine the present moment. However, as Declerck (1991a, 2006) has argued, the “present” involved in the use of the present tense can be of varying length so long as it is centred around t0. In addition, I would argue that the present tense of an echoing utterance, in the case of (19a) a so-called WH-echo, is not different essentially from that of a question rejoinder (19b): (19) (19a) (19b)

Do you see that marvellous bergamot over there? Do I see WHAT over there? Yes, I (can) see it.

In (19a) as well as (19b), and more generally in direct speech exchange, t0 is held constant. In the case of a question–answer pair (19–19b), this is to assess the modal value (‘yes’, ‘no’, or ‘in between’) of the proposition questioned, whereas in the case of an EQ (19–19a), it is, following Iwata’s (2003) analysis, the attribution which is assessed. In addition to the difference pertaining to the number of speech situations involved, another, seemingly obvious but important difference pertains to the speech function involved in EQs and DIST. Irrespective of the speech act type (or ‘tropic’) of the echoed utterance, EQs question the attribution and are thus questions (though not interrogatives, see Iwata 2003: 198–199).17 Thus, a statement like I’m leaving on Tuesday or an order like Pass me the salt! are echoed as You’re leaving on Tuesday? and Pass you the salt? respectively. This is not possible in DIST nor in STR generally. Even in IST, in which interrogative or exclamative clause structures cannot occur, the original speech act type is made evident in the

17

Bolinger (1957, 1987) adopts a different terminological practice. He uses “reprise question” as the equivalent of what is usually called EQ, and distinguishes as subtypes the “echo question”, which echoes an original question, the “reflex question”, which echoes an original nonquestion, and the “reclamatory question”, which echoes and substitutes by means of a wh-word.

The echoic semantics of DIST 261

report through the choice of verbs and/or complement types.18 As examples of DIST previously discussed have shown, reported clauses of DIST can be questions as well as statements, orders or offers, and the type of speech act is something that is shared with the original speech or thought act. This means, in fact, that the attempted ‘reportative’ reading for the EQ in (18B) above, You’re leaving on Tuesday, ??{you said/you say} echoing the statement I’m leaving on Tuesday, is not only problematic because it fails to be relevant, but also because it metarepresents a statement as a question.19 From this discussion it can be concluded that DIST differs from EQs in at least three ways: in contrast to DIST, EQs do not involve STR since they are uttered in one and the same (current) speech situation as the echoed utterance; they change the speech act type of the echoed utterance; and they need not always involve the current speaker’s attitudes and are hence not always ‘echoic’ in the technical sense of the word. The idea that DIST is always in some way echoic does not mean that DIST is always, for instance, ironic, or should always involve a dissociative attitude. Rather, it means that DIST always involves a current speaker’s active ‘use’ or ‘manipulation’ of the original speech or thought act. This is compatible with the relevance-theoretical understanding of echoic utterances, which can be used “to convey a whole range of attitudes and emotions, ranging from outright acceptance and approval to outright rejection and disapproval” (Sperber and Wilson 1986: 240). In different types of DIST, one can recognize a number of options on this cline, from the more evidential examples like he mailed you earlier today, he said which are at the ‘acceptance’ end, since the current speaker associates with evidentially supported claims, over mildly mocking passages like the Lucy and Miss Bartlett dialogue discussed in Chapter 5 (example 5), to strongly dissociative, sarcastic cases in which the current speaker clearly does not agree with the metarepresented utterance (as in Ducrot’s [1991: 17] example I’ve always hated him, I always will hate him).

18

Compare e.g. she said + finite complement, she asked me whether + finite complement, she ordered me to + non-finite complement. 19 The remarks made here on the difference between EQs and DIST with regard to speech act type can be extended to the exceptional cases of “echo declaratives” and “echo imperatives” (Wilson and Sperber 1988: 136, Ohnuma 1970, Iwata 2003: 246–247), as these metarepresent some utterance with a declarative or an exclamative illocutionary force respectively, irrespective of the type of speech act involved in the original utterance.

262 The grammatical semantics and the pragmatics of FIST and DIST In section 4 below, I will discuss more pragmatic subtypes of DIST which involve different positions within the range from acceptance to rejection. For now, a point that needs to be clarified is how this wide range of attitudes can be accommodated within one and the same constructional category. In section 2.3 above, I identified as one of the problems in Leech and Short’s (1981) and Semino and Short’s (2004) approach to FIST the fact that they assign two radically opposed functions to FIS and FIT. Why should the pragmatic functioning of DIST proposed here in terms of associative or dissociative attitudes be any less problematic? The crux here lies in who takes position towards what: in the description of DIST in terms of echoic enactment, the attitude that is expressed is a current speaker’s attitude towards the metarepresented utterance or thought. Having taken an echoic distance, the current speaker can express both more associative and more dissociative attitudes towards the echoed content. The common denominator for these different attitudes is thus that they originate with the current speaker, which is consistent with the overall grammatical description of DIST. In Leech and Short’s (1981) approach to FIST, on the other hand, there is, as far as I can see, nothing that unites the empathetic effect of “apparently putting us directly inside the character’s mind” (Leech and Short 1981: 344) with the essentially distanced (i.e. non-empathetic) and dissociative position of irony. This is because in the final analysis, the effect of empathy Leech and Short describe is a reader’s attitude towards the represented speaker (i.e. an attitude to which the reader is invited), whereas irony involves the narrator “casting an ironic light on what the character says” (1981: 327) (in other words, the current speaker’s attitude towards a metarepresentation).20 There is no common denominator for these two attitudes consistent with the properties of FIST: one is essentially a reader’s, the other the current speaker’s attitude; one is an attitude towards the represented speaker, the other towards a metarepresentation. This is why one can say that a narrator ‘uses irony’ to create certain effects, but not that a narrator ‘invites readers to irony’, and conversely, that a narrator can ‘invite readers to empathize’, but not that a narrator ‘uses empathy’. This sort of discrepancy is absent from the different current speaker’s attitudes 20

If the narrator’s or current speaker’s irony is grasped by the readers, this can in turn invite a reaction on their behalf, but the reader’s reaction to irony need not itself be “at the expense of the speaking character”, as Leech and Short (1981: 334) correctly point out; it can just as well invite the reader’s sympathy with the represented characters.

The echoic semantics of DIST 263

for which I claim DIST can be used: even the more associative (evidential) uses do not invite ‘empathy with the represented speaker’, but express merely the current speaker’s association with the metarepresented claim. I conclude from this section that DIST is a category of STR which is always echoic in the sense of Relevance Theory, that is to say, it expresses an attitude (ranging from acceptance to sarcastic rejection) vis-à-vis the utterance or thought it metarepresents. EQs do not instantiate DIST: they are not always echoic in the technical sense and in them, there is only one speech situation (the current one) and the original type of speech function is changed into a question. The next section turns to a further characterization of the notion of ‘distance’ as understood in relation to DIST.

3.2. Discourse distance In this section, the ‘distancing’ invoked in the name of the category of DIST is clarified further. That DIST is ‘indirect’ is more readily understood, as the term is used in its traditional sense of ‘not direct’: any form of STR which does not purport to directly represent the presumed original utterance or thought is ‘indirect’. This is not to say that DIST and FIST are subtypes of IST; rather, it means that IST, FIST, and DIST have as a general commonality among them the fact that they are ‘non direct’. The precise meaning of the term ‘distancing’, on the other hand, is less immediately apparent, as ‘distance’ already knows a wide variety of uses in linguistics. The terms DST, IST, and FIST all have the benefit (apart from being well-established terms) of naming structural properties, or properties that are directly linked to structural ones: the ‘directness’ of DST translates into its full deictic shift and syntagmatic juxtaposition, the ‘indirectness’ of IST into its (relative) non-shift and syntagmatic incorporation, and the ‘freeness’ of FIST, while less clearly determined, in my interpretation reflects the syntagmatic ‘freedom’ (juxtaposition) within the “indirect” categories (in its broad sense), with concomitant additional expressive potential as far as the represented speaker’s expressivity is concerned. However, DIST presents a case which is also ‘indirect’ in the broad sense, as well as syntagmatically ‘free’ (juxtaposed). So what is ‘distancing’ intended to reflect? Distance is, of course, first and foremost a spatial notion, but one which has come to be used metaphorically in linguistics to refer to non-spatial kinds of distance. One firmly established distance metaphor is that which

264 The grammatical semantics and the pragmatics of FIST and DIST conceptualizes time in terms of space (see e.g. Lakoff and Johnson 1980, Evans 2004), in examples such as The deadline is fast approaching. Temporal distance in itself can be extended into the domain of social distance, as when the past tense is used not to express pastness but rather politeness (see e.g. Fleischmann 1990) as in I was wondering if you could help. Another metaphorical use of past tense verb forms, viz. to mark negative epistemic stance (Fillmore 1990) in conditionals (if you had come, we would have talked), has been treated in terms of ‘hypothetical’ or ‘epistemic’ distance (Dancygier 1993, 1998, Dancygier and Sweetser 2005). The sense in which DIST is ‘distancing’ is to be understood with regard to a further type of distance, discourse distance, distinguished from epistemic distance by Dancygier and Vandelanotte (2009) on account of the echoing or evocation from a single deictic centre of a separate discourse space, emanating from a separate speaker’s knowledge base. In contrast, epistemic distancing involves only one speaker’s discourse. The difference can be illustrated by contrasting the epistemically distanced conditional in (20), in which the counterfactual space is (temporally as well as) epistemically distanced vis-à-vis the current speaker’s base space, and (21), in which an assumption originating in a separate, represented speaker’s discourse space (specifically, the current addressee of 21, who apparently has knowledge about the hire) is used by the current speaker to construct his or her discourse: (20) (21)

If she had been hired, she wouldn’t need our help anymore. If (as you say) she was hired, she doesn’t need our help anymore.

In distanced discourse generally, material from another’s discourse is echoed by the current speaker to construct his or her own discourse, without this implying assertion or even knowledge of the echoed content. The concept of discourse distance, of which DIST is a specific instantiation, allows one to see DIST as related not only to other types of STR, but also to a range of phenomena in grammar and discourse including not just echo questions (section 3.1 above), but also metalinguistic negation (Horn 1985; e.g. that analogy wasn’t strained, it was irrelevant), metalinguistic conditionals (Dancygier 1998; e.g. all I need to do for the oral presentation is powerpointize, if that’s a word), ‘cited predictions’ (Dancygier 1993, 1998; e.g. if (as you say) he’ll be buying me a nice birthday present after all I won’t get angry with him just yet), all the way through to distanced discourse in poetry (see Dancygier and Vandelanotte 2009 for examples and discussion).

The echoic semantics of DIST 265

It will be clear from the preceding discussion that ‘distancing’ can only be successfully treated as a characteristic of DIST if it is understood quite restrictively in the sense of discourse distance, and not in the very broad sense of the current speaker’s ‘non-commitment’, as this is involved in all four types of STR distinguished in this book. What is special about the discourse distance evidenced by DIST is that the current speaker always takes a distance towards the reported clause even though it is deictically and expressively current speaker construed. This sets DIST apart from DST, IST, and FIST, all of which are in some way signalled not to belong to the current speaker discourse: the full or partial deictic shifts in DST and FIST, and to a lesser extent in IST, as well as the incorporated syntagmatic structure of IST clearly indicate that something other than an ordinary speech act is going on to which the current speaker would be committed. This peculiar confluence of current speaker construal and the involvement nonetheless of two speech situations, current and represented, gives rise to the echoic reading discussed in the previous section. As well, it may often pragmatically involve a so-called “voice confusion” (Mey 1999) in terms of how readers ‘decode’ passages as DIST. Consider as an example part of the ‘Priscilla example’ first discussed in Chapter 5 (example 1) and partly repeated here as (22): (22)

So I suggested we dine. But Priscilla wasn’t hungry. She had eaten too much of the smoked salmon at the reception. I proposed we visit a few of the places we had known together, have a few drinks, perhaps dance. Dancing, she claimed, would exhaust her utterly. Did I want that? No, I didn’t. […] (qtd. from the LOB corpus in Vanparys 1996: 153)

Following the initial ‘objective’, narrative sentence So I suggested we dine, the default assumption is to stay with this same narrative voice (‘obstinacy’, cf. Weinrich 1971: 14) and to assume that the following sentence But Priscilla wasn’t hungry also unequivocally represents a narrative truth. The toing and froing which reveals itself and suggests two sides of an ‘underlying’, original dialogue, however, invites another reading and consequently causes voice confusion. It is only when gradually, through subtle grammatical cues a DIST reading is revealed, that the voice complexity is grasped: even though the stretches of discourse under consideration are grammatically the current speaker’s, they echoically metarepresent utterances of the characters Priscilla and the (nameless) ‘I-character’.

266 The grammatical semantics and the pragmatics of FIST and DIST This kind of contextual “doubling back” (Galbraith 1995: 40) required to establish a coherent reading of doubtful passages has been described for FIST (e.g. Ehrlich 1990, Galbraith 1995, Mey 1999, Sotirova 2004, Bray 2007). In terms of how DIST is processed in discourse, it may even more than FIST be like a ‘garden-path utterance’ causing “momentary processing difficulties” only “later offset by appropriate rewards” (Sperber and Wilson 1986: 242). This is because phenomena like the ‘proper name problem’ or the use of the first person to refer to the current speaker point in the direction of current speaker construal, which places more burden on the reader or listener to arrive at the correct, reportative reading. The ‘reward’ for these “momentary processing difficulties” then lies in the recognition of the attitude which the current speaker takes towards the report. The next section turns to an illustration of some of the attitudes involved in concrete cases of DIST in different types of context.

4. Pragmatic usage types of DIST in different genres In this section, some of the pragmatic usage types of DIST in different genres will be discussed. After returning briefly to ‘literary’ examples (of which several have been discussed in preceding chapters), I will focus on a few non-literary genres in which DIST occurs regularly, viz. those of newspaper reportage containing obliquely rendered interviews, echoed argumentation in academic research papers, and conversational uses. This last type of context will be argued to form a transition from the more ‘narrative’ kind of DIST to the more ‘grammaticalized’ kind that will form the topic of Chapter 8. In previous chapters, many examples of DIST as it occurs in literary texts have been discussed. (23–24) present two further examples both involving first person pronouns (singular and plural respectively) referring to the current speaker who is at the same time the represented addressee: (23)

“I am afraid that, medically speaking, the end of your trouble is not yet.” In short, he expected me to have to fight a probable return of tropical illness. Fortunately I had a good provision of quinine. I should put my trust in that and administer it steadily, then the ship’s health would certainly improve. (Joseph Conrad, The Shadow-Line qtd. Steinberg 1971: 223 and von Roncador 1988: 167)

Pragmatic usage types of DIST in different genres 267

(24)

I am recalling with especial clarity an enraptured disquisition he delivered to us one fine May morning on the sin of looking. Yes, looking. We had been instructed in the various categories of sin […] but here it seemed was a new category: the passive sin. Did we imagine, Fr Foamfleck scoffingly enquired, pacing impetuously from door to window, from window to door, his cassock swishing and a star of light gleaming on his narrow, balding brow like a reflection of the divine effluvium itself, did we imagine that sin must always involve the performance of an action? (John Banville, The Sea, 2005: 120)

In (23), as part of the current speaker’s concern to be brief (in short), a shift is made from DST, in which the dialogue would have to be reported alternately from the I-persona’s and the he-persona’s deictic centre, to DIST, in which both the doctor’s and the I-character’s original utterances can be represented from the current speaker’s point of view. In (24), the I-narrator Max recalls a scene in which the topic of sin is discussed by a friar, referred to as ‘Foamfleck’ by his students because he had “flecks of white stuff permanently at the corners of his lips” (Banville 2005: 120). We refers to Max and his classmates, and forms the DIST counterpart of what would be you in DST (do you imagine…) and they in FIST (did they imagine…). As to further effects that may be achieved by using DIST in literary texts, one of these has already been identified in Chapter 5, viz. the explicit ‘exposure’ of the illusionary nature of the mimesis (cf. Fludernik 1993) in STR. This occurs when several utterances, especially questions, are concatenated into a long enumeration of utterances contained in a single sentence, rather than representing the utterances in separate sentences, as they are presumed to have been originally uttered. An example is (25a), taken from Donald Barthelme’s perversion of the well-known fairy tale Snow White, in which Snow White consents to having sex with seven men (the seven dwarfs of the fairy tale). The we in why have we allowed her… refers to the seven men, one of whom can be identified as the narrator of (25a) (alternatively, a ‘collective’, plural narrator could be posited):21

21

The we in we must not be seen and the our in the narrative part (our establishment) refer to the seven men together with Snow White.

268 The grammatical semantics and the pragmatics of FIST and DIST (25a)

Snow White is agitated. She is worried about something called her “reputation”. What will people think, why have we allowed her to become a public scandal, we must not be seen in public en famille, no one believes that she is simply a housekeeper, etc. etc. These concerns are ludicrous. No one cares. When she is informed that our establishment has excited no special interest in the neighborhood, she is bitterly disappointed. (Barthelme, Snow White, 1978 [1967]: 41; also partly qtd. Fludernik 1993: 404)

Apart from the first person we in why have we allowed her… coreferential with the current speaker(s), what supports a DIST reading of (25a) is the enumeration of Snow White’s concerns and the expression etc. etc. Such an express manipulation of the presumed original utterances is difficult to accommodate within an interpretation as FIST, which would precisely maintain the illusion of mimesis by keeping all the questions separate so as to suggest that the represented speaker’s flow of questions is followed. In addition, the placeholder etc. etc. would have to be omitted or replaced by a narrator’s statement saying that the barrage of questions went on beyond the questions represented explicitly. (25b) presents a version of (25a) that is compatible with a reading as FIST: (25b)

Snow White is agitated. She is worried about something called her ‘reputation’. What will people think? Why have they allowed her to become a public scandal? They must not be seen in public en famille! No one believes that she is simply a housekeeper. The questions just keep coming. These concerns are ludicrous. […] (constructed after 25a)

Another prominent effect of DIST in literary texts is that of irony, the problem discussed in section 2.3 above. At least two forms can informally be distinguished. In examples such as the dialogue between Lucy and Miss Bartlett in A Room with a View (example 5 in Chapter 5), there is nothing to suggest that the current speaker contests the contents of the represented utterances. However, the passage can be called mildly ironic because of the current speaker’s simple but efficient choice to omit all reporting clauses and thus to have a quick succession of highly emotional turns going to and fro between the two interlocutors (Oh no! Oh yes!). The irony is then one which gently mocks the rhetorical flourishes and courtesies exchanged between Lucy and Miss Bartlett over a rather commonplace decision – whether the latter will accompany the former or not – which surely does not

Pragmatic usage types of DIST in different genres 269

merit all the fuss it gets. In other cases, a stronger variety of irony is involved, in that the current speaker does not agree with the echoed content. An example is (26), in which the ironically echoed utterance pertains to the pullout of soldiers: (26)

Next year we are to bring the soldiers home For lack of money, and it is all right. Places they guarded or kept orderly, Must guard themselves or keep themselves orderly. We want the money for ourselves at home Instead of working. And this is all right. (from Philip Larkin’s “Homage to a Government”, Larkin 1997 [1988]: 171)

In this extract, it is only a reading of the underlined sentences as DIST that can capture the irony that crucially underlies them (‘it is all right, they say (but I don’t agree)’). Clearly this is not the current speaker’s own view as the entire poem bespeaks disagreement with and sadness at the government’s decision: to the current speaker it is not “all right” at all.22 One can compare, in this regard, a possible FIST representation It was all right [to us], we thought, which leaves the represented speakers’ view of it being “all right” intact, to the ironic DIST of (26) It is all right [to them], they said, with we and them the proponents of a withdrawal of the soldiers. Let us now turn to a few non-literary usage types of DIST. In the newspaper genre of what one might call ‘reportage’, a variety of DIST is frequently used in which journalists freely mix their ‘authorial’ (current speaker) text with represented bits of dialogue with their interviewees. The use of DIST here results in a more narrative rendering of an interview: the stretches of dialogue that get to be reported form part of a larger coherent storyline making up the article. In contrast, the typical question/answertype interview at most has an introduction, but usually no further intervening commentary on the part of the journalist. This latter interview style is typically used to put the news of the day into perspective in small sideinterviews, or to plainly render an interview with an important politician. Reportage, in contrast, usually forms part of large-scale feature articles.

22

For further discussion of DIST in the poetry of Larkin, see Vandelanotte 2002a and Dancygier and Vandelanotte 2009.

