Structures of Focus and Grammatical Relations (Linguistische Arbeiten) [1 ed.] 3484304774, 9783484304772

Table of contents :
Preface
Contrast, the fall-rise accent, and Information Focus
Iconic and categorical focus systems in Scandinavian
Are Finnish null subjects null topics?
Discourse configurationality in Finnish and Hungarian
The relation between morphological case, syntactic functions and thematic roles in Icelandic: A frequency analysis
Passive as activity aspect. On the relation between aspectuality and passive: A comparative study of German and Swedish
The passive in Icelandic – compared to Mainland Scandinavian
Authors’ addresses

Citation preview

Linguistische Arbeiten

477

Herausgegeben von Hans Altmann, Peter Blumenthal, Hans Jürgen Heringer, Ingo Plag, Beatrice Primus und Richard Wiese

Structures of Focus and Grammatical Relations Edited by Jorunn Hetland and Valéria Molnár

Max Niemeyer Verlag Tübingen 2003

Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Bibliothek Die Deutsche Bibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http://dnb.ddb.de abrufbar. ISBN 3-484-30477-4

ISSN 0344-6727

© Max Niemeyer Verlag G m b H , Tübingen 2003 http://www. niemeyer. de Das Werk einschließlich aller seiner Teile ist urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung außerhalb der engen Grenzen des Urheberrechtsgesetzes ist ohne Zustimmung des Verlages unzulässig und strafbar. Das gilt insbesondere für Vervielfältigungen, Übersetzungen, Mikroverfilmungen und die Einspeicherung und Verarbeitung in elektronischen Systemen. Printed in Germany. Gedruckt auf alterungsbeständigem Papier. Druck: Hanf Buch- und Mediendruck G m b H , Pfungstadt Einband: Industriebuchbinderei Nädele, Nehren

Contents

Jorunn Heiland, Valéria Molnár Preface

VD

Jorunn Heiland Contrast, the fall-rise accent, and Information Focus

1

Lars Heltoft Iconic and categorical focus systems in Scandinavian

41

Marja Järventausta Are Finnish null subjects null topics?

87

Valéria Molnár, Marja Järventausta Discourse configurationality in Finnish and Hungarian

Ill

Johanna Barddal The relation between morphological case, syntactic functions and thematic roles in Icelandic: A frequency analysis

149

Barbro Landén, Valéria Molnár Passive as activity aspect. On the relation between aspectuality and passive: A comparative study of German and Swedish

187

Johanna Barddal, Valéria Molnár The passive in Icelandic - compared to Mainland Scandinavian

231

Authors' addresses

261

Preface

T h e purpose of this b o o k is to contribute to a better understanding o f information structure on the one hand, and selected syntactic, thematic and phonological patterns o f human lang u a g e on the other. A l t h o u g h the seven articles included in the v o l u m e are different with respect to theoretical f r a m e w o r k , core subject and the languages e x a m i n e d , they all take up important aspects o f information structure and grammatical form. Q u e s t i o n s related to information structure have for more than thirty years constituted a m a j o r field o f linguistic research. This c o m p l e x o f problems has been o f key interest both to grammarians w o r k i n g within the generative tradition and to representatives o f d i f f e r e n t functional schools. T h e functionalists have mainly discussed the influence of the c o m m u nicative situation on utterance structure, whereas the generativists have called attention to the syntactic and p h o n o l o g i c a l means o f highlighting information. In the functional framew o r k , the partitioning o f utterances into old and new information

(the theme-rheme

di-

c h o t o m y ) w a s considered essential; in generative grammar, on the other hand, the structural representation o f phenomena such as focus

and topic w a s given the highest priority.

In the discussions o f information structure presented in this v o l u m e , special attention is paid to the classification o f topic and f o c u s types, the description o f language s p e c i f i c dev i c e s for the expression o f topic and focus, and the typological characterisation o f different l a n g u a g e s with respect to the parameter o f discourse configurationality. Further, the question is raised whether there exist any universal regularities o f focusing, and if so, h o w these can be accounted for in a theoretically satisfactory fashion. T h e p h o n o l o g i c a l dimension o f information structure is the main concern of the contribution by JORUNN H E T L A N D , w h o discusses the problems of defining focus

and contrast,

and

the relation o f these p h e n o m e n a to s p e c i f i c intonation patterns in E n g l i s h and G e r m a n . W h e r e a s in G e r m a n declarative sentences the core of the m e s s a g e (the " f o c u s " ) is a l w a y s m a r k e d by the last pitch accent, realised as a fall, the information f o c u s o f E n g l i s h sentences can be m a r k e d by falling or (fall-)rising accents. Independent o f its topic or f o c u s marking function, the fall-rise accent of both languages is shown to be w e l l suited to induce contrast,

especially in cases where there is no sign in the context that contrast is intended.

F r o m a diachronic perspective, L A R S HELTOFT argues for the relevance of the notion focus to the d e v e l o p m e n t o f the basic Danish sentence structure. Investigating the w o r d order changes f r o m O l d Scandinavian to Modern Scandinavian, he s h o w s that the word order rules in O l d S c a n d i n a v i a n l a n g u a g e s were iconically

c o d e d for f o c u s - b a c k g r o u n d structure,

w h e r e a s M o d e r n Scandinavian languages are categorical

languages, with f o c u s no longer

assigned to positions, but to sentence domains. T h e notion of f o c u s also plays a vital part in M A R J A J Ä R V E N T A U S T A ' s discussion o f the N u l l S u b j e c t p h e n o m e n o n in Finnish. C o m p a r i n g t w o influential theoretical approaches, the T h e o r y o f V a l e n c y and the Government and Binding T h e o r y , she rejects the c l a i m o f the V a l e n c y T h e o r y c o n c e r n i n g the status of null subjects in Finnish, according to w h i c h the inflection o f the verb is the sole carrier o f the subject features. She argues that a s u b j e c t must be present even in null subject cases - not as a lexical, but as a pro element - on the so-called m a c r o - v a l e n c y level. M o r e o v e r , the lexically empty subject position is motivated

vin

Jorunn Hetland/Valéria Molnár

by the discourse-configurational character of the Finnish sentence structure proposed in generative theory. Discourse configurationality is also the main issue of VALERIA MOLNÁR's and MARJA JÄRVENTAUSTA's article, where they - from a typological point of view - investigate two types of marked positions for focusing in the Finno-Ugrian languages Hungarian and Finnish. They show that the articulated left periphery of the universal sentence structure assumed in recent generative literature - containing a designated structural position for the focus operator - must be modified to include a sentence initial position for contrast. The comparison of Hungarian and Finnish makes it clear that discourse configurationality must be parametrised, and that the basic concepts of information structure and their internal relations must be reexamined. In recent linguistic literature, there has been general agreement that the information structure of a sentence is closely related to the syntactic representation of thematic roles. In addition to the traditional level of syntactic functions, a universal - semantically based - level of thematic structure has been introduced, including thematic roles like agent, patient and experiencer. The morphological and syntactic realisation of thematic structure, however, differs across language boundaries. The choice of morphological case depends crucially on the inventory of case forms accessible in a given language and on the relevant oppositions within the respective systems of case forms. The morphosyntactic realisation of the most prominent thematic relations is the topic of JOHANNA BARöDAL's frequency analysis of Icelandic data. Concerning the morphological and syntactic correlates of thematic roles, a certain amount of variation is also possible due to the existence of the verbal category of voice. The articles by LANDÉN/MOLNÁR and BAR0DAL/MOLNÁR focus on the marked combination of thematic roles and syntactic functions allowed for by the passive voice in different Germanic languages. In their comparative study, BARBRO LANDEN and VALERIA MOLNÁR argue for the expansion of the functional domain of the passive as a universal linguistic category: in addition to the diathetical (relation-changing) properties of the active-passive alternation, they consider the aspectual dimension - the change of the aspectual properties of the verbal event - as an essential component of the category voice. Comparing German and Swedish data, they show that the passive is a complex verbal category and that the specific passive constructions present in different languages convey various combinations of aspectual and diathetical information. The functional complexity of the passive voice is manifested in a wide range of passive constructions in the other Scandinavian languages as well. The passive voice in Icelandic is discussed and compared to the passive in Mainland Scandinavian in joint work by JÓHANNA BARôDAL and VALERIA MOLNÁR. Within the framework of Construction Grammar, they argue that the peripheral passive constructions of Icelandic called "New passive" and "Impersonal passive" should be integrated into the passive domain in spite of their lack of canonical passive properties. The morphosyntactic variation of Icelandic makes it possible to express a great number of aspectually, diathetically and actionally coloured passive types in this language. We are most grateful to professor Heinz Vater, Cologne, for helping us to make this book a reality. Trondheim/Lund, August 2002 Jorunn Hetland/Valéria Molnár

Jorunn

Hetland

Contrast, the fall-rise accent, and Information Focus

In this paper I focus on two concepts that have played a key role in recent discussions of information structure: the notion of contrast and the notion of what I shall here call Information Focus (corresponding more or less to 'Presentational Focus', 'Sentence Focus', 'Primary Focus' or 'Rheme' in the literature). Special attention is paid to the intonational correlates of contrast and Information Focus, in particular to the fall-rise accent. The two Germanic languages English and German are examined closely with regard to their different strategies for marking contrast and Information Focus. Reference is made to data from Korean, Hungarian and Finnish for the sake of comparison.

0. Introduction

Modern research on information structure is characterised by comprehensive and elaborate attempts at generalisation. On the one hand, serious efforts are made to establish concepts like topic and focus as universal categories; on the other, more or less fine-grained typologies are constructed to take care of the internal differences within the main classes. As for the notion focus, one has tried to bring together related, but not necessarily identical phenomena under headings like 'Contrastive Focus' and 'Information F o c u s ' . In fact, 'Contrastive Focus' and 'Information Focus' have been presented as the two main types of focus across languages. 1 The ultimate success of generalisations and subclassifications depends crucially on the existence of exact and clear definitions of the core concepts involved. In recent literature, there have been important attempts at critical investigation of the notions serving as starting points for cross-linguistic comparisons. 2 One of the areas where there is still work to be done, will be central to my discussion in the following: the domain and the concept of contrast. With contrast and contrastivity as a frame, the main focus of my paper will be on a more specific subject, on the fall-rise accent, which contributes to what has been called 'contrastive topic' and 'contrastive focus' (in one sense of the latter term) in the literature. My aim has been to find out more about the special quality of contrast associated with this accent, and to examine the relations between the fall-rise-contrast and other relevant types of 1

2

Other terms that have been used for (approximately) the same concept as 'Contrastive Focus' (Horvath 1986, Kenesei 1998) are 'Operator Focus' (É. Kiss 1995, Molnár 1998), 'Identificational Focus' (É. Kiss 1998) and 'Kontrast' (Vallduví/Vilkuna 1998). 'Information Focus' is related to 'Presentational Focus' (Rochemont 1986, Horvath 1986, Kenesei 1998) and to Vallduvi/Vilkuna's (1998) term 'Rheme'. Important contributions are Molnár (1998), Roberts (1998), Vallduví/Vilkuna (1998), Gundel (1999) and Molnàr/Jârventausta (this volume).

2

Jorunn Hetland

contrast. T h e connections between fall-rise-accented constituents and the information structural categories topic and focus have been another important issue throughout.

1. On accent, contrast and possible alternatives

"There is no contrastive accent as such," Pike (1945: 45) states in his m o n o g r a p h The intonation of American English. A similar view is maintained by Bolinger (1961: 87): " [ . . . ] as far as we can tell f r o m the behavior of pitch nothing is uniquely contrastive". If contrast is understood as "the p h e n o m e n o n [ . . . ] by which two or more items are counterbalanced and a preference indicated for some m e m b e r of the group" (Bolinger 1961: 83), contrast in a broad sense is f o u n d in every sentence. In (1), for instance, read as an out-of-the-blue utterance, (1)

Let's have a picnic.

(Bolinger 1961: 87)

no explicit contrast can be pinned d o w n . But there is an inherent contrast b e t w e e n picnicking a n d a n y t h i n g else the g r o u p might do. A n d this f e e l i n g of c o n t r a s t b e c o m e s stronger as the set of potential alternatives is narrowed down, see (2): (2)

Shall we have a picnic or a dinner party? Let's have a picnic.

A c c o r d i n g to Bolinger, there is no necessary and predictable phonetic difference between an accent associated with a 'contrastive' interpretation and an accent within a sentence that serves as an answer to a wh-question, cf. (3a) and (3b): (3)

a. b.

Q: A: Q: A:

H o w was the j o b ? Oh, it was éasy. W a s the j o b hard? No, it was éasy.

(Bolinger 1961: 84f.)

T h e answers in (3a) and (3b) may be pronounced with exactly the same intonation contour, e.g. with a high fall on éasy. If the accent in (3b) is called 'contrastive' as o p p o s e d to the accent in (3a), it is obviously the use of the accent in this particular context that deserves the n a m e 'contrastive', not the accent as such. So, abstracting away f r o m context, almost every pitch accent, and thus both accents in (3a) and (3b), could be called contrastive in the widest sense of the term. This seems to hold for English and also for the other Germanic languages. 3 In addition, an accent m a y - or m a y not - be used to express contrast. T h e wide notion of contrast described by Bolinger is criticised by C h a f e in his p a p e r Givenness, contrastiveness, definiteness, subjects, topics, and point of view (1976). C o n -

3

There are cases where accent does not seem to induce alternatives, e.g. some accents in German exclamative sentences: Bist dû aber schmutzig! (See Jacobs 1988: 115.)

Contrast,

the fall-rise

accent, and Information

Focus

3

trary to Bolinger, Chafe argues that there is a qualitative difference between contrastive sentences and sentences in which new information is selected from an unlimited set of alternatives. For the sentence (4)

Ronald made the hamburgers.

(Chafe 1976: 35)

with Ronald as 'focus of contrast', Chafe formulates the following interpretation from the point of view of the speaker: "I believe that you believe that someone made the hamburgers, that you have a limited set of candidates (perhaps one) in mind as that someone, and I am telling you that the someone is Ronald, rather than one of those others". And the author adds, "All contrastive sentences follow this pattern, mutatic (sic) mutandis" (Chafe 1976: 34f.). Chafe admits that it is also possible to use the sentence (4) as an answer to the question (5): (5)

W h o made the hamburgers?

In this context Ronald does not function as a 'focus of contrast', but simply as 'new information'. One crucial difference between 'focus of contrast' and 'new information', as defined by Chafe, lies in the delimitation of the set from which Ronald is chosen in the two cases. According to Chafe, a contrastive interpretation presupposes that the speaker believes that the hearer has a limited set of candidates in mind, whereas 'new information' is chosen from an open, unlimited set of possible alternatives. In Chafe's view, 'new information' is a cognitive 'status' of the material to be processed by the addressee, as assessed by the speaker. 'New information' is not a relational concept, in the sense that it involves a sentence-internal relation to backgrounded material. But 'new information' should not be understood as information "introduced to the hearer for the first time" either, rather as "what the speaker assumes he is introducing into the addressee's consciousness by what he says". Thus, in (6), (6)

I saw your fáther yesterday.

(cf. Chafe 1976: 30)

your fáther should be regarded as 'new information' in C h a f e ' s sense of the term, since the speaker, on uttering the sentence, "has assumed that the addressee was not thinking of his father for the moment". The referent of the noun phrase your fáther is introduced into the hearer's consciousness by means of the pitch accent. Across languages, the application of pitch accents is one of the most important means of making certain parts of a sentence stand out at the expense of others. This highlighting of specific constituents involves two dimensions. On the one hand, it creates a relief within the sentence: the pitch-accented parts are singled out, whereas the parts not affected by the accent(s) serve as a background. On the other hand, the aspect of contrast - in Bolinger's broad sense of the term - is at work: the pitch accents mark sentence constituents or even whole sentences as especially important compared to relevant alternatives. These two dimensions of highlighting, one of them involving a foreground-backgroundrelation within the sentence, the other involving a comparison with alternatives outside the sentence, play an important part in different theories of focus. According to Jackendoff

4

Jorunn Hetland

(1972), focus assignment derives two formal objects from the semantic representation of the sentence, the focus and the presupposition. The first one, the focus, consists of material associated with surface structure nodes dominated by a marker F. The second, the presupposition, is a one-place predicate, formed by replacing the focus by a variable. This variable "must be chosen in such a way that it defines a coherent class of possible contrasts with the focus, pieces of semantic information that could equally well have taken the place of the focus in the sentence, within the bounds established by the language, the discourse and the external situation" (Jackendoff 1972: 243, my italics, JH). The notion of contrast is discussed by Dretske in his article Contrastive statements (1972), where the author is especially concerned with the impact of differences in accent placement on the truth value of certain compound expressions. In Dretske's paper, contrastive statements are not regarded as contrastive because they are used to contrast different states of affairs, but because they contain a 'dominant contrast', the 'contrastive focus'. What Dretske (1972) calls 'contrastive focus' and 'contrastive differences' simply corresponds to focus and differences in focus in the theory of Mats Rooth (1985: 3). In Rooth's account, the general function of focus - in all sentences - is to signal that alternatives are under discussion (cf. J a c k e n d o f f s 'possible contrasts'). Thus, in (7b), in the context of (7a), the pitch accent indicates that the alternatives discussed belong to the semantic type matching the focus Sue: (7)

a. b.

Who did John introduce Bill to? John introduced Bill to SUE.

(Rooth 1985: 13)

In Rooth's dissertation (1985), the set of relevant alternatives to a focused constituent comprises the entire range of type-identical individuals. This view is modified in his 1992 paper: here the relevant set of alternatives is confined to a subset, including only contextually salient and plausible choices. Interestingly enough, Rooth (1992) ends up with a set of alternatives similar to Jackendoffs class of possible contrasts, confined by the discourse and the external situation. (Even Bolinger 1961 probably had a restricted set of alternatives in mind, in spite of Chafe's argumentation to the contrary: the inherent contrast to have a picnic in Bolinger's sentence Let's have a picnic is described as 'anything else the group might do' - a set highly restricted by (extra-linguistic) contextual factors, but - in opposition to Chafe's contrast - arguably not a closed set.) Rooth (1985, 1992) concentrates on the phenomenon 'association with focus', involving sentences with focus sensitive operators like only and even. This phenomenon is also examined by Jacobs (1983, 1986). In Jacobs' work, the scalar particles are seen as operators binding the focus variable. In sentences without overt focus-binding elements, focus is bound by the relevant (invisible) illocutionary operator. To unify his two types of focus, i.e. focus bound by visible and focus bound by invisible operators, Jacobs (1988) makes recourse to Rooth's focus theory involving alternatives: the information of every sentence is seen as structured with reference to alternatives. Where no alternatives exist, no focusing is conceivable. Thus, the focusing of a relative pronoun, as in (8), or the focusing of the preposition of a prepositional object, as in (9), is not appropriate: (8)

??Ich kenne den Mann, I

know

the

man

dér

dich

beleidigt hat.

who

you

insulted

Ί know the man who insulted y o u /

has

(Jacobs 1988:93)

Contrast, the fall-rise

(9)

accent, and Information

??Er interessiert sich he interests

5

Focus

für Autos.

himself for

(Jacobs 1988:93)

cars

'He is interested in cars.' If the context provides suitable alternatives for the focused elements in cases like (8) and (9), as in metalinguistic corrections, the sentences will be considered appropriate, however. Whereas the notion of 'possible contrast' - corresponding to the alternatives referred to by Rooth and Jacobs - plays an important part in Jackendoff s general explication of the focus-presupposition dichotomy, Jacobs takes care to distinguish between contrastive and non-contrastive foci. Every focus is related to a set of alternatives, but not all foci are seen as contrastive: a focus is contrastive if it is explicitly set up against one or more alternative foci in the discourse context (Jacobs 1988: 113).4 Thus, according to Jacobs, the focus of (10B) is contrastive: (10)

A: Ich fürchte, daß wieder die I

fear

that

again

the

Schwéden gewonnen haben. Swedes

won

have

'I'm afraid the Swedes have won again.' B: Keine Angst! Diesmal haben wir gewonnen, no

fear

this-time

have

'Don't worry! Wé won this time.'

we

won

(cf. Jacobs 1988: 113)

That of (IIB), however, is not: (11)

A: Weißt du, wer gewonnen hat? know

you

who won

has

'Do you know who won?' B: Wir (haben gewonnen)! We

have

'Wé (won)!'

won

(cf. Jacobs 1988: 113)

Up to now, we have concentrated on two main uses of the term 'contrast', seen in relation to pitch accents and focus. In the first case, the case described by Bolinger (1961), accenting is taken to imply contrast in a very broad sense of the term. This kind of implicit contrast corresponds to Jackendoff s 'possible contrast', defining the type of the variable in the presupposition part of the utterance, and it corresponds to Rooth's and Jacobs' reference to alternatives. 'Contrast' related to 'possible and relevant alternatives' should be kept apart from contrast within a closed set, of which we have seen two variants: 'focus of contrast' as defined by Chafe, involving a choice among alternatives in the addressee's consciousness, and 'contrastive focus' as defined by Jacobs (1988): a focus that stands in explicit contrast to items in the preceding discourse. The latter main type, referring to a closed set of hearer-old (Chafe) or discourse-old (Jacobs) material, is a subset of the former - just as discourse-old alternatives constitute a subset of hearer-old material. Undoubtedly, the implicit or explicit reference to alternatives can be seen as the core of all notions of contrast. But the exact ex-

4

"Kontrastiv ist ein Fokus dann, wenn er im jeweiligen sprachlichen Kontext explizit irgendwelchen Fokusalternativen gegenübergestellt wird" (Jacobs 1988: 113).

6

Jorunn Hetland

plications of ' c o n t r a s t ' vary in the literature - as d o the opinions c o n c e r n i n g the levels where contrast might be relevant. I will n o w turn to a n o t h e r aspect of contrastivity, the t y p e of c o n t r a s t realised in 'contrastive topics' (and 'contrastive foci', as defined by Lambrecht 1994 and Gundel 1999). T h e discussion of contrastive foci in languages like Hungarian and Finnish - alias operator foci or identificational foci - is deferred until sections 12 and 13.

2. O n s e n t e n c e s w i t h f a l l - r i s e a c c e n t s

O u r attention has so far been focused on sentences with only one pitch accent, without any differentiation with respect to accent type. In the following, sentences with t w o or more accents are examined and compared to sentences with only one accent. The effect of different types of pitch accents on interpretation will be taken into account as well. A s argued by Bolinger (1961), s o m e sort of contrast can be f o u n d in every sentence, and no pitch accent can be regarded as uniquely contrastive. In Bolinger's broad understanding of the notion contrast (simply corresponding to the 'identificational' function of pitch accents), this is certainly correct. But when one sets out to c o m p a r e the effects of different intonation contours, there is one accent that does stand out as a very g o o d candidate for the label 'contrastive a c c e n t ' : the fall-rise. This pitch accent plays a key role in the discussions of contrastive topics (and partly foci) in languages as different as English, G e r m a n , Hungarian and K o r e a n . It is of vital interest, both f r o m the point of view of c o m p a r a t i v e p h o n o l o g y and f r o m the point of view of information structure, to find out with what kind of contrast the fall-rise is associated, and to explicate the relations of the fall-rise contrast to other relevant varieties of contrast. Fall-rise-accented constituents (or, in the case of Hungarian and to s o m e extent G e r m a n , constituents with a contrastively interpreted rise, f o l l o w e d by a fall) have been e x a m i n e d u n d e r d i f f e r e n t h e a d i n g s in the literature: as ' c o n t r a s t i v e t o p i c s ' (see H u n y a d i 1981, Szabolcsi 1981a, b, É. Kiss 1987 and Molnár 1998 on Hungarian; Leech/Svartvik 1975 and L a m b r e c h t 1994 on English), as involved in the 'contradiction contour' (Liberman and S a g 1974) or the ' T I L D E c o n t o u r ' (Sag and Liberman 1975), as prototypical topics ( S t e e d m a n 1991, cf. also Biiring 1997 on S-Topics), as a special kind of focus (Jackendoff 1972, L a d d 1980), as topic or focus, or simply as a fall-rise-accented part of the b a c k g r o u n d (Hetland 1999), with the (simultaneous) function of topic and focus (von Fintel 1994, K r i f k a 1998, Lee 1999) and in certain cases as a particular correlation of contrast, topic and focus (Molnár 1998, G u n d e l 1999). W i t h the fall-rise accent as point of departure, Biiring (1997) built up a w h o l e theory of information structure; see also Jacobs (1996, 1997) and his discussion of the p h e n o m e n o n 'I-topicalisation'. Since so many linguists link their accounts of the fall-rise accent (or the c o m p o u n d pattern consisting of a rise and a fall) to information structural notions like topic and focus, an investigation of the fall-rise is exciting f r o m the perspective of information structure. T h e p r o b l e m is - as e v e r y w h e r e else in the field - the disturbing terminological c o n f u s i o n : notions like topic, f o c u s and contrast cannot be taken at their face value - in each case the underlying definitions are crucial.

Contrast,

the fall-rise

accent,

and Information

Focus

7

In the present paper, I will - for expository reasons - use the terms 'topic' and 'focus' as these are introduced in Dahl (1974). This implies that I will make a distinction between two levels of information structure, the focus-background-structure and the topic-comment-structure. Thus, in the sentence John drank beer, as an answer to the question What did John drink? the constituent beer will be seen as the focus, the part of the sentence which is 'new' in the relational sense (what I will here call Information Focus). John drank will be seen as the background. On the topic-comment level, John will function as (sentence) topic, as Satzgegenstand\ drank beer represents the comment, i.e. what is said about the topic. It is important to note that these two levels are not independent of one another: the Information Focus, the core of the message, the 'new' information in the relational sense, will always have to be a part of, or - depending on the possibilities for focus projection - be identified with the comment. In contrast to linguists like Halliday (1967), who holds that practically all sentence initial elements can function as Satzgegenstand, as 'what is being talked about' (Halliday's 'theme'), I assume that there are constituents on the left-hand periphery that cannot have topic status, like interrogative pronouns, sentence adverbials and the focused initial constituents of sentences with only one pitch accent. 5 Thus, I do not consider appearance in sentence initial position as a sufficient criterion for topichood. Whether this position should be regarded as a necessary condition of topic status across languages, is also a controversial issue, which I will leave open in this paper. I do not question the relevance of syntactic constraints on what has been called 'focus projection' in the literature (see e.g. Höhle 1982, Hetland 1992, Rosengren 1993), a phenomenon that might possibly as well be referred to as 'prominence projection'. But in this paper I want to reserve the term (Information) Focus for what has figured in the literature under terms like 'primary focus' (Jacobs 1983), 'nuclear focus' (Molnár 1998), 'Rheme' (Vallduvi/Vilkuna 1998), or 'semantic focus' (Gundel 1999). The reason for this is that I regard the concept underlying these terms as the most interesting candidate for a focus universal: the 'new' part of the utterance, "naturally foregrounded to make it the clearest and most readily understood part as well, facilitating processing and comprehension" (Roberts 1998: 148). With this setting, I will attempt to give a detailed description of the fall-rise accent: of the positions in which it can be found, and the interpretations or implicatures with which it is associated. I will start with the situation in German.

5

Halliday (1967: 178) explicitly refrains from using the terms 'topic' and 'comment' "because they have tended to be used in a way which conflates what are here regarded as distinct functions, with 'topic' meaning both 'given' and 'theme'". My own use of the term 'topic' in this paper corresponds to Halliday's 'theme', with the reservations mentioned concerning specific constituents in initial position.

8

Jorunn Hetland

3. G e r m a n sentences with contrastive topics

Lately, there has been a lively debate in the German linguistic literature of a two-peaked accent pattern, characterised by a rise (or a fall-rise) followed by a fall. This pattern has been discussed under different labels - it has been called the 'hat pattern' (Féry 1993, after Cohen and t'Hart 1967), the 'bridge accent' (Wunderlich 1988, Biiring 1997), or the 'bridge contour' (Wunderlich 1991). The term Ί-topicalisation' (that is: topicalisation by means of intonation) for the associated construction can be traced back to Jacobs (1982). See (12)-(14) for relevant examples: (12)

Die AVEIBlichen

Popstars trugen \KAFtane.

the

pop stars

female

wore

(cf. Büring 1997: 56)

caftans

'The female popstars wore caftans.' (13)

Ge/SCHLAfen

hat \KEIner

von uns.

slept

has

of

none

(cf. Féry 1993: 129)

us

'None of us slept.' (14)

A: What did you buy on 59 th street? B: Auf der /NEUNundfünfzigsten Straße habe ich die \SCHUhe gekauft, on

the

59 th

street

'On 59th street I bought the shoes.'

have

I

the

shoes

bought

(cf. Biiring 1997: 53)

With respect to German, Jacobs (1996) is the first one to claim that one has to distinguish - due to subtle phonological and semantic differences - between the so-called 'root contour', consisting of a fall-rise and a fall, and the 'bridge contour', established by a plain rise and a fall. One of the characteristics of the 'root contour', as described by Jacobs, is particularly interesting, seen from the point of view of alternatives and contrast. In the prototypical case, a German sentence with a fall-rise and a fall is followed by a supplementary utterance of adversative character, naming an alternative to both accented constituents (Jacobs 1997: 92). The explicit mention of an adversative utterance is not obligatory; an implicit reference to alternatives, however, an 'Alternativenbezug', is considered absolutely necessary for the identification of the I-topicalisation construction. 6 Thus, the sentence in (15), (15)

VPEter ist \KLUG. 7 'Peter is wise.'

pronounced with a fall-rise on Peter and a fall on klug, is, in the prototypical case, followed by an utterance of the form (16):

6

Jacobs' original wording: "Daß Alternativen im Kontext (meist in adversativen Erweiterungen) explizit genannt werden, ist ein Merkmal dieses Prototyps, aber nicht obligatorisch; daß dagegen überhaupt ein Alternativenbezug hergestellt wird, der in manchen Fällen auch implizit bleiben kann, ist [ . . . ] eine Conditio sine qua non für I-Topikalisierung".

7

In what follows, I will use Jacobs' root sign ( V ) for all cases of fall-rise accents in German.

Contrast, the fall-rise

(16)

9

accent, and Information Focus

(, aber KLAUS ist DUMM). 'but Klaus is stupid.'