270 The grammatical semantics and the pragmatics of FIST and DIST Examples of obliquely rendered dialogue in reportage are given in (27– 28), excerpts from interviews with nonagenarians Leo Abse and Betty Stevens respectively (Cleave 2008): (27)

(28)

The two most difficult stages in the human lifespan, he says, are adolescence and old age. “You grow out of adolescence, you grow into old age and what you need for a happy old age is love,” adding in his saucy way, “someone in his 80s should not have roving thoughts. Ania married me for sex, I married her for her money!” He must add her practical skills: she had worked as a mechanic and electrician in the Gdansk shipyards, the only woman among 31 men. […] He’s very deaf but he can always hear Ania. She never raises her voice. Without her, he says, he would not have survived the stroke he had five years ago. (Cleave 2008: 105) She has soft white hair, a clear voice and perfect teeth. “Gnashers in good order,” she said. She is 90 and lives in St Andrew’s. […] Her father worked for the Great Western Railway in Berkshire; she and her younger sister played in the garden, shared a governess with the vicar’s children and did as they were told – until Betty was almost 18. (Cleave 2008: 106)

It is typical of the kind of feature article from which these interview snippets are taken that they interweave direct quotes with ‘non-direct’ reportative sentences which are adjusted to the journalist’s deictic centre, as evidenced by the third person pronouns referring to the represented speakers in (27–28). That a reportative rather than purely ‘objective’ reading is likely for the sentences underlined in (27–28) is suggested by the use of interposed reporting clauses, as well as by the presence of clearly marked DST in the immediately surrounding context. The case for a reading as DIST specifically rather than FIST is mainly pragmatic and therefore more subtle. The typical aim and function of press texts seems not to agree very well with the ‘closed circuit’, represented speaker directed semantics of FIST. The journalist’s aim is primarily to provide information rather than to enthrall readers in compelling scenes evoking represented speaker’s belief words and feelings. In my interpretation, the interviewer in (27–28) alternates her reporting style for a stylistic reason, variation, and not so much to achieve silenced, subdued representations of the interviewees’ speech. Among the indications that support a reading as DIST is tense use, which for the most part is absolute with

Pragmatic usage types of DIST in different genres 271

respect to the current speaker’s t0 (as in he’s very deaf in 27 or her father worked in 28, where relative past and past perfect respectively would be more likely in a FIST rendering). The underlined part of (28) could be argued to show the kind of concatenated, condensed representation typical of DIST, and more importantly contains a case of the ‘proper name problem’, as Betty is the name of the represented speaker. A clear example of the mix of DST and DIST in reportage is (29),23 an excerpt from an interview with musician Jan St Werner in which at least the first underlined occurrence of Werner points to a reading as DIST, and possibly also the second (if it is interpreted as an oblique rendering of a presumed original I think): (29)

23

Mouse on Mars recently issued ‘Glam’, the soundtrack to the film of the same name. Stuff that already dates back a few years. Werner: “We’re still making music weekly in Andi’s studio in Düsseldorf, so you can rest assured that a new record will be out soon.” That much doesn’t go for Microstoria for the time being. Werner does not want to seem arrogant or conceited, but with the last few Microstoria records a limit has been reached. Not that no nice new electronic music is being released, far from it. But innovate? Not really. As far as innovation is concerned, Microstoria is still well ahead of the competition, Werner thinks. “A lot of music is plain stupid, it seems as if no one is willing to take any risks anymore, as if no one wants to go their own way.” (Ploeg 2003: 25–26)24

An intricate example of the mix of DST, ‘truncated’ IST and DIST in reportage is discussed in Vandelanotte (2004b: 569–571). 24 The Dutch original reads as follows: “Van Mouse on Mars verscheen onlangs ‘Glam’, een soundtrack van de film met de gelijknamige titel. Materiaal dat ook alweer wat jaartjes oud is. Werner: “We maken nog wekelijks muziek in de studio van Andi in Düsseldorf, dus je kunt er zeker van zijn dat er binnenkort weer een nieuwe plaat verschijnt.” Dat geldt voorlopig niet voor Microstoria. Werner wil niet arrogant overkomen of zichzelf op de borst kloppen, maar met de laatste platen van Microstoria is een grens bereikt. Niet dat er geen aardige nieuwe elektronische muziek uitkomt, verre van. Maar vernieuwen? Nou nee. Wat dat betreft staat Microstoria nog steeds ver boven de concurrentie verheven, meent Werner. “Veel muziek is zo dom, het lijkt wel of niemand meer risico’s wil nemen, dat niemand meer een eigen weg wil gaan.”

272 The grammatical semantics and the pragmatics of FIST and DIST The cases of DIST in the language of the press discussed so far may call for a reconsideration of the general point sometimes made that FIST occurs regularly in newspaper language (see for instance Onions 1904: 83–84, Curme 1931: 420, McHale 1978: 282, Semino and Short 2004: 86–87). As argued above, a journalist’s aims remain rather different from those of a novelist, even in those subgenres where a more ‘narrative’ or ‘literary’ style is used. Consider, in this regard, the example which McHale quotes (30), or the example Semino and Short give of “FIS” in the press section of their corpus (31): (30)

(31)

The Dean of St. Paul’s […] asked what they were to say of those modernist atrocities which happily were not admitted to the exhibition […]. What were they to say of paintings some of which seemed to be the work of a bad mathematician and others to have come from the nursery of a very disagreeable child? (Laughter.) He hoped that the purer art which they saw on those walls might help before long to kill these abominations. They really were, he was convinced, simply nonsense, and he trusted that within the next 10 years the productions of these artists would have been banished to the bathroom or even farther. (Laughter.) (London Times, 16 March 1932, p. 12 qtd. McHale 1978: 282) The Bishop of Wakefield, Nigel McCulloch, chairman of the Church’s communication unit, said that if the claims were true, such practices were ‘utterly disgusting and blasphemous’. They were not recognisable as part of any Anglican creed. (‘Minister “touched woman” at exorcism’, Guardian, 5 December 1994 qtd. Semino and Short 2004: 86)

Pragmatically I believe it makes sense to view the underlined sentences as DIST in which the journalist’s current concerns have come to overlay the represented speaker’s expressivity. The fact that in (30), for instance, the audience’s response to the Dean’s speech is intermittently represented as (Laughter) by the current speaker seems difficult to reconcile with the selfexpressive semantics of FIST. In similar vein, a closed off, ‘selfexpressive’ reading as FIST of the sentence underlined in (31) focuses only on the Bishop’s statement to the reporters, whereas a reading as DIST embeds it more clearly in the broader news report, in which it could be argued that gentle irony is involved. In obliquely representing the somewhat peculiar terms in which the practice of ‘touching’ a woman at exorcism are condemned by the Bishop, the journalist may be seen to express

Pragmatic usage types of DIST in different genres 273

an attitude of finding such an understatement (“not recognisable as part of any Anglican creed”) quaintly funny. A different use to which DIST can be put in news sources is to introduce provocative claims of which it is only subsequently made clear who they originate with. The TV news of the VRT (the television channel of the Flemish Community of Belgium) often starts with such a provocative claim which only turns out not to be an ‘objective’ news claim afterwards (p.c. K. Davidse). For instance, in speaking about the installation of a new bench of aldermen in Antwerp after a series of financial scandals, the newsreader first said about some of the members of this new bench They cannot be appointed because they have been named in fraud cases, and only subsequently clarified in a distancing clause that this is what one of the members of the opposition claimed (VRT news broadcast, 6 April 2003).25 Intonational and even facial cues help to suggest the newsreader’s noncommitment even before the ultimate source of the provocative claim is explicitly revealed. A similar procedure is used at the beginning of the following short newspaper article: (32)

25

NHS better loved than GP Our country and its rulers take better care of the NHS than of the GPs. They value more highly the administration which the former keep than the basic health care the latter provide. This appears according to the weekly The GP from the national health insurance budget. […] (article “Ziekenfonds meer bemind dan huisarts” in Belgian newspaper De Standaard, 14 April 2004)26

In Vandelanotte (2004b: 563–564), I had included this example in the subjectified cases of DIST (see Chapter 8), on the assumption that the fact that the ultimate source is always explicitly mentioned eventually was sufficient to fulfil the condition of an ‘obligatory’ reporting clause for subjectified DIST. On reflection, however, it is difficult to maintain that the subsequent ‘disclaimers’ after such provocative claims are really reporting clauses. In example (32) below, for instance, the DIST status of the first paragraph is only made apparent after a paragraph break. Since DIST here functions at such a broad discourse level, I now think it is better to include this usage under non-subjectified DIST. 26 The Dutch original reads as follows: “Ziekenfonds meer bemind dan huisarts. Ons land en zijn bestuurders zien de ziekenfondsen liever dan de huisartsen. Ze hechten meer belang aan de administratie die de eersten bijhouden dan aan de basisgezondheidszorg die de tweeden verstrekken. Dat blijkt volgens het weekblad De Huisarts uit het budget van de ziekteverzekering.”

274 The grammatical semantics and the pragmatics of FIST and DIST In a case like (32), again, the ‘closed circuit’ self-expressive reading that a categorization as FIST would force makes little sense. Moreover, the first person (our) is incompatible with such a categorization (FIST would require Their country…, they said/thought), and pragmatically the noncommitting, distancing reading is made evident in the second paragraph of the article. Only a DIST reading can accommodate these observations. If we turn now to academic texts, it appears that DIST tends to be used when one researcher – the author of the text – obliquely represents another’s line of argumentation (so as to comment on it or argue for or against it). Such academic ‘polyphony’ is exemplified in (33–34), both taken from linguistic argumentation: (33)

(34)

Comrie then adds that in (4b) the past tense was of (4c) has been replaced by the past perfect had been; this is allowed, he says, because in English any past tense locating an event or situation prior to a contextually established reference point in the past can be converted into a past perfect. (van der Wurff 1996: 264) Signifiers and signifieds (concepts and sound images) are, says Saussure, purely differential, defined by their relationships with other terms in the linguistic system, and not by any positive content of their own. (McGregor 1997: 39)

The linearly early placement of the reporting clause seems typical of the use of DIST in academic discourse, also, as we shall see, of subjectified forms of DIST (see Chapter 8). For the non-subjectified uses of DIST as in (33–34), I would propose that this interposed rather than postposed placement iconically reflects a concern to make it clear as quickly as possible that someone else’s, and not one’s own, argument is being phrased first, in order to be able to react to it subsequently. Very often in such stretches of ‘echoed’ argumentation, it is perfectly possible to understand the passage correctly even without the reporting clause; indeed they may occur without it in the first place, if the context makes it sufficiently clear that someone else’s argumentation is being summarized (see e.g. the introductory Comrie then adds… in 33). Thus, (33a) is perfectly interpretable as an alternative to (33), and the underlined sentence is still to be understood as a DIST echo representing Comrie’s position, which is of current relevance because the current author will compare it to another approach (Declerck’s) and discuss the merits and shortcomings of both approaches:

Pragmatic usage types of DIST in different genres 275

(33a)

Comrie then adds that in (4b) the past tense was of (4c) has been replaced by the past perfect had been; this is allowed because in English any past tense locating an event or situation prior to a contextually established reference point in the past can be converted into a past perfect. (adapted from 48)

Ifantidou in her chapter on parentheticals discusses a similar example to those in (33–34): (35)

UG provides a fixed system of principles and a finite set of parameters, each language setting the values for these parameters, Chomsky says. (Ifantidou 2001: 157)

She comments that “given an appropriate speaker and hearer” (35) would have a “strengthening effect” (Ifantidou 2001: 157), since Chomsky is a recognized authority in mainstream linguistics. However, since there are also many people who disagree with Chomsky’s views on language, it is not difficult to think of scholarly contexts in which the reporting clause in (35) would have anything but a strengthening effect. Ifantidou’s comment here pertains, in the final analysis, to the argument from authority at large, and depending on the context the pragmatic effect of DIST in academic argumentation can be either ‘commitment-strengthening’ or ‘commitmentweakening’. Even when the higher-order pragmatic effect of academic ‘echoes’ is strengthening rather than weakening, they do not engage the current speaker him- or herself in any strict sense. (35) for instance gives a short summary of Chomsky’s theory presenting it as a kind of ‘given’, but does not claim any personal ‘authorship’ of the theory or claim presented. As we shall see further down, in ‘evidential’ conversational usage of DIST, there is a stronger sense of the current speaker really associating with a claim him- or herself, even if this claim is based ultimately on something someone else has said previously. In conversational usage, then, a first type of DIST that can be identified is that of conversationalists echoing to their current interlocutors things other people said to them in a previous speech situation, possibly also (as in 36 below) indicating their disagreement with the echoed content. This type of conversational DIST tends to correspond with those examples cited in evidence of the fact that (against claims to the contrary, e.g. Lips 1926: 81, Banfield 1982: 141, 225) FIST does exist in spoken language. Both exam-

276 The grammatical semantics and the pragmatics of FIST and DIST ples below (36–37) were thus analysed as ‘spoken language’ FIST by Vetters (1994) and Fludernik (1993) respectively: (36)

(37)

You should have heard him! The way he insulted me! I was a jerk, a layabout, and you, you weren’t much better either (he has said / he said). (Vetters 1994: 190) [the speaker is offered a job] this was a Wednesday ((was it right)) so would I start the next day – and perhaps put in for that Friday as well – m and that that would be my first week’s pay (Survey of English Usage S.2.12.91 qtd. Fludernik 1993: 84; emphasis adapted)

In my analysis, such examples show one of the clearest grammatical indications of the deictic singularity across reported and reporting clauses by having the current speaker referred to in the first person in the reported clause. FIST does not tolerate such an infringement on the represented speaker’s construal and expressivity, whereas it is perfectly natural for DIST. To reanalyse (36–37) as DIST rather than FIST does not amount to saying that FIST may not occur in spoken language. Yamaguchi (1989: 593–594) has provided a few valid examples of FIST in oral narratives – not exactly ‘conversational’ usage, but retrospective narratives that were orally produced. (38) is one of these examples in which the underlined sentences instantiate FIST: (38)

My mom had always wanted me to better myself. I wanted to better myself because of her. Now when the strikes started, I told her I was going to join the union and the whole movement. I told her I was going to work without pay. She said she was proud of me. (His eyes glisten. A long, long pause.) See, I told her I wanted to be with my people. If I were a company man, nobody would like me any more. I had to belong to somebody and this was it right here. She said, “I pushed you in your early years to try to better yourself and get a social position. But I see that’s not the answer. I know I’ll be proud of you.” (S. Terkel, Working qtd. Yamaguchi 1989: 593)

This type of example is quite different from (36–37) above, in that it does not involve echoing some original interlocutor’s remarks about the current speaker, but instead coherently represents past thoughts of the represented I-persona, represented in FIST.

Pragmatic usage types of DIST in different genres 277

A final usage type of DIST I would like to point out is equally one which occurs in conversation, but one in which there is a clear associative attitude on the part of the current speaker. This is the type I have identified previously as ‘evidential’ (see Chapter 6, section 1.2.1), and which is instantiated by examples (39–41), discussed previously in Chapters 5 and 6: (39) (40) (41)

John will be late, he said. (Reinhart 1975: 136) He mailed you earlier today, he said, so please do answer him. (attested from e-mail, 4 February 2000) Prof. Nowé has taken a few days off, he says, so he won’t be there. (attested from e-mail, 12 April 2000)

What is different about this type of example is that more than in any of the other types I have discussed, the speech function echoically enacted in the reported clause is one with which the current speaker associates: as a claim, for instance, it is not merely an echoed claim, but it is also used as a current claim. In this sense, the reporting clause mainly gives as ‘evidence’ for the claim of the reported clause the fact that the represented speaker said something sufficiently informative for the current speaker to have drawn the conclusion given in the reported clause from. Thus, as we have seen previously (Chapter 5, section 2.1), Reinhart (1975) has already suggested that the ‘input’ to (39) may well have been something like I will be late, but may just as well have been something rather different like I’m going to work late tonight or My car broke down yesterday so I’ll have to take the bus. As Reinhart (1975: 137) points out, what is at stake is not so much what was said, but rather, in this case, where John is, or whether everybody will be on time. Because this ‘evidential’ kind of conversational DIST is removed quite a bit from the cases which function more ‘narratively’, echoing different ‘characters’ or interviewees or researchers, I would propose to view them as involving a step in the direction of grammaticalization in that the reporting clause in them is placed on a path towards a conventionalized, grammaticalized evidential marker. As I will argue in Chapter 8, DIST cases involving I think in conversational language form the grammaticalized and subjectified ‘prototype’, although other subtypes along the path will be distinguished. In subjectified DIST with I think, the reporting clause no longer serves to describe a speech or thought act of which the content is given in the reported clause, but rather expresses an interpersonal meaning (for instance, modal nuancing) vis-à-vis the reported clause, which is semantically the ‘main clause’.

278 The grammatical semantics and the pragmatics of FIST and DIST The reason why evidential cases of DIST like (39–41) veer towards grammaticalization lies in the semantic and pragmatic precedence which the reported clause has over the reporting clause in the sense that the current speaker associates strongly with the echoed speech act, which functions as a current conversational ‘move’, albeit grounded in previous discourse on which it is based. This functioning as a current conversational move cannot be posited for the uses in literary texts, reportage and academic discourse discussed previously. Conversely, the reason why I do not count examples (39–41) squarely among the grammaticalized and subjectified cases but only as tending towards grammaticalization is that they lack certain features of grammaticalization that more clearly subjectified cases do show, as we shall see in Chapter 8. Thus, in subjectified and grammaticalized cases of DIST, the reporting clause is obligatory: if you want to express a type of interpersonal comment, you are going to have to use the conventional means that have developed for their expression. In the absence of an I think clause, for instance, there is no way for an interlocutor to ‘guess’ the hedge or modal nuance or whatever its function may be. Cases like (39–41), on the other hand, can occur without explicit reporting clauses, given an appropriate context. Thus, for (39), consider (39a): (39a)

John? Oh, I talked to him on the phone this morning. He will be late.

I conclude that cases like (39–41) do belong with non-subjectified DIST, even though they are to be situated nearer to the grammaticalized pole of a cline than literary, journalistic or academic echoes. To conclude this section, I return briefly to the notion of ‘echo’ explored in section 3.1. There it was argued that DIST always involves one attitude from a wide range from acceptance to rejection vis-à-vis the ‘metarepresentation’ in the reported clause. In the uses discussed in this section, these different attitudes can be recognized. Many literary uses tend towards different degrees of dissociation, involving irony or at least (as with the concatenation of highly emotional questions suggesting their exaggerated nature) mild mockery of the represented speaker, although more associative uses are not excluded (as with the example from first person narration (23) I should put my trust in that and administer it steadily). More strongly dissociative are the journalistic echoes of provocative claims as well as the sarcastic conversational echoes of deprecatory comments of the represented speaker about the current speaker (I was a jerk, a layabout, etc.). In report-

Conclusion 279

age, DIST tends more towards acceptance (as with Werner does not want to seem arrogant or conceited, which does not suggest any disapproval on the part of the journalist), and it is probably used as an economical way of reporting, avoiding the burden of having many explicit reporting clauses (with IST) or quotation marks (with DST). Academic echoes can face both ways, so to speak: they may be used dissociatively, being echoed for them to be subsequently denied or at least improved on, but they may also function in a way that Ifantidou (2001: 157) has called commitmentstrengthening. The evidential use of DIST was argued to be partly grammaticalized, and to involve the strongest form of acceptance of all cases described in this section: the current speaker both echoes and ‘makes’ the claim in the reported clause. In Chapter 8, I will focus on more clearly subjectified cases of DIST, in which the reporting clause has come to function as an interpersonal marker and has in a sense become obligatory instead of optional (see Chapter 8, section 1.1).

5. Conclusion In this chapter, I have first characterized the semantics of FIST and DIST in terms of the secondary or ‘surrogate’ grounding in them, along the lines of the model developed in Chapter 4. FIST has been argued to involve the self-expressive, non-exchange directed re-enactment of the original speech function. To this can be seen to correspond more evocative notions such as the ‘closed circuit’ character of FIST, in which the ‘loudness’ of DST is avoided. DIST, on the other hand, was analysed in terms of an echoic speech function enactment because the current speaker is always at an ‘attitudinal’ remove from the utterance or thought ‘metarepresented’ from his or her own deictic centre. I have fleshed out these notions in confrontation with existing approaches to ‘dual voice’ for FIST and ‘echo’ and ‘distance’ for DIST, and I have illustrated some of the pragmatic potential of DIST by comparing usage types across different text types. In the following chapter, I will focus on subjectified forms of STR, including subjectified DIST, and here too I will distinguish a number of pragmatically distinct subtypes which can serve to complement the types discussed in this chapter.

Chapter 8 Subjectified forms of speech or thought representation

In this chapter, I turn to construction types for which a different theoretical and descriptive apparatus needs to be deployed compared to that used in preceding chapters. What is common to all four types discussed previously is that their reporting clauses (explicit or inferred) mean what they say, that is to say, they construe a speech or thought act the content of which is given in the reported clause. The focus in this chapter, on the other hand, is on subjectified forms of speech or thought representation, in which reporting clauses such as I think, I guess, I claim, I would argue, etc. no longer have their original ‘representational’ meaning, but have acquired instead subjective meanings, centering on “the locutionary agent’s expression of himself and his own attitudes and beliefs” (Lyons 1982: 102). Henceforth I will refer to DST, IST, FIST, and DIST as they were analysed in chapters 2 to 7 as types of representational STR, whereas the types dealt with in this chapter instantiate subjectified STR, specifically subjectified IST and DIST, as we will see below (section 1.3). In the first section, I will briefly review arguments in favour of analysing non-representational uses of I think, I guess and related forms in terms of grammaticalization and subjectification, in Traugott’s (1989, 1995a, and Dasher 2002) sense of encoding speakers’ subjective belief states or attitudes to what they are talking about.1 As well, I will argue that there is a link between the deictic properties of representational forms and their eligibility for subjectification. In section 2, I will argue that the “subjectification in grammaticalization” (Traugott 1995a) affecting subjectified STR is accompanied by a syntagmatic reanalysis from a compositional complementation relation to a non-compositional “scoping” relationship in the

1

A competing conceptualization of ‘subjectivity’ in cognitive linguistics is Langacker’s (1985) understanding in terms of implicit construal, which effectively, as De Smet and Verstraete (2006: 369–370) show, subdivides ‘speaker-related’ structures into objective (explicit speaker-reference) and subjective (implicit speaker-reference). For discussion and comparison, see among others Traugott (1995a), Langacker (2006) and De Smet and Verstraete (2006).

Grammaticalization, subjectification, and deictic singularity 281

sense of McGregor (1997). In addition, it will be argued that subjectified IST and DIST are not merely stylistic variants to be captured under one heading (‘parentheticals’), but remain constructionally distinct. In section 3, various pragmatically distinct types of S-DIST in different genres will be distinguished to complement the range of uses described in Chapter 7 (section 4) of representational DIST, thus forming a cline from representational to subjective. In section 4, finally, the main conclusions of this chapter will be summarized.

1. Grammaticalization, subjectification, and deictic singularity In this section, I will deal with two types of issues that were dealt with in separate chapters for representational STR: issues of deixis and grammatical semantics. The reason why these are dealt with within one section is, firstly, that these different topics are strongly interconnected for subjectified STR, and secondly, that once the subjectified nature is properly understood the issues of deixis and grammatical semantics are not as complicated or controversial as with representational STR. In order to understand this last point, consider examples (1–2) below. Both have tags picking up on the ‘reported’ clause, not on the ‘reporting’ clause, which is clear evidence of the subjectified status of the I think clause which, instead of construing a process of ‘cogitating’ or a state of ‘contemplating a thought’, functions as a kind of hedge vis-à-vis the claim about the song and the amount of money respectively: (1)

(2)

– Well I just phoned up about that er song the chap was trying to get earlier on. – Oh yes. Yeah. – I think it’s an old Eddie Fisher song isn’t it? (CB, ukspok) And it’s about three quid I think isn’t it. About three quid each. (CB, ukspok)

In the remainder of this chapter, I will call sentences like (1), with a clauseinitial subjectified reporting clause which is not prosodically separated from the ‘reported’ clause, examples of subjectified IST (S-IST), and examples like (2) will be referred to as subjectified DIST (S-DIST). The reasons for this will be discussed in section 2.3. As for deixis, the significant thing to note about examples like (1) and (2) is that in them there is only one speech situation (viz. the current speech situation), since the

282 Subjectified forms of STR subjectified clause I think does not construe a separate speech situation. It will be recalled that all forms of representational STR involve two speech situations, a current and a represented one. The fact that in subjectified STR (1–2) only one speech situation is involved cancels the specific difficulties caused by combining in various ways the perspectives of two distinct speech situations. Tense use or person deixis in the ‘reported’ or ‘main’ clause of subjectified STR will thus not be discussed, since they are essentially the same as for any non-reported main clause. As for grammatical semantics, since there is only one speech situation with only one speech act vis-à-vis which a subjective attitude is additionally expressed, establishing the degree of (re-)enactment of the ‘original’ speech function is not an issue. Instead, the different types of subjective (speaker-encoding) and possibly intersubjective (hearer-oriented) functions fulfilled by subjectified reporting clauses need to be described. It will be clear from the singularity of speech situation as well as the subjective rather than representational meaning of the ‘reporting clause’ of subjectified STR that this no longer involves speech or thought representation per se. In other words, “subjectified STR” is to be seen as a single concept denoting the constructions resulting from the process of ‘subjectifying’ certain types of (representational) STR. S-IST and S-DIST do not as such represent speech or thought, but use a limited subset of the grammar of STR to do rather different things. For ease of reference, I will in the remainder of this chapter prefer to speak, in referring to the ‘reporting’ and ‘reported’ clause of an example of subjectified STR, of the ‘subjectified reporting clause’ and the ‘main clause’ respectively. With all these terms, it is important to bear in mind that they do not denote ‘subtypes’ of reporting clauses or of types of STR: S-IST, for instance, is not a subtype of (representational) IST. They are different constructions, but related in terms of subjectification to the constructions that in a real sense involve the representation of speech or thought. The reasons for considering S-IST and SDIST as the outcome of processes of grammaticalization and subjectification will be discussed in sections 1.1 and 1.2 respectively; section 1.3 considers the question why it is IST and DIST which lend themselves to the process of subjectification in particular, and not DST and FIST, a question which has not been addressed in existing accounts of (particularly) subjectified I think, which merely assume but do not investigate further the link with representational STR.

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1.1. Subjectified STR: Parameters of grammaticalization The notion of grammaticalization is usually traced to Meillet’s (1921 [1912]: 131) definition of attributing grammatical characteristics to a formerly autonomous word. Apart from lexemes acquiring grammatical functions, the notion was already used by Kuryłowicz (1965) to also capture developments from grammatical resources into further grammaticalized resources. A commonly used definition building on this earlier work is Hopper and Traugott’s, which defines grammaticalization as the change whereby lexical items and constructions come in certain linguistic contexts to serve grammatical functions, and once grammaticalized, continue to develop new grammatical functions (Hopper and Traugott 2003: 18)

Probably the earliest explicit statement of the grammaticalization of I think and similar “epistemic phrases” is Thompson and Mulac (1991a, 1991b), and discussion by among others Traugott (1995a: 38–39), Brinton (1996, 2005, 2007, 2008) and Kärkkäinen (2003: 58) has confirmed the presence of a number of signs of grammaticalization. Among the clearer symptoms are the following (based on the analyses proposed by Vandelanotte 2005b: 332–339 and the overview of features listed in Brinton 2005: 291–293 and 2007: 62): – decategorialization (cf. Hopper 1991: 22, 30–31) and the attendant ‘recategorialization’ (cf. Brems 2007: 114–115): subjectified reporting clauses lose important clausal characteristics in the sense that they typically no longer feature auxiliaries, indirect objects or adverbs (Thompson and Mulac 1991b), and to the extent that they enter into a paradigm of modal adverbs such as probably, presumably, possibly, perhaps or, in other uses, into a paradigm of discourse markers such as you know or well (cf. Kärkkäinen 2003: 175–179), they can be said to be to some extent ‘recategorialized’ into the minor (closed) classes of modal adverbs or discourse markers; – “ossification” (Brinton 2005: 292) of form: as shown by Thompson and Mulac (1991a, 1991b) and Thompson (2002), subjectified reporting clauses are relatively fixed formulas characterized by a simple structure and having first or (in questions) second person subjects (usually pronominal) and predominantly think or guess as predicate, such that particularly I think and I guess are the most strongly formulaic forms,

284 Subjectified forms of STR

–

–

–

–

2

contrasting with the wide variety of forms which representational reporting clauses permit; phonological “attrition” or reduction (Lehmann 1985: 307): apart from the reduction in ‘weight’ as a result of the simpler structure described above, weaker prosodic realizations have been reported at least for I think (Kärkkäinen [2003: 66, 98] mentions accelerated tempo, lack of accentuation or only secondary accent, and phonetic reduction) and for I mean (as Brinton [2007: 63] notes, Crystal and Davy [1975: 97] report reductions to [´mi:n] and [mi:n]); semantic “attrition” (Lehmann 1985: 307) or “desemanticization” (Lehmann 1995 [1982]: 127–130): taking the case of I think, the literal lexical meaning of think (to engage in a process of thinking, to have as a thought) has been weakened and lost to produce the grammatical meaning of, broadly speaking, modalization, that is to say the expression of a speaker’s stance vis-à-vis the main clause;2 pragmatic strengthening (Traugott 1988, 1989, and König 1991): what is a ‘loss’ (of lexical meaning) from one perspective can also be seen as an increase in pragmatic meaning: since on a strict literal (representational) reading I think is largely redundant, as people are generally expected to say only things which they think and (in the typical case) believe, there is an invited inference that something else is intended (viz. the expression of the speaker’s subjective stance, indicating for instance uncertainty); in subjectified STR this conversational implicature has become conventionalized; while subjectification, the mechanism by which “meanings are recruited to encode and regulate attitudes and beliefs” (Traugott forthcoming b) is “typical of semantic change in general” and thus “not limited to grammaticalization” (Traugott and Dasher 2002: 89–90), it often strongly interacts with it (Traugott 1995a, forthcoming b). I will return to the types of subjective and intersubjective meanings expressed by subjectified STR in section 1.2.

Following Persson (1993), I assume think has the meanings of “forming an opinion” (dynamic) and “having an opinion” (static). Nuyts (2000, 2001) seems to take only the former (as in the pattern I am thinking or thinking about) as the literal meaning of think, but this seems too restrictive and does not sit well with the fact that believe, another mental state predicate, is then held to have “hold a belief” as its literal meaning.

Grammaticalization, subjectification, and deictic singularity 285

In addition to these diagnostics, Hopper’s (1991) grammaticalization principles of divergence, persistence and layering can be applied to subjectified STR (see e.g. Thompson and Mulac 1991a: 324–325, Brinton 2005: 292–293, 2007: 62–63): there is divergence because the original, representational form continues to exist alongside the subjectified one and persistence because traces of the original meaning of think, guess, etc. remain and can come to be ‘re-activated’ (see further section 2 below). Layering is involved since adverbial and/or discourse marker uses of I think, I guess and related forms do not supersede forms such as possibly, probably or you know, well but complement them and thus extend the inventory of forms functioning as expressions of (un)certainty, as face-saving hedges or as online planning devices (see further section 1.3 below). What has less generally been noted is that, from the perspective of comparing subjectified and representational reporting clauses, a case can be made that subjectified STR involves reduced paradigmatic variability (Lehmann 1985: 306), in that the option between ‘zero’ and ‘overt’ realization of the reporting clause available to representational STR is reduced to only the ‘overt’ option. As argued in Chapter 2, given sufficient contextual cues to ensure a successful retrieval of the reportative reading, representational STR may often occur without reporting clauses. By contrast, subjectified reporting clauses are obligatory, in the sense that any speakerencoding or hearer-oriented comment one wishes to make about one’s utterance needs to be made explicitly; there is no way to contextually infer or ‘guess’ such comments. As an example, consider the occurrences of I think in (3), which alternate with an occurrence of probably. The topic of discussion (on a phone-in radio show) is Saddam Hussein’s “massacring” of Kurds and how to take a stand against this. (3)

Yeah but I I think I think the problem is that there’s very few countries are prepared to stand up and be counted when it you know comes to it. Probably America and Britain and a couple of others are prepared to do that. Because I think I think you’ve picked on the ones which are reluctant at the moment. (CB, ukspok)

If, in (3), the occurrences of I think are omitted, the remaining clauses take on the ‘default value’ of epistemic modality expressed by indicative mood, viz. “committment to the truth of the proposition” (Verstraete 2007: 49). If anything other than the default value of speaker commitment is to be expressed in an indicative clause, some explicit means of modal marking has

286 Subjectified forms of STR to be used (modal verbs or adverbs, or indeed subjectified reporting clauses such as I think or I guess). Similar arguments can be developed for other (inter)subjective functions of subjectified reporting clauses; the main point is that the involvement of speaker- or hearer-encoding meanings needs to be signposted (even if the specific type of function may be co-determined by context), and in this sense subjectified reporting clauses are obligatory in the “communicative” (rather than language-internal) sense described by Diewald (forthcoming) for certain modal particles in German. Another feature described by Lehmann (1985: 306), “bondedness”, refers to processes of cliticization typical of advanced morphological processes of grammaticalization. In its strict interpretation this does not apply in the case of subjectified STR, but taking a broader view in comparison with representational STR it is perhaps not exaggerated to see some signs of a greater clitic-like nature of subjectified I think in its phonetically reduced features (Kärkkäinen 2003: 66, 98) as well as its frequent intonational integration with a following unit within the same intonation unit (Kärkkäinen 2003: Chapter 5). In addition, the ease with which I think attaches to small units within larger encompassing units, as with all in for all of English football in (4) below, contrasts with the difficulty to report only part of a clausal constituent in the case of (especially more elaborate) representational reporting clauses (5): (4)

(5)

I don’t know anything about that we have just been allowed back in to Europe erm that’s great news for I think all of English football […]. (CB, ukspok) ??This is great news for Michael Owen emphatically said all of English football.

Some other features originally described by Lehmann (1985, 1995 [1982]) have come under attack, notably scope reduction (challenged by Tabor and Traugott 1998 and, for the grammaticalization of discourse markers specifically, by Traugott 1995b) and fixation, or loss of syntagmatic variability (challenged by Traugott 1995b and Brinton 1996 for discourse markers, which tend not to have a fixed slot).3 The fact that Lehmann’s model focused on morphosyntactic change and on more advanced stages of grammaticalization (as noted by Hopper 1991: 21) can

3

Counterexamples to increase in bonding have also been discussed (see e.g. Traugott 1995b: 3 for some examples).

Grammaticalization, subjectification, and deictic singularity 287

help explain the lack of fit for some of Lehmann’s criteria for broader, semantico-pragmatic changes in their initial stages. In the case of subjectified versus representational reporting clauses, certainly no reduced syntagmatic variability can be claimed: if anything, the contrast in (4–5) above could be taken to suggest that subjectified reporting clauses have slightly greater syntagmatic variability, in occurring more easily within clausal constituents. When representational reporting clauses appear sentencemedially, they tend to do so in between two clausal constituents (e.g. “I would like to congratulate you,” he said pompously, “on the occasion of your 30th birthday.”). As for scope reduction, in its interpretation as involving an evolution from having scope over items of “arbitrary complexity” to a “word or stem” (Lehmann 1995 [1982]: 164), it too cannot be posited for subjectified STR. What the comparison of examples (4) and (5) shows is neither scope reduction nor scope expansion, but merely what Himmelmann (2004: 32) terms host-class expansion: the “class of elements the gram is in construction with” is expanded. Whereas representational reporting clauses only have reported complements smaller than a clause when these are understood as a whole utterance or thought, as in She exclaimed “Not for the Queen of England!” or He said “No”, subjectified reporting clauses can bear not only on whole utterances (as in [3] above) but also on parts of them (as in [4] above). In the limiting case, in which I think functions as a boundary marker in discourse or even as a hesitation marker which does nothing more than ‘fill the air’ and give the speaker time to plan his or her speech, it can even be argued that I think no longer has any syntagmatic material specifically in its scope. Subjectified STR thus has the added potential of having narrow or even zero scope, without, however, losing the possibility of scope over whole utterances which representational STR also has. While it can be concluded from the above discussion that the relation between representational and subjectified STR shows the most important signs of grammaticalization, a few remarks are still in order. First, while the phenomena just described are assumed to have arisen over time, my interest in them is primarily synchronic, in keeping with the focus of this study. I thus claim a more “grammatical(ized)” status for subjectified STR compared to representational STR in the spirit of Lehmann’s (1985: 303) notion of synchronic grammaticalization as a “principle according to which subcategories of a given grammatical category may be ordered” (compare also Langacker 2006). The diachronic processes leading up to the present situa-

288 Subjectified forms of STR tion have turned out to be more complicated than initially assumed by Thompson and Mulac (1991a), who envisaged a fairly straightforward, frequency-driven development from I think that over I think Ø to ‘parenthetical’ I think. Brinton’s (1996: Chapter 8) detailed case study of I guess suggests a different syntactic development from adverbial or relative structures such as as I think or since I guess.4 This serves as a reminder that the relation between synchrony and diachrony is not always simple, and the former can certainly not always transparently be ‘read off’ the latter; in particular, as Traugott (forthcoming a) argues, the currently most frequent structure is not necessarily the oldest. Second, scholars who distinguish pragmaticalization as a separate process (e.g. Erman and Kotsinas 1993) regard the development of I think into a “modal particle” as an example of pragmaticalization rather than of grammaticalization proper (Aijmer 1996). However, as argued by Traugott (1995b) and Traugott and Dasher (2002: 158–159), the distinction between what is ‘in’ the grammar and ‘outside’ of it is unworkable, since so-called “pragmatic markers” (like sentence adverbials such as frankly, not usually ‘excluded’ from the grammar at all) are also part of the structure of a sentence and, conversely, phenomena such as tense, aspect and mood (usually regarded as clearly ‘grammatical’) also have pragmatic functions in most languages. In view of such considerations, Brinton (2005: 293, 2007: 64) treats pragmaticalization as a subtype of grammaticalization, not a distinct (let alone opposing) process.5

4

For the historical development of I mean Brinton (2007: 53–58) proposes yet another developmental trajectory, with I mean followed by a phrasal structure as its source. Studies of the now defunct methinks from its Old English origins me ðynceð include Palander-Collin 1997 and Wischer 2000. 5 Fischer (2007a, 2007b: 297–312), who proposes a different interpretation of Brinton’s (1996) historical data on I guess, argues that the development of “parentheticals” in English involves lexicalization rather than grammaticalization. I adopt Brinton and Traugott’s (2005) understanding of lexicalization as the fossilization of complex structures expressing ‘major’ word classes (noun, verb, adjective) rather than functional ones (as in grammaticalization), and hence keep to the grammaticalization analysis.

Grammaticalization, subjectification, and deictic singularity 289

1.2. Subjectified STR: Subjective and intersubjective meanings As argued in the preceding section, the loss of literal, lexical meaning in subjectified reporting clauses compared to their representational counterparts finds a positive correlate in the gain in speaker-encoding or ‘subjective’ meanings. This positive view, correcting the one-sided ‘loss’ model of grammaticalization, was developed in terms of pragmatic strengthening, through conventionalization of implicatures, in the work of Traugott (for instance 1988, 1989, 1995a, and König 1991). In the case of I think, for instance, these implicatures pertain to degrees of certainty: since ‘cooperative’ speech participants can be assumed to be sincere and thus to say only thoughts which they veridically have, an added I think in an utterance can only be understood as relevant if it is taken as a signal that there may be reason for doubt (this is what Halliday 1994 [1985]: 362–363 refers to as the “modal paradox”). In its (1989) exposition, Traugott’s understanding of subjectification included development towards meanings “based in the textual and metalinguistic situation” as well as towards meanings “based in the speaker’s subjective belief state/attitude towards the proposition” (Traugott 1989: 34– 35), referred to as “textual” and “attitudinal” subjectification respectively in Brems (2007: 111–114). This distinction, which is useful to cover certain discourse boundary marking and hesitation uses (textual) vs. epistemic uses (attitudinal) of I think and its close cousins, does not translate neatly into the more recent reformulation in terms of “subjective” vs. “intersubjective” meanings (see e.g. Traugott and Dasher 2002: 19–24 and Traugott forthcoming b). This is because subjective meanings, concerned with the encoding of the speaker’s point of view, cover both speakers’ epistemic attitudes and their attitudes “to the relationship between what precedes and what follows, i.e. to the discourse structure” (Traugott and Dasher 2002: 23). As Brems (2007: 112) notes, these two kinds of speaker-relatedness are rather different. Intersubjective meanings, on the other hand, are defined in terms of the speaker’s attention to the addressee’s self-image or “face” needs, and thus cover phenomena such as hedging and politeness. Before I turn to a brief discussion of what seem to me the main subjective and intersubjective uses of I think, the inclusion of “textual” or discourse organizational uses into the subjective category in Traugott and Dasher (2002: 23) and Traugott (forthcoming b) merits further comment. Traugott’s (forthcoming b) nuanced definition in terms of “the locutionary

290 Subjectified forms of STR agent’s expression of his or her awareness of the addressee’s attitudes and beliefs, most especially their ‘face’ or ‘self-image’” seems to allow, in its first part, for a slightly broader understanding, one which is used for instance by Brinton (2007: 50) when she calls the “because” sense of I mean intersubjective because “the speaker is being attentive to the hearer’s need for explanation”. Attention to the hearer’s need for explanation is not as such a matter of politeness or face-saving, but a broader concern for the successful execution of the communicative exchange between speaker and hearer. Under this slightly modified understanding of intersubjectivity,6 it becomes possible to view discourse organizational and “online planning” uses of I think (on which more below) as at least pragmatically (if perhaps not strictly semantically) intersubjective. This has the benefit that it allows one to see these cases as evidencing a somewhat more advanced degree of grammaticalization, corresponding to their greater reduction in lexical content (see further below). With these preliminaries in mind, I propose to group the different functions ascribed in the literature to I think and related subjectified reporting clauses into three types: epistemic, bearing on the speaker’s epistemic stance; illocutionary, specifying the illocutionary force of an utterance and aiding politeness strategies; and textual, helping speakers organize their interaction with their addressees successfully. While the first of these types merely shows increased subjective meaning, the latter two are intersubjective as well. On the other hand, drawing on Quirk et al.’s notion of comment clauses (1985: 1112f.), the epistemic and illocutionary uses can be grouped together because both provide speakers’s comments on their own utterance; since in some textual uses (for instance the hesitation marker use) I think no longer has anything in particular in its scope, a comment function cannot really be ascribed to it in such cases. I will briefly consider the three broad types I distinguish in turn, and then return to the question of the semantic or pragmatic status of these types. In what is perhaps the prototypical use of subjectified I think and I guess, they are used to code the speaker’s epistemic attitude towards his or her utterance. In keeping with earlier remarks on the ‘modal paradox’ (Halliday 1994 [1985]) and on the ‘default’ value of speaker commitment for declarative clauses (Verstraete 2007), it should be noted that the use of

6

For comparison with still other understandings of intersubjectivity, including Verhagen’s (2005) broad notion, based in argumentation theory, of intersubjective ‘coordination’ between speaker and addressee, see Traugott (forthcoming b).

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conventionalized formulae such as I think or I guess adds further nuances to what is already a modally ‘grounded’ utterance (Langacker 1991). In (6) below, for instance, use of I think adds a measure of tentativeness to the modal position implied in the finite tense marking. Similarly, in clauses which do not have a default value for modality but in which explicit modal marking (adverbs, auxiliaries) is already present (as with could in 7), the comment function of the subjectified reporting clause bears on these modal resources and adds a ‘secondary’ modality reinforcing the epistemic modality of the main clause: (6) (7)

Has this… this hasn’t been used has it? – No I think that’s the one you brought out erm. (CB, ukspok) Iraq could do a number of things, I think, one of which is to provoke incidents in Saudi Arabia. (CB, ukspok)

While the expression of nuance or tentativeness is a very common epistemic meaning, it has been shown at least for I think that in certain contexts and with “falling rather than with rising or fall-rise intonation” (Coates 1987: 116), it can also be used to express a strong commitment to a personal conviction (see among others Holmes 1985, 1990; Preisler 1986; Coates 1987; Simon-Vandenbergen 2000 and Nuyts 2001: 165–166). Several subtypes can be subsumed under the illocutionary or heareroriented meanings expressed by subjectified STR. One subtype is concerned with expressing a comment on, or further specifying, the illocutionary force of an utterance. For instance, in (8) below the word order and intonation of the declarative clause conventionally index the illocutionary force of a statement, but use of the subjectified reporting clause I argue specifies this force further as that of an argument: (8)

But if you make students study more diversely it does not necessarily mean you achieve a higher standard, I argue. (CB, times)

Another illocutionary, intersubjective function ascribed to I think is to aid politeness strategies (see e.g. Perkins 1983: 147, Aijmer 1997: 22, Nuyts 2001: 162–165) by downplaying the speaker’s social position vis-à-vis the hearer and thereby avoiding face threat to the latter (on these strategies, see Nuyts 2001: 162–167). In British English, this hedging use of I think is reported to be much more pronounced than in American English (p.c. Suzanne Kemmer). A case like (9) illustrates another illocutionary use: according to Nuyts (2001: 136), in this example I think acts as a speech act

292 Subjectified forms of STR modifier: “it turns a neutral question into a tendentious one” resulting in a “reproaching undertone, of the type ‘don’t tell me you don’t know’”: (9)

Why have they run out of fuel you think? (Nuyts 2001: 136)

In the literature, there has been, at least since Urmson’s 1963 [1952] paper on ‘parenthetical verbs’, a dominant tendency to analyse both epistemic and illocutionary ‘comment’ uses of such verbs in terms of a double speech act analysis (for discussion and references, see Ifantidou 2001: 132–138). The general idea is that so-called parentheticals (like I think or I argue in examples 6–8) and their associated clauses “perform two separate speech acts, one commenting on the other” (Ifantidou 2001: 137). In my view, this overstates the case; by saying I think in its subjectified use, for instance, no statement is made. Rather, I think, I guess, I argue and similar formulae, when used subjectively, as it were ‘label’ the utterance they accompany in terms of the degree of speaker commitment or the type of speech act performed by it. In this sense, while I can subscribe to Hand’s (1993: 495) characterization of such clauses as “fine-tuning” the force of their associated clause, it seems to me such fine-tuning does not amount to making an independent speech act.7 Besides expressing epistemic or illocutionary comments, subjectified STR can serve textual functions in discourse. As suggested above, these textual functions are not exclusively subjective, in marking the speaker’s attitude to discourse structure (cf. Traugott and Dasher 2002: 23, Traugott forthcoming b), but also to some extent intersubjective. This is because marking boundaries in discourse or ‘buying time’ by using I think as a kind of hesitation marker to plan how best to formulate what you want to communicate next (Kärkkäinen 2003: Chapter 5) reveals speakers’ attempts to hold the floor (rather than yield it to the addressee) as well as to package their message in such a way that it has greater chances of being correctly understood by the addressee. Attention to the text under production is thus inherently oriented towards the addressee’s needs; as Kärkkäinen (2003: 7

A related contentious issue is the question whether ‘parentheticals’ contribute to the truth conditional content of their associated clauses. The answer is usually considered to be ‘no’ on the basis of a test embedding them in the antecedent of a conditional (Wilson 1975, Sperber and Wilson 1995 [1986]). For discussion of problems raised by this test see Ifantidou (2001: 146–155) and particularly Asher (2000), who argues that it does not actually test for truth conditionality, and that parentheticals do contribute to the truth conditions of the discourse.