(Jacobs 1997: 111)

If alternatives are not explicitly mentioned in the context, an utterance of adversative content can always be supplied. Seen against the background of Rooth's (1985) and Jacobs' (1988) focus theories, the prominent topics of sentences like (12)—(15) clearly qualify as foci as well: both accented constituents are contrasted with salient (but not necessarily explicitly mentioned) type-identical alternatives. Both the topic and the Information Focus are highlighted as particularly relevant. The prominent topics in these sentences are all 'contrastive foci' in the sense of Gundel (1999). According to Jacobs (1984), Uhmann (1991), von Fintel (1994), Krifka (1998), Molnár (1998), Gundel (1999) 8 and Lee (1999) contrastive topics are 'focused topics', or topics containing a focus. It goes without saying that all pros and cons in a discussion concerning the focus status of contrastive topics stand and fall by the definitions on which the notions of topic and focus are founded in the relevant theories. I will return to this discussion later. In German declarative clauses, the fall-rise is very often found in the Vorfeld. In fact, Jacobs (1997: 92) sees the Vorfeld as the prototypical position for the first accent of the Ίtopicalisation' pattern. The plain rise, in contrast, as part of the intonation pattern rise + fall, can be used in a variety of constructions with two pitch accents, also in cases where the contrastive interpretational characteristics of the I-topicalisation are totally absent, cf. (17) and (18): (17)

Jedesmal wenn

es /KLINGelt bellt der \HUND.

every-time

it

when

rings

barks

the

(Féry 1993: 144)

dog

'Every time when the door bell rings the dog barks.' (18)

Ede hat den /KANZler beTRUNken\ getroffen. Ede

has

the

chancellor

drunk

'Ede met the chancellor drunk.'

met

(Féry 1993: 144)

(17) and (18) are examples of German bridge contours in the Mittelfeld without any obvious implication of adversative utterances. As I see it, Jacobs' insight concerning the identification and the interpretation of the German fall-rise accent is of great importance, both for the understanding of the German system of pitch accents as such and for the understanding of cross-linguistic similarities at the interface of prosody, interpretation and information structure. I do think there is sufficient evidence in German for the assumed difference in interpretation between plain rises and fall-rises. Consequently, in the following discussion, I will regard the first accent of German bridge constructions with contrastive prenuclear constituents (i.e. where the prototypical contrastive implicature is found) as a fall-rise. I will also consider the first accent of the 'hat pattern', as described by Féry, and the 'bridge accent', as described by Biiring, as a fallrise, if a contrastive or 'adversative' implicature can be identified. The question is: how can

8 In Gundel's (1999) terminology, the fall-rise accented topics are 'contrastive foci', not 'semantic foci'.

10

Jorunn

Hetland

the contrast associated with the fall-rise accent be kept apart from other, more general notions of contrast? At this point, some qualification is necessary concerning the use and the interpretation of the fall-rise accent. On the one hand, the phonetic differences between rises and fall-rises are subtle, and the fall-rise can be levelled out phonetically, especially in rapid speech, so that it comes to sound more or less like a plain rise. This trend may be much stronger in German and Hungarian than in English. In the case of English, there seems to be fairly general agreement concerning the difference in interpretation between the fall-rise and the simple rise. With respect to German, however, some linguists hold the opinion that a fall-rise can always be replaced by a rise, with identical implicatures, see Molnár/Rosengren (1997) and Molnár (1998) for this line of argumentation. According to Molnár (1998), the same goes for Hungarian. As far as I know, there has been comparatively little discussion in the Hungarian literature of the correlation between the status as contrastive topic and the type of rising accent involved. So much for the possibility of replacing a fall-rise by a plain rise. An opposite tendency - replacement of a rising accent by a fall-rise - is at work as well, especially in English. I have myself noticed a tendency among Americans to use the fall-rise very often in subordinate clauses, followed by main clauses with a fall, also in cases where the characteristic fallrise implicatures cannot be traced. Parallels to this have been observed in certain British dialects of the North-West Midlands, where the fall-rise is used more frequently in interrogatives than is the case in R.P., as reported by Cruttenden (1986): [S]ome dialects of English [...] use fall-rises on interrogatives very frequently, while R.P. uses them relatively infrequently. What does this tell us about the abstract meanings (and their different orientations) when compared across different dialects? [...] The local uses and meanings of tones are not only a product of abstract meaning plus orientation [...] but also seem to involve some purely habitual influences. It becomes a habit, for example, to use a fall-rise on interrogatives, and when this happens some of the meaning of the fall-rise is lost. This sort of process must in some way be involved in intonational change. (Cruttenden 1986: 119) It is undoubtedly important to keep Cruttenden's reservation in mind when discussing the interpretation of pitch accents in general and of the fall-rise in particular. The effects of a fall-rise accent (or a rise), followed by a fall, are analysed in Daniel Büring's dissertation On the meaning of topic and focus, published in 1997. Büring claims that there is a one-to-one relationship between the two-peaked 'bridge accent' and the topicfocus structure of the German sentence, in that the first accent of this intonation pattern necessarily denotes the topic and the fall the focus. Consequently, in a sentence like (12), repeated here, (12)

Die the

VWEIBlichen female

Popstars trugen \KAFtane. pop stars

wore

(cf. Büring 1997: 56)

caftans

'The female pop stars wore caftans.' 1 / W E l B l i c h e n , the constituent with the fall-rise (or rise), is regarded as the 'S-topic' (sentence topic) in Büring's theory, whereas \KAFtane (caftans), marked by a fall, is seen as the focus.

Contrast,

the fall-rise

accent,

and Information

11

Focus

Working within an 'Alternative Semantics' frame, Büring assumes that focal accents as well as topic accents induce alternatives to the prominent constituents. The meaning of sentences with 'S-topics' is explained by means of a three-level analysis, as shown in (19): (19)

a. b.

c.

A

the female pop stars wore caftans { A the female pop stars wore caftans, A the female pop stars wore dresses, A the female pop stars wore overalls,...} {{ A the female pop stars wore caftans, A the female pop stars wore dresses, A the female pop stars wore overalls, ...} { A the male pop stars wore caftans, A the male pop stars wore dresses, A the male pop stars wore overalls,...} { A the female or male pop stars wore caftans, A the female or male pop stars wore dresses, A the female or male pop stars wore overalls, ...} { A the Italian pop stars wore caftans, A the Italian pop stars wore dresses, A

the Italian pop stars wore overalls, . . . } . . . }

('ordinary meaning') ('focus value')

('topic value')

(cf. Büring 1997: 68)

(19a) is supposed to spell out the so-called 'ordinary meaning' of the sentence, the proposition proper, with its truth conditions. (19b) explicates the 'focus value', building on the focus theories of Rooth (1985, 1992) and von Fintel (1994). The focus value contains a set of propositions with alternative values for the focus: instead of caftans, the female pop stars might have worn dresses, or overalls, or something else, depending on the possibilities available in the relevant context. The concept 'topic value' in (19c) is Büring's own contribution - it contains a set of sets, namely the alternative sets that one gets when in every proposition belonging to the focus value the topic is replaced by alternatives from the relevant context. Büring formulates two conditions for appropriate topicalisation - one of them is particularly interesting in our context: Given a sentence A, containing an S-Topic, there is an element Q in [[A]]1 such that Q is still under consideration after uttering A.9 (Büring 1997: 69) Büring's claim is that after a sentence with a 'root contour' has been uttered, there necessarily remains a question, the so-called 'residual topic', that is still open and disputable. According to Büring, it is an essential property of sentences with contrastive topics that the issue discussed is not completely settled, see (12) again, this time triggered by a question, in (20):

9

Here Q represents what Büring calls the 'residual topic', a question that is still disputable after A has been uttered. [[A]]1 is the 'topic value' of the analysed sentence.

12 (20)

Jorunn Heiland Q: A:

What did the pop stars wear? Die VWEIBlichen Popstars trugen \KAFtane. the

female

pop stars

wore

(cf. Büring 1997: 56)

caftans

'The female pop stars wore caftans.' On uttering (20A), the speaker implicates a possible contrast: that there might be other contextually relevant persons, to whom the focus does not apply. For instance, one could think of the male pop stars and phrase (21) as the still 'disputable' question: (21)

What did the male pop stars wear?

Similarly in the case of (13): (13)

GeVSCHLAfen hat \KEIner

von uns.

slept

of

has

none

(cf. Féry 1993: 129)

us

'None of us slept.' After (13) has been uttered, questions are still open concerning, for instance, whether some of the people discussed had something to eat. The interlocutor might continue, Did you have anything to eat? And in the case of (14), (14)

Auf der on

the

'On 59

th

VNEUNundfünfzigsten Straße habe ich die \SCHUhe gekauft. 59 t h

street

street I bought the shoes.'

have

I

the

shoes

bought

(cf. Büring 1997: 53)

one might for instance ask, But where did you buy the books? Büring clearly states that this open question, this disputability, is a necessary consequence of the accent pattern: "[...] using a Topic accent must in fact allow for a residual Topic" (Büring 1997: 172, the author's italics). Büring's explication does not qualify as a topic theory, however. The terms topic and focus, which are the cornerstones of his account, are given both a phonological and a semantic/pragmatic definition, and the prosodie characteristics are taken to stand in a one-to-one relation to the information structural categorisation (Büring 1997: 5). On the one hand, topic and focus denote the pitch accents rise (or fall-rise) and fall, respectively. On the other hand, and simultaneously, Büring resorts to traditional definitions of topic and focus. The topic "is understood as 'what the rest of the sentence is about', 'the entity anchoring the sentence to the previous discourse'" (Büring 1997: 55). The focus denotes what is new or unexpected in the sentence - in the relational sense (Büring 1997: 28ff.). Trying to reconcile these two perspectives is a futile enterprise. The conflict becomes critical when Büring discusses the possibilities of adapting his 'topic theory' to English sentences with one fall-rise accent, cf. (22), from Ladd (1980: 153): (22)

Q: Did you feed the animals? A: I fed the v cat.

Contrast,

the fall-rise

accent, and Information

Focus

13

According to Biiring, pitch accents like the one in (22) "would be topics without foci in our terms" (Biiring 1997: 61). 'Topics' like the 'cat in (22) are said to have no corresponding counterpart in German. But indeed, operating with 'topics without foci' makes very little sense in a theory where 'topic' is (also) defined as 'what the rest of the sentence is about'. So, Biiring's theory breaks down at the conceptual level: it cannot be seen as a theory of topic and focus, but must be regarded as an account of the interpretation of rising and falling accents, applied to a specific accent pattern of German. Although Jacobs (1997) does not accept Biiring's overall theory of topic and focus, he obviously does accept the tight relation postulated by Biiring between accent type and status as (sentence-) topic. In Jacobs' view, Biiring's analysis is the first plausible account of the pragmatic effects of the I-topicalisation pattern. Biiring shows, according to Jacobs, that the first prominence of this accent pattern evokes a set of alternatives, and he also shows that this reference to alternatives has another status than the alternatives evoked by the focus. His most important finding is that "utterances that contain only a focus but not a topic do not imply open questions" (Jacobs 1997: 105, my translation and italics, JH). 10 This may be born out for German, but the correlation between 'openness' and topics is a result of factors that turn out to be principally independent of topic and focus status. How can it be that German linguists associate the fall-rise accent with topic status, to the extent that the typical implicatures induced by the fall-rise accent are attributed to the status of 'S-topics' (Biiring) or 'topics as part of the I-topicalisation construction' (Jacobs), respectively? On closer examination, it turns out that the connection between topic status and the fall-rise accent in German (and similarly in Hungarian) is an epiphenomenon of two factors that have little to do with topics in the first place: in German and Hungarian the sentence melody of declarative sentences is falling (or eradicating/level in Hungarian). Furthermore, the nuclear focus of normal declarative sentences has to be expressed by a falling accent. This means that in these two languages it is not possible for fall-rise accents to mark the nuclear focus, or the Information Focus, of declarative sentences. In sections 4 and 5 below, I will go into the German and English cases in greater detail.

4. The intonation of German and English declarative sentences

The languages of the world differ with regard to the possible correlation between sentence types and intonation patterns. In the main group of languages, declarative sentences have a falling intonation. As already suggested, German belongs to this group: normal (high)

10

Jacobs' (1997: 105) original formulation: "Damit wird m.E. zum ersten Mal eine plausible Analyse des pragmatischen Effekts der I-Topikalisierung vorgeschlagen: Es wird erfaßt, daß die erste Hervorhebung bei I-Topikalisierung einen Alternativenbezug beinhaltet, [ . . . ] aber auch, daß dieser Alternativenbezug nicht denselben Status hat wie der mit dem Fokus verbundene: Topikwert und Fokuswert spielen unterschiedliche Rollen in den Bedingungen für die Angemessenheit von Äußerungen in bestimmten Diskurspositionen. Vor allem gilt für Äußerungen, die nur Fokussierung, aber keine Topikalisierung enthalten, nicht, daß sie noch Fragen offen lassen müssen".

Jorunn H et land

14

German declarative sentences end on a falling pitch accent. This rule - that German declarative sentences are marked by a falling pitch accent - seems to be almost without exceptions. Only in very special cases does one c o m e across rising intonation in declaratives. There is, for instance, the phenomenon that von Essen (1956) calls 'Höflichkeitsmelodie' 'melody of politeness' - which may have a haughty and patronising flair - see Cruttenden's example in (23): (23)

Ich möchte I

zehn Liter Ben/ZIN.

would-like ten

litres

(cf. Cruttenden 1986: 159)

(of) petrol

Related to this 'intonation of politeness' is probably the melody of (24), where the speaker Β seems to utter the sentence as an answer to a child: (24)

A: B:

Was

ist das?

what

is

that

Das ist ein that

is

a

/PANdabär.

(Féry 1993: 86)

panda

Except for such rather special cases, patterns of intonation with a single rising last pitch accent are f o u n d only in questions and incomplete utterances in G e r m a n . " T h e G e r m a n speaker evidently uses the rise as a signal that the utterance has not yet been brought to a conclusion - or to signal that he expects a confirmation or some kind of action f r o m the addressee. The fall-rise seems to be even more restricted than the plain rise as a possible last accent of G e r m a n declarative sentences. I have found one example, namely (25), in an illustration in Féry's m o n o g r a p h German intonational patterns (1993): (25)

Das VBETT ist gemacht

worden.

the

(passive participle)

bed

is

made

(cf. Féry 1993: 8, Fig. (3d))

'The bed has been made.' Féry does not tell us whether her illustration of (25) is meant to picture a complete utterance, however. In the chapter where she treats the fall-rise as a nuclear tone, there is not a single e x a m p l e of declaratives - only interrogatives. It is probably justified to c o n c l u d e f r o m this that in (high) German declarative sentences - with the exceptions mentioned one will hardly find intonation patterns ending on a rise or a fall-rise. This means that many accent patterns that are quite frequently found in English, are not or very rarely - found in German, patterns like the ones in (26), for instance. As answers to the question in (26) all the sentences under (a)-(e) are normal and appropriate: (26)

Q: What shall I buy for Grandma for Christmas? A: a. Don't ^ a n i c . I'll ^hink of something. b. ' F l o w e r s seem to be a good i/iea.

11

T h e y are also used for encouragement (Nun /KOMM! i.e. 'Careful!').

(low rise) (high fall + low rise)

i.e. ' C o m e o n ! ' ) and warnings ( / V O R s i c h t / ,

Contrast,

the fall-rise

accent, and Information

15

Focus

c.

"Flowers would be a p o s s i b i l i t y .

d.

Not "flowers (flowers don't last long).

(high fall + fall-rise) (fall-rise)

e.

"I would give her "flowers (if I were you).

(fall-rise + fall-rise)

I f one wants to use fall-rise accents in a German declarative sentence, however, the only possibility one has - due to the overall demands concerning the sentence melody o f German declarative clauses - is to combine the fall-rise with a falling accent to its right, which results (in Jacobs' terminology) in a 'root contour', in the pattern o f 'I-topicalisation'.

5. T h e structural and intonational realisation o f Information F o c u s in E n g l i s h a n d G e r m a n d e c l a r a t i v e s e n t e n c e s

T h e second important factor (in addition to the sentence melody o f G e r m a n ) that might make it look as if the Ί-topicalisation' pattern were a typically German phenomenon, is the position and the prosodie marking o f the core o f the message, what I here call the Information F o c u s o f the sentence. T h e term Information F o c u s must not be mixed up with focus in the sense o f (phonological and/or syntactic) highlighting o f especially relevant parts o f the sentence, see Höhle ( 1 9 8 2 ) , Hetland ( 1 9 9 2 ) , Rosengren ( 1 9 9 3 ) , M o l n á r ( 1 9 9 8 ) and Molnàr/Jârventausta (this volume), among others. Information Focus is associated with one such prominent constituent, and my contention is that in every language the Information F o c u s is uniquely marked. That is, it will always be clear which

one o f the constituents

highlighted to express special relevance has to be interpreted as (part of) the Information Focus. In English one finds sentences like ( 2 7 ) : (27)

Q:

D o you happen to know anybody in Bristol?

A:

M y father and "mother came from /Bristol. [Inf. Focus, first accent]

(cf. O'Connor/Arnold 1973: 4 5 )

[background, last accent]

There exists no German parallel to this intonation pattern, as shown in ( 2 8 ) : (28)

Q:

Kennst du jemanden in Bristol?

A:

* M e i n e \Eltern

kamen aus /BRIstol.

[Inf. Focus, first accent]

[background, last accent]

( 2 8 A ) is not acceptable - for two reasons: First, because the last accent is a rise (see section 4 ) , and second, because the last accent is placed on an element belonging to the background. In German the answer to the question in ( 2 8 ) would have to have either the intonation in (29), (29)

M e i n e \ELtern kamen aus Bristol. [Inf. Focus, last accent]

16

Jorunn

Hetland

with one falling accent, or one would have to prepose the information belonging to the background, so that the last accent would be on the Information Focus, as in ( 3 0 ) : (30)

Aus /BRIstol kamen meine \ELtem. [prominent topic,

(hat pattern)

[Information Focus,

first accent]

last accent]

A s we have seen, there is another relevant difference between English and German as well. In English, a rising or a fall-rise accent can occur in sentences with just one pitch accent. In these cases the accented constituent has to function as the Information Focus - or as part o f the Information Focus, see ( 3 1 ) and ( 3 2 ) : (31)

Have you fed the animals? I've fed the "cat.

(32)

Where are you going? Just to post a f e t t e r .

(cf. O'Connor/Arnold 1973: 160)

There seems to exist a hierarchy o f accents in English, as to their capacity o f representing the Information F o c u s in sentences with more than one pitch accent. I f an English sentence has a combination o f a falling and a rising accent, the falling accent seems to be given the interpretation o f Information Focus, irrespective o f its position, compare J a c k e n d o f f s example in ( 3 3 ) : (33)

Q:

Well, what about the B E A N S ? W h o ate T H E M ?

A:

T R E D ate the " B E A N S . [Inf. Focus, falling accent]

(cf. Jackendoff 1972: 2 6 1 )

[background, fall-rise accent]

A': # V F R E D ate the * B E A N S . i 2 [Inf. Focus,

[background,

fall-rise accent]

falling accent]

( 3 3 A ) is fine - with a fall on Fred, followed by a fall-rise; ( 3 3 A ' ) is not acceptable in this context. S o , whereas German hardly allows for the accent combination o f a fall to the left o f a fall-rise in a declarative sentence, this combination is fine in E n g l i s h , as shown in J a c k e n d o f f s example in ( 3 3 A ) . The left falling accent denotes the Information Focus o f the sentence, and the fall-rise is interpreted as a prominent part o f the background.

12

# here indicates unacceptability in the given context. J a c k e n d o f f ( 1 9 7 2 ) uses the terms Ά accent' and ' B a c c e n t ' for falls and fall-rises, respectively, referring to Bolinger. In fact, B o l i n g e r himself does not rise, he c a l l s it the Ά - R i s e

Accent'

(cf. B o l i n g e r

use the term Έ

a c c e n t ' for the fall-

1958). Jackendoff s terminology

has

nevertheless b e c o m e well established in parts o f the relevent literature. S e e L a d d ( 1 9 8 0 ) for discussion.

Contrast, the fall-rise

accent, and Information Focus

17

If we combine these facts - i.e. the fact that German declarative clauses have a falling intonation, and the fact that the Information Focus of a German sentence has to be marked by the last accent of the sentence - with the formal properties of the Ί-topicalisation' pattern, then we can see clearly what possibilities there are for parallel fall-rise-constructions in German and English. It is easy to construct English parallels to German sentences with Ίtopicalisation' (with some restrictions due to factors like a different sentence structure, accents on German negation particles that tend to be clitics in English etc.). If one wants to construct German parallels to English sentences with fall-rise accents, however, this is evidently (with very few exceptions) only possible if the fall-rise is combined with another accent. The second accent has to be situated to the right of the fall-rise - and it has to be a fall. Consequently, the constituent marked by the fall-rise will always be a 'prenuclear' constituent in German declarative clauses, sometimes a topic. The (nuclear) fall will always mark the Information Focus. Thus, in every German declarative sentence with a fall-rise (and similarly in Hungarian) there is a fall to its right. This gives us the typical two-peaked pattern of Ί-topicalisation'.

6. G e r m a n sentences with Ί - t o p i c a l i s a t i o n ' c o m p a r e d to English sentences with a c o r r e s p o n d i n g s e q u e n c e of pitch accents

Büring (1997) identifies three variants of fall-rise topics in German; he calls them 'contrastive topics', 'partial topics' and 'purely implicational topics'. A closer look at these three topic types, which are all subsumed under his definition of S-topics, gives us a clearer picture of the sense in which fall-rise-accented constituents can be considered contrastive at all. Furthermore, a comparison of German and English sentences with contrastive topics gives us a distinct impression of the striking similarities of the interpretation of fall-riseaccented constituents in these two languages. The English material applied in the German/English comparison that follows is taken from O'Connor and Arnold's Intonation of Colloquial English (1973), which contains dialogues demonstrating English intonation "in the framework of everyday, conversational speech". In fact, O'Connor and Arnold's dialogues proved themselves to be extremely well suited for my purposes. The intonation in the exercise part of the book is carefully marked by diacritics, and for each example a discourse context is given: the sentence whose intonation is exemplified is always preceded by a triggering sentence, and in many cases a following sentence is supplied as well to make the interpretation clearer. Moreover, all the exercises have been recorded and are available on tape. The intonation exemplified in O'Connor/Arnold (1973) is Southern British English, but the aspects of interpretation that are relevant for this paper certainly also apply to other British dialects and to American English, with the reservations mentioned in section 3. To start with, I will examine English sentences with an accent pattern consisting of a fall-rise followed by a fall. As expected, there are plenty of such sentences to be found in O'Connor and Arnold's collection. In (34)-(40) below, some relevant examples are quoted. The first sentence of every pair gives the context; the second sentence has the accent pattern fall-rise + fall:

18

Jorunn

(34)

(35)

(36)

(37)

(38)

(39)

(40)

Hetland

a. b.

'Aren't "vegetables'dear! 13 "Beans I are a ter"rific 0 price.

(O'Connor/Arnold 1973: 257)

a. b.

"What a 'wretched * summer! "August I was a "terrible 0 month.

(O'Connor/Arnold 1973: 257)

a. b.

'Why won't they °make up their "minds? "Peter's I the "obvious 0 choice.

(O'Connor/Arnold 1973: 257)

a. b.

'Why do "people play .games? "I „play I for "exercise.

(O'Connor/Arnold 1973: 257)

a. b.

'Fred's made a°nother com"plaint. "Some 0 people I are "always com 0 plaining.

(O'Connor/Arnold 1973: 257)

a. b.

Well 'whose "fault "was it, 0 then? "Dad 0 says I it was "yours.

(O'Connor/Arnold 1973: 257)

a. b.

'What d'you °think of "Cubism? "That sort of 0 art I is 'quite be"yond me.

(O'Connor/Arnold 1973: 257)

All the (b)-sentences in (34)-(40) show the pattern that Jacobs, Büring and other German linguists would call Ί-topicalisation', or 'bridge accent', or 'bridge contour', if applied to German sentences. Let us now go back to German and to Biiring's three variants of 'S-topics', and let us have a look at the subtype called 'contrastive topics'. These topics function, according to Büring, by leading the conversation away from a discourse topic that has already been under discussion, and to introduce a new topic, i.e. to signal a topic shift, see Biiring's example (41): (41)

Q: Glaubst believe

du, Fritz würde diesen Anzug

kaufen?

you

buy

Fritz

would

this

suit

'Do you think that Fritz would buy this suit?' A: VlCH würde ihn sicher \NICHT kaufen. I

would

it

certainly

not

(cf. Büring 1997: 56)

buy

Ί certainly wouldn't'. 13

I will make use of O'Connor/Arnold's (1973) diacritics in my English examples. O'Connor and Arnold mark their so-called 'word groups' by vertical dividing lines [ | ]. Each word group contains exactly one nucleus - or pitch accent - except for the combination High Fall + Low Rise, which is carefully distinguished from the Fall-Rise. According to O'Connor and Arnold there may be a pause between the word groups, but normally there is none. Prenuclear stress (that is: stress, but not accent) is marked by the tokens ['] for high head, [^,] for rising head and [*] for falling head. The signs ["] and [°] are used to signal high preheads, whereas [°] and [ 0 ] mark syllables in the tail, i.e. stressed syllables following the nucleus. The most important diacritical signs are, of course, the pitch accents; the examples quoted in the present paper contain four of them: the fall-rise ["], the high fall ["], the low rise [,] and the low fall [J.

Contrast,

the fall-rise

accent,

and Information

19

Focus

y/lCH (or I) contrasts with the old discourse topic Fritz. T h e question which remains unanswered or open after (41A) has been uttered, as d e m a n d e d in Biiring's theory, is - a m o n g others - the one that was posed at the start of this conversation: Do you think that Fritz would buy this suit? It is easy to find English sentences with exactly the same kind of 'contrastive' interpretation as the one associated with the German sentence in (41A). Take for instance (42): (42)

a. b.

[What did your mother say?] M y "father I was deMighted by the 0 news.

( O ' C o n n o r / A r n o l d 1973: 258)

My 'father is the new topic and is contrasted with mother. The question asked to start with remains open and constitutes the 'residual topic' in Biiring's terminology. Biiring's second variant of topics, the so-called 'partial topics', have the function to delimit an already given discourse topic, see (20), repeated here as (43): (43)

Q: A:

W h a t did the pop stars wear? Die VWEIBlichen Popstars trugen \KAFtane.

(Biiring 1997: 56)

' T h e female pop stars wore caftans.' A f t e r ( 4 3 A ) has been uttered, it is still open to discussion what the male pop stars were wearing. T h e sentence (43A), with the given intonation, implicates that the m a l e s belonging to the group may have worn something else than the females. There are plenty of English parallels to this kind of topic, see one of the relevant examples in (44): (44)

a.

'What was the °meal Mike?

b.

T h e v soup I was "terrible.

( O ' C o n n o r / A r n o l d 1973: 258)

A f t e r (44) has been uttered, it is still an open question what the other courses were like. A s an e x a m p l e of the third variant of S-topics, the so-called 'purely implicational topics', Biiring cites (45): (45)

Q:

A:

Hat deine Frau

fremde

Männer geküsst?

has

strange

men

your

wife

kissed

'Did your wife kiss other m e n ? ' VMEIne Frau hat \KEIne fremden my

wife

has

no

strange

Männer geküsst, men

kissed

' M y wife didn't kiss other m e n . '

(cf. Büring 1997: 56)

T h e topic accent is not obligatory in the case of the 'purely implicational t o p i c s ' . If it is there, however, it calls up 'alternative topics', see (46): (46)

VMEIne Frau

hat

\KEIne

fremden

Männer geküsst.

(Wie steht es aber mit DEIner Frau?) ' M y wife didn't kiss other men. (But what about Y O U R wife?)' T h e G e r m a n sentence in (45)/(46) corresponds to the English examples in (47) and (48):

20

Jorunn

(47)

(48)

Heiland

a. b.

[What was the soup like?] The v soup I was " terrible.

(O'Connor/Arnold 1973: 258)

a. b.

[How was August?] "August I was a "terrible 0 month.

(O'Connor/Arnold 1973: 257)

In both cases, open questions are induced by the fall-rise. In the case of (47), one might add a question about the quality of other parts of the meal discussed; in the case of (48), about other months of the year. And in both cases, the implicated openness allows for a subsequent utterance of adversative content, as demanded by Jacobs (1996, 1997) for German sentences with Ί-topicalisation', see (49) and (50): (49)

The "soup I was "terrible. [B]ut in "other res 0 pects, I it was an "excellent 0 meal. (O'Connor/Arnold 1973: 257)

(50)

"August I was a "terrible 0 month. But July was fine.

(O'Connor/Arnold 1973: 257)

Of course one could answer a question like the one asked in (47) without using the fall-rise accent, see (51): (51 )

[T]he 'soup was " terrible.

(O'Connor/Arnold 1973: 257)

In that case one would lose the implicature that some other part of the meal was possibly not terrible. The English fall-rise examples that we have seen in this section all behave in accordance with the claim postulated by Büring as a necessary condition of what he calls 'S-topics': After a sentence with a 'root contour' has been uttered, a question - a residual topic - remains open and disputable. Büring (1997) and Jacobs (1996, 1997) seem to tie this openness to the topic status of the constituent accented by the fall-rise. As I see it, one can only arrive at a proper understanding of the relationship between pitch accents and information structure if the implicature of openness or contrast is completely detached from information structure status. I will go into this in greater detail in the next section.

7. Is Biiring's ' T o p i c I m p l i c a t u r e of o p e n q u e s t i o n s ' restricted to t o p i c s o r t o other prenuclear constituents?

Büring postulated two conditions for topichood: (i) a certain connection to the context (1997: 67), and (ii) the (necessary) implicature of an open question, a so-called 'residual topic' (1997: 69). As for the second condition, it does seem to hold for most German Ί-topicalisation' constructions. But should it be regarded as a condition of topics, that is, of 'what the rest of the sentence is about' ?

Contrast,

the fall-rise

accent, and Information

Focus

21

According to Jacobs (1997), the fall-rise accent in German is prototypically bound to the Vorfeld. Contrary to Jacobs, Molnár/Rosengren (1987) and Molnár (1998) demonstrate very clearly that the fall-rise accent is often found in other sentence positions in German with similar implications of contrast, see (52) and (53): (52)

Leo ist VNICHT gekommen, um Ma\RIa zu ärgern. (Féry 1993, quoted from Molnár 1998: 118)

(53)

Du [MUSST] T [NICHT]ρ so viel rauchen.