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171) notes, speakers “routinely organize their speaking turns and make this organization transparent to the recipients”. In her detailed study of I think in conversation, Kärkkäinen (2003: Ch. 5) argues that I think often acts exclusively like a boundary marker with no meaning of certainty or uncertainty (although it can also have both functions simultaneously). In concrete data analysis, I would expect nevertheless that some epistemic meaning often still lingers in such discourseorganizational uses.8 In the related use of I think as a kind of ‘filler’ or hesitation marker, used when a speaker wants to plan the next part of an utterance or wants to rephrase something, it has lost its epistemic meaning more fully and typically no longer has anything particular in its scope. Thus, for instance, in examples like (10–12) I think functions alongside other hesitation markers (er, erm, uh) as a sound ‘filling the air’ so as to hold the floor and plan the rest of a turn in conversation: (10)

(11)

(12)

It’s er I think erm I mean when he said about money for creches and things I’d just like to know how many times he’s sort of looked after his children if he’s got any you know. (CB, ukspok) Erm you know the question why did the rate of monetary growth get out of hand or too high in the first place? It’s er it’s not usually er I think erm a deliberate decision okay let’s increase the rate of growth and the money supply. (CB, ukspok) RICKIE: (SNIFF) That was that, and then I think, uh=, .. couple of days after, .. one of the uh, .. detectives, called me and then I made a report. (Kärkkäinen 2003: 159; prosodic information simplified; = signals lengthening and .. a short pause)

In commenting on (12), Kärkkäinen (2003: 157–161) notes that a specific prosodic profile of I think is associated with hesitation in online planning, viz. pre-positioned I think encoded as a separate intonation unit. Cases such 8

Kärkkäinen claims that I think only serves to do ‘discourse work’ and has no epistemic meaning in examples like And uh, I wanted to order that muumuu, I think it was around twenty-nine dollars, or something like that, and two pairs of short pajamas (2003: 123). In her view, because there are other means expressing modal meanings in the clause in question (as in the above example around and or something like that), and thus the utterance “would be an opinion even without I think” (2003: 131), there is no point in I think encoding (un)certainty. In my view, Kärkkäinen overstates her case here, as language is only too often redundant, especially in the expression of non-representational meaning.

294 Subjectified forms of STR as (10–12) are in my view also the most strongly grammaticalized uses of I think, precisely because they have indeterminate scope (cf. Denison 2002 on bleached uses of sort of).9 In concrete text examples, it stands to reason that the three different types of functions proposed for subjectified STR – epistemic, illocutionary, and textual – cannot always be strictly separated. For instance, it seems likely that many uses of I think are used simultaneously to indicate a lower degree of certainty and to serve as a hedge with a mitigating, non-facethreatening value, thus combining epistemic, subjective meanings with illocutionary, intersubjective ones. Related to this is the question to what extent the meaning types distinguished are fully semanticized rather than pragmatically inferred. Considering the very frequent use of subjectified STR particularly in spoken discourse, suggesting a high degree of entrenchment in the linguistic repertoire of most speakers of English, I would venture to say that at the very least the epistemic, subjective meaning is highly conventionalized. Whether as much can be claimed for the intersubjective meanings is a moot point; it is presumably safer to say that at present these are pragmatic inferences on their way to semanticization. For instance, use of I think to express uncertainty can in certain contexts (particularly when the speaker can be assumed in fact to be rather knowledgeable) be pragmatically inferred by the addressee to mean ‘more’, namely to signal intersubjectively the speaker’s non-face-threatening intentions. Having established a relationship of grammaticalization and subjectification between representational and subjectified STR, I turn next to a consideration of the reasons why only IST and DIST have subjectified counterparts.

1.3. Deictic singularity as a prerequisite for subjectification Previous discussions of the subjectification of I think have tended to focus more exclusively on the subjectified uses and less on their non-subjectified counterparts. Since my overall perspective is that of speech or thought 9

A pathway from ‘expressive’ to ‘textual’ was not envisaged in Traugott (1982, 1989), but its possibility was recognized in Traugott (1995a). If textual uses are indeed pragmatically intersubjective, cases like (10–12) can also be fitted on a cline from non-subjective over subjective to intersubjective (Traugott forthcoming b).

Grammaticalization, subjectification, and deictic singularity 295

representation, I would like to bring the relation between representational and subjectified uses to the fore by establishing a link between deictic properties of representational STR constructions and their propensity for subjectification (see also Vandelanotte 2006: 142–146). In so doing, I will also discuss a number of grammatical prerequisites for reporting clauses to subjectify to the extent that the prototypical cases with I think have. One of the generalizations that I have drawn from the discussion of deixis in the different forms of representational STR is that the four types can be placed on a cline from deictic duality to deictic singularity (see, in particular, Chapter 7, Figure 21). If we repeat this exercise (Figure 22) and indicate the types for which subjectified counterparts are found, it becomes clear that it is the deictically more singular forms of STR which are affected.10 Here I want to argue that this is no coincidence.

dual DST

singular FIST

IST

DIST

subjectification

Figure 22. Speech or thought representation, deixis, and subjectification

When the reported clause of the deictically more singular forms, IST and DIST, expresses the current speaker’s proposition and the reporting clause has a first person subject, a subjectified interpretation of the reporting clause vis-à-vis the reported clause becomes possible. This is directly related to the high degree of deictic singularity of these forms: since the reported clauses of IST and DIST are already construed largely or entirely from the current speaker’s perspective, it becomes possible for the current speaker to use the (subjectified) reporting clause to add a comment to his or 10

However, grammaticalization without subjectification is not excluded for (particularly) DST. In the phonologically reduced and highly frequent use of he/she said and he/she says in colloquial conversation, one finds a case that can be interpreted as a ‘grammaticalization’ of a reporting clause into a kind of quotative particle (cf. Kärkkäinen 2003: 58, Verstraete 2007: 287–288), and these forms combine with direct reported clauses, as in the following example: I called in on a really good friend and told her what I was going to do and she said I said Well would you come with me. She said Of course of I will she said. (CB, ukspok)

296 Subjectified forms of STR her own construal. Since the reported clauses of the deictically more dual forms FIST and DST are largely (or, in DST, wholly) the represented speaker’s construal,11 this possibility does not exist. After all, it makes little sense to epistemically nuance one’s commitment to someone else’s construal (though one can of course describe another’s commitment to their utterances, by saying he thinks or she thinks). Supposing for a moment that we somehow had to get from representational to ‘subjectified DST’, apart from the subjectification of the reporting clause what would be required is that the reported clause (deictically and expressively fully geared to a distinct represented speaker) become reinterpreted as the current speaker’s speech act. That this does not work is confirmed if one compares (relatively rare) examples of DST (13–14) with I think as reporting clause to cases of IST and DIST. Whereas for the latter two, examples can easily be found in which I think can be understood as functionally equivalent to modal adverbs (15–16), and hence subjectified, such is not the case for DST, in which a subjective reading for I think cannot be ‘forced’ (13–14): (13)

(14)

(15)

11

The legal restrictions do however force her to use subtler pictures, which one women [sic] contributor found frustrating: When I see sex magazines, they’re a real turn-off because the men haven’t got erections. I think “what’s gone wrong?” Of course, all this healthy forthrightness can often make some males uncomfortable. (CB, ukmags) :: ??Probably “what’s gone wrong?” When I look I can see good things. Other days I think “it’s just not fair.” I’m not sure what makes a bad day. But I’m very objective and I call it the way I see it. (CB, usbooks) :: ??Other days probably “it’s just not fair.” Erm and I think I’ve already touched on it so I’ll just go through this quickly. (CB, ukspok) :: Erm and probably I’ve already touched on it…

In first person forms, this represented speaker is a ‘deictically’ remote manifestation of the current speaker.

Grammaticalization, subjectification, and deictic singularity 297

(16)

We have, I think, learned at least some of the lessons, though we have not yet finished clearing up the moral squalor: China is still a totalitarian state, and its gulag contains 20 million people more than Stalin’s did at any one time. (CB, oznews) :: We have, most probably, learned…

The deictic difference across the representational forms of STR as represented in Figure 22 is not the only factor which determines whether or not a given reporting clause will be susceptible to subjectification. For one thing, the semantics of the reporting predicate is instrumental in bringing about subjectified readings: when it comes to expressing one’s assessment of degree of certainty, for instance, clearly think will more easily come to express such a position than, for instance, shout. Similarly, when it comes to specifying the illocutionary force of an utterance as an argument and not just a statement, argue will fare better than say. What is equally important is the subject of the reporting predicate: for the reporting clause to express the current speaker’s epistemic or illocutionary comment, it must refer to that current speaker and hence be a first person (I, we). However, as Thompson and Mulac (1991a, 1991b) point out, in questions the speaker may also be asking the hearer to clarify their attitude, and hence second person reporting clauses such as do you think may also have subjectified readings. Finally, as has been argued by Halliday (1970) and Palmer (1990), a speaker cannot express their commitment in the past or in the future, hence only reporting clauses in the present tense will be able to subjectivize.12 The grammatical prerequisites for a reporting clause to subjectivize bear a striking resemblance to those for so-called performative verbs such as to promise: it is only by saying I promise that in actual fact a promise is made; in past or non-first person clauses such as I promised you I would take care of it or he will promise you the world respectively a promise is only described, not enacted. Verstraete (2001) has shown that besides this kind of performativity which is associated with the illocutionary force of an utterance, and which he labels interactive performativity, one should distinguish modal performativity, which “brings into existence a particular position of 12

One apparent exception to this is formed by modal uses of the past tense, such that I thought functions as a tentative form of I think (see e.g. Nuyts 2001: 133, 166 for Dutch and Kärkkäinen 2003: 66 for English). Like other politeness uses of the past tense (as in I wondered if I might ask you whether…), this past tense is not used to express temporal distance but ‘social’ distance.

298 Subjectified forms of STR commitment with respect to the propositional content of the utterance” (Verstraete 2001: 1517). The notion of performativity of these two kinds, modal and interactive, can serve as a generalization as to the grammatical preconditions for reporting clauses to subjectivize: whereas reporting clauses such as she thought or he argues can only be used descriptively, clauses like I think and I argue can be used performatively, viz. when their reporting predicates no longer serve to designate literally a mental or verbal process of thinking or arguing. One way of probing whether potentially performative reporting clauses do actually function performatively is to see whether it makes any sense to question the reporting clause. Thus, for instance, for (8) repeated here as (17a), it will not normally be conversationally felicitous to reply to this as (17b) or (17c): (17a) (17b) (17c)

But if you make students study more diversely it does not necessarily mean you achieve a higher standard, I argue. (CB, times) Do you really (so argue)? No you don’t!

It will be clear that this is a matter of discoursal (un)likeliness, not of (un)grammaticality, and precisely in the possibility that the lexical meaning of a subjectified reporting clause be re-activated lies an opportunity for interlocutors to enter into polemic, ‘metalinguistic’ denials, questioning the appropriateness of the ‘persistent’ lexical meaning (Hopper 1991: 28–30) of the reporting predicate (17d): (17d)

No you don’t, you just assume this, you don’t offer any arguments!

It should be stressed that the notions of modal and interactional performativity (for epistemic and illocutionary subjectified reporting clauses respectively) as used here differ somewhat from the traditional sense of ‘performing something by saying it’: by saying I think, for instance, one does not as such bring thinking into existence. Performativity is understood here specifically as defining the grammatical preconditions (in terms of person and tense) for reporting clauses to be understood subjectively. It is these grammatical preconditions which ensure that subjectified reporting clauses bear on the here and now of the current speaker and can thus serve to encode the current speaker’s subjective or intersubjective stance. There

Grammaticalization, subjectification, and deictic singularity 299

is thus no implication that think, for instance, is a performative verb, since this would entail that one can only think by saying that one thinks.13 I conclude from this discussion that it is the deictically singular forms of speech and thought representation IST and DIST, and only those, that under the conditions of modal or interactive performativity lend themselves to subjectification.

1.4. Conclusion In this section, I have argued that the deictically more ‘singular’ types IST and DIST have grammaticalized and subjectified counterparts, with subjectified reporting clauses such as I think and I guess having reduced lexical meaning but increased grammatical, subjective and intersubjective meanings relating to the speaker’s epistemic attitude to the utterance or to the addressee’s self-image or the discourse structure. In these uses, the subjectified reporting clauses can be argued to have entered a paradigm along with adverbs and discourse markers which express similar epistemic, illocutionary and textual meanings, and they are ‘obligatory’ in the sense that, in order to make a given type of comment, it needs to be expressed.14 In the next section, it will be argued that a structural reanalysis accompanies the different grammatical and subjective status of representational versus subjectified STR.

13

In fact, even if normally performative verbs (in the traditional sense) are used with weakened lexical meaning, they need no longer be understood as strictly ‘acting out by saying’, as in Urmson’s (1963 [1952]: 238) example He’ll forget to come, I bet. As Urmson points out, if in reply to this someone were to “ask for the odds” or to “cry ‘Taken!’” this “would be, as Aristotle would say, the mark of an uneducated man”. 14 The notion of ‘obligatoriness’ may seem a bit strong in relation to textual uses, although even here it can be maintained that if, for instance, one wants to win time for online planning by using I think as a ‘filler’, it is communicatively obligatory since in its absence, an interlocutor might take the floor.

300 Subjectified forms of STR 2. The syntagmatic structure of S-IST and S-DIST The main focus of this section is on the syntagmatic structure of the epistemic and illocutionary types of subjectified STR distinguished in the preceding section. This is because in the most grammaticalized textual uses, in which I think serves essentially just to hold the floor and plan the next part of a speaker’s turn, it can be argued that I think does not really interact syntagmatically with specific parts of that turn.15 In previous observations on the grammaticalization of I think and its near equivalents in the literature, relatively little consideration has been given to the resulting syntagmatic structure. One proposal which has emerged from the work of Thompson (Thompson and Mulac 1991a, 1991b; Thompson 2002) is that I think functions as a ‘fragment’. I will discuss this approach critically in section 2.1 and develop an alternative analysis in terms of McGregor’s notion of a non-compositional, interpersonal ‘scoping’ relation in section 2.2. In section 2.3, it will be argued that even though they both involve scopal structure, S-IST and S-DIST are distinct construction types and not merely stylistic variants, because there are remnants of the different syntagmatic structure of their representational counterparts.

2.1. Thompson’s (2002) ‘fragment’ approach to I think In her influential (2002) paper, Thompson has proposed to replace the existing analysis of so-called complement clauses in terms of complementation by one in terms of “epistemic/evidential/evaluative fragments expressing speaker stance towards the content of a clause” (2002: 125). What has traditionally been considered as a structure comprising a matrix clause with a subordinate clause is thus reanalysed as a monoclausal structure (2002: 136). The central idea which Thompson (2002) puts forward in support of this reanalysis is that “the talk doing [the] actions” (2002: 132) or the “ ‘issue’ around which the talk centers” (2002: 133) in such sentences is contained in the so-called complement, and not in the so-called matrix clause.

15

Alternatively one can see in the notion of indeterminate scope proposed for such cases in section 1.2 above the limiting case of the kind of ‘scopal’ relationship that will be claimed to obtain for subjectified STR in this section.

The syntagmatic structure of S-IST and S-DIST 301

This line of argumentation builds among other things on Thompson’s earlier joint work with Mulac on I think (1991a, 1991b), in which the absence of that was correlated with a simpler ‘matrix clause’ and a higher topicality of the complement clause, although in the (2002) paper the analysis proposed is applied to a much broader range of “complement taking predicates” or CTPs (e.g. forget, guess, (be) possible, remember, see, (be/make) sure, think, wish, read, incredible, (doesn’t) matter, Thompson 2002: 138). While this extension in itself raises a number of issues, for instance in its inclusion of factive predicates (see Chapter 2, section 2.2), I will focus my discussion on the question whether the approach in terms of ‘e/e/e fragments’ handles the syntagmatic structure of I think and its near equivalents satisfactorily. As an illustration of Thompson’s point, consider example (18), which is not so much about what the interlocutors think, but rather about whether or not the photo collage is “cool”. In other words, “the work that the utterance is doing [is] carried by the complement” (Thompson 2002: 155) and the “CTP-phrase” (the phrase with the ‘complement taking predicate’ in, in this case I think) provides an “epistemic stance” toward it. Underlining is used in (18) to indicate “the talk which is accomplishing the action”:16 (18)

[talking about a photo collage on the wall] Terry: I think it’s cool. Abbie: it i=s cool. Maureen: it i=s great. (Thompson 2002: 133)

In previous work (2005b: 351–358; 2006: 153–158) I have identified a number of problems with Thompson’s account; more recently Boye and Harder (2007) have raised similar concerns. The main objection from the perspective of this chapter is that Thompson’s ‘fragment’ analysis largely neglects the representational or ‘descriptive’ counterparts of subjectified or ‘performative’ uses, and is thus in this sense as much an overgeneralization as the traditional complementation analysis she set out to criticize. Even the most typical formula, I think, can in my view be used representationally, even if it is used without a complementizer and even if one looks only at conversational data like Thompson does. While these cases are considera-

16

In Thompson’s example sentences, Du Bois et al.’s (1993) transcription conventions are followed. The relevant one here is = indicating lengthening.

302 Subjectified forms of STR bly less frequent than the subjectified ones, failing to account for these is failing to avoid overgeneralization. In fairness, it should be noted that at the very end of her argument, Thompson (2002: 152–155) does concede that the talk doing the actions could exceptionally be argued to be in the matrix clause after all, as she admits for a single example “out of the 425 complement utterances, where such an argument could be made” (2002: 155; my italics). I join Boye and Harder (2007: 575) in finding this extremely low incidence unconvincing. I will discuss a number of examples from spoken data (including one from Thompson’s own data set)17 of I think which in my analysis do not involve formulaic CTP-phrases with complements ‘doing the action’, or which, in my own terminology, do not involve subjectified reporting clauses. Examples such as (19–21) all contain in their immediate context indications of the fact that I think has not reduced to an epistemic marker, but rather ‘literally’ designates a process of thinking on the part of the speakerI which is fully up for questioning, confirming, contrasting with other thoughts, and so on. Consider, first, examples (19–20), in which it is contextually clear that I think is used representationally, because two different people’s beliefs – the speaker’s and the interlocutor’s – are being contrasted by the speaker: (19) (20)

I think you’re sad and you think you’re sad so it’s two against one. (COLT) You think that you are being a loving wife by not making him face what he has to face. I think that that is one version of love but there is another [ver] much [ver] thougher [sic] version of love which is “Do this again I’ll call the police I can’t do this. I can’t live like this.” You can’t live in a house with somebody who threatens to strangle you. (CB, ukspok)

Likewise, (21) below makes little sense if I think is read as an epistemic formula with a meaning equivalent to probably or maybe or certainly. The question in (21) is not whether or not Peter is (probably or certainly) “a bit of a tosser”, but whether or not he is thought to be that by the current speaker-I:

17

Boye and Harder (2007: 575–576) similarly reinterpret three of Thompson’s own examples, but none of these involve I think, the form on which I choose to focus here.

The syntagmatic structure of S-IST and S-DIST 303

(21)

If I think Peter’s a bit of a tosser I tell Peter to his face, he’s a tosser. (COLT)

Apart from clearly representational uses (19–21), more transitional uses can also be encountered, in keeping with the grammaticalization feature of persistence (Hopper 1991). In cases like (22–23) below, it could still be argued that I think was initially intended by the speaker as ‘subjectified’ (or epistemically formulaic). However, subsequent discourse picks up on the reporting clause and exploits or ‘(re-)activates’ the original representational meaning of I think. In example (22), this (re-)activation is signalled in the speaker’s own insistence on the fact that the claim just made really is a belief he or she holds (I really do). In (23), it is the speaker’s interlocutor who, in seconding the belief state expressed, (re-)activates the representational meaning of I think. (22)

(23)

[Conversation about a couple; the speaker finds it a good idea that they go on a trip together as a testcase for their relationship.] Erm no I think if she goes with MX [male person’s name] it’ll be okay I mean they’ll either come back and decide they don’t want to get married or they’ll sort of be okay. I think they’ll be all right. Mm. I really do. (CB, ukspok) [Discussing a mutual friend who is being given a hard time by others; bracketing here indicates speech overlap.] – I think she’s really [lovely]. – [So do I.] (COLT)

A strictly monoclausal analysis cannot be maintained for cases like (19– 23): if I think is really an ‘unanalysable’ fragment equivalent to an epistemic adverb, it should be possible to rephrase these examples using adverbs with no real change of meaning. This turns out not to be possible, as illustrated for (19) and (22) in (19a) and (22a) respectively: (19a) (22a)

??You’re probably sad and you think you’re sad so it’s two against one. ??They’ll probably be all right. Mm. I really do.

Interestingly, in her discussion of the negated counterpart of I think, I don’t think, Simon-Vandenbergen discusses examples similar to (19–20) above in that in them, I is contrasted with an interlocutor or some other

304 Subjectified forms of STR ‘thinking subject’ “thus moving the expression towards the literal end of the scale” (1998: 319), as in (24): (24)

– you feel the printed word has had its day – no I certainly do not. […] I don’t think the printed word has had its day any more than the people who run the Open University think the printed word has had its day (CC:S.1.10.676) (SimonVandenbergen 1998: 319; prosodic representation simplified)

In addition, Simon-Vandenbergen (1998: 318–321) argues that a tonic accent on any of its elements can promote the representational (literal) meaning of I don’t think. With these representational and transitional types of examples in mind, let us reconsider one of Thompson’s own examples (here again, as for 18, underlining indicates what in Thompson’s analysis is ‘the talk doing the actions’): (25)

[Part of a discussion on the relightability of birthday candles] Marci: I didn’t think they were, but I think they maybe are=. (Thompson 2002: 133)

In contrasting a previous mistaken thought and a current corrected thought, (25) is not unlike (19–20) or (24) in which two different cognizers’ thoughts are contrasted. In discussing the lines in (25), Thompson correctly observes that “Marci […] provides her epistemic ‘history’ towards this claim, as a way of building a kind of concessive agreement with the claim [that the candles are relightable].” (Thompson 2002: 134). This epistemic history is expressed in the two CTP-phrases and “the claim is in the complement, twice” (2002: 134). While this last point is undeniable, it does not mean that the CTP-phrases do not ‘carry the action forward’: in charting the epistemic history towards a claim, the evolution in terms of the epistemic position vis-à-vis this claim is also ‘talk doing actions’.18 18

The general point is that an analysis in terms of ‘head’ and ‘complement’ for representational STR (Chapter 2) does not preclude the complement from carrying the discourse action forward, as suggested already by Hooper (1975: 95–96). Boye and Harder’s (2007) distinction between structural status (lexical vs. grammatical) and usage status (primary/foregrounded vs. secondary/backgrounded) similarly heeds against oversimplification of the relation between structure and usage.

The syntagmatic structure of S-IST and S-DIST 305

Apart from a semantic sense in which I didn’t think and I think in (25) are representational, there is a formal argument as well. As “epistemic adverbial phrases” (2002: 134, 143), CTP-phrases should not bear tense. Thus, a paraphrase such as (25a) ought to make sense, but it does not: (25a)

??Probably they weren’t, but perhaps they maybe are.

We can conclude that even in examples like (19–21) and (24–25), a thought act is described, i.e. a state of affairs involving as central process the mental verb think, in its static sense of ‘entertain a thought, hold a belief’, is representationally construed. If these examples involve representational uses of I think and I don’t think/I didn’t think, this has structural consequences as well: in my view, these cases all involve a complementation relation in the sense described in Chapter 2. As for the ‘transitional’ cases (22–23), these can also not be adequately captured by a fragment analysis: in order to keep the possible ‘(re-)activation’ of representational meaning in view, it has to be recognized that subjectified reporting clauses like I think are still clauses rather than unanalysable adverbs. The failure to distinguish between representational and subjectified cases of I think points up an underlying problem, viz. a failure to take into account the fundamental distinction between descriptive and performative uses of so-called ‘mental state predicates’.19 Recall that as a precondition for subjectification reporting clauses must meet the performativity conditions of first person present tense reference (including ‘modal’ pasts with present tense meanings): when second or third person or past tense is used, “the perspective can be changed from ‘the speaker’s here and now’ (performative) to ‘not the speaker’s’ or ‘the speaker’s but not here and now’ 19

Verhagen’s (1996a, 2001, 2005) approach to complementation places descriptive and performative-subjectified uses of reporting clauses under one and the same heading, that of ‘coordination’ or ‘intersubjectivity’. In his response to Foolen’s (1996) objection to this practice, Verhagen (1996b) proposes to distinguish between performative and descriptive uses in terms of ‘speaker’ and ‘character’ subjectivity, but the inclusion of examples such as To this should be added that… (2001: 342) in the former category shows that it does not cover the same ground as a grammar-based notion of performative subjectivity (as recognized in Verhagen 2001: 354 n5). Verhagen (2005: Ch. 3) regards the difference between ‘first-person perspective’ and ‘third-person perspective’ as “a matter of degree rather than of kind” (2005: 108), whereas I take the different grammatical behaviour discussed in this section as more than merely a matter of degree.

306 Subjectified forms of STR (descriptive)” (Nuyts 2001: 129). Descriptively used reporting clauses such as (26a) below do not touch on the fundamental encoding of speech eventrelated, ‘interactional’ meaning. This is reflected in the fact that they do not allow a paraphrase by means of an adverb (26b), whereas as we have seen fully performative or subjectified ones do. (26a) (26b)

He’s television royalty, but Bill Cosby thinks the medium is less then [sic] cool. (CB, ukmags) ≠He’s television royalty, but the medium is probably less than cool.

In conclusion, the fact that the descriptive-performative distinction has not been incorporated in Thompson’s (2002) approach has led to an overgeneralization of her analysis.20 Even with the most frequently used ‘e/e/e fragment’, I think, and even in her own data set, examples can be found which are used descriptively, and which therefore do not permit an analysis as an epistemic phrase with little or no lexical meaning and with no internal structure.21 By neglecting the difference between representational and subjectified reporting clauses, Thompson unjustifiedly “treat[s] them as a single category” (2002: 128), which is precisely what she faulted the undifferentiated complementation approach with. In my view, representational STR comes under the specific type of ‘interclausal’ complementation analysis proposed in Chapter 2, whereas subjectified STR has a different type of syntagmatic structure, to which I now turn.

20

Diessel and Tomasello, in their (2001) study of the acquisition of finite complement clauses, offer a more balanced view, as they explicitly recognize “assertive” (descriptive) and “performative” uses of ‘complement taking verb clauses’ (2001: 100–109), with strictly formulaic uses being seen as “historically related to the performative use, from which it developed through grammaticalization” (2001: 106). 21 Similar remarks obtain to third person past tense examples such as [he]’s already got it planned out, who’s going to help or [she] sounded real upset that she didn’t know what was going on (Thompson 2002: 151). It should also be noted that Thompson excludes say from consideration “since reported speech raises special issues beyond the scope of the grammar of complementation” (2002: 156 n3). While this exclusion does not affect the points raised here, it seems arbitrary and incomplete because thought predicates like think and guess in their representational uses raise similar ‘special issues’ as say, as do other speech predicates such as suggest, hear, and tell which Thompson does include.

The syntagmatic structure of S-IST and S-DIST 307

2.2. A scopal analysis of S-IST and S-DIST In this section, I will argue that the subjectified forms of STR (S-IST and SDIST) cannot be analysed syntagmatically in the same way as representational forms. In the latter, the representational meaning of the reporting clause plays a crucial role in the analysis proposed in terms of complementation structure (Chapter 2). The fact that this representational meaning is strongly reduced or even lost in favour of (inter)subjective meanings in subjectified STR motivates a different type of syntagmatic structure. I will first consider two types of arguments that point to the syntagmatic reanalysis that accompanies the grammaticalization from representational to subjectified forms of STR (2.2.1–2.2.2). Next I will argue that only a ‘noncompositional’ type of structure, viz. ‘scopal’ structure, can accommodate the semantic and formal phenomena that distinguish subjectified from representational STR (2.2.3).

2.2.1. Compositional vs. non-compositional meaning and structure In Chapter 2, it was argued that even though the reporting clause of representational STR is conceptually dependent on the reported complement, it is at the same time the head or profile determinant. Thus, in an example like He said I’m leaving, the reporting clause he said is the head of the whole construction, because like the whole construction it profiles a saying event. Viewed from the opposite perspective, one can say that the whole construction profiles an instance of what the head profiles, viz. a saying event. Even in contextualized examples in which the ‘issue around which the talk centers’, to use Thompson’s (2002) phrase, is in the complement, it is still the reporting clause which is the head so long as it functions ‘descriptively’ or ‘representationally’. In example (27), for instance, different opinions as to why a plunger sticks to a table are discussed. In each case, the whole sentence of IST profiles an instance of what the reporting clause profiles, viz. ‘a thinking event’ (or, more precisely, ‘a state of contemplating a thought’). If one attempts to replace the underlined clauses by a ‘speaker-encoding’ adverb like probably, the descriptive analysis is confirmed because this replacement is infelicitous. (27)

So the girls have suggested three explanations as to why the plunger sticks to the table. Marie thinks that air from under the

308 Subjectified forms of STR plunger is squeezed out and comes out here. […] And joins all the air around the plunger in pushing it down onto the table. So she thinks that the air outside pushes it down. Fay thinks that when the plunger’s stuck to the table there’s no air between the table and this rim of the plunger and it’s that there’s no air between the rim and the table that makes it stick. So Fay thinks that the plunger sticks because there’s no air between the table and the rim of the plunger. Clare and Alison both think that when the plunger’s stuck to the table there’s still some air underneath the plunger. They think that this air pulls or sucks the plunger down. So Clare and Alison think that the bit of air that’s left inside the plunger sucks it down. These are the three ideas that the girls suggest. (CB, ukspok) Let us now compare representational STR constructions as in (27) to a subjectified one (28). Here, the whole construction does not profile an instance of a ‘thinking event’ (or the ‘state of contemplating a thought’), because the occurrences of I think do not representationally construe a thinking event in the first place. Rather, the constructions profile the states of ‘him having been going out with her for about two years’ and ‘it having been about a month’. I think in each case expresses the speaker’s modal position towards these states (with a focus on the duration adverbial): (28)

– Is Gemma going out with Kashu now? – Yeah. Yeah he’d been going out with her [Michelle] for about… for two years I think. Well, one and a half years… and then, now it’s been about a month I think. (COLT)

In view of its grammaticalization and subjectification, it would be odd to say that subjectified I think profiles an event at all, just as it would be odd to say that probably profiles an event. The fundamental point is that expressions like subjectified I think or a modal adverb like probably do not add to the knowledge of what the situation expressed by the clause is about. In other words, subjectified reporting clauses do not add representational material to produce a more complex representation: in expressing a subjective or intersubjective comment towards a representation, the situation talked about remains the same, but a particular epistemic or illocutionary slant towards it is expressed. This semantic observation has important structural repercussions. If I think in its subjectified uses (28) is not the ‘head’, it must be concluded that subjectified STR does not involve head–complement structures of the kind

The syntagmatic structure of S-IST and S-DIST 309

involved in representational STR. This should not be taken to imply that subjectified STR is instead a head–modifier structure, as argued in Thompson and Mulac (1991a: 323). Against this, the fundamental point made above has to be stressed, viz. that subjectified reporting clauses do not add representational form and meaning to produce ‘larger’ representational structures: they do not ‘add to’ or ‘enhance’ the description of the situation or state of affairs. In other words, subjectified reporting clauses (like other non-representational or “interpersonal” expressions in the sense of Halliday 1994 [1985]) are no ‘constituents’ of a clausal representation; it is only verbal processes, participants in those processes, and circumstances providing information as to the ‘when, where, how and why’ of those processes (cf. Halliday 1994 [1985]: 150) that form constituent structures of the composite clausal structure. In conclusion, the syntagmatic structure of subjectified reporting clauses cannot be adequately captured in terms of the compositional type of structure that characterizes representational STR (as well as other representational structures). The next section turns to a further indication of the ‘noncompositional’ manner of integration in subjectified STR in terms of unithood.

2.2.2. Unithood in representational vs. subjectified STR The different syntagmatic status of non-representational, non-compositional structures shows up in the fact that the latter do not operate with the same units defined by compositional (complementation) structure. Relevant examples of this include (29–30), in contrast to example (5), repeated here as (31). As (29–30) show, it is possible for a subjectified reporting clause to express an interpersonal comment vis-à-vis only part of an utterance. In representational STR, this is very difficult (31): (29)

(30)

I wrote the first draft of this… I wrote the first draft of it in er I think seven pages and er they said that won’t do at all […]. (CB, ukspok) It is worth emphasizing before looking at each of these factors in detail that the ‘inherent’ evaluative potential may be neutralized in, we believe, all cases by the evaluative charge of other elements in the context. (Thompson and Yiyun 1991: 372)

310 Subjectified forms of STR (31)

??This is great news for Michael Owen emphatically said all of English football.

This is not to say that representational reporting clauses may not have parts of clauses as their complement, as in (31a) below. The point is, however, that when a representational complement is only part of a clause (or even only one word, as in He said “Yes”), this part is functionally a whole utterance. (31a)

Who is this great news for? Michael Owen emphatically replied: “All of English football!”

The issue of what subjectified vs. representational reporting clauses interact with can be generalized, in the sense that complementation relations are always between specific types of units. A predicate like sing, for instance, takes nominal complements to code the singer and the song sung; a modifier like in the hallway modifies an event or a situation (e.g. in we played football in the hallway); and so on. Conversely, interpersonal structures tend to interact with a variety of structures. Other interpersonal structures show similar interactions both with whole utterances (a clause, a minor clause, a part of a clause) and with specific parts of utterances (29– 30); cases in point include modal adverbs (Tucker 2001) as in (32–33) or scopal adjectives (Vandelanotte 2002, 2007), such as invectives (as in 34, in which fucking has scope over the situation read the manual) or ‘framing’ adjectives such as alleged and so-called (as in 35, in which so-called has scope specifically over United). The kind of structural versatility displayed in examples (29–30) and (32–35) is difficult to capture in traditional constituency or dependency analyses. (32) (33) (34) (35)

Mr Graham possibly has that in mind. (CB qtd. Tucker 2001: 190) It will end in imprisonment, torture, possibly death. (CB qtd. Tucker 2001: 208) Read the fucking manual. (cf. Vandelanotte 2002: 247) The west has no intention of saving the Muslims from genocide and this is reflected by the feeble response of the so-called United Nations which is dominated by the western powers. (CB, ukmags qtd. Vandelanotte 2007: 366)

The type of unit that a subjectified reporting clause expresses its (inter)subjective stance towards is thus not well-defined in terms of types of

The syntagmatic structure of S-IST and S-DIST 311

units with definable ‘sizes’. What adds to this structural versatility is the possibility of vague or indeterminate scope, whereas what representational reporting clauses take as their complement is usually clear (provided that the reportative reading is explicitly signalled or contextually clear). Consider example (36), from a discussion of the roles of Iago and Othello in Shakespeare’s play Othello: (36)

It’s even more er this is the point really of of of being specific they both make a pledge. Actually Iago I think goes down on his knee. It’s not just that they make a commitment it’s actually you know the dramatic action is a pledge. (CB, ukspok)

Here it is difficult to determine whether the tentativeness expressed by I think bears on whether it is Iago (or Othello) who goes down on his knee, or on whether Iago goes down on his knee or performs some other dramatic action to ‘enact’ his pledge, or even more generally on the entire utterance Actually Iago goes down on his knee. This kind of vagueness is not normally found with representational STR (compare John thought that Iago in fact went down on his knee or “Actually Iago goes down on his knee,” John said in his discussion of Othello). The fact that subjectified reporting clauses do not interact with strictly delineated types of units can be further characterized along the following lines. Complementation relations, as we have seen, depend on correspondences between schematic substructures and are in this sense ‘local’ in nature: one specific e-site is elaborated by one specific structure, and the meaning contributed by this structure pertains only to the e-site elaborated by it (Chapter 2). Non-compositional structures like subjectified reporting clauses, however, can be characterized in terms of overlaying or dispersal, to borrow McGregor’s (1997: Ch. 6) description of interpersonal combinatorics. This means that a subjectified reporting clause overlays an entire unit (utterances and parts of utterances alike), and ‘disperses’ its interpersonal meaning across this unit.22 Let us now turn to the type of interpersonal structure which can best capture the facts observed so far, viz. McGregor’s (1997) notion of scope. 22

The other type of non-compositional structure with interpersonal semantics which McGregor (1997) distinguishes is that of framing, in terms of which he proposes to capture the syntagmatic structure of STR. See Chapter 2 for discussion with regard to representational STR, and below for discussion with respect to subjectified STR.

312 Subjectified forms of STR 2.2.3. The scopal structure of subjectified STR Scope is of course a widely used notion in linguistics in relation to phenomena such as quantifiers or negation. McGregor redefines this general notion as a type of non-compositional syntagmatic relationship which does not involve ‘parts’ functioning as constituents of composite units. More specifically, scope is defined as a relationship between two units in which one “unit applies over a certain domain, leaving its mark on the entirety of the domain” (McGregor 1997: 210). The units thus related are “the enclosed whole, and this unit together with the material that surrounds it, the embracing unit” (McGregor 1997: 65). For instance, in an example like (37), repeated from Chapter 2 (example 2), (37)

Frankly, millionaires don’t need child-care assistance or maternity payments. (CB, oznews)

a difference in interpersonal values obtains between the ‘encompassed’ unit millionaires don’t need child-care assistance or maternity payments and the ‘operating’ unit frankly, millionaires don’t need child-care assistance or maternity payments in the sense that the scoping unit frankly “‘shapes’ the other, indicating how it is to be taken or viewed by the addressee” (McGregor 1997: 210). As an interpersonal ‘scoping’ unit, frankly is not a dominant unit in the traditional sense of being the ‘mother’ of a daughter constituent, or the ‘head’ of a dependent. In terms of syntagmatic structure, then, it is proposed that subjectified STR involves scope, not complementation (Vandelanotte 2004b, 2006, forthcoming). This scopal analysis has the following benefits. First, it fully takes into account the non-representational, (inter)subjective meaning of the subjectified reporting clauses. In addition, the syntagmatic reanalysis in terms of scopal structure gives body to the semantic change from representational to interpersonal. Because a scoping unit is not a ‘dominant’ unit in any of the traditional ways it allows one to capture the kind of ‘dispersal’ or ‘overlaying’ of (inter)subjective meaning across an entire encompassed domain. Additional structural benefits of the notion of scope are that it allows quite naturally for one and the same scoping unit to disperse its meaning across units of different sizes (including whole utterances as well as very local parts of utterances), and that it leaves the clausal status of I think intact. In so doing, it does not encounter the problems Thompson’s (2002) ‘fragment’ account incurs when confronted

The syntagmatic structure of S-IST and S-DIST 313

with ‘transitional’ cases in which the representational meaning of I think is reactivated (as in [23] I think she’s really lovely. – So do I.). As part of his notion of scope, McGregor (1997: 68–69) has argued that scopal relations may apply over a given domain while at the same time focusing on a particular element in this domain. Thus, in examples like in I think seven pages (29) or in, we believe, all cases (30), the domain of I think and we believe is in seven pages and in all cases respectively, but within this domain the element focused on is seven and all respectively. In cases where the precise range of application of a ‘scopal’ clause seems to be vague (as in [36] above, Actually Iago I think goes down on his knee), it could be argued that the domain is the whole clause, but the focus can be on a particular element in the domain (for instance on Iago or on goes down on his knee). In terms of grammatical theory, finally, the notion of scope embodies a fundamental insight from various functional theories of grammar, viz. the idea that non-representational meanings are realized differently from representational ones and hence, that they are semiotically distinct, that is to say, that they involve different form–function correlations. This claim is present in different functional theories in various guises. For instance, in SystemicFunctional Grammar, interpersonal grammar is said to favour a “prosodic” rather than a constituency-based type of structure (Halliday 1994 [1985]: 36). In Dikian Functional Grammar, interpersonal “proposition and illocution operators” are distinguished from representational “predicate and predication operators” (e.g. Hengeveld 1989, Dik 1997), and in Role and Reference Grammar a similar “layered structure of the clause” is proposed (e.g. Van Valin and LaPolla 1997). What is more important than the precise implementation of the distinction is the recognition that a different kind of structure is involved, one which is not constituency based or, more generally, non-compositional. By way of conclusion to this section, I compare my proposal in terms of scopal structure with the way in which Langacker, Halliday and McGregor have dealt with the syntagmatic structure of subjectified STR. In fairness, it should be said that apart from Halliday, they have not given any explicit special consideration to subjectified STR in general or I think specifically. One striking generalization across all three proposals is that ultimately, they assign the same syntagmatic structure to representational and subjectified forms of STR, although Halliday does add an additional mechanism, that of grammatical metaphor, to distinguish the two.

314 Subjectified forms of STR From Langacker’s description of the “status of THEY WERE VERY as a complement of THINK” (1997: 23) in the example They were, I think, very cooperative, it appears that his analysis of subjectified STR is in terms of a head–complement structure. He thus assigns the same structure to representational and subjectified STR.23 Halliday’s account of subjectified forms of STR in terms of (interpersonal) grammatical metaphor (1994 [1985]: 354–355) leaves the syntagmatic structure of these forms intact or undiscussed. In this account, a sentence like I think it is so is seen as a non-congruent, metaphorical realization of the unmarked sentence It probably is so in which the speaker’s opinion is “coded not as a modal element within the clause […] but as a separate, projecting clause in a hypotactic clause complex” (1994 [1985]: 354). The syntagmatic structure said to apply to the representational forms (hypotaxis) is also said to apply to the subjectified form; the only difference is that it is used metaphorically. McGregor (1997: 266) rejects Halliday’s solution in terms of grammatical metaphor, but whereas he replaces Halliday’s analysis by one in terms of framing (see Chapter 2, section 3.2), I replace it by one in terms of scope. In comparing I think they will come tomorrow to They will probably come, McGregor (1997: 266) argues that the two clauses are “roughly synonymous” in terms of the judgement expressed vis-à-vis the proposition They will come, but “[t]here are differences in the nature of this interpersonal modification: in one case it is framing, in the other it is scopal”. This is argued to render superfluous an explanation in terms of grammatical metaphor. However, in my view I think and probably in these examples are not only comparable in meaning, but also in syntagmatic structure, that is to say, they both involve scope. By analysing subjectified I think in terms of framing, McGregor like Halliday assigns the same syntagmatic structure to representational and subjectified forms of STR. In the analysis proposed here, the grammaticalization and subjectification of subjectified STR is reflected in a change from one type of structure (complementation) to a different type (scope). This kind of change cannot be captured if STR, representational as well as subjectified, is to be captured entirely in terms of interpersonal structure (viz. framing) only. COOPERATIVE

23

As noted in Chapter 2 in the context of representational STR, Langacker views the head–complement relation as one between reporting verb and reported clause, not between reporting and reported clause.

The syntagmatic structure of S-IST and S-DIST 315

In Figure 23, the different approaches to the syntagmatic structure of representational and subjectified STR just discussed are schematically summarized, alongside the traditional approach and the alternative proposed in this study. The traditional constituency approach views a reported clause as the complement of the reporting verb, and these two form a unit, the VP, which in its turn combines with the subject NP to form a sentence. Presumably, subjectified forms would receive a similar treatment in traditional complementation approaches. In the cognitivefunctional approaches of Langacker, Halliday, and McGregor, representational and subjectified forms also receive the same syntagmatic analysis. Langacker’s approach is traditional inasmuch as the reported clause is a complement of the reporting verb, but it departs from the tradition in its view of the progressive assembly of clausal structure: there is no hierarchicization in terms of VP and NP. Instead, the subject Dorothy and the reported clause both participate directly in a dependence relation with the reporting predicate. In the diagram, “e” is short for “e-site” or “elaboration site”, i.e. the schematic substructure that is elaborated by the complement of the reporting verb. In Halliday’s approach to STR, DST involves parataxis, and IST, as in the example sentence, involves hypotaxis, which I have represented using slightly more mainstream terminology and diagrammatic conventions, in terms of a head (H) and a dependent (Dep), with an arrow going from head to dependent.24 The subjectified variant receives the same analysis syntagmatically, but it is stipulated (on the basis of tagging behaviour as in I think it’s going to rain, isn’t it?) that the reporting clause is a grammatical metaphor and as such an incongruent realization of a meaning congruently realized by a modal adverb like probably. McGregor, finally, uses framing to model both representational and subjectified STR, thus dealing with both types entirely in terms of interpersonal grammar. What he does share with Halliday is that the reporting clause forms a primary unit in STR constructions, and that the reported clause is still a clause, i.e. it has not been reclassified as a noun phrase. These two aspects are maintained in my approach, which thus,

24

The manner of representation in Systemic-Functional Grammar for Dorothy said they were very cooperative would be α^”β, with α the dominant clause and β the dependent one in hypotaxis, with ^ indicating sequence, and with ” indicating a relation of ‘locution’.