(Büring 1995, quoted from Molnár 1998: 118) Negation particles like nicht (not) in (52) or finite verbs like mußt (must) in (53) are labelled as 'topics' by Büring, simply because of their accent pattern. But these constituents are not possible topic candidates, with topic defined as 'what the rest of the sentence is about'. There are other internal prenuclear cases, however, where the fall-rise seems to be appropriate and where the constituent in question is referential and identifiable, and thus might be fit for topic status. Compare the constituent the DOG in (54A): (54)

Q: What are you going to do with the DOG and the CAT while you're away? A: I'll leave the DOG with my PARENTS and the CAT can stay OUTSIDE. (Lambrecht 1994: 332)

Whether the DOG in (54A) should be seen as a sentence topic or not, depends on the definition of the term 'topic'. In the theory of Molnár (1991, 1998), where the position at the left periphery of the sentence is seen as the main universal syntactic correlate of topicality, constituents like the DOG in (54A) are excluded from topic status, in this case because the first position of the sentence is occupied by another constituent compatible with topic status: the intonationally unmarked first person pronoun subject I (Molnár 1998: 118 and p.c.). Molnár also comments on a similar pair of examples from Vallduvi/Engdahl (1996), cf. (55) and (56), where the forks and the knives could be pronounced with a fall-rise accent in both cases: (55)

Where can I find the cutlery? a. The forks are in the CUPBOARD ... b. but the knives I left in the DRAWER.

(56)

Where can I find the cutlery? a. The forks are in the CUPBOARD ... b. but I left the knives in the DRAWER.

(Vallduvi/Engdahl 1996: 473)

In Molnár's view, the prominent constituent the knives in (56b) shares only the implicature of contrast with the contrastive topic the knives in (55b). It cannot be classified as a topic, in spite of the very strong feeling of aboutness associated with it. The implicature of contrast associated with a fall-rise (or a rise) is called Ί-contrast' in Molnár's work. According to Molnár, Ί-contrast' is a phenomenon characterised by the same two-peaked intonation contour as the I-topicalisation, but the first of the two accents

22

Jorunn

Heiland

can appear in different prenuclear syntactic positions, some of which cannot be associated with topicality, as is the case in the English examples (54A) and (56b). Since German (and Hungarian) declarative sentences end on falling pitch accents, this type of contrast is necessarily restricted to prenuclear positions in these languages. If one wishes to test whether fall-rise accents are restricted to topic status or prenuclear position on a cross-linguistic scale, one has to look at languages that allow fall-rise accents as the last or the only accent of declarative sentences. Let us take a closer look at English and let us concentrate on cases where the fall-rise is the only pitch accent of the sentence. In such cases the fall-rise has to mark the Information Focus, not the topic in the sense of 'what the rest of the sentence is about', or another prenuclear constituent. We will find that a fall-rise on the Information Focus of English sentences invokes exactly the same 'open questions' and 'supplementary adversative utterances' as the fall-rise-accenting in the twopeaked patterns of Ί-topicalisation' or Ί-contrast' in English, German or Hungarian. In other words, the tendency to induce open questions does not depend on a double contrast: if the sentence contains only one accent, and this accent is a fall-rise, the constituent carrying the fall-rise is likely to be contrasted with one or more alternatives, belonging to a set in the relevant context. The three variants of fall-rise topics described by Büring (and examined in section 5) can be identified in fall-rise Information Foci as well. An example of an Information Focus of the variant that Büring calls 'contrastive' is shown in (57). If Jane had been a topic in this sentence, it would have exemplified a topic shift: (57)

a. b.

How will Henry get home? ^How will "Jane get 0 home, you 0 mean. (Henry's journey's simple.)

(O'Connor/Arnold 1973: 72)

After (57), it is still an open question, of course, how Henry will get home. The following example contains a sentence with a 'partial' fall-rise Information Focus, a parallel to Büring's sentences with 'partial topics': (58)

a. b.

I ^thought they "all took O one. "Ann 0 did.

(O'Connor/Arnold 1973: 170)

After having uttered (58), it is still an open question whether the other relevant persons 'took one'. One could add, specifying an 'adversative' alternative, as demanded by Jacobs (1997) for complete two-peaked 'I-topicalisations', (59)

But the "others „didn't.

(O'Connor/Arnold 1973: 170)

O'Connor and Arnold's material also contains numerous examples of 'purely implicational' fall-rise Information Foci. One of these is quoted in (60): (60)

a. b.

But ^Peter's "quite 0 satisfied. "Peter's „satisfied.

(O'Connor/Arnold 1973: 174)

Contrast,

the fall-rise

accent, and Information

23

Focus

T h e speaker implicates that some other person(s) may not be satisfied. One might ask (open question, 'residual Information F o c u s ' in this case): Are the others

satisfied?

Following

( 6 0 ) , an utterance o f adversative content is formulated by O ' C o n n o r and Arnold, see (61): (61)

"I'm not „though.

(O'Connor/Arnold 1973: 174)

8. E n g l i s h vs. G e r m a n : further c o m p a r i s o n o f the effects o f the fall-rise a c c e n t

W e have seen that fall-rise (information) focusing in English evokes exactly the same types o f 'open questions' as the fall-rise-accenting within the two-peaked pattern o f 'I-topicalisation' in German. Let us now compare the German sentence with Ί-topicalisation' in ( 6 2 ) to the English sentence with a fall-rise as its only pitch accent in (63): (62)

Q:

Hast

du

die

Tiere

have

you

the

animals looked-after

versorgt?

'Did you look after the animals?' A:

Die VKATze

habe

ich

ge\FUTtert.

the

have

I

fed

cat

[topic, fall-rise]

[Inf. Focus, fall]

Ί fed the cat.' (63)

Q: A:

Did you feed the animals? I fed the v cat.

(cf. Ladd 1980: 153)

[Inf. Focus, fall-rise]

( 6 2 A ) is a prototypical example o f Ί-topicalisation'. T w o sets o f alternatives are evoked by the two pitch accents: by the fall-rise on the topic die formation F o c u s ge\FÜTtert

i/KATze

(fed). T h e participle ge\FLJTtert

specification o f the (discourse-old) predicate versorgt

and by the fall on the Inis in this sentence a (new)

(looked after), it is also ' n e w ' in the

relational sense. In contrast to ( 6 2 A ) , the English sentence in ( 6 3 A ) has only one pitch accent, on "cat,

which is the Information F o c u s in this case. ( T h e predicate fed

the

is simply b a c k -

grounded in the English example.) Consequently, only one set o f alternatives is activated in ( 6 3 A ) . T h e constituent marked by the fall-rise is, exactly like die KATze

in ( 6 2 A ) , hearer-

old in the referential sense (hearer-old by inference), at the same time it is the core o f the message o f the sentence, the Information Focus. T h e two sentences in ( 6 2 A ) and ( 6 3 A ) are indeed different as to their intonation and their topic-focus structure. Taking these differences into consideration, J a c o b s ( 1 9 9 6 : 4 4 ) is certainly right when he talks about "dramatic differences" between German sentences with Ί topicalisation' and English sentences with one fall-rise accent. But these two sentences ( 6 2 A ) and ( 6 3 A ) - do have important properties in common in spite o f all the differences: the very special 'contrastive' aspects o f interpretation that are due to the fall-rise accent on

24

Jorunn

Heiland

the topic KATze in the German sentence and on the Information Focus cat in its English counterpart in (63). After having uttered (62A) with Ί-topicalisation' intonation - that is, with a fall-rise on die KATze (the cat) and a fall on geFÜTtert (fed), there has to be, according to Β tiring, at least one question belonging to the topic value of the sentence that is still open to discussion. That would for instance - in this case - be true of a question like 'Did you feed the other animals?' or, depending on the relevant context, maybe 'Did you feed the guineaPig?'· But even in cases like the English (63A), where the fall-rise accent lies on the only prominent constituent of the sentence, on the Information Focus, this accent seems to signal an open question and a very special relationship to the context. Just as in the topic case in German, the fall-rise accent - on the Information Focus of the sentence - conjures up alternatives that are available in the Common Ground of speaker and addressee, cf. (64): (64)

{ Λ Ι fed the cat, Λ Ι fed the guinea-pig, ΛΙ fed the hamster,...}

Exactly as in the case of the German sentence (62A) - with Ί-topicalisation' - the English sentence in (63A) implicates that there is at least one alternative - one 'question' from the set in (64) - that is still unsettled after (63A) has been uttered, for instance the question 'Did you feed the guinea-pig?'. This implicature is clearly a result of the fall-rise accent on the Information Focus of the sentence. So, there are good reasons to believe that the German and the English fall-rise accents have important properties in common. One aspect of this common core seems to be an inherent part of the interpretation of the accent: the accented constituent is seen as belonging to a set which is hearer-old or which can be inferred, and it can be contrasted with alternative elements of this set.

9. H o w t h e m e a n i n g of the fall-rise is utilised in E n g l i s h c o n v e r s a t i o n

According to Brazil/Coulthard/Johns (1980), the main difference between conversations among friends and conversations among strangers consists in the amount of uncertainty involved with respect to what belongs to the common context - what speaker and addressee have in common. In their opinion, the speaker of English has quite a free choice as to the way in which he wants to present discourse-new material. He can present it as brand new (that is, as totally new to the hearer) - or he can present it as discourse-new, but hearer-old. By means of the fall-rise it is possible to manipulate brand-new discourse units and present them as if they were already part of the relevant context. Consequently, the fall-rise can be used, exploited, even misused by the speaker to emphasise that the two participants in the conversation have a common platform. See the example (65) from Ladd (1980), (65)

A: Do you want a glass of water? B: I'll ^have a v beer.

Contrast,

the fall-rise

accent,

and Information

25

Focus

compared to the alternative [B1: I'll have a vbeer.]

(cf. Ladd 1980: 153)

If the speaker Β pronounces beer with a fall-rise, he signals, according to Ladd, that he has interpreted A's question as including beer as a possible alternative. With a falling accent on beer there would be no reference to a common context, and B's utterance would be interpreted as a contradiction, possibly as an insult. In this connection I would like to bring up a similar pair of German sentences - one with Ί-topicalisation', and one with a single falling accent, cf. (66): (66)

A: Möchtest du ein Glas Wasser? Β: Ein V B I E R hätte ich \LIEber. B': Ein \BIER hätte ich lieber.

Since I am not a native speaker of German, I cannot decide for sure whether the German fall-rise (as part of the accent pattern Ί-topicalisation') induces an implicature similar to the English fall-rise on the Information Focus of (65B). But I would not be surprised if it did.

10. Back to the general notion of contrast and the status of the implicature of contrast induced by the fall-rise accent

What is it that distinguishes the special kind of contrast induced by the fall-rise from other cases of contrast? Let us recapitulate: the differences between the diverse variants (or degrees) of contrast discussed in section 1 seem to be due to the differences in contextual specification demanded in the various cases. As Bolinger (1961) saw it, every pitch accent induces some kind of contrast. That is, every context can act as a background for contrast in the broadest sense of the notion; even the unlimited set of alternatives invoked by a whquestion will do. Related to Bolinger's broad notion of contrast, Rooth (1985) and Jacobs (1988) see the very essence of focusing in the reference to possible alternatives. (Compare also Vallduvi/Vilkuna 1998 and their notion of 'Kontrast'.) What changes as the context narrows down, is the strength of the 'contrastive' impression: the smaller the set of alternatives, the stronger the feeling of contrast. In contradistinction to Bolinger, Chafe (1976) wants to reserve the term 'contrast' for the choice of some member out of a delimited set in the consciousness of the hearer. According to him, an explicit mention of relevant alternatives is not essential for the qualification as a 'focus of contrast'; crucial is the speaker's evaluation of what is in the hearer's consciousness. Even stricter criteria for 'contrastive foci' are formulated by Jacobs (1988): in his view, a 'contrastive focus' has to be explicitly contrasted with alternatives in the discourse context. (A similar restriction may hold for contrastive foci in Finnish, see section 13 below.) According to Chafe (1976), it is possible for a sentence to have more than one focus of contrast. But obviously, the contrastive interpretation of his examples of 'double contrast'

26

Jorunn

Heiland

has nothing to do with the fall-rise accent: Chafe does not have 'bridge accents' or 'root contours' in mind at all when he compares the two sentences (67) and (68) with respect to the status of the constituent Alice. (67)

(68)

Q: What happened at the meeting? A: They elected Alice président.

(Chafe 1976: 36)

(They elected Henry treasurer, and ... ) they elected Alice président.

(Chafe 1976: 36)

Alice is interpreted as 'simply new information' in (67) and as a 'focus of contrast' in (68). The labelling is a direct consequence of the different context in the two cases. With regard to the intonation of the two sentences, Chafe gives the following comment: A normal pronunciation for Alice when she is simply new information (as in 2) [i.e. my (67), JH] is with a pitch that falls only slightly on the second syllable. But when she is a focus of contrast (as in 3) [my (68), JH], the pitch must fall steeply. [...] When there is a single focus the sentence intonation will fall in any case, obliterating the distinction. That is why Ronald made the hámburgers is ambiguous between the contrastive and noncontrastive (new information) meanings. On the other hand it is also true that the high pitch on a contrastive focus is often higher than that on a simple new information item (and the stress stronger). Probably this increased prominence often given to a contrastive focus results from an increased emotional commitment that is likely to accompany contrastiveness. (Chafe 1976: 36, my italics, JH)

The pitch accents in Chafe's example (68) with Alice as a 'focus of contrast' would in O'Connor and Arnold's system probably have been marked as in (69): (69)

They elected "Alice I "president.

Comparing this version to a variant with a fall-rise accent followed by a fall, how can we account for the differences in interpretation between (69) and (70)? (70)

They elected "Alice I "president.

The main difference seems to consist in the property of the fall-rise to induce a contrastive interpretation also in cases where the discourse context gives no clue that any contrast is intended. But, of course, the fall-rise is also very often used when alternatives are specified in the given context. Examples of Büring's three subclasses of S-topics show very clearly the spectrum of more or less contextual specification found in connection with fall-rise-accenting. In what Büring calls 'contrastive topics', the contrast is always explicit, cf. (71): (71)

a. b.

'Didn't Frank a/gree to the °plan? Yes but "Peter I was 'very °much a"gainst it.

(O'Connor/Arnold 1973: 258)

Peter is contrasted with Frank, and of course this would also have been a contrast if Peter had been pronounced with a high fall, which is evidently the accent that Chafe has in mind when talking about double contrast. There is an extra flair about the fall-rise, however,

Contrast,

the fall-rise

accent,

and Information

27

Focus

which is not found when falling accents are applied. The fall-rise seems to induce an impression of some sense of 'givenness' of the accented constituent itself or of the set to which it belongs: Ladd (1980: 150) describes the 'meaning' of the fall-rise as "something like focus within a given set". This effect is totally absent in the case of falling pitch accents - any givenness associated with constituents accented by falls is always due to the context, as in Chafe's example in (69). In the case of 'partial' and 'purely implicational' fall-rise-accenting, the contrast is less or not at all explicit. The 'partial' fall-rise accented constituents name a subset of some contextually given set, and thus invoke alternatives to this subset, see (72): (72)

a.

"Did you ,eat °well?

b.

T h e ^ f o o d in "Paris I was su'perb. (but the food in Vienna ...)

(O'Connor/Arnold 1973: 258)

With the question "Did you eat well?" the speaker asks about the overall quality of food; the answer delimits this discourse-topic to the food in Paris. Again, it is perfectly appropriate to pronounce Paris with a fall. In that case, any feeling of contrast would be due to the (contextually based) inference that Paris is just one of several places relevant in this case. In sentences with 'purely implicational' fall-rise accents, the implicature of contrast has no support in the preceding discourse context whatsoever; the implicature depends crucially on the fall-rise accent, cf. (73): (73)

a. b.

['What was the °soup Tike?] The v soup I was t e r r i b l e .

(O'Connor/Arnold 1973: 258)

With a fall on soup in (73b), this sentence would not be perceived as contrastive at all.

11. A n o t e o n K o r e a n

In a recent paper by Chungmin Lee (1999), Korean sentences with contrastive topics are compared to their English counterparts. Lee documents clear parallels between English and Korean declarative sentences with respect to the relationship between a so-called 'B accent' (Jackendoffs term for the fall-rise accent, cf. footnote 12) and an implicature of contrast. The Korean facts are highly interesting, and they show very clearly that what is called 'topic' in a language like Korean denotes something else and something more than 'topic' in the sense of 'Satzgegenstand', as 'what the rest of the sentence is about'. According to Lee, the Korean 'topic marker' (N)UN is used in (at least) the following three cases: (i) as a marker of noncontrastive topics (in this case normally without a pitch accent), cf. (74): (74)

[inshaeki -NUN] T

hankuk saram -i

palmyonghae-ss-ta [kind-object predicate]

printer

Korean

invented

Top

person

'The printer, a Korean invented it.'

Nom

(Lee 1999: 325)

28

Jorunn Heiland

(ii) as a marker of contrastive topics in the sense of Szabolcsi (1981a, b), Lambrecht (1994) and Molnár (1998), among others. In this function it carries "a similar high tone [as the English Β accent]" (Lee 1999: 318), cf. (75): (75)

na

[sa-wol -e -NUN] B cungkuk -e ka

I

April

in

CT

China

in

'In [April] B I'm going to [China] A ' (in May to Mongolia)

go

(cf. Lee 1999: 323)

(iii) as a special contrastive variant of the category Information Focus (what Lambrecht 1994 would call a 'contrastive focus', and what in Gundel 1999 would qualify as a case of overlapping between her categories 'contrastive focus' and 'semantic focus'). Also in this function the constituent with the (N)UN marker is pronounced with a 'B accent', cf. (76): (76)

Q: Do you have money? A: na [tongceon-UN] B iss I

coin

CT

exist

-eo Dec

Ί have [coins]B (but I don't have bills).'

(cf. Lee 1999: 322)

Lee marks the constituent [tongceon-UN] B as a contrastive topic (CT), although it carries the only pitch accent of the sentence and denotes the core of the message in the relational sense. 14 In fact, he labels all constituents combining the 'B accent' with the 'topic marker' (N)UN 'contrastive topics'. This brings back Biiring's (1997) argumentation concerning the status of the accented constituent in English sentences with only one (fall-rise) pitch accent. Büring would regard the (fall-)rise-accented constituent as a topic also in one-accent-sentences, a line of reasoning that cannot be reconciled with an aboutness or frame interpretation of the term topic (see section 2). On the basis of Lee's data, the 'meaning' of the Korean 'topic-marker' (N)UN appears in a new light. In fact, the status of this morpheme as an unambiguous marker of topicality in the sense of aboutness cannot be upheld. To isolate a common denominator for the meaning of (N)UN, we have to look for some property that all topics, contrastive and noncontrastive, have in common with contrastive foci. Is (N)UN simply a marker of some special referential status, some degree of (assumed) accessibility? Lee also compares the sentences in (77) and (78) below, (77) with a fall-rise-like 'B accent' and (78) with a fall: (77)

(78)

14

pi-NUN [CT] o-n-ta 'Rain-CT is coming.'

(Lee 1999: 339)

pi-ka [Nom] o-n -ta 'Rain is coming' = 'It's raining.'

(Lee 1999: 339)

This holds under the assumption that there is no hidden Ά accent' on iss (exist).

Contrast, the fall-rise

accent, and Information

Focus

29

In (77), with the particle NUN marked by the CT accent, rain is contrasted with relevant alternatives, for instance snow. For cases like this, Lee (1999: 340) claims that the contrastive topic is "in Nuclear Scope", spelled out as [[T]] F . In (78), no contrast is implied at all. It seems as if the Korean 'topic morpheme' (N)UN has the same status as the Japanese marker wa. As reported by Kuno (1972: 270), the wa particle signals either the 'theme' (corresponding to the 'topic' in this paper), which is, according to Kuno, 'previously mentioned' or 'generic', or it marks a contrasted element of the sentence, cf. (79): (79)

Ame wa

hutte imasu ga, yuki

wa

hutte

imasen,

rain

falling is

snow

falling

is-not

but

(Lit.) 'Ráin is falling, but snów is not falling.'

(Kuno 1972: 271)

A comparable sentence with the subject marker ga instead of wa has no implication of contrast, see (80): (80)

Oy a, ame ga/*wa

hutte

i ru.

oh

falling

is

rain

'Oh, it's raining.'

(Kuno 1972: 282)

Kuno does not comment on intonational facts, however. For this reason it is not possible to draw any conclusions on the basis of the given data with respect to potential prosodie parallels between contrastive utterances in Korean and Japanese. The cognitive status of topics has been much debated in the literature. Undoubtedly, unmarked topics (as for instance the subjects of SVO languages when in their base positions) can be brand-new in the sense that they are discourse-new and also hearer-new, as argued by Molnár (1998), see the newspaper headings quoted in (81) and (82): (81)

Jetliner Crash Kills 131 in Philippines.

(82)

Cult papers reveal new massacre links.

(The Herald Tribune, April 20, 2000) (The Guardian, April 18, 2000)

Under the precondition that the speaker is almighty with regard to his treatment of all aspects of information structuring, one might argue that simply in choosing one special constituent at the cost of others as point of departure for the predication, he somehow treats the topicalised constituent as if it were accessible to the addressee. Or, should unmarked 'new' topics - as in (81) and (82) above - be considered topics at all? I must admit that I am very hesitant as to taking a stand in this matter. Accessibility is clearly an underlying factor for both contrastive topics and contrastive foci, however. The implication of contrast presupposes that the hearer can construct a set of relevant alternatives to the accented constituent - via discourse, general knowledge, or implicature, compare the discussion of 'focus of contrast' in Chafe (1976). In Korean (as in English, German and Hungarian), it is obviously the 'B accent' that is responsible for the implicature of contrast in cases where there is no reference to alternatives in the context. The Korean 'B accent' distinguishes contrastive NUN-marked topics from noncontrastive NUN-marked topics. As for the fall-rise Information Foci in Korean, they

Jorunn

30

Hetland

d i f f e r formally f r o m other Information Foci in two respects: in pitch accent ( ' n o r m a l ' noncontrastive Information Foci are marked with falling pitch accents, cf. Lee 1999: 327), and with respect to N U N - m a r k i n g : only contrastive foci (in the sense of L a m b r e c h t 1994 and Gundel 1999) are NUN-marked. Korean seems to e m e r g e as a language whose focusing, strangely enough, has very m u c h in c o m m o n with English: the Information Focus of Korean declarative s e n t e n c e s can be m a r k e d with a fall-rise accent - with the well-known implicatures of contrast - if this accent is the only pitch accent of the sentence. Two-peaked sentences with 'root contours' apparently occur frequently in Korean, - with implicatures similar to those of English, German and Hungarian: in every two-peaked 'root contour', the last (falling) constituent is obviously interpreted as the Information Focus. T h e Korean facts d o strengthen the suspicion that phonological p r o m i n e n c e m a y play a more important role in the marking of information structure than hitherto assumed, also in languages where it has up to now been taken for granted that information structure is established by other m e a n s than pitch accents. M o r e empirical work is obviously needed in this field.

12. A note on Hungarian. Further discussion of the interpretation of the fall-rise implicature of contrast

Hungarian has traditionally figured in the literature as a prototypical e x a m p l e of discourseconfigurational languages. In Hungarian, the left periphery of the sentence contains designated positions for both topics and foci, see the example in (83): (83)

Q:

Ki

irta

a

Háború és

who wrote the War

A:

and

békét? Peace-acc

' W h o wrote W a r and Peace?' [ T A Háború és békét] the War

and

Peace-acc

[ F Tolsztoj] Tolstoy

'It was Tolstoy that wrote W a r and Peace.'

irta. wrote'

(cf. É. Kiss 1998: 268)

In (83A), a Háború és békét (War and Peace) occupies one of several possible topic positions, and Tolsztoj is situated in the special slot for exhaustive foci in H u n g a r i a n : in the Spec F position (according to Brody 1990, Molnár 1991 and É. Kiss 1998). T h e view that the S-structure of Hungarian sentences is completely determined by the information structure of the sentence has been challenged and modified in several recent contributions (see, for instance, the argumentation in Kenesei 1998, M o l n á r 1998, R o b e r t s 1998, and Molnár/Jarventausta, this volume). T h e determining prerequisite for appearing in the o p e r a t o r position for H u n g a r i a n foci s e e m s to be a quantificational, or a s e m a n t i c property - in addition to the property of being an Information F o c u s . 1 5

15

The term 'Information Focus' as used in this paper is not identical to the same term as used by É. Kiss (1998): É. Kiss' 'information focus' comprises new nonpresupposed information

Contrast,

the fall-rise

accent,

and Information

Focus

31

What happens to Hungarian Information F o c i which are not exhaustive? In some cases they are obviously left in situ, cf. ( 8 4 ) : (84)

Q:

Hova

tettél

where

put-you books

könyveket?

'Where did you put books?' A:

Tettem

könyveket

A

put-I

books

the shelf-on

POLCRA.

Ί put books O N T H E S H E L F (among other places).'

(cf. É . Kiss 1 9 9 5 b : 5 )

There also seems to exist a possibility - in very special cases - for non-exhaustive foci to appear in a topic position, see ( 8 5 ) below, quoted from Szabolcsi ( 1 9 8 0 ) by Molnár: (85)

Q:

Ki

tudná

elénekelni

ezt

a

dalt?

who

could

perf. sing-inf

this

the song-acc

' W h o could sing this song?' A:

En

[F

I

el]

tudnám (énekelni).

perf.

could

/ Példaul

it sing.

for instance

én. I.

Ί could sing it. For instance I.' (Szabolcsi 1980, quoted from Molnár 1999: 2 9 ) In Hungarian, both the topics marked by a fall-rise or a rising pitch accent, and the operator (exhaustive) foci can be seen as expressing contrast in some sense, cf. Szabolcsi ( 1 9 8 1 b : 5 1 8 ) : "In rather informal terms we can say that the c o m m o n feature distinguishing Τ and F from neutral constituents is that only the former may be contrastive". T h e sense o f contrast that applies to 'contrastive topics' and 'contrastive foci', however, is fundamentally different in the two cases. Kenesei ( 1 9 8 9 ) attempts to spell out the similarities

between the two by

introducing a feature [+exclusive], which functions as a kind o f (semantic) c o m m o n denominator for different pragmatic instances o f the phenomenon 'contrast'. The differences

be-

tween contrastive topics and contrastive foci are accounted for by assuming that in the case o f operator focus, all members except for the focused constituent itself are excluded from the predication. A s for the contrastive topic - Kenesei calls it 'contrafocus' - a weaker type o f exclusion is involved: At least one member

o f the relevant set is excluded from the predi-

cation in this case. T h e explication o f the relations between the two types o f contrast involved in operator focus and contrafocus, respectively, is spelled out in the formulations quoted in ( 8 6 ) and ( 8 7 ) below, involving the operators every

and some.

For the operator focus the following

is taken to hold ( a is the focused constituent):

(86)

F(a) and (for every χ (χ * a)): not (F(x)). (Kenesei 1989: 119, quoted from Molnár 1 9 9 8 )

marked by one or more pitch accents - without expressing exhaustive identification. Thus the two sets 'identificational focus' and 'information focus', as defined by E. Kiss, are mutually exclusive.

32

Jorunn

Heiland

For the contrafocus, or the contrastive topic, (87) is relevant (a stands for the contrastive topic): (87)

F(a) and (for some χ (χ * a)): not (F(x)). (Kenesei 1989: 119, quoted f r o m Molnár 1998)

M o l n á r (1998) adopts and elaborates on Kenesei's proposal. In her account, the operator focus is characterised by the two features [+exclusive] and [+exhaustive], expressing 'V-exclusion' or ' s t r o n g ' exclusion, see (86). The contrastive topic, on the other hand, is described by the features [+exclusive], and [-exhaustive], which corresponds to what she calls 'Ξ-exclusion' or ' w e a k exclusion' (as spelled out in (87)). W i t h respect to the Hungarian operator focus and exhaustiveness, it is generally accepted that exhaustiveness is truth-conditionally relevant and thus clearly a semantic p h e n o m e n o n , as argued by Szabolcsi (1981b). Thus, the proposition corresponding to (88), (88)

[pMária] látta Mary

saw

Pétert. Peter-acc

'Mary saw Peter.'

(Szabolcsi 1981b: 519)

m e a n i n g ' M a r y and nobody else (of the relevant persons) saw Peter', cannot f r o m the sentence in (89) with a coordinated subject, (89)

be inferred

[p M á r i a és Èva] látta Pétert. ' M A R Y and E V E saw Peter. '

(Szabolcsi 1981 b: 519)

F r o m (89), however, one can infer (90)

Látta Pétert Mária. ' M a r y (for example, among others) saw Peter.'

(cf. Szabolcsi 1981b: 519)

It is evident that the operator position of the Hungarian sentence, compare [ F Mária] in (88) and [p M á r i a és Eva] in (89), can only be used when the F-feature is correlated with the appropriate quantificational/semantic features expressing exhaustiveness (É. Kiss 1995, 1998, M o l n á r 1998). But: is it really the case that the so-called contrastive topics can be exhaustively described by r e f e r e n c e to ' w e a k e x c l u s i o n ' ? Kenesei's explanation suggests this. Let us have a look, first at the general notion of contrast, then at Kenesei's semantic/quantificational account, and finally at the empirical facts. A n absolute condition for the use of the term 'contrast' is that 'two or m o r e items' are 'counterbalanced' (Bolinger 1961). If we operate on open sets, choosing one element at the e x p e n s e of others m a y simply imply identification: we c o m m e n t on one item - but say nothing about our relationship to the complementary set. If the set involved is closed, every contrast by necessity implies s o m e sense of exclusion, otherwise the term contrast is not appropriate. In the 'exhaustive' case, the chosen alternative is different f r o m the entire c o m plementary set (or: the chosen part involves the whole set, as in the case of operators like every, all etc., also taken to be 'exhaustive', but not 'exclusive', see Molnàr/Jârventausta,

Contrast,

the fall-rise

accent,

and Information

Focus

33

this volume). The '3-exclusion' on the other hand, see (87), is simply a paraphrase of the meaning of the term contrast, as applied to a closed set: there has to be at least one element that is different. As an explication of the minimal prerequisite for applying the label 'contrast', (87) is certainly a perfect formulation. But the typical property of the intonai ionmarked contrastive topics, and of the other examples of Ί-contrast' given by Molnár (1998), as well as the contrastive fall-rise Information Foci in languages like English, is that the '3-exclusion' may not hold (cf. the discussion in Molnár 1998: 135f.). The cases where the fall-rise-accented constituent is contrasted with an element mentioned in a parallel assertion in the discourse context are, of course, clear cases of a 'realised' contrast, see (91): (91)

On "weekdays 11'work, II but on "Saturdays 11 'don't.