NP

they were very cooperative

they were very cooperative

Dep

they were very cooperative

they were very cooperative

they were very cooperative

VP

I they were very cooperative

they were very cooperative

I think

NP

Dep

they were very cooperative

think e

think

V

VP

they were very cooperative

they were very cooperative

= metaphoric equivalence probably

H

I think

e

I think

I

NP

S

SUBJECTIFIED STR

Figure 23. The syntagmatic structure of representational vs. subjectified STR: comparison of different approaches

Dorothy said e

Vandelanotte

H

said

e said e

said

Dorothy said

Dorothy

Dorothy

Dorothy

V

McGregor

Halliday

Langacker

Traditional

NP

REPRESENTATIONAL STR S

The syntagmatic structure of S-IST and S-DIST 317

despite important differences, does share some essential features with Halliday’s as far as representational forms are concerned. Langacker’s model is, however, more explicit as to what it means to have ‘heads’ and ‘non-heads’, and he has separated out ‘conceptual dependence’ (in terms of which two types of ‘non-heads’ are distinguished, complements and modifiers) from headhood or profile determinacy. For subjectified forms I use scope, not (against McGregor 1997) framing. In McGregor’s diagrammatic conventions, a ‘framed’ unit is represented by a thick box, a ‘scoped’ unit by a thin one (cf. McGregor 1997: 67).

2.3. Syntagmatic differences between S-IST and S-DIST In this section, I consider the question whether S-IST and S-DIST are still constructionally distinct. Even though the ‘reported’ clause in both is in fact a ‘main’ clause, the epistemic or illocutionary grounding of which is “fine-tuned” (Hand 1993) by the subjectified reporting clause, I will suggest that there are nonetheless still a few areas in which differences remain. These differences can be understood as remnants of the difference between the tighter incorporation of IST versus the more loose juxtaposition of DIST, as described in Chapter 2. First, however, a terminological point needs to be clarified because it may obscure precisely these differences between S-IST and S-DIST (and even between representational IST and DIST). The term that may cause this confusion is that of parenthetical, use of which I have already avoided in relation to FIST and (representational) DIST because it could be taken to suggest grammatical subordination. For subjectified forms as well, I avoid this term, because it tends to be used in two different ways in the literature. On the one hand, it is sometimes used to refer to any clause which occurs syntactically ‘in parenthesis’, whether it is used (inter)subjectively or not. For instance, Asher (2000) uses the term parenthetical for a case like John, Mary assures us, can be trusted (Asher 2000: 35), in which Mary assures us is clearly representational, as suggested by the non-equivalence with Assuredly, John can be trusted. Similarly, Dehé and Kavalova (2007: 1) define parentheticals broadly as “expressions that are linearly represented in a given string of utterance (a host sentence), but seem structurally independent at the same time”. On the other hand, Urmson (1963 [1952]: 221) and others like him, while restricting the use of the term parenthetical to ‘modally performative’, subjectified cases, uses it indiscriminately for both

318 Subjectified forms of STR sentence-initial and non-sentence initial cases, covering for instance I suppose that your house is very old alongside Your house is, I suppose, very old and Your house is very old, I suppose. One important syntagmatic distinction between representational IST and DIST was that the former did not, whereas the latter did, allow all basic clause types, including, for instance, interrogative mood. At first, it may seem difficult to extend this distinction to subjectified STR: using I think in a question will yield a representational reading, as in (38), a ‘free’ direct thought: (38)

Are you trying to be a little outrageous, I think.

(38) cannot be read as S-DIST, basically because you cannot ‘give’ your modal attitude towards the speech act of ‘asking’ for information. What is possible in questions, however, is to ask your interlocutor not only for information, but also for a clarification of his or her modal position, as happens in (39) with do you think. Here again, as with I think in assertive speech acts, the question is not so much whether something is a thought the interlocutor entertains, but rather whether in the addressee’s assessment the questioned information is the case, and if so, to what degree of likelihood. In (39), the reply to the ‘explicitly modalized’ question is itself also hedged (not really, I mean): (39)

– I think it’s perhaps because I don’t know perhaps I want to be seen as different to everyone else. – Are you trying to be a little outrageous do you think? – No not really because I mean I don’t see it as being outrageous. – No you don’t but obviously you’re making a statement here. (CB, ukspok)

If we accept (39) as a genuine case of S-DIST, which I believe is the correct way of handling it (see also Thompson and Mulac [1991a, 1991b]), its interrogative clause structure is something which S-IST does not allow. An S-IST counterpart involving do you think is given in (40) below, part of a short telephone conversation. In asking do you think you could give her a message, the speaker is politely making the request to give her a message, not asking whether the interlocutor is currently entertaining the thought or belief that he or she could give her a message:

The syntagmatic structure of S-IST and S-DIST 319

(40)

– Oh hello is FX [Female Name] there please? – She’s not I’m afraid no. – Is she not. Oh it’s FX [Female Name] here erm the woman who’s erm selling the house to her. – Oh yes. – Erm do you think you could give her a r message to ring me? – Er yes. (CB, ukspok)

I conclude that S-IST and S-DIST differ at least in this respect: only the latter allows I think to have scope over non-declarative clause structures.25 A second area in which the distinction between S-IST and S-DIST can show up in the grammar pertains to so-called Neg-raising, since only S-IST allows a negation in a matrix clause to be interpreted as in fact negating the complement (such that not think that p is understood as think that not p; see e.g. Horn 1978).26 (41a) can serve as an example of a sentence of S-IST which involves Neg-raising (compare I think that people’s attitudes haven’t really changed…). (41b–c) present attempted S-DIST alternates of (41a). (41a) (41b) (41c)

25

I don’t think that people’s attitudes have really changed towards me since I got pregnant. (CB, ukmags) *People’s attitudes have really changed towards me since I got pregnant, I don’t think. People’s attitudes haven’t really changed towards me since I got pregnant, I (don’t) think.27

Ifantidou in her chapter on ‘parentheticals’ (2001: Ch. 6) similarly emphasizes the difference between what she calls “main-clause constructions” (such as I wonder whether he’s coming) and “genuine parentheticals” (as in Is he coming, I wonder?) precisely in terms of whether or not they allow “non-declaratives” (2001: 125), and she has argued on the basis of this difference that they are not merely stylistic variants (pace Urmson 1963 [1952]). 26 While subtle differences between the two variants in terms of focus on modality and negation have been recognized (e.g. Nuyts 1990, Simon-Vandenbergen 1998), Dancygier (subm.) challenges “raising” treatments because they do not account for them, nor for other uses of negated think or other stance verbs. 27 The fact that the felicitous S-DIST alternate of (41a) can have either I think or I don’t think points to the fact that I don’t think has grammaticalized as a unit into a “negative epistemic marker” (Croft 2001: 213; Cappelle 2002: 378–380).

320 Subjectified forms of STR Significantly, it is not possible to construe an S-DIST alternate of this sentence without introducing a negation marker in the initiating clause: apparently Neg-raising cannot be posited for S-DIST sentences. In order to confirm the intuition that clause-final I don’t think clauses are not normally possible if no negation is involved in the preceding clause (or part of a clause), I performed a Cobuild corpus search on sentence-final I don’t think (operationalized as I don’t think followed by a full stop, question mark, exclamation mark, or semi-colon). Out of 96 interpretable examples, 95 showed some form of negation (no, never, nobody, etc.) in the preceding scoped unit28 – a full clause as in (42) or short elliptical replies as in (43) – whereas only one example did not (44): (42)

(43)

(44)

It has to do with taste. Taste is the thing. I think it must be acquired. You’re not born with taste. A baby hasn’t got taste, I don’t think. (CB, ukbooks) – Do you get any competition there’s a lot of other I noticed other corner shops? Do you have any competition? – Not a lot I don’t think. (CB, ukspok) That’s really helped me a lot. I don’t think. (CB, ukspok)29

(44) occurs in a context in which a lot of surrounding material is coded as unintelligible, so it is difficult to understand what “really helped [her] a lot”. At any rate, the one interpretation that sentences like (44) allow is a sarcastic one, in which I don’t think occurs as a kind of intonational ‘tail’ or ‘afterthought’ signalling a sarcastic reading of the preceding utterance, similar to the colloquial use of stressed NOT. Such a sarcastic use is not equivalent to a Neg-raised I don’t think, since it involves the literal meaning, not the subjectified one. I conclude from this discussion that so-called Neg-raising can only be observed in S-IST, not in S-DIST, which supports the proposal to view S-IST and S-DIST as distinct types (see Vandelanotte 2006: 148–149 for further examples and discussion).

28

In one case, this preceding negation was itself caused by a sentence-initial occurrence of I don’t think: Er I don’t think they’ve any wish to be erm avant garde or sort of erm innovatory I don’t think (CB, ukspok). 29 Occurrences transcribed as a separate clause but belonging to a single speaker’s turn were included in my extraction. In the Cobuild corpus, spoken texts are transcribed without prosodic marking, so full stops are interpretations on the part of the coders anyhow.

The syntagmatic structure of S-IST and S-DIST 321

Some independent support for this conclusion can be gleaned from Kärkkäinen’s (2003: Ch. 5) description of the suprasegmental structure of I think.30 According to this description, I think typically occurs at the beginning of intonation units, but other positions are possible as well (2003: Ch. 5). One such position type is post-positioned I think encoded as a separate intonation unit, the function of which Kärkkäinen (2003: 161–170) describes in terms of signalling completion. (45) is one of three examples of this type, out of a total of 41 occurrences of I think studied: (45)

REBECCA: I think that’s, I think he he finds somebody that’s isolated, […] a=nd he= .. goes for a certain age group, I think (Kärkkäinen 2003: 164; prosodic information simplified; = signals lengthening and .. a short pause)

The separate prosodic status and the distinct function (signalling completion) which Kärkkäinen isolates for this use can be interpreted as supporting a constructional distinction between S-IST and S-DIST, in that the position and prosodic separation of I think accords well with the syntagmatic properties of DIST and S-DIST in general. At least in the three areas touched on above differences between S-IST and S-DIST can be observed: S-DIST allows clause types such as interrogatives which S-IST disallows, S-IST can involve Neg-raising whereas S-DIST cannot, and ‘post-positioned’ occurrences of I think seem to be coded as a separate intonation unit, which points in the direction of S-DIST rather than S-IST. S-IST reporting clauses are utterance-initial and are part of a larger intonation unit. Against Thompson (2002: 143), then, I hold that the distinction between “main clause” and “syntactically parenthetical” reporting clauses is more than a terminological one, and I propose to extend the distinction between representational IST and DIST to their subjectified counterparts. While S-IST and S-DIST both involve scopal structure, the difference can be captured in terms of ‘integrated’ (S-IST) versus ‘nonintegrated’ (S-DIST) scopal structure, as a remnant of the incorporation vs. juxtaposition of their respective representational counterparts.

30

For a discussion of the prosody of “parentheticals” in general, see Dehé (2007), who has stressed the point that they are not always set off by intonational breaks and that the relation between syntactic and prosodic parenthesis is thus complex.

322 Subjectified forms of STR 2.4. Conclusion In this section, it was argued that a syntagmatic reanalysis accompanies the grammaticalization and subjectification of IST and DIST into S-IST and SDIST. I have first argued that Thompson’s (2002) approach in which subjectified reporting clauses are analysed as fragments ignores the grammatical distinction between descriptive and performative uses, and therefore fails to recognize that even the most prototypical ‘formula’ (I think) can be used representationally even in contexts of casual conversation. I have argued instead that in S-IST and S-DIST, the subjectified reporting clause is neither a head nor a modifier, but integrates noncompositionally, in terms of scopal structure as defined by McGregor (1997: Ch. 6), with the utterance or part of an utterance over which it applies: it does not add representational ‘content’ to build a more complex representation, but rather overlays a ‘self-contained’ representation with its (inter)subjective meaning. I have also argued (against Urmson 1963 [1952) and Thompson 2002, among others) that S-IST and S-DIST continue to instantiate different construction types, because there remain a few remnants of the syntagmatic differences between their representational counterparts: only S-DIST allows non-declarative clause types, only S-IST can involve Neg-raising, and post-positioned subjectified I think is prosodically and pragmatically marked which suggests a distinct constructional status for S-DIST.

3. Subjectified DIST in discourse In this section, I briefly discuss a number of pragmatic usage types of SDIST in different kinds of discourse (conversational, academic, and journalistic) (section 3.1). Fully textual uses of S-DIST will not be included in this discussion, since the use particularly of I think as a boundary marker and hesitation marker has been described in detail by Kärkkäinen (2003). In section 3.2, I will combine the usage types of S-DIST described here with those distinguished for representational DIST in Chapter 7 (section 4) and relate these in terms of a cline of increasing subjectivity. As a preliminary remark, it should be pointed out that in a number of respects, S-DIST represents a more grammaticalized stage than S-IST. First, the contrast between optionality and (communicative) obligatoriness of the reporting clause between representational and subjectified DIST is

Subjectified DIST in discourse 323

stronger than for representational versus subjectified IST, because in representational IST the reporting clause is already (mostly) obligatory (with the exception of so-called truncated IST; Chapter 2). Second, DIST is more fully deictically singular than IST, and thus from the start conforms more strongly to one of the prerequisites for subjectification. Third, the reporting clause of representational DIST is syntagmatically juxtaposed rather than incorporated, and this less tight integration or interdependence suggests that it is more easily up for independent development (viz. subjectification). As a result of this somewhat more advanced stage of grammaticalization, for DIST it is not so easy as for IST to come up with examples in which I think is still used representationally. In particular, the type of case in which different opinions are contrasted is difficult to come by or even imagine, as witnessed by the attempted DIST alternate to (19) (I think you’re sad and you think you’re sad so it’s two against one) in (46): (46)

??You’re sad, I think, and you’re sad, you think, so it’s two against one.

‘Transitional’ cases involving the ‘re-activation’ by an interlocutor of the representational meaning of I think should probably not be excluded for SDIST (47), even though they will probably be less frequent than with IST, and if they occur may well be considered conversationally non-cooperative: (47a)

(47b)

I don’t want to be er heavy about this but we’d need to define epic I think before we could have a meaningful discussion on this because it’s a much abused word. (CB, ukspok) Do you really think so? (constructed)

I now turn to an illustration of a number of usage types of S-DIST in different genres. It will turn out that S-DIST can be found in rather similar contexts to representational DIST (Chapter 7, section 4), such as newspaper language or academic argumentation, but with different functions.

324 Subjectified forms of STR 3.1. S-DIST in discourse: epistemic, illocutionary, and evidential comments In conversational usage, I think and I guess have become deeply entrenched ways of expressing both epistemic and illocutionary comments. In their epistemic uses, they subjectively signal a typically reduced epistemic commitment (compare Thompson and Mulac 1991a, 1991b), though with falling intonation they may conversely express a strong commitment (see e.g. Simon-Vandenbergen 2000, Nuyts 2001: 165–166). Hearer-oriented or illocutionary functions intersubjectively serve politeness strategies and the avoidance of face threat (see e.g. Aijmer 1997: 22, Nuyts 2001: 162–165). Arguably, the two types of functions cannot always be teased apart, and both may well be involved at the same time. As examples, consider (48) and (49) below, in which I think primarily serves to nuance the initial modal value of the reported clause, rendering the entire utterance more tentative and as such perhaps more reasonable or palatable to the hearer: (48) (49)

Looks a bit black out there I think. Looks like it’s going to rain. (COLT) My silence said it all I think. (CB, ukspok)

Besides casual conversation, another context in which such subjectified uses of I think (though not so much of I guess) crop up is that of academic discourse. It will be remembered that representational DIST was also argued to occur in academic discourse (Chapter 7, section 4). The difference is that representational DIST is used to obliquely render the line of argumentation of other scholars (so as to argue for or against it), whereas SDIST is used by researchers to indicate the tentative status of their own proposals. Interestingly, in academic discourse the scopal reporting clause very often features predicates different from think such as argue or claim in (50) and (51), both taken from linguistic research papers: (50)

(51)

The investigation of formal lexicogrammatical environments is, I would argue, a necessary step in the process of understanding and modelling the semantic potential of a language, as expressed through its lexicogrammar. (Tucker 2001: 186) Instrumental -er nominalizations, I claim, cannot all be classified as ‘impersonal Agents’ (Marchand 1969: 274) or inanimate extensions of the human agentive prototype of -er suffixation. (Heyvaert 2001: 295)

Subjectified DIST in discourse 325

Verbs such as argue and claim give more precise indications of how the utterance is to be taken as an interactive event or ‘move’ by the interlocutor. In this sense, subjectified reporting clauses as in (50–51) serve an intersubjective, illocutionary function in rendering the general type of speech event encoded by the declarative word order and intonation (viz. that of a statement) more specific: what is said is not forced onto the reader as an accomplished fact, but rather presented as a researcher’s claim. Besides casual conversation and academic discourse, there is another context in which S-DIST occurs, viz. that of news reports. In the discussion of representational DIST newspaper texts were also discussed as a locus for its occurrence, but this was particularly in the specific genre of reportage, in which human interest stories are treated in a mixture of journalistic text and echoed interviewee’s speech. S-DIST, on the other hand, occurs in reports on (topical) news items, reports which are largely based on what ‘official’ sources have made known about the news fact. Here, the typical reporting predicate is said, and the typical subject of that predicate is a third party with some measure of authority (e.g. police, officials, the officer, authorities, witnesses). This already indicates the ‘in between’ status of this type of S-DIST, which is in fact only party grammaticalized, and not subjectified, since it does not fulfil the grammatical prerequisites for performativity. The sense in which S-DIST in news reports can be considered to have ‘grammaticalized’ relates to the conventionalized and ‘contextually’ obligatory nature of its reporting clauses, as well as to their evidential meaning. In (52), the first three sentences from a news report posted on the USA Today website on 4 December 2002 (‘Indonesians nab alleged terror chief’) are quoted: (52)

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) – Indonesia has arrested the alleged operations chief of an al-Qaeda-linked terror group blamed for bombings on the resort island of Bali, the nation’s police chief said Wednesday. The arrest of Mukhlas, alias Ali Gufron, was a major blow to Jemaah Islamiyah, which has been implicated in a string of terror plots against Western targets in Southeast Asia, officials said. Mukhlas was taken into custody Tuesday near the central Javanese town of Solo, along with eight other people, including his wife, police chief Gen. Erwin Mapaseng told reporters. (www.usatoday.com, 4 Dec. 2002)

326 Subjectified forms of STR That (52) is best interpreted as a form of DIST is suggested among other things by the use of Indonesia and alleged in the first sentence, both of which can only be understood as designations emanating from the journalist, not from the police chief (a plausible DST variant might be something like We have arrested Mukhlas, who we believe to have been involved as an operations chief in the recent Bali bombings).31 Clearly, any subjective effect in such examples is much weaker than is the case with I think and similar examples; basically a news item is given in the reported clause, and its source in the reporting clause. Insofar as the source of a piece of information could be taken to give an indication or an impression of reliability (cf. Chafe and Nichols 1986: vii, Waugh 1995), the reporting clauses in these news reports could be argued to reinforce rather than mitigate the degree of certainty, and the subjective effect achieved could be analysed as epistemic (see e.g. McGregor 1997: 232– 233, who groups ‘authorizational’ scope with ‘modal’ or epistemic cases). Alternatively, and this is the option I suggest, it is possible to subsume examples of this type under a separate category, that of evidentiality, which as Aikhenvald (2004) has convincingly shown can and should be conceived of narrowly in terms of the notion of ‘source of information’, which as such bears no straightforward relationship to reliability (see Aikhenvald 2004: 3–10 for discussion). Classing examples such as (52) in a distinct, ‘evidential’ subtype of SDIST accords well with the observation that, unlike in epistemic uses, speaker commitment is not really at stake in (52), since the reporting clauses here are ‘impersonal’ or ‘third party’ indications, and do not encode speaker stance. By not grouping examples like (52) together with subjective, epistemic uses of I think and I guess, it is possible to view them as further removed from prototypical S-DIST, and even as an intermediate stage in between clearly subjectified and clearly representational examples. The reason why I do not consider (52) as a wholly representational case relates to the high degree of conventionality involved: for news reports to ‘count’ as news reports, they must conform to the genre expectation that news sources be provided for any and every claim. In addition, while it would be exaggerated to claim real ‘formulaic’ status for the reporting clauses of ‘evidential’ S-DIST, there is nonetheless rather limited structural

31

See Vandelanotte (2004b: 560–563) for a more detailed consideration of the DIST status of the excerpt quoted in (52), which contrasts with clearly signalled DST and IST in the remainder of the same news report.

Subjectified DIST in discourse 327

variation: they typically have rather general speech reporting predicates (said, told) and always involve an ‘official source’ (police, government officials, and so on) as their grammatical subjects. I conclude that evidential ‘S’-DIST belongs more with S-DIST than with representational DIST, because its conventional nature, its relatively constrained formal options, and its evidential meaning suggest a degree of fixation typical of grammaticalization. The epistemic and illocutionary types of S-DIST in conversational and academic usage, on the other hand, represent clearer cases of grammaticalization, and unlike the evidential type they involve subjectification as well. In the next section, I attempt to relate these three usage types of S-DIST to the subtypes of representational DIST illustrated in Chapter 7 (section 4).