(O'Connor/Arnold 1973: 66)

But in the 'purely implicational' cases of fall-rise accentuation, the relevance of the '3-exclusion' is moved into the field of pragmatics, (92)

Q: Did your wife kiss other men? A: "My wife I 'didn't kiss other men.

The implicature of contrast cannot be seen as an implicature to the effect that the utterance My wife didn't kiss other men (with the indicated intonation pattern) necessarily implies that 'there is some χ such that x's wife did kiss other men'. It rather implicates that it is an open question whether 'there is some χ such that x's wife did kiss other men'. And even this implicature of 'openness' can easily be cancelled, cf. (93): (93)

"My wife I 'didn't kiss other men. In fact, nobody's wife kissed other men.

This brings the implicature discussed very close to the conversational implicatures described by Grice (1967). What is ' s a i d ' in (92A), in the terms of Grice, is certainly nothing but 'my wife didn't kiss other men'. The implicature is just a subtle suggestion that some other person's wife might belong to the complementary group - the '3-exclusion' describes the content of this possible implicature. What does seem to hold in all cases of (fall-rise-accented) contrast, however, is that the constituent carrying the fall-rise is marked by the speaker as being part of a set accessible to the hearer (and thus a closed set). This is enough to induce the implicature that the relevant predication may not be applicable to other members of the set. The 'openness', as formulated by Biiring (1997), seems to be vital in the case of the fall-rise contrast, but 'openness' also applies to the applicability of the '3-exclusion': if nothing else is specified in the context, it is open whether there exists at least one alternative for which the relevant predication does not hold. Thus, the '3-exclusion' is appropriate to express the facts as they are when one disregards the effect of the fall-rise accent: When contrast is realised in the context (anaphorically or cataphorically), the '3-exclusion' applies as a description of the facts. As soon as the fall-rise alone carries the burden of indicating contrast, the 'quantificational' 3-exclusion is embedded in pragmatic conditions.

34

Jorunn

Hetland

13. A note on Finnish

Like Hungarian, Finnish has been regarded as a language providing "solid evidence against a unified category of focus" (Vallduvi/Vilkuna 1998: 80). The position on the left periphery of Finnish sentences, termed Κ for 'Kontrast', is reported to be reserved for contrastively highlighted constituents, which may function either as 'contrastive topics' or 'contrastive foci'. Foci moved to the 'Kontrast' position in Finnish are exhaustive, just like the operator foci in Hungarian. But exhaustiveness is not the decisive factor for constituents in the Κ position: contrastive topics need not be exhaustive. There is some disagreement in the literature on Finnish with respect to the status of the movement of contrastive foci to K: Vallduvi/Vilkuna (1998) seem to consider this movement to be obligatory, whereas other linguists, e.g. Molnár/Jarventausta (this volume), regard it as optional. Thus, in Vallduvi/Vilkuna's interpretation, the sentence in (94), (94)

Anna sai KUKKIA. 'Anna got F L O W E R S . '

(cf. Vallduvi/Vilkuna 1998: 90)

can only be interpreted with K U K K I A as 'simply new i n f o r m a t i o n ' ; in M o l n á r / Järventausta's account K U K K I A could be either 'information focus' or in situ 'Kontrast', depending on the context. If movement is triggered by the need for feature checking - how could one possibly identify the feature(s) needed to trigger movement to the Finnish Kontrast position, a position for topics and foci, for exhaustive foci and nonexhaustive topics? É. Kiss (1998) proposes that the main differences (and similarities) between the left periphery of Finnish and Hungarian sentences can be explained with recourse to the two features [±contrastive] and [±exhaustive]. In Finnish, according to É. Kiss, the Spec CP position (the Κ position) is specified as [+contrastive], [±exhaustive]. Thus, 'contrastive constituents' have to (or may, depending on the strength of the feature) appear in the Κ position, irrespective of the value of the [±exhaustive] feature. In Hungarian, the facts are different: here [-(-exhaustive] wins over [±contrastive]: exhaustively focused constituents are moved to the Spec FP position, whether they are contrastive (with 'contrast' referring to a closed set) or not. With respect to the contrastive topic, there are indications that the Finnish cases are fundamentally different from the fall-rise-marked contrastive topics that we have observed in English, German, Hungarian, and Korean. The specific intonation contour found in the latter group of languages is probably not a possibility in Finnish sentences at all: here the accent on the 'contrastive topic' is reported always to be a fall; there seems to be no qualitative difference between topic and focus accents (Vallduvi/Vilkuna 1998: 89). Thus, if Vallduvi/Vilkuna are right, the Finnish case of 'contrastive topics' is closely related to the 'foci of contrast' that Chafe (1976) describes for English: the accent is a (steep) fall, the discourse conditions are such that the speaker has reason to believe that the hearer has a relevant set of possible candidates in mind, out of which he chooses the 'focus of contrast', at the cost of one or more alternatives. (See also Prince 1981 and her 'focus movement'.)

Contrast,

the fall-rise

accent, and information

35

Focus

The lack of accent differentiation may be the reason why there is no discussion in the literature on Finnish of implicational topics or contrast implicatures. Maybe there is no accent in Finnish to signal the possibilities of openness or contrast independently of context. The cases that would be interpreted as 'pure' implicatures of contrast in languages with fall-rise accents are simply seen as cases of confirmation in Finnish, cf. (95): (95)

A: Pekka lensi R e y k j a v i k i i n . Pekka

B:

flew

to-Reykjavik

'Pekka went by plane to Reykjavik.' (Tosiaan. [KONFIRM R e y k j a v i k i i n ] Exactly

to-Reykjavik

(han) Pekka lensi (kin). PRT

Pekka

flew

PART

'Exactly. Pekka went by plane to Reykjavik.' (cf. Molnár/Jarventausta, this volume) A parallel fall-rise Information Focus in a language like English, however, would be perceived as something more than a mere confirmation, see (96): (96)

Q: Did you feed the cat? A: (Yes.) I ^fed the "cat.

(But...)

Here the fall-rise accent itself induces an implicature of contrast.

14. C o n c l u d i n g r e m a r k s

Undoubtedly, the (set-theoretical) notion of contrast plays an important part in determining the surface structure of many of the world's languages. But this does not necessarily mean that some sort of contrastive focus (or operator focus/identificational focus/'Kontrast') has to be accepted as a cross-linguistically relevant category of focus. We have seen that the content of a possible operator category of 'focus' or 'contrast' varies to a considerable degree across languages. In Hungarian, for instance, an Information Focus that is 'exhaustive' has to move to a designated operator position. 1 6 In Finnish, a related movement is attested, but it applies to categories of quite diverse content: both to topics and to foci. Attempts to reconcile facts like these by means of parametric feature accounts, introducing features like [±exhaustive], [±contrastive] (E. Kiss 1998), still leave important questions open. It appears to be problematic to establish the category 'operator focus' (also called 'contrastive focus' or 'identificational focus') as a candidate for a universal category of focus. Prospects may be better for the category of 'Information Focus', as described in this paper: there seem to be strong indications that in all languages every sentence has to contain a special constituent - the size of which may differ, depending on the different possibilities for focus projection - which stands out from the rest of the sentence. This 16

Cf. footnote 15, p. 30, as to different uses of the term 'information focus'.

36

Jorunn

Heiland

constituent s e e m s to be clearly marked in all languages - and in most, if not in all cases, accent plays an important role in the marking (see Gundel 1988). In G e r m a n declarative sentences, it is clearly the last pitch accent of the sentence, realised as a fall, that has this function. In English the core of the message can be marked by falling or rising accents, but there are a b s o l u t e regularities as to the identification of the I n f o r m a t i o n F o c u s : if the sentence contains more than one pitch accent of the same kind, the last accent will mark the Information Focus. If the sentence contains both falling and rising accents, the last falling accent, i r r e s p e c t i v e of its position in relation to rising or fall-rising accents, will be interpreted as the Information Focus. Korean seems to behave very m u c h like English. A l s o in H u n g a r i a n , the constituent carrying the last falling accent is interpreted as the core of the message of a declarative sentence. If the Information Focus is exhaustive and exclusive, it is raised to the specifier position of a functional projection, which m i g h t possibly as well be called Spec E P (for 'Exhaustive(ness) P h r a s e ' ) as Spec F P (for ' F o c u s P h r a s e ' ) . If the Information Focus is not both exclusive and exhaustive, it can occupy other sentence positions: it can remain in situ, or even go to a topic position (cf. e x a m p l e (85)). In addition there is a special position (between the topic and operator f o c u s position) for quantifiers. But: no primary accent is allowed after the constituent given the status of Inf o r m a t i o n Focus. Finnish, with its (optional) position for explicit focus contrast, s e e m s to behave similarly.

References

Bolinger, Dwight L. (1958): A theory of pitch accent in English. - In: Word 14, 109-149. - (1961): Contrastive accent and contrastive stress. - In: Language 37 (1), 83-96. Brazil, David/Coulthard, Malcolm/Johns, Catherine (1980): Discourse intonation and language teaching. - London: Longman. Brody, Michael (1990): Some remarks on the focus field in Hungarian. - In: VCL Working Papers in Linguistics 2, 201-226. University College London. Biiring, Daniel (1997): The meaning of topic and focus: the 59 part implicature. In (16b), the very same implicative relation is involved, the very same rheme is predicated about this subject, but the bit of information in Holland has now been singled out as a separate, marked theme, meaning that a contrast is evoked, for instance between England as the neutral state of the world, and Holland.

50

Lars Heltoft

Again, the marked theme is manifested as such by way of position relative to the subject. In both cases (16a) and (16b), the subject is the theme by way of its standard syntactic coding.

2.2. Theme, rheme and subject in Scandinavian V2 languages This point will stand out even more clearly when we compare the English situation to that of the Scandinavian languages, including here Danish, Norwegian and Swedish. These are V 2 languages, their initial position can be filled in by the subject or by any other VPdaughter or adjunct PP. A non-initial subject must be in subject position. It is hard to see any important difference with respect to thematic status between anaphoric VP-daughters and anaphoric subjects in examples like the following: (17)

a.

Hende har jeg nu solgt og faaet en Skjeppe Penge for. her

have

I

now

sold

and

had a bagful of money for

Ί have sold her now and had a bagful of money for her.' b.

HC A Claus 19

dem bandt vi sammen tre og tre [...] them

tied

w e together

by threes

'we tied them together by threes [...]' (18)

VS Odys 75

a. Dette fortalte storveziren sultanen. this

b. c.

told

the grand vizier

the sultan

Sultanen

plejede

i alle vigtige sager

the sultan

used

in all important matters to consult

at râdf0re sig med

Men i denne sag

var storveziren

selv

part i sagen.

but in this matter

was

himself

part of the case

the grand vizier

storveziren.

the grand vizier

'This the grand vizier told the sultan. The sultan used to consult the grand vizier in all important matters, but in this case the grand vizier himself had an interest in the case.' V S Al 17 In the Scandinavian languages, the initial P 1 position is open to all types of descriptive material, even plain anaphors as shown in (17). This position is therefore not a position reserved for marked themes, as the English parallel, but also for quite unmarked themes. For ease of exposition, we shall call the position for the first theme the fundamental field, and the constituents in it fundaments:

Iconic and categorical

(19)

focus

systems

in

Scandinavian

FUNDAMENT

THEME

Hende

jeg

[...]

dem

Dette Sultanen [...]

i denne

V har bandt fortalte plejede sag var

[...]

vi νι storveziren st storveziren st

51 RHEME nu solgt [...] sammen tre o g tre [...] Sultanen. at rádf0re [...] storveziren. selv part i sagen.

(17) is about hende (= Grandmother) and the speaker; (18a) about the grand vizier and the piece of intelligence provided by the secret police; (18b) is about the sultan (and has in fact a secondary adverbial theme as well, which we shall disregard at present, but see section 3.2); (18c) is about i denne sag, a contrastive theme, and about the grand vizier. Danish is V2, and what is in English the auxiliary position is in Danish a general finite verb position. Subjects are either in the fundamental field, or they are in subject position, THEME in (19). English word order as in (5) is never grammatical in Danish. The centre of interest here is the level to which thematic structure is grammaticalised in Danish. P 1 as a position, subject position, and syntactically defined subjecthood, all these are grammatical phenomena bound up with thematicity. V2-position, which Halliday might think a candidate for thematic status as well, is not a functional option of information structure, but rather an option coded with an illocutionary frame, since main clause order or V2 order in Danish is coded differently, namely as an assertive illocutionary frame.

2.3. The need for language specific studies of thematic structure The conclusion of this initial setting of the scene is a call for scrutiny of language specific organisation principles of information structure. The English first position is a position for emphasis, not for plain themes, and the subject position is not the structurally initial position. Only in the case of the initial position for marked themes does word order ascribe thematic status, the subject is inherently the theme by way of the grammaticalised coding of English syntax. In the Modern Mainland Scandinavian V2 languages, the initial position is open for both neutral themes and contrastive themes. It is open to the subject - syntactically grammaticalised as the theme (as in English) - and to V P daughters as well, but even these can be plain anaphors. Danish, then, allows double neutral themes, one grammaticalised through position, the other one syntactically as the subject. An anaphoric subject in the fundamental field (17b) is unmarked by virtue of its being already syntactically selected as a neutral theme.

2.4. Focus as an element of la parole Provisionally, the concept of focus will be defined as the constituent or part of constituent that carries the bit of information that the speaker considers to be the most important bit, in the sense that this is what he invites the hearer to contest, should the latter disagree. Focus, then, is a pragmatic notion. Neither category of sentences or clauses can carry focus, but utterances can.

52

Lars Heltoft What clauses can carry is instructions to the receiver as to where to find the actual focus

in the (con)text. Clauses have information structural frames, but the actual focus can only be intended as such by the speaker, and decoded as such by the hearer. This pragmatic credo is not a radical pragmatic position. Admittedly, the actual focus is a unit of la parole and must as such be pinned down by the hearer in discourse, but the conditions for his so doing are in part set conventionally by intersubjectively valid grammatical rules for focus domains. For Modern Danish, these rules will essentially consist of fields within which a normal focus will fall, or of rules for syntactic constructions, the semantic essence o f which is to ascribe rhematic status or status as the focus to a specific constituent. Presentative (existential) constructions and cleft sentences are prototypical examples of constructions from Danish, examples that have parallels in English. Given their status as conventional codings of syntax and word order, such focus rules and their formulation are part of the (investigation of) the language system. B y contrast, the foci o f actual discourse are contextually determined phenomena and as such idiographic, o f interest to linguistic descriptions and theory simply as examples and tests of coded structural boundaries. Summing up, the linguistic level of the description and theory of focus is focus domains and focus constructions. As we shall see, languages may have specific focus positions in addition to domains, and undoubtedly, in languages outside the scope of this article, there is focus morphology as well. Focus domains and focus positions define the normal frame for focus application. Actual focus is pinned down in discourse.

2.5. Focus in N0lke's theory Since we are concerned with focus codings in word order, there will neither be space nor need for an overall theoretical discussion of focus, nor for excessive discussions of former or alternative proposals. The concept of focus employed here is inspired by definitional work by the Danish linguist Henning N0lke (1994). Conceptually, the focus is the result of the focalisation process, and this result is characterised as syntagmatic and paradigmatic choices embodying the speaker's intention. Syntagmatically, the focus is manifested in some linear stretch o f elements that can be identified as such by the hearer. Paradigmatically, this stretch is a choice excluding alternative stretches of elements. This choice is also identifiable as such to the hearer. Thirdly, this paradigmatic choice serves an end, namely that the speaker may mark the point targeted, in a way that makes this targeting comprehensible to the hearer. Nolke is obviously reluctant with respect to specifying the pragmatic content of this target, but, somewhat daringly maybe, I shall add the suggestion that this targeting be read as the speaker's intention that the hearer should recognise that this identified stretch o f linguistic items is what he - the speaker - wishes the hearer to contest, should he disagree or hesitate in accepting the utterance. N0lke stresses that all focusing is a process of identification. If this identification is the sole end o f the focalisation process, this is said to be simple focalisation. In other cases, additional information is added up to make this identification possible, and in such cases we

Iconic and categorical focus systems in Scandinavian

53

have specialised focus, for instance in cleft sentences. Simple focus is found in such examples as (20), specialised focus in (21). (20)

a. b. c. d.

Paul Paul Paul Paul

s'est promené dans la forêt. n'a pas battu le chat avec le baton. n'a pas battu le chat. n'a pas battu le chat.

Taken as simple focus, (20a) will mean that the speaker wishes to locate Paul's walk in the wood. The invited negative sentence would not contest his having taken a walk, but exactly the location of this walk. (20b) is already in the negative, and what is contested is the type of weapon, not necessarily Paul's having beaten the cat. (20c, d) have been added by myself, and in (20c), the whole lexical part of the VP is negated, whereas in (20d), no beating is being denied, only the identity of the victim. Notice here that the tripartition: predicate focus, argument focus and sentence focus adopted by Lambrecht (1994), will not help us out here, since (20c) has VP-focus, not predicate focus, nor argument focus alone. Thus, Lambrecht's tripartition does not provide for focus coding to be in keeping with such language specific organisation principles as the VP. (21)

a. b.

Même Paul a compris. C'est la robe blanche que j'aimerais

acheter.

(21a) is an instance of specialised focus because identification is complex. The focus operator même 'even' builds up a model where the hearer is expected to accept that many others have understood, and that Paul would not normally be among those. In spite of this, he is nevertheless identified as one of those having understood. (21b) identifies an important colour in the mind of the speaker, while at the same time presupposing that the speaker would like to buy a dress. The cleft sentence of (21b) is the type of specialised focus construction that divides the sentence content in two, a focus part and a presupposed part. In the present framework, this is but a special case of focus, cf. also Lambrecht (1994). N0lke finally provides a sensible definition of the term 'focus domain', which he employs to clarify the relation between syntax and focalisation. Focus domains delimit possible focalisations. They set the limits for a focalisation that will take place inside this domain. The analysis of focus has two steps: -

partant de la structure de la phrase on détermine le domaine de focalisation (c'est l'analyse syntaxique) tenant compte du contexte (non-spatio-temporel) on détermine le foyer actuel (c'est l'étape d'interprétation) (N0lke 1994: 133)

This is a distinction between the structural frames or limit - the level of la langue - set up to facilitate focus identification and the actual context dependent focalisation, at the level of la parole. It follows that the widespread question test is not a reliable tool for finding coded focus, unless applied very carefully. Any question test will be equal to a context that focalises a

54

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Heltoft

constituent in the answer. To find coded limits of focalisation, one must go for impossible answers to questions. What is not in focus will just be said to be non-focused. Such constituents will need a specific name if coded as non-focus. We shall define backgrounded constituents as constituents coded as non-focus. Thus, there is a difference to observe here between Dahl's (1974) terminology and my own. Non-focused constituents will not need a specific name. I shall add one point here which I find of extreme importance. The content of the focus domain is not and cannot be content at the level of la parole. The coded content of a focus domain must then be the instruction to the hearer to identify the actual focus within the given domain. 4 Sometimes these instructions leave little room for variation, as in the case of cleft sentences, but very often - and especially so in languages like Danish, English and French that have a V P - such instructions are underdetermined and leave considerable room for contextual interpretation. This is the basis of a typological claim. I shall claim that the differences of word order between Old and Modern Scandinavian must be understood in terms of the ways thematic structure and focus structure are coded in word order. Modern Danish will be said to have an open focus system, Old Scandinavian, by contrast, to have an iconic focus system, with stricter coding.

3. Modern Danish focus structure

3.1. Open focus In a sense to be clarified below, focus has accommodated to the categorical syntactic structure of Modern Danish. According to the categorical focus principle, the focus must fall within the VP, unless countermeasures are taken. Since the early 16th century, Danish has had a categorical sentence structure, with a bipartitioning of the sentence into a constituent designating the entity predicated about - this constituent is the subject - and a complex syntactic unit predicated about this subject. As spelled out in 2.1-2.4, this is the N P - V P split, coded as theme vs. rheme. The focus must normally be found within the rheme. The subject is normally not the focus, again unless specific measures are taken. The subject will be called the antifocus. The frames for the normal coding of N P - VP are shown in figure 3.

4

For this instructional view on semantic coding, see Harder (1996a, b).

Iconic and categorical focus systems in Scandinavian

55

Figure 3. Coding of NP - VP in Modern Danish (adapted from Heltoft 1997): Subject position

Postfield positions

NP: Subject

VP: Other valency bound constituents

Thematic constituent = theme

Rhematic constituents = rheme

Antifocus

Potential focus constituent(s)

Expression

Content

The focus domain contains all VP daughters, that is, the subject is normally not included. Neither are, normally, free time and place adverbials. A finite verb is normally rhematic and very often part of the focus.

3.2. Unspecified and specified foci An unspecified focus will contain a nonfinite verb + complements (elaborators), as exemplified in (22).

(22)

Lille Claus havde solgt hende.

sin

bedstemoder

og fàet

en skœppe penge

for

'Little Claus had sold his grandmother and had a bagful of money for her.' Depending on the context, we find specified foci inside the in itself open focus domain. In (23) (identical with (15a)), focus (A) is now a single verbal constituent, focus (B) specified to Verb + direct object. (23)

a.

b.

Hende

har

jeg

nu

solgt (A)

her

have

I

now

sold

og

faaet en

Skjeppe Penge

for (B).

and

had

bagful of

for

a

money

Ί have sold her now and had a bagful of money for her.' FUNDAMENT V2 THEME RHEME = FOCUS

Hende

har

jeg

HC A Claus 19

(nu) solgt (og) faaet en Skjeppe Penge for.

The focus can be specified as constituents inside the rheme, for instance as an NP, a predicative complement or a bound adverbial. Focus can even be pinned down as a second rank modifier, see below. The following text begins with an unspecified focus, the second sentence has the direct object, the price for the wizard, as its focus. In the third sentence (24c), one interpretation has the focus on the adverb strax 'right on the spot'. The direct object in (24b) is in principle

56

Lars Heltoft

inferable from (24b)'s promise to pay any price. The focus in (24c) is on what can be paid in cash right away. (24)

a.

"Den

Troldmand

maa

Du scelge mig,"

sagde Bonden,

that

wizard

must

you

said the peasant

sell me,

b.

"forlang for

den Alt

hvad du

vil!

demand

for

it

what

want

c.

ja,

jeg

giver

Dig strax

yes,

I

give

you

all

you

en heel Skjeppe

right away a whole

bagful of

Penge!" money

H C A C l a u s 16

'That wizard you must sell me, said the peasant, demand for him anything you want, I'll even give you a bagful of money right away.' d. FUNDAMENT V2 THEME RHEME Den Troldmand maa Du scelge mig forlang for den Alt hvad du vil! jeg giver Dig5 strax en heel Skjeppe Penge! In (25a), the continuation's first sentence, there is no focus, since the illocutionary value is the only informative point: the acceptance of the price, the promise to sell at the price suggested. The same point applies to the peasant's final acceptance. But in the intermediate sentence the focus is on the predicative topfuld 'heaped', the last detail to be settled. (25)

a.

"[...] Du skalfaae Troldmanden for en Skjeppe Penge you shall have the wizard for a bagful of money

b.

men jeg vil have Skjeppen topfuld. " but I want the bag heaped

c.

"Det skal du faae ", sagde Bonden. so shall you have, said the peasant

'You shall have the wizard for a bagful of money, but I want the bag to be heaped. So shall you have, said the peasant.' HC A Claus 16 d.

FUNDAMENT

Du (men) jeg Det

V2

skal vil skal

THEME

RHEME

du

faae Troldmanden for en Skjeppe have Skjeppen topfuld faae

[...]

We need not quarrel about details of interpretation. In actual interpretive practice, receivers may very well to some degree construe specifying foci that differ from what was intended by the speaker. Our point is to pin down the grammaticalised rules and preconditions for specifying and identifying foci, not to defend actual details of interpretation. For another example from the Danish author H.C. Andersen that shows contextually determined specialised focus, see examples (26)-(27). Modal verbs can be construed either as subjective or objective (Heltoft/Falster Jakobsen 1996). Subjective readings are by definition non-foci, objective readings can be in the focus. 5

Unstressed personal pronouns and pronominal adverbs are treated positionally and functionally as themes.

Iconic and categorical focus systems in Scandinavian

57

Deontic readings can be objective and are therefore focusable. The deontic reading of the modal verb mà 'must, may' in the following example is integrated in the focus. (26)

raabte: "Hyp, all mine Heste! " 'Little Claus shouted: Ho, all my horses.' "Det maa du ikke sige, " sagde store Claus [...] that must you not say, said Big Claus

'You must not say that, said Big Claus [...]'

HCA Claus 13

Focus is here on what is in the scope of negation, simply the periphrastic verbal form maa sige 'must say' (det 'it/that' is an anaphoric fundament, du 'you' is the theme). If there are no rhematic VP daughters, the verb alone is the focus. (27)

"Jeg skal saamcend ikke sige det mere! " sagde lille Claus. I shall for sure not say it more, said Little Claus

'For sure, I will not say it any more, said Little Claus.'

HCA Claus 13

Focus is on the content of Little Claus' promise, the rhematic part of the clause is the focus. The modal verb skal 'shall, I promise' is subjective in the sense of speaker-bound, and such subjective modal verbs are by definition never part of the focus, since only propositional constituents can be negated. The sentence adverbial saamœnd 'for sure' is subjective, too, and outside the range of possible foci. Focus may very well fall on the finite V2 alone: (28)

Midt som hurt sad pâ hans sengekant med en brun hând om hans hvide 'Just as she was sitting on the edge of his bed, a brown hand around his white one' tcenkte han: hende bedrog du thought he

she-OBL

deceived

you-NOM

'he thought: you deceived her.'

Bod Rama Sama 161

In the case of contrastive focus between reality and non-reality in the finite verb, focus may hit a modal verb alone, or the validity claim inherent in the finite tense form. (29)

Og selvom der er grœnserfor hvad der kan ruskes op i, 'And even though there are limits to what can be stirred up' íá kan der ruskes. anyway

can

there

be stirred up

'anyway, stirring up is certainly possible.'

Inf 1807 98 9

In isolated examples, we have few criteria for pinning down the actual focus, since this results from interpretation in context. (30)

Edison har jo ogsá opfundet den elektriske stol. 'Edison has in fact also invented the electric chair.'

Lars Heltoft

58

The point about (30) is its underdetermined structure with respect to focus. We know from its structure the limits within which to find it, but we shall need context to determine exactly where, cf. (31)-(32), foci in boldface. (31)

Edison

harjoogsâ

opfundet

den elektriske

Edison

has in fact also

invented

the electric chair

stol.

'Edison in fact also invented the electric chair.' (Context: besides having been, say, a loving family father) (32)

Edison harjoogsâ opfundet den elektriske stol. (Context: along with the glow lamp, the phonograph, and a series of other useful inventions from his hand and mind)

3.3. Focus in the fundamental field Both Danish fundaments and marked initial non-subjects in English can exchange their normal thematic status for a rhematic function as the marked focus. An English example is (33a, b, c), the focused status of the initial predicative complement is clear from the scope of negation. a. b.

c.

traitor he is, and traitor we shall call him THEME UNMARKED RHEME MARKEDFOCUS traitor he is traitor we shall call him THEME UNMARKED RHEME MARKEDFOCUS traitor he isn't traitor we shall not call him

Initial focus offers a grammaticalised way of disambiguating the open focus of (30). Where focus is concerned, (34) equals (32): (34)

a. b.

den elektriske stol har Edison jo ogsá opfundet FOCUS V2 THEME UNMARKED RHEME den elektriske stol har Edison (jo) ogsâ opfundet

In (35) the open focus domain results in a similar ambiguity, and the co-text added does not solve the problem.

Iconic and categorical focus systems in Scandinavian (35)

59

Sâ [...] gik ind til din mor med dig og gjorde sig parat. then went Ulysses in to your mother with you and equipped himself

Men han ville ikke tage sin bedste bue med, but he would not take refi, best bow with

selv om alle andre mente det var

n0dvendigt.

although all others found it necessary

'Then [...] Ulysses took you to your mother and went to equip himself. But he would not take his best bow with him, even though everybody else thought this necessary.' (35) can be interpreted either as (36) or (37). However, in (38) the focus has been pinned down by way of fronting. (36)

(37)

FUNDAMENT han

V2 THEME NEC ville ikke

RHEME tage sin bedste bue med

FUNDAMENT

V2

THEME

NEG

RHEME

han

ville

-

ikke

tage sin bedste bue med

The original version by the Danish author Villy S0rensen is (38). The direct object is marked as the focus, to the textual effect that a polarity arises between the bow and the rest of the weaponry that Ulysses does bring along to Troy. Ulysses selects the right gear for the right time and place. The marked focus is the textual mechanism that stylistically parallels Ulysses' intuition and knowledge about the future with that of the narrator. (38)

Sá [...] gik ind til din mor med dig og gjorde sig parat. Men FOCUS

V2

THEME

NEG

U N M A R K E D RHEME

sin bedste bue

ville

han

ikke

tage med.

VS Odys 9

3.4. Focus on a modifier For the sake of completeness I shall mention that the focus can fall on just one modifier of second rank, as for instance, in (39a, b): (39)

a.

Der var engang en Prinds, han vilde have sig en

Prindsesse,

there was once a prince, he wanted have refi, a princess

O n c e there was a prince, he wanted a princess, men det skulde vœre en rigtig Prindsesse. but

b.

it

must

be

a real princess

but she must be a real princess.' "inens sp0rgsmäl er ogsà samfundets sp0rgsmàl. "

HCA Prindsess 23

the wine's question is also society's question

'The question of the wine is also the question of society.'

H0eg Nat 84

60

Lars Heltoft

3.5. A final example To see all of this conceptual machinery at work, consider a final example: (40)

Pà Dagmarhus mâtte fangerne

stà indtil 5 timer med hœnderne i vejret,

at D. must the prisoners

stand up to 5 hours with their hands up

og and

sà then

blev de endda prygletfra sans og samling. were they even

beaten out of their wits

Her banker vi dem ikke,

men b0rnehjœlpsdag er det jo ikke

here beat we them not

but Children's welfare day is it surely not

'At Dagmarhus the prisoners had to stand up to 5 hours with their hands up, and on top of that they were beaten out of their wits. Here we don't beat them up, but Children's Welfare Day it certainly is not.' (Tamm 173) The layout of this text's information structure is (41a, b, c, d). Notice that the first three fundaments set the geographic and emotional scene for the episodes (Gestapo's treatment of prisoners at Dagmarhus vs. Danish Resistance internating Danish collaborators in May 1945). Their function is thematic. The fourth fundament is a focus. (41) a. b. c. d.

FUNDAMENT Pà Dagmarhus sà Her bornehjaelpsdag

V2 mátte blev banker er

THEME SA NEG RHEME fangerne stà indtil [...] i vejret, de endda pryglet [...] og samling. vi dem ikke, det jo ikke.

3.6. Summary of categorical information structure In English as well as in Danish, information structure complies with categorical sentence structure. As languages with a categorical information structure, they share the following features: 1. 2. 3. 4.

Information structure is realised within limits set up by NP - VP structure. The subject is prototypically the entity predicated about: the theme. The VP determines the normal limits of rhematic structure. The unmarked position for the actual focus is within the focus domain, the nuclear postfield of the clause. 5. Subjects are difficult to give rhematic status to, and hence difficult to focus, by way of position alone. This applies to two-place constructions, especially transitive constructions. 6. Danish and English have developed constructional means for reshuffling information structure, most importantly a presentative or thetic construction to give rhematic status to the subject and cleft sentence constructions as a general means of contrastive focusing. Since Danish is V2 (or XVSO) and English is a more straightforward SVO language (with only remnants of V2), the two languages differ with regard to their codings of the initial P 1

Iconic and categorical focus systems in Scandinavian

61

position. Danish allows any informative constituent in P1 (the fundamental field), (except for the finite verb, but this part of the rule follows from the strategy behind the positional model). Its coding is as follows (for more detail, see Heltoft 1996a): 7. Danish coding of P 1 (XVSO): thematic (anaphoric or non-anaphoric) rhematic: focus English P 1 is not open to plain anaphors. 8. English coding of P 1 (SVO):

thematic (marked: only non-anaphoric themes) rhematic: focus

4. N o n - c a t e g o r i c a l features in M o d e r n Danish information structure

The unmarked subject was characterised as the antifocus - the entity predicated about, implying that subjects will not normally be focusable. There are a few exceptions to this. Some other constituent can block Ρ 1 , and in certain cases, this may leave the subject as the sole possible focus. Intransitive constructions are an obvious, but trivial example, and in predicative complement constructions and in transitive constructions, we similarly find the complement or the direct object in P 1 , leaving the subject as the only rhematic constituent: (42)

Frodigt var kun det starke, dunkeltgyldne

Haar.

buxom was only the intense dark-golden hair

'The only thing buxom was her intense dark-golden hair.' (43)

Jac 25-26

Sammenhcengen kendte iscer journalisten. the explanation knew especially the journalist

'The explanation was primarily known to the journalist.' This phenomenon is rather trivial, since it is reduced to the fact that in such cases, no rhematic material is really available in the nuclear postfield. (44)

a. b.

Frodigt

var det dunkeltgyldne hàr.

buxom

was the dark-golden hair

Sammenhcengen

kendte

the explanation

knew the journalist

journalisten.

4.1. Subjects positionally marked as rhematic In other, less prototypical cases, remnants of older information structural principles may still apply to the effect that the subject focuses, even in transitive constructions. Their sta-

62

Lars

Heltoft

tus as leftovers from earlier stages cannot be made explicit at the present stage of the exposition, but in section 8 the former iconic information structure will be displayed in full. A sentence adverbial (or a free time or place adverbial acquiring this function) will normally follow the subject, but it may for the effect of markedness occur in pre-subject position. A pre-subject sentence adverbial redefines the limit of the rhematic part of the sentence, that is, it makes the subject rhematic and thus a part of the focus domain. Such rhematic subjects need not be the focus, but an obvious and frequently relevant reason for making them rhematic, is the need to focus them in the actual context. (45)

a. b.

Den elektriske stol har jo Edison opfundet. FUNDAMENT V2 FOCUS RHEME Den elektriske stol har jo Edison opfundet.

(46)

Nàr en dansk cykelrytter

bliver testet positiv, f0lger

automatisk

when a Danish bicycle athlete is tested positive follows automatically

to àrs

karantœne.

two years' suspension

'When a Danish bicycle athelete is tested positive, there follows an automatical suspension for two years.' DR 1 110898 21.00 (47)

FUNDAMENT BACKGROUND Nâr en dansk cykelrytter

bliver [...] positiv,

RHEME BACKGROUND f0lger automatisk

RHEME FOCUS to àrs karantœne.

Compare this to the unmarked organisation in (48). The subject is thematic, and the focus falls on the manner adverbial automatisk 'automatically'. I add a context that calls for a thematic subject. Notice that in this context a rhematic subject as in (48c) will result in 'a bad text', i.e. a non-cohesive text, marked "!". (48)

a.

Franske cykelryttere kan kun fâ karantœne efter en indviklet juridisk procedure, og da er maksimumstraffen to àrs udelukkelse. Nâr en dansk cykelrytter bliver testet positiv, f0lger to ârs karantœne automatisk. 'French bicycle athletes can only be suspended through a complicated juridical procedure, and so the m a x i m u m penalty is two years' suspension. W h e n a Danish athlete is tested positive, two years' suspension follows automatically.'

b.

FUNDAMENT V2 THEME RHEME BACKGROUND BACKGROUND BACKGROUND FOCUS Nâr en dansk [...] positiv, f0lger to ârs karantœne automatisk. Franske cykelryttere kan kun fâ karantœne efter en indviklet juridisk procedure, og da er maksimumstraffen to ârs udelukkelse. Nâr en dansk cykelrytter bliver testet positiv, f0lger [!] automatisk to ârs karantœne.

c.

To see the difference between rhematic subjects with no alternative as in (42)-(44), and the positionally marked rhematic subject, consider (49): (49a) is positionally marked and the

Iconic and categorical

focus

systems

in

63

Scandinavian

subject must be rhematic and presentative, (49c) is unmarked and open to normal thematic subject interpretation, as in (49d, e). a. b.

c. d.

e.

Der

kommer jo

Per Degn.

there

c o m e s indeed

Peter the Parish Clerk

FUNDAMENT BACKGROUND Der Der

V2 BACKGROUND kommer jo kommer

RHEME FOCUS Per Degn. Per Degn

jo.

there

comes

Peter the Clerk

indeed

FUNDAMENT BACKGROUND Der FUNDAMENT FOCUS Der

V2 FOCUS kommer V2 NON-FOCUS kommer

THEME BACKGROUND Per Degn THEME BACKGROUND PerDegn

SA JOSA JO-

We shall need to call attention to question foci as well, since these are key examples of subjects that need not be in focus, but which are still rhematic and presentative. Example (50a) is interpreted either with a presentative subject and focus on the adverbial hvor 'where'. Or it has Lone as the only focus, thus fitting into a situation where the question of the whereabouts of some other person has already been raised. (50)

a.

Hvor er egentlig Lone

henne?

where is after all Lone LOC.PART.STATIC

b.

c.

d.

'Where is Lone anyway?' FUNDAMENT V2 FOCUS NON-FOCUS Hvor er egentlig FUNDAMENT V2 NON-FOCUS NON-FOCUS Hvor er egentlig Hvor er Lone egentlig henne ?

RHEME NON-FOCUS Lone RHEME FOCUS Lone

STRANDED PART OF FOCUS henne? NON-FOCUS henne?

where is Lone after all LOC.PART.STATIC

e.

FUNDAMENT FOCUS Hvor

V2 NON-FOCUS er

THEME NON-FOCUS Lone

SA egentlig

RHEME FOCUS henne?

Summing up, the word order system for rhematic subjects is (51). (51) F

V2

SA

//

RHEME Subject

neg / Nuclear postfield

Notice that this is a marginal structure, respecting the normal position for subjects in relation to negation and the non-finite verb. It is radically different from the rules for Old Scandinavian, see below.

64

Lars Heltoft

4.2. Iconic adverbial focus Modern Danish has another positional system for marking a constituent as focus, namely a positional system for free adverbials, time and place adverbials and manner adverbials. We must devote some effort to this phenomenon, since it is of extreme importance for the understanding, firstly, of the typological relationship between older stages of Scandinavian and the modern situation, and secondly, of the changes involved. This iconic focus system - as I shall call it - is in fact a historical remnant of the formerly dominant word order system of Old Scandinavian. It applies to free adverbials only; subjects and all types of objects are no longer accessible to iconic focus. For the concept of iconicity (= diagrammatic isomorphism), see Engberg-Pedersen (1996). Free adverbials have their unmarked position at the end of the clause, to the right of the nuclear postfield, but they can occur in the topological space between the subject position and the nuclear postfield (that is, in the actualisation field of Paul Diderichsen's sentence frame, see Diderichsen 1941, 1946). Traditional descriptions leave it at that and ignore the alternative positions relative to negations, let alone their codings. But such free adverbials can either precede negation or immediately follow it. (52)

a.

b.

Hans arbejder var

blandt kritikere

ikke blevet vurderet ret h0jt.

his works were

among critics

not become estimated very highly

'Among critics, his works had not been very highly estimated.' Hans arbejder var ikke blandt kritikere blevet vurderet ret h0jt. his works were

not

among critics

become estimated very highly

'Among critics, his works had not been very highly estimated.' Compare (52a) with (52b). In (52a), the adverbial is a secondary theme predicated about, the best English translation would seem to front this adverbial as a marked theme, meaning that this evaluation applies in relation to critics, and possibly to many others as well. (52b) points to this adverbial as the sole focus of the clause, meaning that whichever positive evaluations his works may have received from others, these certainly did not include the critics. The English translation should be read with a fronted focus. (53)

a.

betroede arbejde [...] forudsatte,

at der ikke

ifamilien

the parents' confidential work depended on that there not in the family

var personer, som udgjorde nogen

sikkerhedsrisiko.

were persons who represented any security risk

b.

'The parents' confidential work depended on there not being any persons in the family who represented any security risk.' Inf 1807 98 8 betroede arbejde [...] forudsatte, at der i familien ikke var personer, som udgjorde nogen sikkerhedsrisiko.

The meaning of (53a) is that whatever risks Stasi might have been willing to accept in relation to other persons, this family was definitely not to represent a security risk. By contrast, (53b) has 'the family' as a secondary theme: the message about the family is that it must not represent a security risk. Other persons may also be parallels to the family.

Iconic and categorical focus systems in Scandinavian (54)

a.

65

Det kan jeg ikke i dag bestride àbenlyst. that can I not today deny openly

'This I cannot today deny openly.'

b.

Det kan jeg i dag ikke bestride àbenlyst. 'That can I surely not today (stand here and) deny.'

(54a) means that Ί may very well be willing to do so on other occasions, but not today', ( 5 4 b ) is about something and the present day, the message being that 'it cannot be openly denied'. Thus, free time and place adverbials can be protected from negation to form a kind o f secondary or auxiliary topic. template in (55) will provide an overview. (55)

THEME

NEC FOCUS

hans vaerker var

ikke hans vaerker var blandt kritikere ikke at der ikke -

blandt kritikere i familien

V ... blevet vurderet ret h0jt blevet vurderet ret h0jt var [ . . . ] som udgjorde [ . . . ] risiko

at der

i familien

det kan j e g

—

ikke

var [...] som udgjorde [ . . . ] risiko

-

ikke

i dag

bestride àbenlyst

det kan j e g der vil

i dag

ikke

-

bestride àbenlyst

-

ikke

der vil

forelöbig

ikke

forel0big

blive skredet ind [ . . . ] blive skredet ind [ . . . ]

-

Thus, the iconic focus system has the form of a position for a focus constituent: the constituent next to the negation carries the focus, and the normal focus domain does not contain the focus. If there is no focused adverbial constituent, normal focus domain rules apply, that is, the focus will fall within the limits of the focus domain, its precise extension being contextually determined. The syntactic categories sensitive to iconic focus are free adverbials. Valency-bound nuclear material is never sensitive to these iconic rules, but has - to reveal the nature o f the historical process - been fully taken over by categorical structure. W e shall see that free adverbials in fact retain a system that applied to all types of constituents in the older language. Some further examples of iconic focus:

(56)

Hvorfor

kan

vi ikke

i vores egen

why

can

we not

in our own backyard

baggàrd

leve op til de krav, vi stiller i den 3. verden? meet

Beri Τ 280698 1 17

the demands we set up for the 3rd world

'Why can't we conform in our own backyard to what we demand from the third world?'

66

Lars

Heltoft

Examples without explicit negation must be interpreted as focus or secondary theme, the point being that whenever negation is there, this choice is made a choice of word order also.

5. T h e historical forerunner: Old Scandinavian

A striking contrast between Modern Mainland Scandinavian word order and Old Scandinavian word order is found in the coding of grammatical relations. Subjects and objects have their own position in the topology of the modern languages, but this was not so in Old Scandinavian. The coded content of Old Scandinavian word order had nothing to do with distinctions between grammatical relations. These differences were still marked solely by the case system, cf. the following example showing OV-order and VO-order for direct objects and indirect objects around the non-finite verb. (57)

Warthcer han siukur

tha ma han halfwan gifua clostre

falls he ill

then may he half-Α give convent-D

œllœr hwem sum han wil oc eig mera fran

arfwm.

or w h o - D that he will and not more-Α from the heirs

ei clostre hœldœr cen andrum

manni.

not convent-D nor another-D man-D

'If he falls ill, then he is allowed to give half (of his lot) to a convent or to whom he wishes, and nothing more at the expense of the heirs, neither to a convent nor to any other man.' SkL Β 69 37 In relation to the non-finite verb, Old Scanic (and Old Scandinavian in general) allows both OV and V O order, or, generalising, XV or VX order. This is well known also in traditional accounts (Diderichsen 1941, Karker 1991, Pedersen 1993). First XV examples: (58)

/En vm vigía seal. but if inaugurate shall

tha sculu b0ndcer biscop thre ncetcer f0tha. then must farmers bishop-Α three nights feed

oc capalanum

half marc gifua.

and curates-D

half mark-Α give

'But if one has to inaugurate (a church), then the farmers must feed the bishop for three nights, and give a halfmark to the curates.' SkKl 2 An example of VX order: (59)

Thœmma rœtti j gien.

tha haui b0nd0r

iat

this-D law-D against

then have-SUBJ farmers-N

accept-PASTPTC.

biscopi

thrithiungs

bishop-D

one third-G thithe-A

tindce

afallum

sath sinum.

of all-D sath-A/D refl.-D

'In return for these statutes, the farmers should accept (to give) the bishop a thithe of one third, of all they sow.' SkKl 20

Iconic and categorical focus systems in Scandinavian

67

Objects and constituents in general may cluster on both sides of the non-finite verb, for instance IO V DO: (60)

Pawin hawir

allum cristnum mannum

forbuthit

pope-Def. has

all-D Christian-D men-D

prohibited ordeal by fire-A

iernbiurth.

oc far thy at swa cer.

Tha williom wi ey

oc ey mughum wi skiwda ws

and since that so is

then will-PL we not

nor can-PL we ignore

fran thesse almennings

buthi.

this common law

'The pope has forbidden all Christian men the ordeal by fire, and this being so, we will not nor can we ignore this common law.' SkL Add XII, E don.var. 136,4° Word order is flexible in Old Scanic, and it does not code grammatical relations. Both XV and VX are possible orders in relation to the non-finite verb. This relative flexibility - we shall see - is not a case of free variation: it codes information structure. We shall need to study the role of the non-finite verb in some detail, especially in relation to adverbial particles and prepositions.

5.1. Old Scanic topology In his book Syntactic Change (1990) the Norwegian linguist Jan Terje Faarlund has suggested the following analyses of the relationship between prepositions and non-finite verbs in Old Norwegian/Old Icelandic (West Norse). Both prepositions and non-finite verbs are predicates that may occur in various positions independently of the position of their sisters. Prepositions can of course adjoin to their NPs, but they can occur discontinuously in two other positions, namely in the fundamental field and in the position for normal non-finite verbs, either alone or if there is a non-finite verb, adjoined to this. Faarlund's examples are originally from Nygaard (1906); let us first see a single preposition in non-finite verb position: (61)

Högg

f>ú af tvœr alnar

hverju

cut-imp

you

every-D bigtree-D'

o f f two-Α alen-A

stórtré.

'Cut two alen (a measure) off every big tree.' Here the preposition af governs the dative hverju stórtré. Consider also a single preposition in the fundamental field: (62)

En á

pykkir

mér

but

seems

I-D

on

skuggi nökkurr be

shadow-N some-N

manninum. man-D.DEF-D

'But there seems to be a shadow on this man.' Here á governs the dative manninum. verb:

And finally, a preposition adjoining the non-finite

68 (63)

Lars He Itoft Pat

kefir mik

til rekit

svá langrar ferdar.

this

has

to

such long-G

I-A

driven

journey-G

'This has driven me to such a long journey.' The genitive NP langrar ferdar is governed by the preposition til. I shall assume that these rules will apply for Old Scanic as well. In later Old Danish the verbal positions are the same, but in the present context, we need not trace this development for the prepositions. Faarlund does not mention intransitive place adverbials of the type up/uppi ' u p ' , nithcer/nithri 'down', in/inni 'inside'. I shall suggest that they be included in the rules for Old Scanic since they are strikingly similar to prepositions with respect to word order, and I subsume them all under the concept of verbal particles. The existing texts in Scanic do not provide us with excessive material of discontinuous PPs, although (64) is one example: (64)

Warthœr

thrceli

hand

is

thrall-D

hand-N off cut

afhoggen

b0te thœn œr afhiog

[...]

compensate he who off cut

'If a thrall has his hand cut off, he who cut must compensate [...]'

SkL Β 69 125

The dative thrceli 'thrall' is governed by the preposition a f , yet its position is next to the finite verb. Verbal particles are a better basis for the analysis because of their higher frequency. They can adjoin to the non-finite verb or simply fill in its position, making (65a) and (65b) positionally analogous. (65)

a.

Tha d0me

thingmcen

then sentence thingmen

b.

bondanum

uth sina wirthning.

farmer-D.DEF-D

out his estimation

'Then the sentence of the thingmen must be that the amount estimated by the farmer be paid out.' SkL Β 74 145 Pawin hawir allum cristnum mannum forbuthit iernbiurth. the pope has

all-D Christian-D men-D

forbidden ordeal by fire

'The pope has forbidden all Christian men the ordeal by fire.' (66) Tha d0me thingmaen Pawin hawir

10 bondanum allum cristnum mannum

V/Part uth forbuthit

DO sina wirthning. iernbiurth.

Verbal particles can precede or follow the non-finite verb, a principle that Diderichsen (1941) strikingly describes as a mirror image principle. Normally, the particle will precede the non-finite verb, if other constituents do, see (67a). Presumably, the constructed example (67b) is deviant. (67)

a.

Wil han cey at them stcefnu dagi sith stiborth vp taka. will he not at the day settled refi, drawdoor up take

b.

'If he will not at that term take up his drawdoor.' Wil han cey at them stcefnu dagi sith stiborth taka vp.

SkL Β 74 214

Iconic and categorical focus systems in Scandinavian

69

Thus, the backbone of a topological model for Old Scanic must be the positions for verbs and particles. The model suggested is by and large reconstructed on the basis of Diderichsen (1941). Pi

m i d d l e field Vinf/part X1...X« Y1...Y" d0me thingmœn bondanum uth hawir allum cristnum mannum forbuthit wil han œy at them stœfnu dagi sith stiborth vp taka ma han halfwan gijua V

tha pawin tha

postfield sina wirthning iernbiurth clostre

Unlike Diderichsen, I shall stress that Old Scanic and the other Old Scandinavian languages had no specific position for their nominative subjects. Statistically, the most frequent position for a nominative subject was P> or the first middle field position, but quite unlike the modern situation, it could just as well occur in the postfield or in later middle field positions. (68)

a.

b.

/En vm

thcet wil dylia

arfui

hans.

at hanum

but

that

heir-N

he-G

at

if

will

contest

he-D

d0thum[...] dead-D

'But if some heir of his wants to contest this, when he is dead.' Hafuir han vœth oc vil œy sœthia.

SkKl 8

has he security and will not give

c.

'If he has security and will not give it tha ma han œy rœna

hin

then

the aforementioned-N

must he-A

he-D

accusation-N given

SkL Β 74 192

that he

'If he is accused that [...]' SkKl B74 20 Warthcer thrceli hand af hoggen b0te [...] (if) is thrall-D

e.

rob openly by force

then his counterpart must not openly rob him.' Warthcer hanum sac gifuin han [...] becomes

d.

not

hand-N off cut

pay as compensation [...]

'If the thrall has a hand cut off, he must pay as compensation [...]' SkL Β 69 125 Gar b0rnum ysildi ofna hœndœr [...] goes

children-D

misery-N

upon hands

'If the children fall in misery [...]'

SkL Β 69 47

In (68a) the nominative subject arfui hans is in the postfield, to the right of the non-finite verb dylia. In (68b), in spite of the nominative and accusative syncretisms in the relevant pronouns, the only sensible reading has hin 'the other one' as a postfield subject. In (68c, d, e) the nominative subjects are in middle field positions to the right, preceded by dative NPs. Notice that no principle of fronting weakly stressed pronouns would account for (68d, e), since these have full dative NPs. I shall claim below that these alternative positions for subjects make them rhematic - the middle field positions even focused subjects.

70

Lars Heltoft

5.2. Similar word-order patterns for Lucidarius (14th - 15th century) Danish up to the mid 15th century had by and large the same situation for inflexional case as present day Danish. Case was only preserved in a handful of pronouns as a simple nominative vs. oblique opposition. Nevertheless, the original basic topology had been preserved, and there was still no specific position for subjects. (69)

a. Tha then

b.

kommer til t0m œnglœ

oc andrœ hœliœn.

c o m e to them angels

and other saints

oc hw swolœ t0m and soothe them

'Then angels and other saints come to them and soothe them.' Thet gyuœ oss then 'herrœ' ther [...]

Luc 66r

this

Luc 51v

give

us

the Lord that

Positions centre round the non-finite verb in the same way as in Old Scanic. (70)

Tha œr thœrœ

so ouœruœthœs

then is in that place

such immense heat

hedœ

at œngœn mo therce vcerce. that nobody can there be

'In this place there is then such an immense heat that nobody can stay there.' Luc 91v (71)

Vthœη

glcedœs e merce

at the skullœ ey thith sceluœ kommee.

but

rejoice the more

that they are not thither selves to come

'But they rejoice the more that this is not where they are to go themselves.' Luc 67r (72)

[...] saa m0gœl rœzclœ oc skam [...] ath the vildce hœldœr i heluidis pince vcerce cen so much terror and shame

hans œnledhœ

thelich

that they would rather in Hell's torment be than

see.

his face in this way see

'[...] so much terror and shame [...] that they would rather be in Hell's torment than see his face like that.' Luc 69r OV examples dominate my exposition, but VO is very frequent as the neutral order. (73)

thet barn [...]

thcet skulœ fanghee manghœ lydhce.

this child

it was to contract many defects

Luc

56v

XV order and VX order may of course coexist: (74)

Hwy moo man cey thaa see monyn. why can one not then see moon-def

'Why can't one see the moon at that time?' The sentence frame for Late Middle Danish and for Scanic is the same:

Luc 63r

Iconic and categorical focus systems in Scandinavian Pi

Y fin

cengcen the the

mo skullce vildœ

thcet hwy

skulœ moo

71

middle field Χ 1...X" therœ ey thith sœluœ hœldœr i heluidis pince hans œnledhœ thelich man cey thaa

V'nf/part p o s t f i e l d Y»...Y" vœrœ kommœ vœrœ see fanghœ manghœ lydhœ monyn see

6. OV and V O characteristics and codings: iconic focus

As regards the non-finite verb, Old Scandinavian retains systematic OV options, alternating with VO options, with regard to both NPs (i.e. objects) and to PPs and other adverbials. The finite verb is not involved, since this is fixed to the second position. Being at a transitional state from OV to VO order does not prevent the older language from turning this distinction into a grammaticalised, semantic contrast. The order Negation Χ V marks the X (subject, object or whatever) as the iconic focus (78 - 79). The order X Negation V marks Xs as protected from negation's scope (79 - 80). An element preceding negation is iconically marked as a backgrounded element: P" V2

X [...] BACKGROUND

NEG

X [...] FOCUS

V

VO order is neutral with respect to focus. Postfield constituents are rhematic, and as such they may carry the focus, but need not. The marked focus position is so coded that a sole constituent in this position must be the focus. To document the positional analysis, I shall quote numerous examples with negation, or some other focus operator. Only in few cases shall I appeal to the meaning of the text. Plain VO order is found in examples (75a, b, c); (75b) is particularly illuminating, since its context places the focus on an adverbial clause, not on the preceding adverbial and object. (75)

a.

Seel man

bort

hœst.

œllœr oxa.

œllcer annar cost [...]

sells man

away

horse-Α

or

or another valuable

ox-Α

'If a man sells off a horse or an ox or some other valuable [...]'

SkL Β 74 150

72

Lars Heltoft b.

Bonde ma

eig

scelia mœth loghum sinna kunu iorth

landowner may

not

sell

f0r

œn barnmynt

legally

refi, wife's land

œr.

until 'barnmynt' is

Ά landowner may not legally sell his wife's land until he has been authorised as his children's administrator.' SkL Β 69 8 Tha ma han gifua halfuan houuth loth sin.

c.

then may

he

give

half-A

share-Α

refl-A

'Then he may give half of his share.'

SkKl 8

Remember that nominative subjects occur readily in the Old Scanic postfield, a phenomenon well known from West Norse as well, cf. (68a). Although in Lucidarius the subject is overwhelmingly the most frequent filler of either P 1 or position 3, there is still no basis for claiming that the third position is now a fixed subject position, nor a grammaticalised thematic position. It will almost always contain backgrounded material, very often definite pronouns, but this does not prove that thematic status has been grammaticalised in the subject. Compare again an example from Lucidarius: (76)

lathœ

sek

opp

synœ 0wen,

because

Forthi

let

refi.

up

refi, eyes

thaa

maa

han

see

i then samme stund.

then

can

he

see

at that very hour

'Because if his eyes open, then he can see at that very hour.

Luc 48r 11-13

Here position 3 is filled by a reflexive, which is no candidate for a theme, and the subject is rhematic. We are now in a position to characterise Old Scanic and Late Middle Danish with respect to grammaticalised theme-rheme structure. I shall assume that the only ways of grammatically appointing thematic status to a constituent is to place it in P 1 , or - which I shall not deal with in this paper - to dislocate it. (77)

a. /£n vm thœt wil dylia arfui hans. at hanum d0thum [...] b. tha ma han gifua halfuan houuth loth sin c. tha ma han cey rcena hin d. forthi lathœ sek opp synce 0wen. C

Pi

V

MIDDLE

V/PART

POST

han han œy sek

dylia gifua rœna opp

arfui hans halfuan houuth loth sin hin synœ 0wen

THEME

vm

forthi

thœt tha tha -

RHEME

wil ma ma lathœ

Let us now apply the claimed focus structure to this analysis as well. Marked focus is often employed to mark semantic oppositions, such as between the focused constituent and an excluded alternative. Such examples add to the number of positionally unambiguous exam-

Iconic and categorical focus systems in Scandinavian

73

pies, since sumt in (78) may be taken to hold the position that the contrastive œy alt would have held. (78)

Warthœr hanum sac gifuin. hart hafuir sumt reth. oc œy alt. witi [...] is he-D accusation-N given that he has some paid and not all witness

'If he is accused that he has paid some, and not all, he must witness [...]'

SkKl 20

Examples (79 - 80) are good examples of backgrounded full NPs, originally pointed out by Pedersen (1993). (79)

[...] at han giorthe bondanum œy mera schatha j thy afhoggi

[...]

that he did owner-D-DEF.D not greater-A loss in this-D cut-D

'[...] that he did not cause the owner greater damage in this cut [...]' (80)

SkL Β 74 125

Han uildi fœ sith œi uth l0sa. he would cattle his not out pay

'He would not pay out his cattle.'

SkL DgL I, 170

Similar examples are not hard to find, and examples with a backgrounded pronoun are just special cases of this more general principle, they are not instances of specific positions for unstressed pronouns. (81)

Julianus gat

thœn harm

œy

lœngœr

Julianus could

this

no

longer

insult

thold. stand-PERF.PTC.

'Julianus could no longer stand this insult.' St. Christina, Cambridge fragment, GL 285 (82)

a.

Svenbarn

ma œy

sœliœ sinœ iorth. œy andrœ lund af hœndœ.

boy

may not

sell his land

f0r œn thœt œrfœmtan

wintœrgamalt

not other way transfer

[...]

until he is 15 winters old

/Enkiœ ma sinœ iorth bœthe sœliœ bort oc skiftœ. window may refi, land both sell away and give as share

b.

Ά boy may not sell his land, nor transfer in any other way, until he is 15 years old [...] A widow may both sell her land and give it as a share.' SkL Β 74 G O 4 6 /En wilt thu mie thœt œi sighœ ac seal giuœ thit ki0t undœ diur at œtœ. but wilt thou me this not say I shall give your flesh to predators to eat

'But if you will not tell me this, I shall give your flesh to predators to eat.' Leg. Christina GL 284

74 (83)

Lars Heltoft Och

man

kunnce

thet

aldri

and

one

can

it

never

fanghœ catch

vthen

man

kommœr

thet

til

unless

one

brings

it

to falling

forthi

thet

kan

segh

ikkœ

opprœsœ

ighen

nar thet fallcer

can

refi.

not

rise

again

when it falls

b e c a u s e it

atfallœ.

'And one cannot ever catch it, unless one brings it to falling, for it cannot rise again, when falling.' Luc 58v Some further marked focus examples: (84)

Sigir

sithan

kunungs

says

later

kings

var

mœd

viliœ

was

with a will

umbuzman

at

thœt sar

representative

that

that wound

giort oc

œy

mœth

done

not

by accident

and

vatha.

tha seal theen [...] then must he

'If the king's representative says later that that wound was inflicted intentionally and not by accident, then he must [...]' (85)

(86)

Sac s0kere

ma

œy

andra

plaintiff

can

not

in other way

lund

s0kia

œn nu œr mœlt.

sue

than now is said

Ά plaintiff cannot sue in any other way than those mentioned up till now.' SkL Β 74 147 Kuna mans ma œy mœth logum mer sœlia w i f e man's

may

afbondans

not

with the law

bo.

more

œnfem pœnninga

of the landowner's property

sell

mun.

than five pennies worth

Ά man's wife may not legally sell more from his property as a landowner, than to the value of five pennies.' SkL Β 74 152 (87)

Oc alla the delà

them cumber jmœlle

skal

eig annar

and all the controversies

them c o m e between

must

not

delas

œn a huskarla

be settled

than at household meeting

stath

other place

stefna.