3.2. From representational to subjectified DIST: A cline of subjectivity In representational DIST, as argued in Chapter 7, the confluence of overall current speaker construal with the involvement of two speech situations (current and represented) results in an echoic semantics in the sense that the current speaker ‘metarepresents’ an utterance or thought from their own perspective and expresses an attitude towards it. In S-DIST, on the other hand, in which there is only the current speech situation, the subjectified reporting clause expresses a comment which bears on the epistemic modality, illocution, or evidentiality of the utterance, or it serves textual or ‘discourse organizational’ functions such as online planning or boundary marking. Table 3 represents an attempt at putting the usage types distinguished for representational and subjectified DIST onto a cline of increasing subjectivity. Two preliminary remarks are in order: first, this cline (and the sections from this and the preceding chapter which it is based on) is not intended to exhaustively list possible usage types. Second, in keeping with the decision to focus in this study on the constructional commonalities between ‘speech’ and ‘thought’ representation, the cline abstracts away from the ontological difference between speech and thought. The simplification which this entails to some extent at the representational end is mitigated at the (inter)subjective end of the cline, since there the literal

evidential echo narrative echo

evidential comment

illocutionary comment

epistemic comment

textual marker

SUBTYPES

academic discourse > indicating tentativeness + claiming authorship – The investigation of formal lexicogrammatical environments is, I would argue, a necessary step [...] (Ch. 8, ex. 50) topical news reports > juxtaposing the news source to the news fact – Indonesia has arrested the alleged operations chief of an al-Qaeda linked terror group […], the nation’s police chief said Wednesday. (Ch. 8, ex. 52) casual conversation > speaker’s knowledge based on another’s discourse – He mailed you earlier today, he said, so please do answer him. (Ch. 5, ex. 11) literary texts; echoed argumentation; reportage; conversational echoes > echoing another’s discourse – I’m going to third. Where’s he going? ‘Basement,’ / he says. He’ll wait while I go up, then he’ll go down. (Ch. 5, ex. 21) – This is allowed, he says, because in English any past tense […] (Ch. 7, ex. 33) – He’s very deaf but he can always hear Ania. She never raises her voice. Without her, he says, he would not have survived the stroke he had five years ago. (Ch. 7, ex. 27) – You should have heard him! The way he insulted me! I was a jerk, a layabout, and you, you weren’t much better either. (Ch. 7, ex. 36)

spoken (informal) language > discourse marker, hesitation marker – It’s er it’s not usually er I think erm a deliberate decision okay let’s increase the rate of growth and the money supply. (Ch. 8, ex. 11) casual conversation; academic discourse > degree of epistemic commitment – Looks a bit black out there I think. Looks like it’s going to rain. (Ch. 8, ex. 48) – The general principle is, I think, that the simple verbal group can be related to the complex one as a ‘simplified’ replay. (Matthiessen 1996: 454)

DISCOURSE TYPES, SEMANTIC GLOSS, AND EXAMPLES

Table 3. A cline from representational to subjectified DIST: Increasing subjectivity

representational, nonformulaic, optional reporting clause

non-subjectified but formulaic, conventional reporting clause evidential, non-obligatory reporting clause

grammaticalized, subjectified, formulaic reporting clause which is communicatively obligatory and replaceable by adverbs

fully bleached, indeterminate scope

CHARACTERISTICS

Subjectified DIST in discourse 329

meaning of thinking or saying (with its attendant ontological implications) has moved to the background.32 The subjective and pragmatically intersubjective pole of the cline in Table 3 is formed by textual (discourse organizational) uses of S-DIST, because these have indeterminate scope and because their original lexical meaning has been ‘bleached’ more strongly than in other subtypes. Next on the cline are situated those cases in which the reporting clause fulfils the prerequisites of performativity and functions as an epistemic or illocutionary comment. The reporting clauses here are highly formulaic and ‘communicatively’ obligatory (in the sense that they cannot be omitted without loss of the epistemic or illocutionary meaning they express). In addition, they are in principle replaceable by modal or illocutionary adverbs such as probably, certainly or arguably. A bit further down the cline, we find news reports of the officials said kind: here, the reporting verb is not used in a derived, delexicalized sense, but even so the function of the reporting clause is not really to indicate that an echoic rendering of another’s discourse is involved, but rather to add to something that is reported as a news fact, its evidential source. The high degree of conventionalization involved suggests that we are still in the realm of ‘grammaticalized’ DIST, though not strictly speaking of ‘subjectified’ DIST, unless perhaps in the weaker sense of “character subjectivity” rather than “speaker subjectivity” (Verhagen 2001, 2005). The sense in which these third person subject reporting clauses are ‘obligatory’ is also weaker than for cases higher up the cline: it is only in terms of the expectations of the genre that an obligatory presence can be claimed. Moving within the realm of representational DIST, an evidential, less than prototypical category can also be distinguished here. This is the ‘conversational’ type of example in which the current speaker strongly associates with the metarepresented utterance to the point of really making the ‘reported’ claim him- or herself, but additionally indicating as evidence on which this claim is based its source. With so-called ‘narrative echoes’ in literary texts, echoed argumentation, reportage, and conversational (often sarcastic or ironic) echoes, we finally arrive at the representational end of

32

Note, in this connection, that certain subjectified uses of I say (Brinton 2005) could be included on the cline represented in Table 3. The pragmatic functions of imperative say distinguished by Brinton (2005), however, cannot be incorporated, since they do not derive from a representational matrix and complement structure.

330 Subjectified forms of STR the cline, in which the reporting clauses are optional and non-formulaic, and function in their full lexical meaning. Two remarks are in order with regard to the cline proposed in Table 3. Firstly, what is missing from Table 3 are examples with a second person reporting clause. This is not to say that these do not exist, but arguably they are less common.33 S-DIST with a fully modalized meaning and academic uses of S-DIST will involve first person reporting clause subjects because, as mentioned above, they involve the speaker’s epistemic stance or illocutionary pointers. The one exception to this is formed by cases in which it is not the current speaker’s position that is expressed, but the interlocutor’s that is questioned (do you think?) As for representational DIST, as noted in connection with ‘second person FIST’ (Chapter 5, section 3.1), second person narration is decidedly rare. (53) and (54), both constructed examples, could serve as instances of second person DIST: (53) (54)

You will never give up hope, you think. John is, you say, a spy. (Ifantidou 2001: 149)

By their very (non-speaker encoding) nature, these examples can only be considered as examples of representational, not subjectified, DIST. A second remark pertains to the role that may be played by intonation. By changing the intonation on the reporting verb to falling-rising (cf. Halliday 1994 [1985]: 303), it becomes possible to additionally signal one’s modal position (he said so but I do not believe him) as in (55b): (55a) (55b)

John will be here in time, he said. John will be here in time, he SAID. [falling-rising]

In (55b), the suggestion is very much that, on the basis of other knowledge presumed to be shared with the interlocutor (e.g. ‘John always runs late’), John is not likely to be where he is expected in time. Because of this additional modal meaning, (55b) could sensibly be placed nearer the subjective end of the cline than (55a).

33

Within the class of ‘textual’ S-DIST, one might include you know (cf. Erman and Kotsinas 1993), since in some of its uses know is more reportative than factive.

Conclusion 331

4. Conclusion In this chapter, I have proposed to deal with (inter)subjective uses of I think and similar ‘reporting’ clauses as the subjectified and grammaticalized counterparts of representational forms of STR. Subjectified STR was argued to show the main features of grammaticalization, including decategorialization (and recategorialization), ‘ossification’ of form, and semantic (and to a lesser extent phonological) attrition. While the lexical meaning of subjectified reporting clauses has weakened, they have gained in subjective and intersubjective meanings, identified in this chapter as epistemic, illocutionary or textual (discourse organizational). A fundamental characteristic setting subjectified STR apart from representational STR is its involvement of only one speech situation, the current one. The reason why it is IST and DIST, and not DST or FIST, which allow subjectification was argued to lie in the higher degree of deictic singularity of the former two types. Syntagmatically, subjectified STR was argued not to involve a compositional relationship: its subjectified reporting clauses do not add to the construal of a state of affairs, but rather provide an (inter)subjective slant on a fully composed state of affairs. Instead, an analysis in terms of McGregor’s (1997: Ch. 6) notion of scopal structure was proposed. The remnants of the syntagmatic differences between IST and DIST observable in S-IST and S-DIST were captured in terms of ‘integrated’ versus ‘nonintegrated’ scopal structure. Finally, I have distinguished a number of pragmatic subtypes of SDIST, involving epistemic, illocutionary, or evidential comments, in different genres (conversation, academic discourse, and topical news reports). These subtypes were placed on a cline of increasing subjectivity along with those distinguished for representational DIST in Chapter 7 (section 4). While I have not undertaken to propose a similar cline for IST, I suspect that discourse analysis of representational and subjectified IST could produce a similar result.

Chapter 9 Conclusion

Speech or thought representation is a topic that has over the past few decades attracted the interest of many neighbouring disciplines of linguistics, from stylistics, poetics and literary studies to philosophy, psychology and anthropology. While the input from each of these perspectives can be valued in its own right, part of what this book is about is to reclaim speech or thought representation for linguistic analysis. The linguistic aspects of STR that were focused on in this book are syntagmatic structure, deixis and expressivity, and grammatical semantics. The model elaborated for the syntagmatic structure of ‘representational’ forms of STR combines insights from functional and cognitive-linguistic theories and avoids the problems inherent in the traditional verbal complementation analysis, which necessarily imputes transitivity to so-called reporting predicates. With functional approaches like Halliday’s (1994 [1985], and Matthiessen 2004) and McGregor’s (1997), it shares the view that the relevant syntagmatic relations hold between two component clauses, reporting and reported, and not between the matrix clause verb and the reported clause. By coupling this point of departure with Langacker’s (1987) view on the integration of component structures which show Autonomy/Dependence layering into a composite construction, I have attempted to avoid the more problematic sides of Halliday’s and McGregor’s models such as the former’s assumption that the component clauses of DST both have free status, and the latter’s assumption that the relation between the component clauses of STR constructions is exclusively interpersonal. By analysing a reporting clause as a conceptually dependent head, it is recognized that it is in itself semantically incomplete, but also that it indicates the type of thing the clause as a whole is about, viz. a speech or thought ‘event’ rather than the type of event construed in the reporting clause. The syntagmatic properties that set IST apart from other types of STR can be explained in terms of the lower degree of autonomy of its reported clause in the A/D layering between reporting and reported clause. The analysis of DST particularly can be extended to other ‘juxtaposed’ types of STR, FIST and DIST, as well as to more or less recent innovations in the grammar of English STR involving forms such as be like and go.

Conclusion 333

In the realm of deixis and expressivity, two main descriptive points were made that go against traditional assumptions. The first pertains to IST, which was shown to allow a greater amount of ‘intensionally absolute’ forms linked directly to the represented speaker’s deictic centre than hitherto recognized. In the realm of tense, for instance, intensionally absolute tense was shown to be more frequent than previously thought, and whereas Declerck and Tanaka (1996) related its function in most cases to truth in the current speaker’s belief world, I argued that its typical function is to recreate a sense of re-enactment, and thereby to lay the speech functional reponsibility for the reported utterance squarely with the represented speaker. As for spatiotemporal deictics, the occurrence of intensionally absolute deictics in IST adds an important nuance to the insistence in the literature on the occurrence of this feature in FIST (Banfield 1982, Adamson 1995), which has been shown not to be as distinctive for FIST as often assumed. The second novel proposal in the realm of deixis made in this study is to distinguish between FIST and DIST. This distinction revolves mainly around the notion of accessibility organization, that is to say, the question as to who gets to choose the type of noun phrase with which referents get to be designated. This question was separated out from that of mere deictic alignment in terms of grammatical person, and this led to an alternative analysis of those apparent cases of FIST in which the represented speaker or the represented addressee is referred to by means of a proper name or a descriptive noun phrase. If this is the case, the current speaker ‘takes over’, i.e. appropriates and echoes the represented speaker’s utterance or thought. This is because a designation of a represented speaker or addressee – the most highly accessible referents in a speech event – by means of low accessibility markers disrupts the represented speaker’s perspective and expressivity. If in a case of apparent FIST a proper name or descriptive noun phrase occurs which designates the represented speaker or the represented addressee, and which cannot be interpreted as a de dicto designation, the logical conclusion is that the represented speaker is not construed as a point of view, and consequently that a categorization as FIST is incorrect. Once the ‘proper name problem’ has led to the positing of a separate category, that of DIST, another set of apparent FIST cases can be classed with DIST, viz. those cases in which first and second person pronouns referring to the current speaker and addressee occur in the reported clause. The overall current speaker construal defining DIST is fully compatible with the inclusion of such cases into the category.

334 Conclusion As a consequence of uncovering the differences in terms of deictic centre and accessibility organization between FIST and DIST, another light was shed on the pragmatic functioning of speech or thought representation in the realm in between or ‘beyond’ DST and IST. Under the present analysis, the problematic assumption that FIST serves two opposite pragmatic functions, empathy (associated with thought representation) or irony (associated with speech representation), can be abandoned. Instead, FIST can be upheld as a type in which the represented speaker’s belief world and expressiveness are coherently represented, but in which the few deictic hookups to the current speaker’s deictic centre serve to avoid the bland outspokenness of DST inappropriate for the representation of confused, intimate or unspoken words and thoughts. In DIST, on the other hand, the current speaker appropriates the represented speaker’s utterance or thought for his or her own current purposes, such as expressing mild narrative irony or strong conversational sarcasm, or making current claims based on the evidence of what someone else has said.1 As for the semantics of STR constructions, i.e. the meaning that is encoded in them rather than pragmatically inferred, traditional approaches in terms of notions like verbatimness or mention vs. use were argued to be too black-and-white to be able to handle the four types which need to be distinguished. Instead, the constructional semantics of representational STR were approached in terms of the degree and kind of speech function (re-) enactment in their surrogate ground. Because the features of the surrogate ground are co-determined by the syntagmatic and deictic properties of the constructions, this yielded a schematic semantic description which closely correlates with the grammatical properties of the separate types. From direct over free indirect to indirect speech or thought, a cline resulted from full re-enactment to its absence, whereas DIST was characterized in terms of echoic enactment, resulting in ‘discourse distance’, rather than any kind of re-enactment. Unlike representational forms of STR, subjectified ones only have one speech situation, the current, in which some speech act is performed to which the grammaticalized and subjectified reporting clause adds an (inter)subjective comment. That it is IST and DIST, and not DST or FIST

1

Although ultimately nothing very crucial hinges on the precise manner of taxonomization, the significant, deictically created viewpoint differences combined with the pragmatics ‘falling into place’ have led me to consider FIST and DIST as types on a par with one another, rather than to view DIST as a subtype of FIST.

Conclusion 335

which subjectivize has been related to the deictic singularity of the former two types. As for syntagmatic structure, I have argued against a ‘fragment’ approach in the spirit of Thompson (2002) and more generally against approaches which assign the same structure to subjectified and nonsubjectified STR. Instead, the semantic shift from representational to (inter)subjective was argued to be accompanied by a syntagmatic reanalysis in which the reporting clause no longer functions as a conceptually dependent head vis-à-vis a reported complement, but rather as a scoping unit overlaying its meaning across the entire scoped unit. This is supported by agnation behaviour different from that of representational STR, such as the replaceability by modal or illocutionary adverbs or the communicative nonoptionality of the subjectified reporting clauses. The syntagmatic differences which remain between S-IST and S-DIST can be viewed as remnants of their ‘representational’ structural differentiation in terms of incorporation vs. juxtaposition, and thus support the proposal to explicitly relate representational and subjectified forms of STR in terms of grammaticalization. Taken together, the syntagmatic, deictic and semantic properties of the different types yield what one might call a constructional profile for each construction type. The main features of the six STR construction types distinguished in this book can be summarized as follows. DST is characterized by a full deictic and expressive shift to the represented speech situation, which means that all grammatical resources (including the choice of noun phrase type) are ‘absolute’ with respect to the represented speaker’s deictic centre, save for the occasional occurrence of ‘suspensive’ elements like so and so. The deictic ‘reset’ to the represented speaker’s deictic centre is co-enabled by the juxtaposed syntagmatic structure of DST, which translates into a high level of autonomy for the reported clause, which enables all clause types including, for instance, interrogatives and exclamatives. The speech function ‘originally’ enacted by the represented speaker in the represented speech situation is dramatically ‘reenacted’ fully in the reported clause of DST. FIST shares with DST its syntagmatic structure (juxtaposition), but in it the deictic shift to the represented speaker’s deictic centre is only partial: in its reported clause, grammatical person is determined with respect to the current speaker’s deictic centre, to which also tense choice is normally relative, although the represented speaker’s deictic centre is intensionally or interpretively prominently evoked as well. Moreover, expressive resources as well as accessibility organization (i.e. the choice for high accessibility

336 Conclusion pronouns to designate the represented speech participants) relate fully to the represented speaker. FIST’s high level of represented speaker expressiveness combined with its partial deictic ‘remoteness’ from the represented speech situation reconciles the expressive virtues of DST with the ‘indirectness’ often preferred for intimate or unspoken words or thoughts in fiction. Technically, this mixture is captured in terms of the notion of a speech function re-enactment which is, compared to that of DST, only partial. More specifically, it can be characterized as self-expressive: there is represented speaker related expressiveness and there are structures which can encode different speech acts, but the deictic displacement prevents these features from being exchange-directed. IST is in a sense the most complex of representational types of STR, and this is related to its deviant syntagmatic structure. Compared to the other three representational types, its ‘incorporated’ reported clause has a lower degree of conceptual autonomy vis-à-vis its reporting clause. This tight syntagmatic bond between reporting and reported clause entails a number of restrictions on the expressive structures that can occur in the reported clause of IST, such that IST can only have isolated expressive hook-ups with the represented speaker’s deictic centre. What is crucially missing in the incorporated reported clause of IST is an independent speech function, which translates semantically into the absence of speech function reenactment. As for deixis, grammatical person as well as relative tense are determined from the current speaker’s deictic centre, but relative tense nevertheless evokes the represented speaker’s intensional perspective. In addition, absolute tense is typically related to the represented speaker’s deictic centre, and spatiotemporal deictics may also be ‘intensionally’ absolute. Like deixis, accessibility organization in IST presents a mixed picture. On the one hand, the represented speaker, named in the sentenceinitial reporting clause, constitutes a point of view from which the reported clause is viewed, which results in the use of high accessibility encoding pronouns to refer to the represented speech participants. Third parties, on the other hand, may receive either a de dicto reading or a de re reading, as in the classical case of Oedipus and his mother, which means that the current speaker’s accessibility organization can occasionally intervene in the reported clause of IST. DIST, unlike FIST, does not construe the represented speaker as a point of view in its reported clause; instead, the current speaker has appropriated and echoed the represented speaker’s utterance or thought for his or her current communicative purposes (such as irony or sarcasm, or making

Conclusion 337

claims based on ‘hearsay’ evidence). The main grammatical observations on which this constructional profile is based are the following. The occurrence of first and second person pronouns to refer to the current speaker and addressee in the reported clause of DIST shows that grammatical person is geared to the current speaker. The fact that, conversely, the represented speaker and addressee can be referred to by means of proper names or descriptive noun phrases confirms that the accessibility organization as well is that of the current speaker. The combination of a juxtaposed reported clause, allowing all clause structures which in their turn can encode all manner of speech functions, with the grounding of the reported clause in the current speech situation together result in the fact that speech function is enacted, and not merely re-enacted, in DIST. However, the involvement of the represented speech situation is only recognized if this speech function enactment is interpreted as ‘echoic’, i.e. as involving distanced discourse, ‘borrowed’ by the current speaker to express either more associative or more dissociative attitudes vis-à-vis the represented utterance. S-IST is not about representing an utterance or thought located in a ‘remote’, represented speech situation. Rather, it is about encoding in a grammaticalized and subjectified reporting clause an (inter)subjective comment vis-à-vis a speech act performed in the current speech situation. Syntagmatically, this involves the non-compositional relation of scope: essentially, in S-IST structures are not combined, through the sharing and elaboration of schematic substructures, to form a composite structure with a composite meaning, but rather one structure overlays the entire other structure. The scopal structure of S-IST can be characterized as ‘integrated’ because, as a remnant of the tight syntagmatic integration of representational IST, the scopal clause of S-IST allows so-called Neg-raising structures but does not attach to interrogative clause structures. S-DIST is similar to S-IST in all of the above aspects, save the last one: the scopal structure of S-DIST is ‘non-integrated’, in that it does combine with interrogative clauses, and that it does not allow Neg-raising. As well, there seems to be evidence suggesting that the subjectified ‘scoping’ clause of S-DIST stands prosodically more on its own than that of S-IST. It is not claimed that these six constructional profiles, which are complex and fairly abstract, provide a ready-made heuristic invariably producing clear-cut categorizations of concrete text examples. As pointed out on several occasions, insight into the make-up of the current and represented speech situation, with their respective participants and their location in time

338 Conclusion and space, is essential to disambiguate between possible readings, and even then ambiguous or vague instances may occur. However, in order to arrive at sensible interpretations in context which are consonant with linguistic facts, one needs to have well-defined categories first, to serve as a filter through which to interpret concrete text. As an example, cases of ambiguity or vagueness between readings as FIST or as DIST were discussed in Chapters 5 (section 3.4) and 7 (section 1.3). More generally, possible confusion between reportative and ‘objective’, narrative readings has been addressed in the literature, focusing particularly on FIST (e.g. Ehrlich 1990, Ikeo 2007). Paraphrasing Galbraith’s (1995: 41) assessment of ‘dual voice’ readings of FIST passages,2 we can state that “prolonged confusion” as to the precise status of an ambiguous passage does not constitute proof that categorization is useless or impossible; arguably, in fact, such confusion and its eventual resolution is part and parcel of an intellectually satisfying reading experience. When vagueness rather than ambiguity exists, no important interpretive differences emerge. Perhaps surprisingly, a case in point is provided in the context particularly of spoken language by DST and IST, which one would tend to think of as prototypical opposites. In many spoken examples, however, there is not much to go on to decide in favour of DST or IST. For instance, in the sentence oh they said there’s a possibility of snow this evening (COLT), the absolute present tense can be accommodated in IST as well as in DST and no other deictic indications can be relied on. In such an example, then, no watertight categorization presents itself, unless prosodic information were available and able to reliably distinguish between DST and IST (which is not necessarily the case; see Clift and Holt 2007: 11–12 for some discussion and references). While the present account thus recognizes cases of ambiguity or vagueness, it has tried to provide clearer grounds for categorization, and therefore allows (it is hoped) to draw some boundaries more sharply. Thus, for instance, the previously neglected criterion of accessibility organization has helped to separate out current speaker-related DIST from represented speaker-expressive FIST, a distinction which provides a principled treatment for hitherto ‘problematic’ examples involving the ‘proper name 2

In particular, Galbraith reacts to claimed ‘dual voice’ readings of passages which have unclear boundaries between the representation of one character’s consciousness and that of another in stating that “[p]rolonged confusion about whose consciousness is being followed does not constitute proof that more than one consciousness is being followed at the same time” (1995: 41).

Conclusion 339

problem’ or so-called ‘overheard speech’. Likewise, in consistently recognizing the contribution of syntagmatic structure, a more reliable parameter for distinguishing IST from FIST was defined compared with approaches in which the mere appearance of subjective lexis was reason enough to label an example as FIST (even if the syntax of the reported clause was clearly still ‘incorporated’, not ‘juxtaposed’), or in which the presence of an explicit reporting clause was considered sufficient ground for an analysis as IST rather than FIST (even though this explicit reporting clause was clearly juxtaposed, not incorporated). The constructional description offered in this study needs to be confronted further with concrete texts in order to refine and expand on it. While a few usage types were proposed across different genres for DIST and S-DIST at the end of Chapters 7 and 8 respectively, this discussion was inevitably selective and could be broadened in terms of genres and STR types considered. As well, a number of constructions of which I have suggested in passing that they are closely related to the STR constructions that formed the focus of this study merit further research. One such family of constructions is that of subtypes of IST with non-finite reported clauses, including constructions with non-finite reported clauses representing “proposals” (offers and commands, Halliday 1994 [1985]: 257–260), accusative and infinitive constructions, and nominative and infinitive constructions (see e.g. Noël 2008). A category closely related to STR is narrated perception, which does not represent speech or thought but non-verbalized perceptions. For this reason it was excluded from this study, but theoretical concepts such as deictic centre, speech situation, accessibility organization and absolute vs. relative tense could help to elucidate the linguistic properties of this neighbouring category. Apart from further synchronic description of usage types and of related constructions, diachronic and typological extensions of the present framework suggest themselves. Against the ‘anachronic’ interpretation of texts from older stages of English in terms of present-day English categories like FIST, the rise and evolution of different categories of STR in the history of English is not yet fully understood (but see Adamson 2001, Sotirova 2007). The turning point for the emergence of FIST, for instance, was suggested by Banfield (1982: Ch. 6) to occur between the seventeenth and early nineteenth centuries, and Adamson (2001) likewise places the emergence of the ‘was + now’ construction in the seventeenth century (within the autobiographical genre of Puritan “conversion narratives”). However, further work remains to be done to chart in greater detail how precisely

340 Conclusion juxtaposed, non-direct types of STR (FIST and DIST) have crystallized from earlier phenomena into their current shape. Consider, for instance, example (1) below, which from a present-day English perspective seems decidedly odd. Historically, however, it could be interpreted as a transitional stage in which the incorporated reported clause of IST was being ‘freed up’, by enclosing it in quotation marks, starting it with a capital letter, and giving it its own punctuation. It could then be further hypothesized that, when syntactically ‘free’ or ‘juxtaposed’ indirect types became more established, quotation marks were no longer felt to be necessary. In substantiating (or disproving) such hypotheses lies an interesting challenge ahead. (1)

The orator bustled up to him, and, drawing him partly aside, inquired “On which side he voted?” Rip stared in vacant stupidity. Another short but busy little fellow pulled him by the arm, and, rising, on tiptoe, inquired in his ear “Whether he was Federal or Democrat?” (Washington Irving, “Rip Van Winkle”, qtd. Oates 1994: 28)

While STR is an area that has already attracted a good deal of typological attention (e.g. Coulmas 1986, Lucy 1993, De Roeck 1994, McGregor 1994, Janssen and van der Wurff 1996, Güldemann and von Roncador 2002, Güldemann 2008, Aikhenvald 2008), study from a typological perspective of intermediate types such as FIST, which have tended to take centre stage in linguistic as well as stylistic studies of English, is comparatively rare (see e.g. Tammi and Tommola 2003). As well, the many crosslinguistic counterparts of ‘similative’ or ‘approximative’ English be like and go (listed by e.g. Schourup 1983, Foolen 2001, Güldemann 2002: 284 and Meyerhoff 2002: 351–353) have not been described in nearly so much detail as the English forms in regard to their grammatical, pragmatic and sociolinguistic properties (cf. Van Alphen and Buchstaller 2008). The good news in all this is, of course, that there remains ample scope to further exercise our minds with the workings of speech and thought representation in synchrony, diachrony, and typology.

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Index

As with subjects, only the more substantial author references are included in this index. This means among other things that not all authors whose work is cited and listed in the reference list are also in the index. Notes are indicated by the letter ‘n’ following the relevant page number. absolute vs. relative tense. See under tense accessibility, 67–70, 72–76, 145– 149, 152–154, 157–158, 175– 177, 186–187, 208–209, 217, 249–250, 333–339 Aczel, Richard, 247 Adamson, Sylvia, 3, 106, 116, 217, 333, 339 agnation, 22–23, 27–33 Aijmer, Karin, 288, 324 Aikhenvald, Alexandra, 326 ambiguity vs. vagueness, 171–175, 241–242, 337–338 Ariel, Mira, 17, 65, 67 Asher, Nicholas, 317 associative vs. dissociative attitudes. See under distancing indirect speech/thought Baker, Carl, 180–181 Bally, Charles, 242, 249 Banfield, Ann, 2–3, 30, 43–44, 55, 63–64, 105–106, 109–113, 116, 136n, 144–147, 155–162, 164, 169, 187, 206, 217–218, 223– 225, 228–229, 246–247, 254, 260, 275, 333, 339 be like, 50–52 Binding Theory, 67, 178–179, 181 Blackstone, Bernard, 101 Bolinger, Dwight, 71n, 149, 260n Bolkestein, Machtelt, 114 Boogaart, Ronny, 84n

Boye, Kasper, 301–302, 304n Bray, Joe, 247, 266 Brems, Lieselotte, 283, 289 Brinton, Laurel, 178–179, 182–184, 283–285, 288, 290, 329n Bühler, Karl, 59 Cantrall, William, 178, 179 Cappelen, Herman, 6, 124 Chafe, Wallace, 326 Clark, Herbert, 6, 52, 119, 121, 124, 128–130, 166 Coates, Jennifer, 291 coercion, 32 cognitive grammar, 14, 65–69 Cohn, Dorrit, 249 combined direct/indirect speech/thought, 6, 126, 130n complementation, 21–22, 36–37, 39, 311, 314 conceptual dependence, 34–39, 45– 47 constituency, 19–25 construction as integration of component structures, 33–37 at the discourse level, 9–10 definition of, 1, 8–9 construction grammar, 8–10 corpora, 15–16 Coulmas, Florian, 113, 124 Croft, William, 1, 8–9, 34–36, 38 current speech situation. See speech situation

Index 379 current vs. represented speaker, 2, 13, 61, 173–175 Dancygier, Barbara, 9, 264, 319n Dasher, Richard, 14, 18, 280, 284, 288–289, 292 Davidse, Kristin, 24, 26n, 27–31, 50–51, 91, 273 Davidson, Donald, 20n, 124, 127– 128 Davies, Eirian, 42, 110, 227, 234– 235 de dicto–de re ambiguity, 73–75, 113–116, 121, 122n, 124, 336 De Roeck, Marijke, 24 De Smet, Hendrik, 280n Declerck, Renaat, 81–84, 87–88, 90– 91, 93–96, 98–101, 103–104, 190–193, 195–197, 199–201, 204–207, 215, 260, 333 Dehé, Nicole, 317, 321n deixis, 58–60, 333 adverbial expressions, 105–109, 217–221. See also was–now paradox deictic centre, 60–65, 187–189 deictic shift, 62–65 link with subjectification, 294– 299 person deixis, 65–80, 141–187 temporal deixis, 80–104, 190– 217. See also tense Delacruz, Enrique, 26n demonstration vs. description, 127– 131 Denison, David, 294 dependency, 20, 35. See also conceptual dependence Depraetere, Ilse, 81 descriptive noun phrases, 67–68, 70, 154, 176–177, 333 diegesis. See mimesis vs. diegesis Diessel, Holger, 306n Diewald, Gabriele, 286 Dillon, George, 250–251

direct speech/thought, 2–4, 60–65, 115, 131–133, 149, 154, 226, 233–237, 240, 263, 295n, 332, 335, 338 constructional semantics of, 136 expressivity in, 109, 133–134 free direct speech/thought, 3–4 person deixis in, 70–71, 74–75, 78 spatiotemporal adverbials in, 105, 109 structural analysis of, 21–25, 31– 33, 37–41, 43–53, 55–57, 315 tense in, 88–89 traditional approaches to, 118– 130 discourse distance, 263–266 distancing indirect speech/thought, 5–6, 52, 142–145, 186–189, 333– 334, 336–37 associative vs. dissociative attitudes in, 211, 217, 225, 237–238, 241, 262–263, 277– 279, 337 constructional semantics of, 236– 240, 255–266 evidential vs. narrative usage types of, 209–214, 216–217, 224–225, 279 expressivity in, 222–225 from semantics to pragmatics, 240–243, 266–279 in newspaper language, 272 in second person narrative, 330 in spoken language, 275–277 in subclauses, 242–243 person deixis in, 145–160, 163– 173, 176–178, 184–186 spatiotemporal adverbials in, 217–221 subjectified distancing indirect speech/thought. See under subjectified speech and thought representation tense in, 208–217

380 Index use of term, 263–264 dual voice theory, 244–255, 338 Ducrot, Oswald, 164, 246 echo, 145, 151, 154–155, 222–225, 236–240, 255–266, 278–279, 337 echo questions, 223, 257–261 Ehrlich, Susan, 144, 153, 192–194, 206–207, 266, 338 elaboration, 34–35, 37–39, 51, 311, 315–316 Erman, Britt, 288, 330n evidentiality, 209, 225, 277–279, 325–327 expressivity, 43–44, 109–114, 222– 230, 333 factive constructions, 26–31 faithfulness, 2–3, 5, 119, 123n, 244– 245. See also verbatimness Fauconnier, Gilles, 70, 90 Fillmore, Charles, 8–9, 175, 264 Fischer, Olga, 288n Fleischman, Suzanne, 202 Fludernik, Monika, 63n, 119, 123, 152, 155, 167, 175–176, 194– 195, 200, 205, 223, 226, 229, 242, 246–247, 250, 267, 276 fragments (epistemic/evidential/evaluative), 300–306 framing, 40, 61–62, 129, 131–134, 142 free direct speech/thought. See under direct speech/thought free indirect speech/thought, 3–5, 9– 10, 126, 130n, 132, 137–139, 141–142, 186–189, 270–273, 333–336 boundary with indirect speech/thought, 4–5, 54, 110– 112 constructional semantics of, 233– 236 expressivity in, 226–230

from semantics to pragmatics, 240–255 in second person narrative, 162– 163, 168 in spoken language, 275–276 person deixis in, 145–149, 152– 153, 157–163, 167–179, 182– 184 spatiotemporal adverbials in, 217–221 structural analysis of, 52–56 tense in, 191–207 Galbraith, Mary, 246–247, 254, 266, 338 Garver, Newton, 126 Gerrig, Richard, 6, 52, 119, 121, 124, 128–130, 166 Gleason, Henry, 22, 26 gnomic statements, 197–199, 213– 214 go, 50–52 Goldberg, Adele, 8–9, 52 Government and Binding. See Binding Theory grammatical metaphor, 313–314 grammaticalization, 277–278, 281– 290, 295n, 300, 303, 307–308, 314, 322–323, 327, 334–335 grounding, 135–139, 232–240 Güldemann, Tom, 24 Haiman, John, 46, 124–126, 134n Halliday, Michael, 8, 13–14, 16, 20– 21, 27–29, 33, 39–40, 42, 47–48, 51, 76, 91, 126, 226–227, 253, 289–290, 297, 309, 313–317, 330, 332, 339 Hand, Michael, 20n, 127, 292, 317 Hanks, William, 60, 62, 105 Harder, Peter, 301–302, 304n Hare, Richard, 257 Hasan, Ruqaiya, 29 headhood, 35–36 Hengeveld, Kees, 114

Index 381 Hernadi, Paul, 251 Himmelmann, Nikolaus, 287 historic present tense. See under tense Hooper, Joan, 28, 304n Hopper, Paul, 283, 285–286, 298, 303 Horn, Laurence, 319 Huddleston, Rodney, 99 Hudson, Richard, 36 hypotaxis, 20, 47–48, 315 Ifantidou, Elly, 275, 279, 292, 319n Ikeo, Reiko, 4–5, 338 incorporated quotation. See combined direct/indirect speech/thought incorporation, 41–50, 54, 111–112, 114, 133, 137, 148, 182, 321, 332 indirect speech/thought, 2–5, 60–65, 115–116, 131–133, 141–142, 147–148, 233, 237, 240, 260– 261, 263, 323, 332–333, 336, 338 boundary with free indirect speech/thought. See under free indirect speech/thought constructional semantics of, 137– 139 expressivity in, 109–114, 133– 134 person deixis in, 70–76, 78–80 spatiotemporal adverbials in, 105–109 structural analysis of, 21–31, 37– 50, 56, 315 subjectified indirect speech/thought. See under subjectified speech and thought representation tense in, 83–84, 87, 90–104 traditional approaches to, 118– 130 truncated indirect speech/thought, 32n, 44–45, 323 intensional domain, 90–91, 93

intensional perspective, 91–92, 96, 106, 192, 211–212, 216–217, 249, 336 intensionally absolute forms, 96– 101, 103–107, 132, 138, 142, 196, 199, 204, 218–220, 333. See also under tense and was–now paradox interpersonal grammar, 20–21, 40, 226–230, 307–317 intersubjectivity, 289–294, 305n, 325, 329 irony, 153, 211, 223–225, 251–256, 262, 268–269, 336 Iwata, Seizi, 257–258, 260 Jahn, Manfred, 153n juxtaposition, 41–50, 52–56, 111, 134, 148, 182, 222, 233, 236, 321, 332 Kärkkäinen, Elise, 283–284, 286, 292–93, 295n, 321–322 Kavalova, Yordanka, 317 Killie, Kristin, 206 Kiparsky, Carl, 26n, 27 Kiparsky, Paul, 26n, 27 Kirchhoff, Frederick, 250–251 König, Ekkehard, 284, 289 Kotsinas, Ulla-Britt, 288, 330n Kuno, Susumu, 72, 143, 179 Kuryłowicz, Jerzy, 283 Langacker, Ronald, 1, 8–9, 14, 16– 17, 28, 33–39, 45, 52, 58–59, 65– 67, 70, 77, 85–86, 135, 206, 227, 280n, 287, 291, 313–317, 332 Leech, Geoffrey, 2–3, 11, 17, 53, 61, 110–12, 118–119, 123n, 244, 251–253, 262 Lehmann, Christian, 284–287 Lepore, Ernie, 6, 124 Lips, Marguerite, 249, 275 logophoricity, 77–80, 179–82, 184– 187. See also reflexives

382 Index Lyons, John, 59, 81, 124, 257, 280 Marnette, Sophie, 27n Matthiessen, Christian, 137, 332 Mayes, Patricia, 133–134, 140 McGregor, William, 8, 13–14, 18, 20–21, 27, 40, 48–49, 61–62, 110, 117, 129–134, 136, 140, 142, 226–227, 253, 281, 311– 317, 322, 326, 331–332 McHale, Brian, 3, 12–14, 43, 111– 112, 246, 251, 254, 272 Meillet, Antoine, 283 mention vs. use, 124–126 Mey, Jacob, 53, 123, 246n, 248, 265–266 mimesis vs. diegesis, 128n mixed quotation. See combined direct/indirect speech/thought modification, 36–37, 39 Mosegaard Hansen, Maj-Britt, 25, 48, 124–125 Mulac, Anthony, 283, 285, 288, 297, 301, 309, 318, 324 Munro, Pamela, 24 narrated perception, 12–13, 339 Neg-raising, 319–320 Nichols, Johanna, 326 Nikiforidou, Kiki, 9–10, 206–207 Noh, Eun-Ju, 6, 130 non-reflective consciousness, 155– 157 NOW in the PAST. See was–now paradox Nuyts, Jan, 284n, 291–292, 305– 306, 324 Oltean, Stefan, 246–248 Östman, Jan-Ola, 9 Palmer, Frank, 297 parataxis, 20, 47–48, 315 parenthetical, 146–147, 275, 281,

288, 292, 317–321. See also reporting clause Partee, Barbara, 125–127 partial quotation. See combined direct/indirect speech/thought Pascal, Roy, 123, 175–176, 198, 245–246, 248–249 Peirce, Charles, 59 Perridon, Harry, 122n Persson, Gunnar, 284n pragmatic strengthening, 284, 289 pragmaticalization, 288 pragmatics (vs. semantics), 14–15, 140, 171–173, 240–255, 266– 279, 290, 294, 322–330, 334 Pratt, Mary Louise, 162 profile determinacy. See headhood progressive aspect, 206–207 proper names, 67–75, 145–157, 179n, 333 Quine, Willard, 73n, 124, 126 Quirk, Randolph, 19, 21–22, 25, 290 Redeker, Gisela, 70, 154 Reed, Susan, 87, 92 reference point constructions, 65–69, 80–81, 85–86, 107–109, 148– 149, 152–153, 180–181, 191n, 221. See also accessibility reflexives, 77–80, 178–186 Reinhart, Tanya, 17, 143, 146–147, 155, 179, 225, 277 Relevance Theory, 126, 251n, 255– 261 reportage (as a genre), 269–271 reported clause, 26–33, 37–41 use of term, 11 reported speech. See speech and thought representation reporting clause, 26–33, 37–41 absence of, 3–4, 32, 53–54 position of, 44–45, 55, 166n use of term, 11

Index 383 representational speech and thought representation, 280–287, 295, 302–311, 313–317, 334–335. See also direct, distancing indirect, free indirect and indirect speech/thought represented speaker. See current vs. represented speaker represented speech situation. See speech situation Reuland, Eric, 179 Rigter, Bob, 90 Rosier, Laurence, 116 Sakita, Tomoko, 104n Salkie, Ralph, 87, 92 Sanders, José, 70 sarcasm, 164 scopal structure, 307–317. See also interpersonal grammar Segal, Gabriel, 127 semantics of direct and indirect speech/thought, 117–140, 334 of free and distancing indirect speech/thought, 232–240, 334 of subjectified speech and thought representation, 289–294 vs. pragmatics. See pragmatics (vs. semantics) Semino, Elena, 2–3, 5–6, 11–12, 15– 16, 110–112, 123n, 173, 244, 251–252, 262, 272 Semiotic Grammar, 132, 226, 311– 317 shift of temporal focus, 215–216 Short, Mick, 2–3, 5–6, 11, 15–17, 53, 61, 110–112, 118–119, 123n, 173, 244, 251–253, 262, 272 Simon-Vandenbergen, Anne-Marie, 303–304, 324 so and so, 120–122, 124 Sotirova, Violeta, 247n, 266, 339 Speas, Margaret, 127 speech and thought representation

‘speech’ vs. ‘thought’, 11, 327, 329 types of. See direct, distancing indirect, free indirect, and indirect speech/thought use and scope of term, 10–14 speech function, 42, 90–91, 117– 118, 135, 257–258 degrees of (re-)enactment of, 136–139, 232–240, 282, 334 speech participants, reference to represented, 70–74, 145–175 speech situation, 13, 59–62, 187 Sperber, Dan, 256–257, 259, 261, 266 Steinberg, Günter, 220 Sternberg, Meir, 4, 63n subjectification, 30–31, 277–278, 281–284, 289–299, 305, 307– 308, 314, 322–330, 334–335, 337 subjectified speech and thought representation, 14, 30–31, 280– 331, 334–335 constructional semantics of, 282, 289–294 deixis in, 281–282, 294–299 from semantics to pragmatics, 322–330 grammaticalization of, 283–288 structural analysis of, 300–322 subjectified indirect vs. distancing indirect speech/thought, 281– 282, 317–330, 335, 337 such and such, 120–122, 124 surrogate ground. See grounding suspensive reference, 121–122, 124– 125, 165, 172. See also so and so, such and such Sweetser, Eve, 9, 264 syntagmatic structure, 19–57, 300– 322, 332, 335 systemic-functional grammar, 14, 16, 226, 313, 315n Tabor, Whitney, 286

384 Index Tanaka, Kazuhiko, 81, 90, 91, 93– 96, 98–101, 104, 199, 333 Tannen, Deborah, 119 temporal zero-point, definition of, 81 tense absolute vs. relative tense, 81–86, 88–104, 190–199, 201, 204, 209–217, 333, 336 historic present tense, 204–206 in direct speech/thought, 88–89 in distancing indirect speech/thought, 208–217 in free indirect speech/thought, 191–207 in indirect speech/thought, 83–84, 87, 90–104 theory of, 81–87 third parties, reference to, 74–76, 175–178 Thompson, Sandra, 283, 285, 288, 297, 300–302, 304–307, 309, 312, 318, 322, 324, 335 Tomasello, Michael, 306n Tops, Guy, 195 transitivity of ‘reporting predicates’, 23–25 Traugott, Elizabeth, 14, 18, 102n, 162, 280, 283–284, 286, 288– 290, 292 truncated indirect speech/thought. See under indirect speech/thought Tucker, Gordon, 310

van der Voort, Cok, 226, 247, 249– 250, 254 Van Hoek, Karen, 17, 65–69, 72, 75–80, 85, 148, 181–182, 184 Van Langendonck, Willy, 36, 39, 70 Vandelanotte, Lieven, 30, 50–51, 63, 88n, 90–91, 94, 134, 141, 143, 147, 156, 246, 264, 273n, 283, 295, 301, 310, 312, 316, 320, 326n Vanparys, Johan, 143 verbatimness, 118–124. See also faithfulness Verhagen, Arie, 305n, 329 Verstraete, Jean-Christophe, 280n, 285, 290, 295n, 297–298 Vetters, Carl, 276 Vološinov, Valentin, 245–246, 249 von Roncador, Manfred, 24, 62–63, 120–21, 131–132, 144, 153n, 155, 162, 165n, 169–170, 194, 198–199, 220, 248 was–now paradox, 3, 10, 12, 106, 116, 155, 217–218 Waugh, Linda, 6, 326 Wierzbicka, Anna, 46, 64, 136 Wilkins, David, 113 Wilson, Deirdre, 256–257, 259, 261, 266 Wynne, Martin, 123n, 244 Yamaguchi, Haruhiko, 157n, 162, 223, 259, 276

Urmson, James, 292, 317, 322 Zribi-Hertz, Anne, 178–181, 183–84 vagueness. See ambiguity vs. vagueness