'And none of the controversies that come between them may be settled in any other place than at the household's meeting.' Vederloven GL 118 (88)

Hwy

moo

man

œy

thaa

see

monyn.

why

can

man

not

then

see

the moon

'Why cannot one see the moon then?' (89)

Luc 63r

Hwy mwœ

ey

diœfflœ

frœlsœs

aff therœs

why can

not

devils

save-PASS

from their torment

'Why cannot devils be saved from their torment?' (90)

/€nvm

han

ma

œy

thœt

orka.

but if

he

can

not

that

provide

pinœ. Luc 75v

Iconic and categorical

focus

systems

in Scandinavian

75

oc vil

han

hœldœr

iarn bœra tha

age

thœs cost.

and will

he

rather

iron carry

have-SUBJ

this-G option

then

'But if he cannot do this and prefers the ordeal by fire, then he shall have this option.' SkKl 7 For a final comparison between OV and VO codings, let us consider two almost parallel wordings, differing mainly in word order. One is (57), rendered here as (91). (91)

Warthœr

han

siukur

tha ma han

halfwan

gifua

falls

he

ill

then may he

half-Α

give

œllœr

hwem

sum

han wil

oc eig mera

fran

or

who-D

that

he will

and not more-Α

from the heirs

e i clostre

hœldœr

œn andrum

not convent-D

nor

another-D man-D

clostre convent-D

arfwm.

manni.

'If he falls ill, then he is allowed to give half (of his lot) to a convent or to whom he wishes, and nothing more at the expense of the heirs, neither to a convent nor to any other man.' SkL Β 69 37 The other one is (92), which similarly deals with the shares of heritage that a man may give to the church instead of his family heirs. Here the focus is not particularly on the size of the share, but on the conditional PP i sotum 'in illness, if ill'. The share is introduced in the neutral pattern VO as a rhematic constituent, halfuan is of course interpretable as carrying the focus, but it is not marked as such. Instead, focus marking is secured through the adjoined reduced constituent oc œy i sotum mera. The point of this text is that the rule applies only in case of illness. The clergy is not allowed to strip mortally ill men (their heirs, that is) of their property. The rule is different for sound and healthy people, who may give all their share to a convent when joining in: ALn um hel man wil sic ingifua [...] tha [...] mœth allum hofuut lot sinum 'if a sound and healthy man wants to join in, then he may do so with all of his share'. (92)

/En vm man liggœr a d0tha digi. oc gifuœr

han guthi egn sina.

but if man lies on death-G day-D and gives

he G o d - D property-Α refi.-A

tha ma han gifua halfuan houuth loth sin

oc œy i sotum

then may he give half-Α share refi.-A

and not in illness more

mera.

'But if man lies on his death bed and gives God some property, then he may give half a share and nothing more, if in illness.' SkKl 8 The following structure is implied: (92')

[...] tha ma han œy i sotum mera gifua œn halfuan houuth loth sin [...] then may he not in illness more give than half share refi.

Its parallel in the Zealand Ecclesiastical Law is (93), focusing inside the relevant clause on the adverb mer 'more, further' :

Lars Heltoft

76 (93)

/En of nokœr wil giwœ.i. sotœsiœng.

thamahan

œy mer giuœ

but if someone will give in illness bed

then may he

not more give

œn half sin houet lot. than half refi, share

'But if anyone will give in his sickbed, then he may not give more than half of his share.' SjKl 8 We can now integrate the iconic focus structure in the sentence frame for Old Scanic. Ρ·

V

V/P

MIDDLE .

THEME

BACKGROUND NEC

han han Julianus tha alla [...] delà [....]

giorthe bondanum uildi fee sith thœn harm gai ma han skal -

œy ce i œy

hwy hwy han

moo mwee ma

man -

mera

POST RHEME

schatha

eig

lœngœr halfwan annar stath

j thy [...] uth l0sa thold clostre gifua delas œn [...] stefna

œy ey œy

thaa diœfflœ theet

see frœlsœs orka

-

-

FOCUS

monyn ajf[...]pinœ?

In a layout that will allow representation of complex NPs in the middle field: MIDDLE BACKGROUND NEC FOCUS

tha d0me thingmaen pawin hawir wil han tha ma han

xy

bondanum uth sina wirthning allum cristnum mannum forbuthit iernbiurth at them staefnu dagi sith stiborth vp taka halfwan gifua clostre

As a consequence of the legal genre represented, many examples are semantic opposites of some other item in the text, possibly leaving the impression that the focus position is a position for specialised focus. There is certainly room for discussion here, but examples like (94)-(95) I take to be arguments in favour of ordinary neutral focus, meaning that the non-finite verb is part of the focus. A possible way of formulating the precise rule for the iconic focus position, could be that the nearest constituent to the negation must be part of the focus, the rest are focus candidates, including the non-finite verb. (94)

Tha seal

œi theem drœpa

utan man b0tœr fore.

then shall

not them kill

but man's compensation for

'Then one shall not kill them (namely animals that cause injury or death to people), but man's compensations must be paid for (the incident).' SkL Β 69 181

Iconic and categorical focus systems in Scandinavian (95)

77

Tha fongce

forbannœ men

saa m0gœl rcezclce oc skam

then get

condemned men

so much terror and shame

aff ihesus christus hans vblidœ cenlidce from J.C. his unfriendly face

i heluidis

pince

in hell's torment be

vœrœ

ath the vildce hœldœr that they would rather

cen hans

œnledhœ

thelich

see.

than his face in this way see

'Then those condemned are met with so much terror and shame from the unfriendly face of Jesus Christ that they would rather be in hell's torment than see his face in this way.' Luc 69r

6.3. Summary Old Scandinavian as represented by Old Scanic codes its clausal OV word order iconically, with iconic to be understood in the sense of diagrammatic isomorphism, cf. Engberg-Pedersen (1996). The position to the very right of the negation marks an OV constituent as the focus. The scope of negation is expressed by contiguity. Constituents to the left of negation are protected from its scope, except for the finite verb itself. This iconic system is active as late as the 15th century.

7. B r i d g i n g the systems: the rise of modern Scandinavian word order

We cannot here discuss the historical trends in detail. However, well in line with Hjelmslev's views on the relation between synchrony and diachrony (1972, 1935) and with the present upsurge of diachronic interest, I shall briefly render the analysis of the Scandinavian development that springs from the above analyses. A synchronic analysis that opens up new ways of understanding historical changes, is eo ipso synchronically corroborated. The modern mainland Scandinavian languages have a marked difference between so-called main clause word order, a version of verb second order, and so-called subordinate clause word order with no verb second: a strict version of SVO order, where the subject is always fixed and where there is no P 1 . A marked difference between main clause order and subordinate clause order is the position of the finite verb: (96)

a.

Odysseus ville jo ikke tage sin bedste bue med ved afrejsen. O. would indeed not bring his best bow along at the departure

b.

'Ulysses would not bring along his best bow, when departing.' at Odysseus ikke ville tage sin bedste bue med ved afrejsen [...] that U. indeed not would bring his best bow along at the departure

c.

'that indeed U. would not V SA pi S c S SA Od. ville jo at Od. jo

bring along his best bow, when departing [...]' 0 . NEG V 0 . NEG V sin bedste bue med. tage ikke ikke ville tage sin bedste bue med.

Lars Heltoft

78

Where subordinate clause order is concerned, the modern Scandinavian features would seem to just match well-established facts from word order typology: VO-languages should have the order SA + V, since V is the modifier of SA. W e shall not go into this questionable analysis, since any explanation of the modern situation must also include the remnants of iconic focus demonstrated in section 4. Recall: (97)

a. b. c.

Odysseus ville jo ikke frivilligt tage sin bedste bue med. 'Ulysses would indeed not voluntarily bring his best bow along.' at Odysseus jo ikke frivilligt ville tage sin bedste bue med ved afrejsen [...] 'that U. indeed not voluntarily would bring [...]' V V 0 . P1 S SA NEG F O C U S V 0 . c S SA NEG 0. ville ikke frivilligt tage sin bedste bue med. jo at 0. ikke frivilligt ville tage sin bedste bue med. jo

In section 6 emphasis was on the similarities between the word order systems and the coding of the older and later medieval Danish. There is, however, a set of peculiarities in Late Middle Danish that deserves special attention, namely iconic focus in preverbal position, a pattern that stems from an optional generalisation of the iconic focus pattern to occur also between certain conjunctions and the finite verb. This stage is Alpha and Omega for the historical development of the Scandinavian subordinate clause word order. (98a, b) are prototypical model examples: (98)

a.

at h f0lgœ the syndher oc mangœ andrœ ondhœ syndher meth teres

lecomœ

to follow such sins and many other evil sins with their body

b.

ther

cei

quemt

that

not

suitable is

aff at syce

owenbarligh.

about to tell in public

'that are not suitable for public mention.' at the aldrœ samœn vildœ kommœ that

C.

cer

they

never

together

'that they would never Rei. BACKGROUND ther at the

would come

Luc 57r f0rrœœn[...] until

come together until [...]' NEC FOCUS V œi quemt cer aldrœ samœn vildœ kommœ

POSTFIELD aff at syce owenbarligh f0rrœœn[...]

The Lucidarius manuscript shows many examples of this type, see (99a - g). Few examples have negation or other robust indicators of focus, so we shall have to rely on semantic judgments as to whether we have a backgrounded or a focused constituent. (99)

a.

b.

Thet samme legasmae

0

maenaeskas

f0rrae hadae

thet fongae the igen,

that same body

Rei.

men

before had

that have they back

'Men have again that very same body as they had before.' Thet barn ther hun thaa fêdhœ thœt skulœ fanghœ manghœ the child that she

then

bore

Luc 68r lydhœ.

that would have many defects

'The child that she gave birth to then, that was to have many defects.'

Luc 56v

Iconic and categorical focus systems in Scandinavian c.

d.

The [...]

cerce saa gladce

at

the

hans œnlœdœ

see

at [...]

they

are so joyous

that

they

his face

see

that

'They are so joyous to see his face that [...]' thœn stund ther the i skicers eeld cerce the time

e.

f.

rei. they

Luc 72r

in purgatory are

'the time they are in purgatory' Sicetce er ormœ ther t0m

ceder bodce bag og force.

the sixth (one) is snakes

eat both back and front

that

Luc 66r

them

'The sixth (one) is snakes that eat them from both sides.' Tha talœthce hans son ther lœngce hauthce thceyd (= thiaed). then spoke his son

g.

79

who

long

had

kept silent

'Then spoke his son who had for a time remained silent.' Forti thothuœricen the at skrefft hauœ vœrœt because although

they

at confession

tha[...]vorce

the

aldrœ

then were

they

never

Luc 66ν

Rydârb. I, 75, 20

have been

ithœnhw. in this mind

'Because although they have been to confession, then [...] they never had this mind.' (100) a.

b.

See

nw

huilkœn

thu

nw

look

now

what person

you

now

are

Luc 82v

'Now look what kind of person you are.' Han spordce hwi hun s o giordce. he asked

c.

œst.

why

she

so

did

'He asked why she did this.' Forti at thu thet giordce tha skal thu vœrœr

Luc 82v forbannœt.

because that thou this did then shall thou be condemned

d.

'Because you did this, you shall be comdemned.' C BACKGROUND FOCUS cest huilkœn thu nw giordce hwi hun so giordce forti at thet thu ceder ther t0m ther hauthce thceyd lœngœ the at skrefft hauœ vœrœt thothucericen

Luc 83r Postfield

bodœ bag

ogforœ

This process 6 can in fact be traced back to approximately 1300, cf. the following quotation f r o m the Legend of St. Christina, a fragment of the manuscript Κ 48 dating back from this time.

6

The model for the creation of this new Late Middle Scandinavian pattern is probably the relative clause construction traditionally called the 'wedge', an obligatory filling of P 1 in subject relative clauses by a non-subject constituent, an idea already pointed to by Paul Diderichsen. For details, see Heltoft (2001).

80

Lars Heltoft

(101) West thu aei thaet Κ know you not

that

ac thic S DO

f0ddae oc Vf"'"

thu minae spaenae S DO

dithae. ν«"

I

bore

you

sucked

you

and

my breasts

'Don't you know that I gave birth to you and you sucked my breasts?' Leg. Christina GL 285 This new development follows from the interpretation in late Middle Scandinavian of at least some conjunctions C to take the structural position of V2. W e need not enter into open debates with generative grammar at this point. Suffice it here to say that the moment V2 and C are topologically identified, the topological space between V2 and V/part is projected onto the topological space between C and V/part. The finite verb in these emerging subordinate clauses is relegated from V2 to V/part, now forming a continuous verb constituent. This new optional word order pattern paves the way for an understanding of the odd outcome of subordinate clause formation. In itself, it does not affect the iconic focus word order, since we still have the classical pattern. (102) at that

de folk

draebe h vert annet

ey

those people

kill

not

each

other

'that those people do not kill each other'

Luc 56r

The modern word order emerges when OV is replaced by VO through reinterpretation to categorical structure. This process is easiest to isolate in subordinate clauses, the word order of which is not bound up with illocution. I have nothing definitive to say about the details here, except that subjects are now semantically reinterpreted as the entity predicated about, that is, the grammatically identified backgrounded constituent. Its new syntactic counterpart is the VP. Subjects regain a formal, this time positional marker as the N P next to the first reality marker. The outcome is a middle field with no VP daughters, at least no valency bound ones. (103)

FRAME FIELD Κ Pi V 2 Κ

MIDDLE FIELD S SA Adv. S SA Adv.

PIVOT NEG NEG

POSTFŒLDS Π-ΙΠ Adv. V O ... A . . . V Adv. V O ... A . . . V

ZZ[...]A ZZ[...]A

Observe that the introduction of categorical structure affects only valency-bound constituents. All objects, verbs and predicatives and bound adverbials are relegated from the middle field, this being interpreted as a field for free modifiers, namely sentence adverbials, and iconically focused adverbials. That is, free adverbials retain their preverbal positions in the former middle field, i.e. they retain their free, iconic information structure: (104) BACKGROUND Adv.

negation

FOCUS Adv.

The attractiveness of this analysis is of course the understanding of Scandinavian subordinate clause word order as a residual product of other interpretations that are easier to substantiate than the alternative, isolated rise of preverbal adverbial positions. Danish subordinate

Iconic and categorical focus systems in

Scandinavian

81

clause word order, then, does not arise through a change in the position for sentence adverbials. The adverbial complex is left behind, when V and its valency-bound constituents are reinterpreted as VP-daughters. The Old Danish situation can be summarised as follows: 1. Information structure is realised within limits set up by OV - VO structure, or more generally: within XV - VX structure. 2. The subject is not grammaticalised as the entity predicated about. As the unmarked semantic role, the nominative subject, it is the most frequently backgrounded constituent, but this is something different. 3. Neutral rhematic status is bound up with VX order. 4. The unmarked position for the actual focus is in the postfield, the marked position for focus is in the middle field. 5. Subjects may readily obtain rhematic status by way of position alone. 6. Old Scandinavian has no presentational construction, only presentational word order. 7. Old Scandinavian is probably even more open than Modern Danish with respect to coding of P 1 , since even negation may go there. Like in Modern Danish, its main coding is as 'illocutionary frame' (though not as 'assertive illocutionary frame', a question we cannot deal with in detail here).

8. Two final perspectives

I have listed a set of word order characteristics for Old Scandinavian and Modern Danish, respectively, concluding that these linguistic stages differ systematically with respect to information structural coding. The positions of the Old Scandinavian middle field are strictly coded, they are not plainly syntactic positions. Even Modern Danish retains part of this structure, the iconic focus structure. Methodologically and theoretically, my analysis is intended as a contribution to a renewed discussion of the relationship between synchrony and diachrony. Any synchronic stage consists of layers of older and more recent rules (paradigms and constructions). Recent layers will tend to consist of productive core rules, older layers will belong to increasingly marginal and finally unproductive remnants. Thus, the coexistence of iconic focus with the dominant open focus in Modern Danish can only be fully understood in this double perspective, namely as synchronically coexisting, but diachronically heterogeneous layers. Of course, this insight is not new. Above all, it lies behind a long tradition in comparative linguistics for internal reconstruction, the sine qua non of which is the identification of fossilised structure in the languages under comparison. Historically, such morphological and syntactic remnants were once productive structures, see for instance Szemerenyi (1991), W.P. Lehmann (1993) and Elmegaard Rasmussen (1991), to refer to different traditions within Indo-European linguistics. Comparative internal reconstruction would not have got off the ground without such a view of linguistic synchrony. Hopefully, such a view will be fruitful for synchronic grammar as well. Synchrony and diachrony do not form an exclusive dichotomy, only complementary perspectives.

82

Lars

Heltoft

Thus, we need improved standards of linguistic explanation. Any synchronic grammar must be understood as a description of frozen history, and any description of a historical change must be judged with respect to the structural stages that it relates to each other in a principled way. A synchronic grammar that yields historically meaningful structure, is superior to one that does not, and a set of reinterpretations and actualisations that relate structures of different stages is superior to one that does not. Another general point relates to the functional and content-based approach presupposed in this article as a work within the consensus of the Copenhagen school of functional linguistics, see Engberg-Pedersen et al. (1996). We cannot judge, let alone describe and explain, syntactic structure in isolation from linguistic content (coded meaning). And not all semantic differences are bound up with hierarchy, let alone binary right branching. Again, iconic focus is an essential issue. Where the semantic hierarchy is concerned, the main semantic pivot of the present study has in fact been negation: everything preceding negation is also hierarchically above it, everything following it is at least potentially in its scope. Not all semantic differences, however, are hierarchical differences, and iconic focus order X V and neutral order VX do not reflect a hierarchical difference. Objects and adverbials change side to change information status, but a marked focus is not higher up in any tree than is the unmarked focus. 7 Let us return to the Modern Danish remnants of iconic focus: (105) a. b. c. d.

Vi kan ikke i vores egen baggàrd leve op til disse krav. 'We cannot in our own backyard meet these demands.' NEG [i vores egen baggàrd [leve op til disse krav]] Vi kan ikke leve op til disse krav i vores egen baggàrd. 'We cannot meet these demands in our own backyard.' NEG [[leve op til disse krav] i vores egen baggàrd]

The facts of Old Scandinavian and Modern Scandinavian iconic focus are counter-arguments both against the idea of an autonomous, non-semantic syntax, and against the idea that such a syntax can be constructed in terms of binary right branching. Instead, our models must separate linearity from hierarchy. I notice with satisfaction that Rögnvaldsson (1996) suggests a step towards such a loosening of the intertwined linear and hierarchical structures of the Chomskyan generative tradition, by suggesting that OV and V O (XV and VX) be generated as alternatives with no intrinsic hierarchical difference.

7

Thus, iconic focus is hard to reconcile with current analyses of Scandinavian in generative grammar (Platzack 1986, Thráinsson 1986, Thráinsson/Rognvaldsson 1990, Vikner 1995, Holmberg/Platzack 1995). Note that XV order and its focus codings are particularly transparent in the context of negation, but they do not depend on its presence, so there is no way constituent negation - for instance - would apply as a general excuse. Nor are there any rules such as object shift, since VX and XV are quite general options.

¡conic and categorical focus systems in

Scandinavian

83

Sources

HCA Claus Β 74 Β 74 GO BerlT DgL DR GL

=

=

=

= =

=

=

Inf Jac

=

Luc

=

SjKl SkKl

=

=

=

SkL Β 74

=

SkL Β 69 Tamm

=

VS Al

=

VS Odys

=

=

Hans Christian Andersen. "Lille Claus og Store Claus". As printed in Samlede Eventyr og Historier. Odense: Skandinavisk Bogforlag 1976. Codex Holmiensis Β 74, quoted from GL. Codex Holmiensis Β 74, quoted from transcription by Finn Delager for Gammeldansk Ordbog [Old Danish Dictionary project], 1995. Berlingske Tidende [a Copenhagen daily newspaper]. Danmarks gamie Landskabslove I. Ed. by Johs. Br0ndum-Nielsen et al. Copenhagen 1933. Danmarks Radio (Radio Denmark, television programme, channel and date). Gammeldansk laesebog [Old Danish Reader], ed. by Nelly Uldahler and Gerd Wellejus. Copenhagen 1968. Information [a Copenhagen daily newspaper]. J.P. Jacobsen, Marie Grubbe. As printed in Falkenstjerne og Borup Jensen: Hândbog i dansk litteratur 3. A Danish Teacher's Manual from the Mid-Fifteenth Century (COD. AM 76,8°). S. Kroon et al. (eds.), Lund: Lund University Press 1993. Zealand Ecclesiastical Law, after Codex Holmiensis C 69, as printed in GL. Scanic Ecclesiastical Law, after Codex Holmiensis Β 74 and Codex AM 37,4°. Text as in GL. The Scanic Law, after Codex Holmiensis Β 74, text - if not otherwise stated from GL. The Scanic Law, after Codex Holmiensis Β 69, as printed in DgL, text II. Ditlev Tamm. Retsopg0ret efter besaettelsen. Viborg: Jurist- og 0 k o n o m forbundets Forlag 1985. Aladdin og den vidunderlige lampe. Gendigtet af Villy S0rensen. K0benhavn: Centrum 1981. Villy S0rensen. Den ber0mte Odysseus. Copenhagen: Gyldendal 1988.

References

Andersen, John E./Heltoft, Lars (eds.) (1986): Scetningsleddene og deres stilling - 50 ár efter. NyS 16-17. - Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag. Askedal, John O. (1986): Topologisk feltanalyse, koderingssystemer og pragmatiske funksjoner. - In: J. E. Andersen, L. Heltoft, 18-55. Bjerrum, Anders et al. (eds.) (1966): Paul Diderichsen. Helhed og Struktur. Udvalgte sprogvidenskabelige Afhandlinger. - Copenhagen: C.E.G. Gads forlag. Dahl, Osten (1974): Topic-comment structure revisited. - In: Ö. Dahl (ed.): Topic and comment, contextual boundness and focus, 1-24. Hamburg: Buske. Diderichsen, Paul (1941): Sœtningsbygningen i Skaanske Lov. - Copenhagen: Munksgaard. - (1943): Logische und topische Gliederung des germanischen Satzes. - In: A. Bjerrum et al. (eds.), 52-63. - (1946): Elementcer dansk Grammatik. - Copenhagen: Gyldendal.

84 -

Lars

Heltoft

(1966 [1964]): Saetningsleddene og deres stilling - 30 âr efter. - In: A. Bjerrum et al. (eds.), 364-379. Dik, Simon C. (1989): The theory of Functional Grammar. Part 1. The structure of the clause. Dordrecht: Foris. Dik, Simon C./Hengeveld, Kees (eds.) (1997): The theory of Functional Grammar. 1-2. - Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Engberg-Pedersen, Elisabeth (1996): Iconicity and arbitrariness. - In: E. Engberg-Pedersen et al. (eds.), 453-468. Engberg-Pedersen, Elisabeth et al. (1996): Content, expression and structure. Studies in Danish Functional Grammar. - Amsterdam: Benjamins. Faarlund, Jan T. (1990): Syntactic change. Toward a theory of Historical Syntax. - Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter (= Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs 50). Halliday, Michael A. K. (1967): Language structure and language function. - In J. Lyons (ed.): New horizons in linguistics. Harmondsworth: Penguin. - ( 2 1996): An introduction to Functional Grammar. Edited by Edward Arnold. Hannay, Mike (1991): Pragmatic function assignment and word order variation in a functional grammar of English. - In: Journal of Pragmatics 16, 131-155. Harder, Peter (1996a): Functional Semantics. A theory of meaning, structure and tense in English. - Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter. - (1996b): On content and expression in syntax. - In: L. Heltoft, H. Haberland (eds.): Proceedings of the 13th Scandinavian Conference of Linguistics, 83-92. Department of Languages and Culture, Roskilde University. Heltoft, Lars (1992): The topology of verb second and SVO-languages - a study in the sign functions of word order. - In: M. Herslund (ed.): Copenhagen Studies in Language 15, 13-64. Copenhagen: Munksgaard. - (1996a): Topics in Danish and in universal pragmatics. - In: L. Heltoft, H. Haberland (eds.): Proceedings of the 13th Scandinavian Conference of Linguistics, 251-262. Roskilde: Department of Languages and Culture, Roskilde University. - (1996b): Paradigms, word order and grammaticalization. - In: E. Engberg-Pedersen et al. (eds.), 469-494. - (1997): Hvem opslugte hvo - et bidrag til beskrivelsen af det danske kasussystems udvikling. - In: F. Lundgreen-Nielsen et al. (eds.): Ord, sprog oc artige diet. Festskrift til Poul Lindegârd Hjorth, 227-256. Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzel. - (1999): Hierarki og raekkef0lge - skandinavisk ledstilling i funktionel grammatisk belysning. - In: P. A. Jensen, P. Skadhauge (eds.): Sietningsskemaet i generativ grammatik, 31-62. Kolding: Institut for Erhvervssproglig Informatik og Kommunikation, Syddansk Universitet, Kolding. - (2001): Recasting Danish subjects: Case system, word order and subject development. - In: J. T. Faarlund (ed.): Grammatical relations in change, 171-204. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: Benjamins. Heltoft, Lars/Falster Jakobsen, Lisbeth (1996): Danish passives and subject positions as a mood system. - In: E. Engberg-Pedersen et al. (eds.), 199-234. Hjelmslev, Louis (1935): La Catégorie des Cas I. Étude de grammaire générale. - In: Acta Jutlandica Vili. Ârhus: Universitetsforlaget i Aarhus. - (1943): Omkring Sprogteoriens Grundlœggelse. Copenhagens Universitets festskrift. Copenhagen. - (1972): Sprogsystem og sprogforandring. Travaux du Cercle Linguistique de Copenhague. Vol. XV. - Copenhague: Nordisk Sprog- og Kulturforlag. Holmberg, Anders/Platzack, Christer (1995): The role of inflection in Scandinavian syntax. New York, London: Oxford University Press.

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Scandinavian

85

Karker, Allan (1991): Jydernes lov pâ dansk. - In: 0 . Fenger, C. R. Jansen (eds.): Jydske Lov 750 àr, 124-143. Viborg: Udgiverselskabet ved Landsarkivet for N0rrejylland. Lambrecht, Knud (1994): Information structure and sentence form: Topic, focus, and the mental representations of discourse referents. - Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lehmann, Winfred P. (1993): Theoretical bases of Indo-European linguistics. - New York, London: Routledge. Mathesius, Vilém (1975): A functional analysis of present day English on a general linguistic basis. Edited by J. Vachek. - The Hague: Mouton. Molnár, Valéria (1991): Das Topik im Deutschen und im Ungarischen. - Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell (= Lunder germanistische Forschungen 58). Nygaard, M. (1906): Norr0n Syntax. - Oslo: Aschehoug. N0lke, Henning (1994): Linguistique modulaire: de la forme au sens. - Louvain: Éditions Peeters. Pedersen, Karen M. (1993): Letledsreglen og lighedsreglen - Novation, ekspansion og resistens. - In: K. M. Pedersen, I. L. Pedersen (eds.): Jyske Studier, 199-218. Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzel. Platzack, Christer (1986): COMP, INFL and Germanie word order. - In: L. Hellan, Κ. Koch Christensen (eds.): Topics in Scandinavian syntax, 185-234. Dordrect: D. Reidel. Rasmussen, Jens Elmegârd (1987): The make-up of Indo-European morphology. - In: J. E. Rasmussen (ed.): Selected papers on Indo-European linguistics, 244-255. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press. Rögnvaldsson, Eiríkur (1996): Word order variation in the VP in Old Icelandic. - In: Working Papers in Scandinavian Syntax 58, 55-86. Sasse, Hans-Jürgen (1987): The categorical vs. thetic distinction revisited. - In: Linguistics 25, 511-567. Schachter, Paul (1977): Reference-related and role-related properties of subjects. - In: P. Cole, J. Sadock (eds.): Grammatical relations, 279-306. New York: Academic Press (= Syntax and Semantics 8). Szemerenyi, Oswald ( 4 1990): Einführung in die vergleichende Sprachwissenschaft. - Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. Thráinsson, Höskuldur (1986): On auxiliaries, AUX and VPs in Icelandic. - In: L. Hellan, K. Koch Christensen (eds.): Topics in Scandinavian syntax, 235-266. Dordrect: D. Reidel. Thráinsson, Höskuldur/Rögnvaldsson, Eiríkur (1990): On Icelandic word order once more - In: J. Maling, A. Zaenen (eds.): Modern Icelandic Syntax. Syntax and Semantics 24, 3-40. San Diego: Academic Press. Vikner, Sten (1995): Verb movement and expletive subjects in the Germanic languages. - New York: Oxford University Press.

Marja

Järventausta

Are Finnish null subjects null topics?*

This article investigates null subjects in Finnish from a syntactic and pragmatic perspective. Standard Finnish is a partial null subject language with null subjects in the 1 s t and 2 n d person. Firstly, it will be shown that null subjects in Finnish are not 'nothing', but have fixed positions in linear sentence structure and contribute as null elements to the information-structural interpretation of sentences. Secondly, it will be argued that there is no 1:1 relation between the grammatic category of (null) subject and the pragmatic category of (null) topic.

1. Introduction

Fundamental to a discussion of null subjects from a syntactic and pragmatic perspective are the concepts of subject and topic. In a modular view of language, the categories of subject and topic belong to different autonomous modules of the complex language system - syntax and pragmatics (section 2). These modules interact in certain ways, but in principle they are independent of each other. Finnish is a partial null subject language where subjects may be null only in 1 st and 2 n d person. Finnish has been considered to have an optional null subject system, since subject pronouns are never obligatorily omitted. Here I will argue against Finnish null subjects being optional as a rule; instead I suggest that only Standard Finnish is partially null subject, whereas Colloquial Finnish does not have null subjects (section 3). Section 4 discusses the syntax of null subjects in two different theoretical frameworks. First I consider GB approaches to the null subject phenomenon, but only those relevant to Finnish. I then discuss in somewhat greater detail a valency-theoretic model of null subjects, the so-called dual-level model, originally developed for Hungarian. Here I will argue that the Finnish null subject facts challenge the cross-linguistic validity of this model. The pragmatics of null subjects is investigated in section 5. A starting point for the discussion is the discourse-configurational K-before-T rule of Finnish, according to which a stressed Κ element ('kontrast') must precede the Τ element ('topic' or 'theme') in contrastive sentences. An investigation of null subject information structure shows that whilst null subjects may function as pragmatic topics, they need not necessarily be (null) topics.

* I would like to thank Ute Bohnacker (Lund University) for the translation of this article from German into English.

88

Marja

Järventausta

2. Basic concepts

2.1. The subject Research on Finnish syntax considers the subject not to be a homogeneous category, but traditionally assumes that there are both nominative subjects as well as partitive ones. A. Hakulinen (1982), building on Keenan's (1976) subjecthood tests, has shown that as regards semantic and syntactic behaviour, subjects in Finnish have much in common with nonsubjects. For instance, objects too can take partitive case, and other sentence-initial elements can control reflexivization and possessivization. The notion of subject is a problem for syntactic analyses of Finnish, and multifactorial and prototypical definitions have been used in order to account for the syntactic peculiarities of the subject in Finnish (e.g. A. Hakulinen 1982, Karlsson 1983a). In contrast to many other languages, Finnish characteristically tolerates a number of different types of subjectless constructions. On the one hand, there are sentences that lack a subject a priori, as they contain a predicate that does not have a subject argument, like an impersonal weather verb, see (1), or a predicate that expresses a psychological or physical state, cf. (2): (1)

Sataa. rain-3SG

'It rains.' (2)

Minua

pelottaa.

me-PAR(object)

frighten-3SG

Ί feel frightened.' On the other hand, there are sentences that lack a subject only as a secondary characteristic, as it is the syntax that forces the overt subject to be deleted. Examples of this kind are the Finnish passive, see (3), and the so-called "generic 3 rd person with a zero subject" (A. Hakulinen 1987: 148), cf. (4): (3)

Suomessa pelataan talvella

jääkiekkoa.

Finland-INE play-PAS

icehockey-PAR

winter-ADE

'In Finland you play ice-hockey in the winter.' (4)

Jääkiekkoa voi pelata kesälläkin. icehockey-PAR can-3SG play-INF summer-ADE-also 'You can also play ice-hockey in the summer.'

Are Finnish

null subjects

null

89

topics?

The "generic sentences with missing persons" (Hakulinen/Karttunen 1973: 157) are characterized by a 3 rd person singular predicate, a missing 3 rd person subject pronoun that can be interpreted as (generic) 'null person' (Laitinen 1995), and a generic reading of the sentence. 1 Missing subject pronouns are found in Finnish also for the 1st and 2 nd person; these null subject sentences are to be distinguished from null person sentences: (5)

Pelaan

talvella

jääkiekkoa.

play-lSG

winter-ADE

icehockey-PAR

Ί play ice-hockey in the winter.' (6)

Pelaamme jääkiekkoa

kesälläkin.

play-1 PL

summer-ADE-also

ice-hockey-PAR

'We also play ice-hockey in the summer.' Null subjects are generally defined as missing subject pronouns in finite clauses. So-called null subject languages typically leave out subject pronouns in the unmarked case. Lexical (or phonetic) realization of referential subject pronouns is the exception rather than the rule, and expletive subject pronouns are never realized (cf. Kaiser/Meisel 1991: 112). Since the early 1980s, null subjects have been an issue of intensive debate in GB theory (e.g. Chomsky 1981, Rizzi 1982, 1986, Jaeggli/Safir 1989). In Valency and Dependency theory too, there have been some interesting recent approaches to this phenomenon (e.g. Pasierbsky 1981, László 1988, Ágel 1993). Traditionally, (Standard) Finnish is considered not to have a formal expletive subject. In Colloquial Finnish, however, expletive uses of the pronouns se and sitä do occur; consider for instance: 2 (7)

Se/sitä sataa. EXPL

rains

(Holmberg/Nikanne 1994: 178)

'It rains.' (8)

Sitä/??se leikkii

lapsia

kadulla.

EXPL

children+PART

in-yard

plays

'There are children playing in the yard.'

(Holmberg/Nikanne 1994: 178)

Holmberg/Nikanne (1994: 173, 178-179) treat expletive se and sitä as "nonreferential subject pronouns" in a GB-theoretic sense. The different distributions of the two forms are attributed to se being a quasi-argument that can only occur with verbs without a subject argument, whereas sitä is a non-argument that can freely occur as a placeholder (Holmberg/Nikanne 1994: 178).

1 2

Finnish d o e s not have a generic subject pronoun. A c c o r d i n g to H o l m b e r g / N i k a n n e ( 1 9 9 4 : 173, 175), se largely corresponds to E n g l i s h whereas sitä rather resembles English

there.

it,

Marja Järventausta

90 2.2. The topic

There is much disagreement in the literature as how to determine the information-structural category of topic. There have been numerous failed attempts to define topic via necessary and sufficient criteria or only one criterion such as "old information, background, given information, focus of attention, entity being talked about, etc." (van Oosten 1987: 5). Van Oosten argues in favour of a multifactorial and prototypical definition of topic, as all the different criteria touch upon some crucial aspect of topichood and "in the prototypical topic, they are all jointly present" (van Oosten 1987: 5). However, the concept of 'aboutness' is regarded as essential for topichood (van Oosten 1987: 46). In a modular view of language, information structure categories are part of the pragmatic module and must be defined without recourse to other modules. Topic, being a pragmatic function, must be defined on the basis of pragmatics. Traditionally, information structure has been split into two levels: the binary distinction of topic - comment (T - C), and that of focus - background (F - B) (e.g. Jacobs 1988). Yet in order to investigate Finnish null subjects and their relationship with null topics, information structure has to be stratified further into three levels in order to include theme - rheme alongside topic - comment and focus - background. Topic is the concept of pragmatic 'aboutness', and is diametrically opposed to comment, the part of the sentence that says something about the topic. Theme is the concept of what is known from the perspective of the listener, as contrasted with rheme, whereas the concepts of background and focus are determined on the basis of what the speaker sees as relevant or not. (For details see Molnár/Jarventausta, this volume.) The topic is established via communication as an object or event about which something is said. A "sentence topic" (cf. Reinhart 1982), which occurs in sentence-initial position in linearized syntax (in declarative sentences), is the starting point of the predication or utterance. The initial position may be called topic position; however, it should be distinguished from the pragmatic topic function (cf. Molnár 1991: 214-228). (For topic positions in hierarchical sentence structure, cf. Molnár/Jarventausta, this volume.) The topic is not an obligatory part of information structure. For one thing, not every element in topic position also functions as a topic: there is no 1:1 correlation between linear sentence structure and pragmatic topic - comment structure, and thus no direct match between sentence-initial position and pragmatic topic. For instance, nonreferential elements such as expletives or sentence and modal adverbials can never be topics, since topic as an aboutness-based concept must correlate with the semantic condition of referentiality. Further, there are sentences that do not have a topic position in linearized syntax or do not fill such a position; interesting here are verb-initial null subject sentences, to be discussed in detail in section 5. There is a strong tendency in Finnish to avoid verb-initial declarative clauses (cf. Nikanne 1994: 433-435). In Colloquial Finnish expletive se and sitä often occur in sentence-initial position, consider: (9)

Se oli

kiva

nähdä

sua.

it

nice

see-INF

you-PAR

was

'It was nice to see you.'

(Vilkuna 1989: 140)

Are Finnish

(10)

null subjects

Sitä

mä

it-PAR I

null

91

topics?

halusin että sä

tulet.

wanted

come

that

you

'What I wanted was that you come.'

(Vilkuna 1989: 140)

Vilkuna (1989: 139-147) does not treat the expletives as formal subjects (cf. Holmberg/Nikanne 1994: 178-179), but "T(opic) dummies", which are there mainly for discourse-functional reasons: on the one hand they function as placeholders in sentenceinitial position when there are no other candidates for this position; on the other, they are used to 'chase away' default topics - typically subjects (Vilkuna 1989: 41) - from sentenceinitial position. However, since expletives are nonreferential elements, they cannot function as pragmatic topics, although they occur in topic position.

3. Null subjects in Finnish

Finnish is an agglutinating language rich in inflectional morphology. The verbal inflectional paradigm includes six person endings that remain constant across tenses and moods (indicative, conditional, potential), making a perfect system of subject-predicate agreement in person and number. Due to its 'rich inflection', Finnish is an ideal candidate for a true null subject language. On closer scrutiny though, Finnish is only "partially pro drop" (Holmberg/Nikanne 1994: 176), since it does not allow referential null subjects in the 3 r d person. Moreover, there are considerable differences between Standard Finnish and Colloquial Finnish as far as null subjects are concerned.

3.1. Standard Finnish The inflectional paradigm of finite verbs in Finnish has two categories of number and three categories of person, encoded by six person endings incorporated into the verbal stem: (11)

Person endings in Standard Finnish: 2 numbers, 3 persons 3

1. P. 2. P. 3. P.

3

Singular

Plural

-n

-mme

-t

-tte

-VIO

-vAt

The stem v o w e l determines the exact form of the person ending in the 3 r d person singular: either the stem vowel is lengthened (-V) or a null morpheme (0) is used. The v o w e l of the 3 r d person plural ending is realized as a o r ä , depending on v o w e l harmony. For the 1 s t and 2 n d person, the forms of the person endings do not vary.

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Apart from this traditional three-way distinction, a fourth category of person has been suggested in the literature, where the 4 th person stands for non-specific personal reference where number is neutralized. Hakulinen/Karlsson (1979: 255), for instance, suggest the following: (12)

Person endings in Standard Finnish: 2 numbers, 4 persons

1. 2. 3. 4.

P. P. P. P.

Singular

Plural

-n -t -VIO

-mme -tte -vAt -Vn

Postulating a 4 th person in the inflectional person endings paradigm is an attempt to account for certain peculiarities of the Finnish passive. The Finnish passive, also called "indefinite" (Shore 1986: 15), is neutralized for person (in contrast to e.g. German or English passives). This is reflected by the fact that the 'person ending' (vowel lengthening + -ή) has indefinite person reference, referring to a plurality of unidentified or unidentifiable persons (e.g. Hakulinen/Karlsson 1979: 254-255). Historically, person endings already evolved during the Proto-Uralic period, and - except for the 4 t h person - can be traced back to the respective personal pronouns. Even today, some of the Finnish person endings formally correspond to personal pronouns. (13)

Personal pronouns and person endings in Standard Finnish Singular 1. P. 2. P. 3. P.

minä sinä hän

Plural -η -t -V/0

me te he

-mme -tte -vAt

Owing to the rich verbal inflection in number and person in Standard Finnish, subject and predicate unambiguously agree in number and person. 4 For the 1 st and 2 nd person, where personal pronouns and person endings are similar in form, the linguistic system is 'unnecessarily' redundant: the categories of number and person are not only expressed by the pronominal subject, but are also projected onto the predicate (cf. L. Hakulinen 1979: 551). This doubling of information is not reflected quite so neatly in the morphophonology of the 3 r d person, where personal pronouns and person endings do not match in form. Yet the person endings in the 3 rd person are just as monofunctional and unambiguous as in the 1 st and 2 n d person. All grammars of Finnish point out that in the unmarked case, the 1 st and 2 n d pronominal subjects are omitted. The null subject paradigm of Standard Finnish is as follows: 4

However, lexical NP subjects only agree in number with the predicate (cf. Eisenberg 1994: 286).

Are Finnish null subjects

(14)

null

93

topics?

Standard Finnish null subject paradigm, illustrated with the verb syödä 'eat' Singular 1. P. 2. P. 3. P.

0 0 hän

Plural syön syöt syö

0 0 he

syömme syötte syövät

Omission of the subject pronoun is never obligatory in a structural-grammatical sense, but it is recommended for normative-stylistic reasons if the subject is not emphasized. Frequent and unnecessary use of the subject pronoun is considered to be an influence from Germanic languages (L. Hakulinen 1979: 554). A language with entirely transparent person endings and consistent obligatory subjectpredicate agreement, as is the case with Finnish, should obviously be a good candidate for being a null subject language: in the unmarked case (i.e. without special emphasis), the same thing need not be expressed twice (L. Hakulinen 1979: 552). Yet Finnish does not allow 3 rd person null subjects, but only deictic 1 st and 2 nd person ones. One possible reason for this might be that there is no morphophonological correspondence between the person ending and the personal pronoun for the 3 rd person (though there is for the 1 s t and 2 n d ). Another more plausible explanation for why there are no referential 3 rd person null subjects, might be the fact that null subjects in the 3 rd person singular have taken on the function of expressing a generic null person (see Heinonen 1996: 50).

3.2. Colloquial Finnish The partial null subject system with I s1 and 2 n d person null subjects described above is only found in Standard Finnish; in Colloquial Finnish, pronominal subjects are basically never omitted. 5 Colloquial Finnish also differs from Standard Finnish with respect to person endings and subject-predicate agreement, which may help to explain why there are no null subjects. (15)

Person endings in Colloquial Finnish

1. P. 2. P. 3. P.

5

Singular

Plural

-n -t -VIO

-Vn -tte -VIO

The term 'colloquial' is not without its problems. I take 'colloquial' to denote non-dialectal variants of Finnish (which may well be regional) that are used in private and semi-public communication. Colloquial Finnish is very common in spoken discourse, but it can also be used for informal written communication (cf. Kaiser/Meisel 1991: 110-111 for French).

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Subject-predicate agreement in Colloquial Finnish, illustrated with the verb syödä 'eat' 6 Singular 1. P. 2. P. 3. P.

Plural

mä sä se poika

syön syöt syö syö

me te ne pojat

syödään syötte syö syö

boy-SG

eat-3SG

boy-PL

eat-3SG

(pronominal subject) (NP-subject)

Colloquial Finnish has neutralized the number dichotomy in the 3 rd person, and as a result, there is no number agreement in the plural. In the 1 st person plural, there is no person and number agreement since the active verb form is replaced by the passive '4 t h person' form. Hakulinen/Karlsson (1979: 257) attribute these instances of neutralization to a general preference for unmarked and semantically less specified categories. The obligatory use of subject pronouns for the 1 st and 3 r d person plural in the Colloquial language might be explained by the impoverished paradigm and polyfunctional verb forms. For the 1 st person singular and 2 n d person (singular and plural), however, the Colloquial Finnish verbal inflections are identical to those of Standard Finnish, so that the lack of null subjects in the Colloquial languages here should probably rather be put down to system-internal analogy.

3.3. Summary In their discussion of null subjects, Holmberg/Nikanne (1994: 175) do not distinguish between Standard Finnish and Colloquial Finnish, and they are therefore forced to describe null subjects in Finnish as optional, and expletive se as a semi-null subject. Vainikka (1989: 184-189, 224-239), on the other hand, treats Standard Finnish and Colloquial Finnish as two separate language systems, at least as far as null subjects are concerned. Even though it is difficult to draw a line between 'standard' and 'colloquial', this distinction appears to be relevant also in other areas of Finnish syntax. 7 Modern Finnish might therefore be considered as a 'poly-lectal' system with a standard and a colloquial variant. 8 Syntactic differences between Standard Finnish and Colloquial Finnish might of course indicate a fundamental structural change in Finnish syntax in general.

6

1

8

The personal pronouns mina and sinä are usually shortened to mä and sä. The personal pronouns han and he are mostly replaced by the demonstrative pronouns se and ne. Laury (1996) makes a similar distinction, arguing that Colloquial Finnish has the category of definite article, even though Finnish is considered as a typical non-article language. Compare also Kaiser/Meisel (1991: 110) for French.

Are Finnish

null subjects

null

topics?

95

4. T h e s y n t a x of null s u b j e c t s

4.1. Null subjects in GB theory Other phenomena regularly coincide with null subjects, and in GB theory these are subsumed under the pro-drop parameter, although it is a matter of much dispute exactly which phenomena to include. 9 According to the Extended Projection Principle, every clause has a subject NP, and hence an empty subject position is assumed in the case of subject omissions (e.g. Chomsky 1981: 97). However, these empty subjects (pro) violate Chomsky's (1981: 250) Empty Category Principle (ECP), according to which empty positions must be properly governed. Since only lexical categories can be proper governors, pro-subjects do not have a proper governor, being governed by the functional category INFL. A common way of trying to get around this theory-internal contradiction is to parameterize the E C P in null subject languages such that INFL, or rather the agreement (AGR) part of INFL, can have pronominal features which enable it to bind and properly govern the empty subject position (e.g. Rizzi 1982: 130).'0 In general, a condition for this 'standard' view of the pro-drop parameter is that A G R is specified for person and number, null subject languages typically having a lot of verbal inflection. However, such verbal morphology is neither a sufficient nor a necessary condition for null subjects. On the one hand there are languages such as German that are not null subject even though their verbal inflection is quite elaborate. On the other hand, there are languages such as Chinese which are null subject even though they do not have any verbal inflection at all (cf. Huang 1984). It has been proposed that inflectional languages can only be null subject if their inflection is 'rich' enough to specify pro (Müller/Rohrbacher 1988: 13). 'Rich' is here taken to mean person endings that can be unambiguously identified, and in turn unambiguously identify pro coindexed with AGR (cf. e.g. Rizzi 1986: 520). Apart from genuine pro-drop, restricted pro-drop in so-called semi-pro-drop languages has been described in the literature, the crucial difference between the two being the following: genuine pro-drop languages have referential null subjects, semi-pro-drop languages only have expletive null subjects. A genuine pro-drop system is usually taken to include semipro-drop. Thus a language that tolerates referential null subjects also has non-referential quasi-arguments and non-arguments that are null (Rizzi 1986: 541). Both Vainikka (1989) and Holmberg/Nikanne (1994) discuss the Finnish null subject phenomenon in a GB framework, although they aim at achieving different things: Vainikka wants to describe and explain null subjects in a GB model modified for Finnish; Holmberg/Nikanne use the example of Finnish to discuss general principles of the pro-drop parameter, concentrating on the relation between null subjects and semi-null subjects. According to Vainikka (1989: 38), a fundamental principle of Finnish syntax is that the Spec IP position must be filled. Crucial to Vainikka's explanation of the null subject phenomenon is the assumption that verbal inflection suffixes are anaphors which must be anaphor-bound within the local domain of IP and that subjects in Spec IP act as such

9 10

For a review of the literature up to 1988, see Müller/Rohrbacher (1989). For another approach, see e.g. von Stechow/Sternefeld (1988: 2 9 4 - 2 9 9 ) ; see also Vainikka ( 1 9 8 9 : 2 5 - 3 2 , 1 8 4 - 2 4 2 ) for Finnish.

Marja Järventausta

96

binders (Vainikka 1989: 28, 184). 11 However, in Standard Finnish this binder in Spec IP is obligatory only in the 3 r d person and can be either a lexical N P or a pronominal subject, such as: (17)

a.

b.

He-i

lähtivät-i

kotiin.

they

went-3PL

home

'They went home.' *[]-i lähtivät-i kotiin. went-3PL

home

(Vainikka 1989: 225)

For 1 st and 2 nd person null subjects, there does not seem to be such a binder, and it seems that Spec IP need not be filled. Vainikka (1989: 40, 224-225) argues that in these cases there is an abstract discourse-related binder in Spec IP - an implicit "speaker-NP" or "hearer-NP" - which prevents other elements from moving into this position: (18)

a.

Me-i lähdimme-i kotiin. we

went-1 PL

'We went home.' b. [NP-SPEAKER]-i

home

lähdimme-i kotiin went-1PL

home

( V a i n i k k a 1989: 2 2 5 )

Vainikka's fundamental principle that Spec IP must be filled in Finnish holds for null subjects too, with only slight modification: Spec IP must be filled by a lexical or abstract element (Vainikka 1989: 58). This approach is superior to traditional GB as it can explain the absence of 3 rd person null subjects in Finnish, according to Vainikka (1989: 40, 122). The difference between null subjects in the 1 st and 2 nd person and the null person can also be accounted for: null person does not have an abstract binder in Spec IP, since this position has to be filled by a lexical element, without exception (see Vainikka 1989: 50-52). In contrast to Vainikka, Holmberg/Nikanne (1994: 174) take a standard view of null subjects and treat Finnish as a null subject language of the 'European' type where null subjects are licensed by "strong AGR". However, in their view Finnish does not meet all the criteria for an ideal null subject language. Firstly, "even standard, written Finnish is only partially pro drop in that only 1st and 2nd person pronouns can be null" (Holmberg/Nikanne 1994: 176). Secondly, the null subject system of Finnish includes only a partial semi-null-subject system. And thirdly, the entire null-subject phenomenon seems to be optional in Finnish. Holmberg/Nikanne do not investigate why Finnish does not tolerate referential 3 rd person null subjects. Instead, they discuss Finnish semi-null subjects in great detail and find that Finnish is a counterexample to Rizzi's (1986: 541) implicational hierarchy of referential and non-referential null subjects. According to this hierarchy, a language with referential null subjects, i.e. a genuine null subject language, must also tolerate quasi-argument null subjects and non-argument null subjects. Using examples mainly from Colloquial Finnish, Holmberg/Nikanne (1994: 178-179) show that only quasi-argument se can be dropped like a null subject, whereas non-argument sita cannot, for instance:

11

Vainikka ( 1 9 8 9 : 2 9 ) notes that "this in s o m e sense is the reverse of the C h o m s k y

treatment of pro-drop, where 'AGR' binds the subject".

(1981)

Are Finnish

(19)

null

topics?

97

(Se) sataa. it

(20)

null subjects

(Holmberg/Nikanne 1994: 175)

rains

*(Sitä) leikkii

lapsia

kadulla.

there

children

in-street

play

(Holmberg/Nikanne 1994: 175)

Holmberg/Nikanne (1994: 183-184) conclude: "Finnish is a pro-drop language, with agreement strong enough to license referential and quasi-argument pro". They suggest that since non-argumental sitä is non-nominative, it cannot be interpreted as a subject, and as a consequence does not qualify as a null subject. Holmberg/Nikanne's line of argument is not without problems, if it is to account for the null subject phenomenon in Finnish in its entirety. Since Holmberg/Nikanne do not distinguish Colloquial Finnish from Standard Finnish data, they are forced to claim that Finnish null subjects are optional in general. Whilst they grant that expletives tend to be used in Colloquial Finnish (1994: 175-176), they also state that expletives are not ungrammatical in the standard language. The facts, however, are as follows: expletives virtually never occur in Standard Finnish, but they do occur in Colloquial Finnish, 12 whereas referential null subjects only occur in Standard Finnish, but hardly ever in Colloquial Finnish. This points to two separate systems with respect to null subjects in Finnish: Standard Finnish has a partial null subject system with 1 st and 2 nd person null subjects; Colloquial Finnish does not have null subjects.

4.2. Null subjects in Valency theory As Sadzinski (1989: 95) notes, valency theory was unfortunately developed for two languages - French and German - with obligatory subject actants as a rule. This may explain why null subjects have received relatively little attention in valency theory frameworks and in valency-theory-based dependency grammar. Those valency and dependency approaches that actually consider null subjects all take the actant status of the subject as a starting point, but differ considerably as to which factors are held responsible for the subject pronoun omission. Particularly in early work (e.g. Happ 1976), the subject is simply treated as an optional actant. An argument against this view is the fact that omission of the subject pronoun is not determined by the inherent valency properties of the verb, but by other factors. Sadzinski (1989: 104), for instance, claims that the fundamental difference between Polish, a null subject language, and German, a non-null subject language, can be put down to verb inflection: in Polish, but not in German, verb inflection can take on pronominal functions, which in turn allows subject pronouns to be omitted. Sadziiiski's "pronominal function" of verbal inflection, where the subject actant is incorporated into the verbal inflection, is not a new idea in valency and dependency theoretical frameworks. Already Tesnière (1980: 84) noted that personal pronouns in French are exact syntactic equivalents of the person endings in languages such as Latin. Tesnière (1980: 12

Quasi-argumental se is often omitted in Colloquial Finnish too (cf. Holmberg/Nikanne 1994: 176).

98

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124) goes on to say that subject personal pronouns, or "personal indices", ultimately play exactly the same role as person endings, since their only function is to indicate person. Tesnière's "bold hypothesis" (Seyfert 1976: 16-17), part of the person ending being part of the subject and not of the predicate, is taken up by Ágel (1993) and developed systematically for Hungarian versus German, also building on Pasierbsky (1981) and László (1988). Pasierbsky's (1981: 160) main thesis is that in order to be able to make typologically relevant comparisons of valency structures across languages, we have to make a fundamental distinction between macrovalency and microvalency. According to Pasierbsky (1981: 162), macrovalency is traditional valency, i.e. the relations between the verbal valency carrier and its lexical or syntactic actants. On the other hand, for Pasierbsky (1995: 163) microvalency means that the verbal valency carrier (i.e. the structural centre of the sentence) can incorporate actants into its morphological structure and only represent these actants morphologically. Pasierbsky (1981: 164) claims that each verbal valency carrier has a valency structure both on the macro and the micro level, such that each lexical (macrovalent) actant has a morphological (microvalent) counterpart in verbal inflection, even though this often is a null morpheme. From a contrastive perspective, this proposed dual valency has the advantage that languages differing in their macrovalent and microvalent actant realizations, as do null subject languages and non-null subject languages, may be compared with each other. László (1988) exemplifies this with Hungarian and German. Actants that can be realized through microvalency, such as subjects in null subject languages, are called dual-level actants ("ZweiEbenen-Aktanten", László 1988: 226). In null subject languages, the subject is morphologically encoded in the verbal inflection ('microvalency') and therefore does not have to be lexically realized ('macrovalency'). In non-null subject languages, on the other hand, the subject is not (sufficiently) identified on the micro level, and therefore it must be realized through macrovalency. The following examples illustrate how the Hungarian person ending of the verb can take on the deictic/anaphoric functions of the subject and object in microvalency. (21)

a.

Ismerik

aszüleid

know-they-him the parents-your

b.

ezt

az orvost?

this

the doctor

'Do your parents know this doctor?' Ismerik, know-they-him

'They know him.'

(László 1988: 220)

Pasierbsky (1981: 167-168) considers microvalency to be a projection of the macrovalency level, such that nominal actants are formally marked in the morphological structure of the verbal valency carrier. László (1988: 227), on the other hand, toys with the idea of taking microvalency as the basis of sentence structure, which she regards as more plausible, even though it does not conform well with tradition. For László (1988: 227), the fact that duallevel actants always have to be marked morphologically whereas they need not be marked syntactically, is a strong argument in favour of the primacy of microvalency.

Are Finnish null subjects null topics?

99

Following László (1988: 228-230), Ágel (1993: 41-42; 1995: 9-10) illustrates the interaction of micro- and macrovalency levels by systematically comparing the structures of German isst 'eats' and Hungarian eszi 'he/she eats it': 1 3 (22)

Microvalent (MiV) and macrovalent (MaV) realization of the actants of German isst and Hungarian eszi (definite inflection paradigm) essen

eszi (definite inflection paradigm)

MiV

a,

0

a

MaV

A,

A2

A! A 2

A! A 2

Ai A2

(23)

Sie

isst

she

eats

es.

l

0

a

2

0

it

Eszi. eats

Die Mutter

isst

the

eats

mother

Sie

isst das

she

eats

the

es.

Αι 0

it

Fleisch.

0

Die Mutter

isst das Fleisch.

the

eats

mother

A2

meat

the

A] A 2

meat

Aζ

any a

the

mother

eszi. eats

Eszi

a

eats

the meat

húst.

Az

anya

eszi

a

the

mother

eats

the

húst. meat

Microvalent (MiV) and macrovalent (MaV) realization of the actants of German isst and Hungarian eszik (indefinite inflection paradigm) isst

eszik (indefinite inflection paradigm)

MiV

a,

0

MaV

Α ι A2

A! A 2

Sie

isst

she

eats

alles.

0

0

A2

all

Die Mutter the

a,

mother

Mindent

eszik.

all

isst eats

alles. all

A! A2

eats

Anya

mindent

mother

all

eszik. eats

In German, the subject actant has a microvalent realization ( a ^ , but it still has to be expressed via macrovalency (A]), whilst the object actant only has a macrovalent realization (A 2 ). In Hungarian, the subject actant is a so-called dual-level actant both in the definite and indefinite inflection paradigm. A dual-level subject actant is obligatory only on the micro level (ai), whereas on the macro level it can be omitted or realized (0 or A]). The object actant only is a dual-level actant in the definite paradigm (microvalent a 2 , macrovalent 0 or A 2 ), whilst in the indefinite paradigm it must be realized on the macro level (A 2 ). Thus, the 13

a = microform, A = macroform; 1 = subject actant in nominative case, 2 = object actant in accusative case; 0 = null realization.

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valency-typological differences between German and Hungarian may be summarized as follows: Hungarian is a null subject language, and in the definite inflection paradigm it is a null object language as well. German, on the other hand, obligatorily realizes the subject and object actants lexically. Ágel (1995: 5-6) has illustrated this fundamental difference with the Hungarian minimal sentence Látlak ( Ί see you') and its German equivalent Ich sehe dich. In Hungarian, the verb form is a "microcosmos" (Fourquet 1970: 56) which incorporates subject and object actants, whilst the actants are spelled out explicitly via pronouns in emphatic cases only, e.g. Én látlak téged. In German, both actants must be realized lexically. Ágel (1993: 38) regards microvalency, i.e. the morphological level of valency realization, as primary. He observes that in languages with microvalent subject representations subject actants cannot be realized only on the macro level. On the other hand, languages with microvalent representations allow realization only on the micro level. Yet these observations are not a good argument in favour of the primacy of microvalency, for two reasons. Firstly, Agel only considers languages with a microvalent level of representation, i.e. languages with rich verbal inflection, ignoring those languages that realize their actants on the macro level only. Secondly, Ágel's condition for a language having only microvalent representations is the structurally deictic/anaphoric status of verbal inflections. Yet I cannot help feeling that there is some circularity in the use of the central term 'structurally deictic/ anaphoric element' ("strukturelles Deiktikon/Anaphorikon", Ágel 1993: 37, cf. also László 1988: 227): for instance, the only reason why verbal inflections are denied structural deictic/anaphor status in German appears to be that actants are obligatorily realized at the macro level in German. If so, we cannot attribute the unacceptability of microvalent actant realization in German only to verbal inflections not being structurally deictic/anaphoric (cf. Ágel 1993: 38). Even though Finnish null subjects have not been widely investigated from a valency theory perspective, the dual-level model appears to describe and explain the omission of Finnish subjects quite well at first glance. The subject is a dual-level actant which only has to be realized via inflectional morphology, but also allows macrovalent lexical realization. From a structural-grammatical perspective, the sentences Minä syön kaiken ( Ί eat everything') and Syön kaiken are thus equivalents. Importantly however, 3 rd person referential null subjects like *Syö kaiken are ungrammatical; a pronominal macro form is obligatory here. Yet the 3 rd person inflection is unambiguous and invariant, and 3 rd person subjects have a microvalent representation just as 1 st and 2 nd person ones. According to the duallevel model, verbal inflections generally must have deictic/anaphoric potential in order to license null subjects and 'only microvalent' actant realization (Ágel 1993: 38). 3 rd person endings then, do not have this anaphoric/deictic potential. One reason for this might be that they do not formally correspond to personal pronouns, whereas 1 st and 2 nd person inflections do. If so, the 'defective' null subject system of Finnish might be explained in a duallevel framework by saying that only verbal inflections with deictic potential in the 1 st and 2 n d person allow microvalent subject actants. On closer scrutiny however, the data from Finnish can be interpreted as against the fundamental principle of the dual-level model, that null subjects are actants that are exclusively realized on the micro level.

Are Finnish null subjects

null

101

topics?

5. T h e p r a g m a t i c s of null subjects

5.1. Discourse configurationality in Finnish Finnish has extremely free word order, and it also has free inversion (cf. Vilkuna 1989: 187-191), an often cited attribute of null subject languages (e.g. Chomsky 1981: 240). Yet a distinctive trait of Finnish is the fact that word order, which is free in a structural-grammatical sense, is in fact strictly regulated by discourse pragmatics for reasons of information structure (cf. Vilkuna 1989: 17, 1995: 244; see also Karttunen/Kay 1985: 289-290). Finnish is a discourse-configurational language, and its free word order is a way of encoding discourse functions, as shown by the following examples from Karttunen/Kay (1985: 280): 14 NEUTRAL CONTRASTIVE

a. b. c. d. e.

Esa luki kirjan. Kirjan luki Esa. ESA kirjan luki. KIRJAN Esa luki. LUKI Esa kirjan.

Esa read a book. The book was read by Esa. It was ESA who read the book. It was a BOOK that Esa read. Esa DID read a book.

For a discourse-configurational account of word order variation in Finnish, two discourse functions have been proposed: topic (T) and kontrast (K). They are usually considered to be fixed positions in linear sentence structure, positions which are said to have certain discourse-pragmatic characteristics. Vilkuna (1989: 51) describes this sequence as follows: (25)

Κ < Τ < V field

According to Vilkuna (1989: 8, 38), Τ is "the function of a constituent, normally an NP, that immediately precedes the finite verb in a textually neutral sentence" and could be either called theme or topic. Κ is "the function of a constituent that precedes T", and the V field is simply "the part of the sentence that follows T". The discourse function of topic is to express about what something is being said in the sentence, whereas Κ - if provided - singles out an element from the contextually determined set of alternatives and highlights it via stress (cf. Karttunen/Kay 1985: 289-290). The discourse functions of topic and kontrast may also be considered to be syntactically motivated positions in hierarchical sentence structure. Vainikka (1989: 33-34), following the principles of X' syntax, integrates topic and kontrast into a model of Finnish syntax, by postulating that Comp is the landing site for kontrast, and Spec IP the landing site for topic. Vilkuna (1995: 244) even goes as far as saying: "I now take what I called 'discourse functions' to be positions, each for a single constituent, rather than functions." In neutral declarative sentences, the default order is Τ < V < X, where V is the finite verb and X any kind of complement. So-called contrastive sentences, on the other hand, have the order Κ < (Τ) < (X) < (V) < (X), where parentheses indicate optional elements. Vilkuna dis-

14

Contrastive stress is shown by capitals (see Karttunen/Kay 1985: 280).

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tinguishes two types of contrastive sentences, i.e. sentences with a Κ element: so-called T O P sentences as in (26), and so-called FOCTOP sentences, illustrated in (27): (26)

[ K ANNALLE] [ T Mikko]

antoi KUKKIA.

Anna-ADE

gave

Mikko

'To Anna, Mikko gave flowers.' (27)

a. b.

T O P sentence

flowers-PAR

(Vilkuna 1995: 249)

[ K ANNALLE] [ T Mikko] antoi kukkia. [ KANN ALLE] [ T Mikko] kukkia antoi. 'It was to Anna that Mikko gave flowers.'

F O C T O P sentence (Vilkuna 1995: 249)

For Vilkuna, the information-structural difference between Κ elements in T O P sentences and in F O C T O P sentences is as follows: in T O P sentences, the "main news" is not in K, but comes later on. Such TOP-sentence Κ elements are "new-old" and can be paraphrased as " a ; I'm not saying anything about b, c..." and termed "contrastive topics", however with the restriction that verbal elements in Κ are not topics. In F O C T O P sentences, the "main n e w s " is in Κ; Κ is "old-new" and can be paraphrased as " a ; not b, c..." and termed as "contrastive focus". The Τ element in both T O P and F O C T O P sentences Vilkuna calls "continuous topic". (28) and (29) provide a schematic overview of what the two sentence types have in c o m m o n and what sets them apart (cf. Vilkuna 1995: 248-252, see also Vilkuna 1989: 91-112): (28)

(29)

ANNALLE

Mikko

antoi

Κ

Τ

V field

contrastive topic

continuous topic

new-old

main news

ANNALLE

Mikko

antoi kukkia

Κ

Τ

V field

contrastive focus

continuous topic

KUKKIA

kukkia antoi

TOP sentence

F O C T O P sentence

main (old) news

Vallduvi/Vilkuna (1998: 89-91) attribute the difference in information structure between Κ elements in T O P sentences and those in F O C T O P sentences - Vilkuna's "new-old" and " o l d - n e w " - to a difference in rhematicity: T O P sentence Κ elements are [-rhematic],

Are Finnish null subjects null

103

topics?

FOCTOP Κ elements are [+rhematic]. It should be noted though that Vallduvi/Vilkuna (1998: 89) do not distinguish rheme from "focus" or "main news". As for determining the discourse function of Finnish null subjects, the categories suggested by Vilkuna (1989, 1995) and Vallduvi/Vilkuna (1998) are insufficient. Instead I will use a three-level model of information structure (topic - comment; theme - rheme; background - focus). The discourse-configurational concepts topic and theme are relevant to our discussion of null subjects and must be strictly kept apart, which is possible by locating them on different levels of information structure.

5.2. Discourse configurationality in Finnish null subject clauses The discourse-configurational sequence of Κ < Τ in Finnish brings about obligatory placement of contrastive or emphatic stress (focus accent). The sentence-initial element to the left of Τ must be stressed and have a contrastive or emphatic interpretation. 15 No other kind of stress or interpretation is possible. Typical examples of sentences with Κ < Τ configuration are SOV (24c') and OSV (24d'): (24)

c' [ K ESA] [jkirjan] luki. 'It was Esa who read the book.' d' [ K KIRJAN] [ x Esa] luki. 'It was a book that Esa read.'

Let us now investigate whether this configuration remains intact in null subject sentences. As a starting point for our discussion, consider (30) and (31), two examples with overt 1 st person singular pronominal subjects (amended from (24c1) and (24d')): (30)

[ K MINÄ] [jkirjan] luin. 'It was me who read the book.'

(31)

[KKIRJAN] [ T m i n ä ] luin.

'It was a book that I read.' Dropping the subject pronoun in (30) and (31) results in Kirjan luin, a null subject sentence which at first glance might be derived from or expanded into the SOV sentence Mina kirjan

luin, t h e O S V s e n t e n c e Kirjan

minä

luin, or t h e O V S s e n t e n c e Kirjan

luin

minä.

However, Kirjan luin does not have an ambiguous information structure; rather it only allows the OSV reading with an accented object kirjan in Κ position. An SOV or OVS reading is excluded also because subjects may only be null if the corresponding subject pronoun is unstressed. This is neither the case for the SOV reading, where the subject pronoun is contrastively stressed, nor for the OVS reading, where it is rhematic. Stress placement clearly determines the interpretation of Kirjan luin as OSV. Stress may fall on

15

Neutral or unmarked sentence-level stress in Finnish is on the rightmost (lexical) element; other ways of placing sentence-level stress are non-neutral or marked and as a rule evoke stronger emphasis (cf. Hakulinen/Karlsson 1979: 308-311, Karlsson 1983b: 168-175).

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kirjan alone ( K I R J A N luin 'It was a book that I read') or on kirjan and /win (K1RJAN LUIN 'The book I read'), whilst other stress patterns, such as *Kirjan LUIN, are not acceptable. Since the sentence-initial element obligatorily receives contrastive stress, we have to assume that it is located in K. This is illustrated in (32), where the null subject sentences corresponding to (26) and (27) only allow the stress pattern of a TOP sentence (32a) or that of a FOCTOP sentence (32b): (32) a. b. c.

Annalle annoin kukkia. Anna-ADE gave-lSG flowers-PAR ANNALLE annoin KUKKIA. 'To Anna, I gave flowers.' ANNALLE annoin kukkia. 'It's to Anna that I gave flowers.' *Annalle annoin KUKKIA.

According to Vainikka (1989: 36, 41), in SVO and OVS sentences the sentence-initial element may either be in Τ or in K. The Κ reading is only possible if this element is strongly highlighted by contrastive stress. Such stress placement is optional, and we therefore have to assume that Τ is empty when the nominal element is moved into K. In null subject sentences however, movement of the sentence-initial nominal element into Κ is not optional but obligatory, and from this we may conclude that Τ is filled by a null element - the null subject. The null subject sentences Annalle annoin kukkia may thus be analyzed as follows: (33)

a b.

[ K ANNALLE] [·,á félaga

nokkurra

(Haf 1997: 284-286) spurninga [...]

he

some

questions (gen)

asked

them

companions

'He asked the companions some questions [ . . . ] '

(Byl 1996: 191-192)

Genitive NPs also occur as objects of prepositions. Some common genitive-assigning prepositions are the following: (14)

til 'to', án 'without', innan 'within', medal

'amongst', vegna

'because o f

Prepositional genitive is illustrated in the following examples: (15)

a.

[...]

ef ég má

ekki

fara til J j e i r r a .

if

not

go

I

may

to

them (gen)

' [ . . . ] if I am not allowed to go to them. ' b.

Meöal

merkilegri

amongst

noteworthy

kvikmynda films

(gen)

sem

(Eng 1995: 153-155) voru syndar ]Dennan vetur [...]

which were

shown

this

winter

'Among the more noteworthy films that were shown this winter [ . . . ] ' (Ská 1994: 111-113) Some adverbials may have genitive form as well:

2

It is also possible to analyze bak 'back' in ad baki 'at back' and á bak 'on back' as a part of a compositional preposition governing the dative.

154 (16)

Johanna [...] s n e m m a early

morguns

geng ég eftir

Keflavikurveginum [...]

morning (gen)

walk

the Keflavik road

I

along

Barddal

' [ . . . ] early in the morning I walk along the road to Keflavik [ . . . ] ' (Eng 1995: 153-155) Finally, the genitive case is used on nominal attributes: (17)

a.

[...]

sem

menn

which men

b.

Porvalds

Eiríkssonar

fundu

í

eyju

vestarlega.

Porvaldur

Eiriksson's (gen)

found

in

an island

westerly

' [ . . . ] which Porvaldur Eiriksson's men found on an island in the west.' (Vin 1997: 36-38) [...] sú n á n d [ . . . ] haföi vakiö innra meö {)eim tálsyn ástarinnar. that

intimacy

had

w a k e n e d in

with

them

the illusion love (gen)

' [ . . . ] that intimacy [ . . . ] had awakened the illusion of love within them.' ( M j ö 1997: 169-170)

2.5. S u m m a r y I s u m m a r i z e the results of the overview given in 2.1. - 2.4. in the following table: Nom

Acc

Dat

Gen

X X X

X X X

X X X

X X

Indirect object

X

X

Object of preposition Attribute Adverbial

X

X X X

Subject Predicative Direct object

X

X X X X

Table 1 : Distribution of morphological case across syntactic functions C o m p a r i n g the syntactic f u n c t i o n s of the four cases, it s e e m s clear that the n o m i n a t i v e d i f f e r s the most f r o m the other three cases in that it only exhibits three of seven functions and therefore has the narrowest syntactic distribution. Accusative and genitive exhibit six of seven f u n c t i o n s , while the dative has the widest syntactic distribution as it exhibits all seven usages. W h a t differentiates the nominative in its usages f r o m the other cases is, apart f r o m being the m o s t c o m m o n predicative case, that it is only f o u n d with direct syntactic relations, called c o r e relations within typology (see Blake 1994). H o w e v e r , the nominative does not occur with all core relations, as it never occurs with indirect objects. The accusative differs f r o m the dative and the genitive in not f u n c t i o n i n g as an attributive case. D a t i v e and genitive, on the other hand, are different f r o m each other in that the dative can function as an indirect object while the genitive cannot. E x a m i n i n g what the cases have in c o m m o n , it is clear f r o m the table that all the f o u r cases can function as a subject, and as a predicative complement, and all the f o u r cases can function as an object. Accusative, dative and genitive can all exhibit the function of being

Morphological

case,

syntactic

functions

and thematic

roles in

155

Icelandic

objects of prepositions. Obviously, there is no one-to-one relation between morphological case and syntactic functions. The question arises whether it is feasible to say that the distribution of morphological case across syntactic functions is free or relatively free. That is certainly what Table 1 implies. At the same time, a schema like the one above does not give us any information on how frequent these correlations are. I believe that an adequate description of these correlations has to take frequencies into account. The results of such an investigation will be presented below. I now proceed to the semantic analysis.

3. Case and thematic roles in Icelandic

3.1. The nominative Arguments, morphologically marked as nominatives, can be assigned different thematic roles, such as Agent, Cause, Theme, Content, Station, Experiencer, Cognizer, Perceiver, Beneficiary, Source, Path, Manner and Time (see section 6.2.1 for definitions): (18)

a.

Ég

held

aö

hann

I

think

that

he (nom) would

mundi breyta Jyoösöngnum [...] change the national-song

b.

Ί think that he would change the national song [...]' (Pjóóarsálin 1996-1997) [...] sem ránid vakti meöal almennings

c.

'[...] which the kidnapping caused among the people' P a ö er aldrei a5 vita hvar maöur lendir

which the kidnap (nom)

it

d.

is

never

to

know

awoke

where

among

people

man/one (nom) land

'You never know where you might end up.' Pessu fylgdi l é t t u r h ö f u ö v e r k u r í fyrstu. this

followed light

headache (nom)

in

(Frá 1997: 15-17) sko. that-is

(I>jó3arsálin 1996-1997)

first

'To begin with, this was accompanied by a mild headache.' e.

f.

Viö

Halla

we

Halla (nom) have

h.

J)ó

oröiö

goöir

(Kom 1995: 135-137) vinir [...]

though

become

good

friends

'Halla and I have become good friends though [...]' Ertu hrifin af laginu? are-you (nom)

g.

höfum

fascinated by

the song

'Do you like the song?' Ég reikna auövitaö meö

aö [...]

I (nom) count

at

of-course

(Ste 1998: 148-149)

with

(Pjôôarsâlin 1996-1997)

Ί assume, of course, that [...]' Viö sjáum ekki handa skil, sagöi

(t>jó9arsálin 1996-1997) Jórunn [...]

we (nom)

Jórunn

see

not

hands

mark, said

' W e don't see anything, Jórunn said [...]'

(Sof 1995: 136-138)

Johanna

156 i.

Fäiö

J)iö [...] aöstoö

Barddal

viö garövinnuna?

receive you (nom) assistance

with the gardening

j.

'Do you get [...] any help with the gardening?' [...] aö t r e g d u l o g m á l i d kveöur á um

k.

'[...] that the law of inertia states about things which [...]' (Hug 1996: 108-109) P e s s i stigur er mikiö farinn.

that

this

1.

the law-of-inertia (nom) states

path (nom)

is

much

no

about

things which

gone

'This path is much used.' [...] er engin leiö is-there

on

(Í>jó0arsálin 1996-1997) hluti sem [...]

way (nom)

aö fá

J)aö aftur?

to

it

get

back

'[...] is there no way to get it back?' (Í»jó9arsálin 1996-1997) m . Hann var syndur á laugardegi k l u k k a n e i t t [ . . . ] he

was

shown

on

Saturday

clock (nom) one

'It was on the air on Saturday at one o'clock [...]'

(Í>jó9arsálin 1996-1997)

3.2. The accusative Accusative arguments can be assigned the thematic roles of Theme, Content, Experiencer, Cognizer, Beneficiary, Goal, Reason, Source, Comitative, Path, Location, Manner, Measure and Time: (19)

a.

b.

c.

Já

og

ef a9

{jú

kaupir fálkann [...]

yes

and

if

you

buy

when

party (acc)

Julius

worded with them

this

(Pjôôarsâlin 1996-1997)

'when Julius mentioned this party to them [...]' M i g langar bara aö vita [...] want

only

to

(Fai 1996: 192-193)

know

Ί only want to know [...]' Auk {jess undrar m i g [...] apart

e.

the falcon (acc)

veislu [...

I (acc)

d.

that

'Yes, and if you buy the falcon [...]' Pegar Julius oröaöi viö Jjau {»ssa

that

(Pjôôarsâlin 1996-1997)

wonder I (acc)

Apart from that I wonder [...]' L···] aö rikiö maetti nú styrkja |>á that

the state

might

well support

those (acc)

(Sat 1997: 97-98) sem [...] who

[...] that the state should support those that [...]' ...] sem aö viö höfum sent í keppnina. which that

we

have

sent

to

the competition (acc)

[...] which we have submitted to the competition.' Fá hann í v i n n u hér [...] get him

in

work (acc)

(Pjôôarsâlin 1996-1997)

(Pjóóarsálin 1996-1997)

here

'To get him to come here to work [...]'

(Pjôôarsâlin 1996-1997)

Morphological case, syntactic functions and thematic roles in Icelandic h.

[...] faer Siguröur skyrslu urn gets

Siguröur

report

fomleifafundinn

about

eftir

starfsbródur s i n n .

after

colleague (acc)

157

the archeological-findings

his

i.

'[...] Siguröur gets a report by a colleague on the archeological findings.' (¿Evi 1991: 209-211) [,..]en kom aftur meó {jjónustustúlku og [...]

j.

'[...] but he came back with a servant and [...]' [...] aö ég {jyrfti aö fara yfir götuna

k.

'[...] that I would have to cross the street in order to [...]' (Pjoöarsalin 1996-1997) Jú tiravi aö |)ú ert kominn á línuna pá geriröu faö.

but came

that

yes

1.

I

back

with

servant (acc)

needed to

since

you

go

are

across

come

(Byl 1996: 191-192) til J)ess[...]

the street (acc) to

on

he

is

white

in

which had

been

that

the line (acc) then do-you

'Yes, since you're on the line, you can do that.' [...] hann er hvítur á litinn [...]

that

(Pjoöarsälin 1996-1997)

colour (acc)

'[...] he is white [...]' m. [...] sem höföu veriö steyptar

η.

and

cast

Jjrjá metra

(Pjoôarsâlin 1996-1997) niöur í árbotninn [...]

three

down

meters (acc)

in

the river bottom

'[...] which had been cast at the bottom of the river three meters down [...]' (Fer 1998: 122-123) Paö er spurning ί hvaöa saeti viö lendum annaö kvöld. it

is

a question

in

which

place

we

land

tomorrow

'The question is where we land tomorrow night.'

night (acc)

(t>jôôarsàlin 1996-1997)

3.3. The dative The dative case can be found with arguments denoting Theme, Content, Station, Experiencer, Cognizer, Perceiver, Beneficiary, Goal, Reason, Source, Instrument, Manner, Location, Path, Measure and Time: (20)

a.

[,..]en súgurinn hlaut aö feykja manni but the wind

had

to

blow

útaf og [...]

man (dat)

off

and

b.

'[...] but the wind had to blow one off and [...]' [...] {jjàlfuô ί framgöngu o g v i n n u b r ö g ö u m

c.

'[...] trained in fascistic deportment and working methods [...]' (Múl 1996: 226-227) Par sem g j a l l m ö l i n n i hallaöi niöur aö ánni[...]

trained

where

in

deportment

gravel (dat)

and

slopes

(Fer 1998: 122-123) fasista[...]

working-methods (dat) fascists

down

'where the gravel slopes to the ri ver [... ] '

at

river

(Fer 1998: 122-123)

158

Johanna

d.

e.

Nú fer

mér

aö leiöast

svolitiö [.

now

I (dat)

to

little

begin

(Pjóóarsálin 1996-1997)

'I'm starting to get a little bored [...]' Heyriö, hvaö mér datt ί hug. hear-you,

f.

be-bored

what

I (dat)

fell

in

mind

(Sat 1997: 97-98)

'Listen, I got an idea.' A flatlendinu verôur

mér

starsynt

á

gröfu[...

on

I (dat)

staring

on

excavator

the

flat-land

becomes

'In the flat country I started staring at an excavator g. t>aö er ekki ö l l u n i gefiö. it

h.

i.

is

not

everyone (dat)

veggnum.

I

the wall (dat)

him

(Hei 1997:42-44)

given

'Not everyone can do that.' E g [ . . . ] keyri hann upp aö drive

Barddal

(Pjóóarsálin 1996-1997)

to

Ί [...] push him to the wall.' Hann var bullsveittur af á r e y n s l u n n i

(Eng 1995: 153-155) o g átinu [...]

he

and

was

real-sweaty

of

the exertion

the eating (dat)

'He was really sweaty from the exertion and the eating [... (Han 1997: 126-128) Fra

h o n u m lagöi indaela

fiskilykt.

from

him (dat)

fish-smell

lay

lovely

k.

'Nice smell of fish came from it.' [...] og ytti rösklega viö honum meö tryninu [...

1.

'[...] and pushed him forcefully with the nose [ [...] aö sitja meö okkur til borös.

and

to

pushed

sit

forcefully

with

with

us (dat)

him

to

with

the nose (dat)

(Isb 1992: 2-9)

table

'[...] to sit together with us at the table.' m. Pá kom mamma á haröaspretti til aö [, then

n.

stands

to

on

such

morning

(Peö 1995: 158-160)

rock (dat)

walk

1

along

(Pjoôarsâlin 1996-1997) Keflavikurveginum [...] the Keflavík road (dat)

early in the morning I walk along the road to Keflavík [...]' (Eng 1995: 153-155) Öm áundan og Gils tveimur Jjrepum á eftir. Örn

q·

on fast-run (dat)

'He is situated on a rock.' snemma morguns geng ég eftir [ early

Ρ·

mum

(Fai 1996:192-193)

'Then Mother came rushing in order to [...]' Hann stendur á svona bergi. he

o.

came

(Isb 1992: 2-9)

ahaed

and

Gils

two

steps (dat)

behind

'[...] Örn first and then Gils two steps behind.' aldrei á aevinni lent ί aö fá Ég hef have

never

on

life (dat)

landed

in

to

have

Ί have never in my life been received in such a way.'

(Vei 1994: 94-96) svona mottökur. such

reception

(Pjôôarsâlin 1996-1997)

Morphological

case,

syntactic

functions

and thematic

roles in

159

Icelandic

3.4. The genitive Genitives can have the thematic roles of Theme, Content, Goal, Reason, Source, Comitative, Location, Path, Manner, Measure and Time: (21)

a.

b.

c.

Lœknirinn

kom aö vitja J)eirra [...]

the doctor

came

to

visit

them (gen)

'The doctor saw to them [...]' Eg aetla aö vekja aöeins m à i s

á [...]

I

on

intend to

wake

just

(Byl 1996: 191-192)

speech (gen)

Ί just want to draw the attention to [...]' Heñir hann aldrei komiö til R e y k j a v i k u r [...] has

he

never

come

to

(Pjôôarsâlin 1996-1997)

Reykjavik (gen)

d.

'Has he never been to Reykjavik [...]' [...] í leit aö handritum og skjölum vegna

e.

'[...] looking for manuscripts and documents because of their own research.' (Árn 1998: 115-116) [...] en Jjessar rofmyndir má fyrst og fremst rekja til b e i t a r [...]

f.

'[...] but these patterns of erosion can primarily be traced to grazing [...]' (Rof 1997: 56-62) [...] og rökkriö var aö siga aö milli h ú s a n n a [...]

g.

'[...] and it was getting dark in the neighbourhood [...]' î>eir fóru á milli baendabyla í nágrenninu

(t>rö 1994: 46-49) og[...]

they

and

in

and

search

these

and

h.

erosion-pictures

the darkness

on

was

between

to

documents because

may first

sink

farms (gen)

with

you

to

in

and

own

research (gen)

foremost trace

between

to

grazing (gen)

the houses (gen)

the neighbourhood

whole-mindedly (gen)

Ί support you, wholeheartedly.' Ég er tólf ára. I

j.

went

manuscripts and

'They went from farm to farm in the neighbourhood and [...]' (Ràô 1992: 111-112) Stend meö ykkur, h e i l s h u g a r . stand

i.

at

(Pjódarsálin 1996-1997) eigin rannsókna.

am twelve

(Pjoöarsälin 1996-1997)

years (gen)

Ί am twelve years old.' [...] sem höföu dugaö j^eim ί that

had

lasted

them

in

(Pjóóarsálin 1996-1997) vetrarhörkunum og til v o r s . the winter hardness and

till

spring (gen)

'[...] that had been good enough for them during the hard winter until spring time.' (Yin 1997: 36-38)

3.5. Summary A schematic overview of the distribution of morphological case across thematic roles is given in the following table:

160 Nom Acc Dat Agent X Cause X χ χ χ Theme Content χ χ χ χ Station χ Experiencer χ χ χ Cognizer χ χ χ Perceiver χ χ Beneficiary χ χ χ Goal χ χ Reason χ χ Source χ Instrument χ Comitative χ χ Path χ χ χ Location χ χ Time χ χ χ Manner χ χ χ Measure χ χ Table 2: Distribution of morphological case across thematic roles

Johanna

Barddal

Gen

χ χ

χ χ χ χ χ χ χ χ χ

The tendencies are clear. Datives have the widest range of thematic functions, i.e. 17, followed by accusatives which exhibit 14 functions. Nominatives have 13 thematic functions, while genitives have the narrowest range of thematic functions, i.e. only 11. Examining the different thematic roles, it is clear that the Agent, the Cause and the Instrument are the only thematic roles which are consistently encoded with a single morphological case, i.e. nominative and dative, respectively. The widest thematic functions are the Theme and the Content, encoded with all the morphological cases, followed by Source, Path, Time and Manner, also encoded with all four morphological cases. The thematic roles of the Experiencer, Cognizer and Beneficiary are more narrowly distributed among the morphological cases with three cases encoding them, i.e. nominative, accusative and dative. The same holds for the Goal, Reason, Comitative, Location and Measure, which are also more narrowly distributed across morphological case since three cases, i.e. accusative, dative and genitive are employed to encode them. The Station and the Perceiver are encoded only by the nominative and the dative. To sum up, there is not a one-to-one relation between morphological case and thematic roles, even though Instruments are always encoded as dative and Agents and Causes are always encoded as nominative. The nominative, on the other hand, is certainly used to encode a much broader range of thematic roles than only the Agent and the Cause. The same holds for the dative.

Morphological case, syntactic functions and thematic roles in Icelandic

161

4. Preliminary remarks on the corpus of the investigation

In section 4.1 below, I first give an overview of how I compiled my corpus of Modern Icelandic texts, i.e. which genres are represented and how the texts were chosen. In section 4.2, I report on how the material was computerized and tagged, and which linguistic variables were used.

4.1. The corpus Count frequencies of morphological case were carried out in a study of word frequency in Icelandic (see íslensk Ordtídnibók 1991), done by Oröabok Háskólans (The Institute of Lexicography at the University of Iceland). The grammatical categories tagged for case were nouns, pronouns, adjectives and numerals. In order to be able to compare the results of my study with this previous study, my corpus was compiled according to the same principles as applied in 1991. Since my corpus is very small, only 40,000 words, while the 1991 corpus contained 500,000 words, it was important that they be comparable. If the proportional figures for the distribution of the morphological cases are the same in both studies, then one can assume that the general results of my study should hold, irrespective of the size of the corpus. The text material of the 1991 frequency study was divided into the following five genres: (22)

1. Icelandic fiction 2. Translated fiction 3. Biographies and memoirs 4. Nonfiction 5. Teenage and children's literature

Each genre consisted of twenty texts, with samples of 5,000 words from each text. All the texts were published during the 1980s, and no author (or translator) was represented more than once. The sample was a convenience sample. My corpus consisted of the same five genres (for a complete list I refer the reader to the references in Barödal 2001b), all typical of the written language, and in addition it included a corpus of spoken Icelandic (see also Barödal 2001b). Each genre was represented by ten titles, with a passage of 500 words, randomly selected from each text, a total of 50 passages containing 25,000 words. The spoken material consisted of interactive radio programs, where listeners were encouraged to phone in and state their opinions on topics under discussion. My corpus of spoken Icelandic contained the first 15,000 words of the recorded material, hence the total sum for both the written and the spoken language was 40,000 words. The sample was a convenience sample. The texts of the written genres were collected from my own home library, Stadsbiblioteket i Lund (Lund City Library), and the private libraries of friends and fellow Icelanders in Lund. Only titles first published in 1990 and later were included. The genre Teenage and children's literature was evenly divided between Icelandic and translated material, as in the 1991 study, and the genre Nonfiction was evenly divided between

162

Johanna

Barddal

the humanities and the natural sciences, as was also the case in the 1991 study. Since s o m e of the non-fiction titles I used were multidisciplinary I chose to categorize them according to the profession of the author. W h e n c o u n t i n g the w o r d s in the excerpted material, the limit of 5 0 0 w o r d s w a s not reached after a precise count of 500 lexical units: some authors write two words as one, for instance parsem ( ' w h e r e ' , ' s i n c e ' ) in one of the biographic texts, while others write it as t w o words. I have chosen to count words in accordance with each author's orthography, so that for instance parsem is counted as one word in that particular text but as two in other texts where it is written parsem. All parenthetical references and all quotes f r o m other texts were excluded. All abbreviations were counted as single words. F r o m the corpus of spoken Icelandic, the first 15,000 words were selected. Everything complicating the word count was removed, for instance various signs which had been put in during an earlier transcription of the corpus, such as colons in the middle of words, indications of turntaking signalled with the initials of the people talking (which thus d o not qualify as words), and so on. All hesitations (eh, uh, uhm), interjections and half w o r d s were r e m o v e d . Fillers, such as sko, hérna, parna,já and ha ( ' s o r t of, w e l l ' ) were kept in the text since they qualify as whole words. Also, very often content words are used as fillers, and since I wanted to refrain f r o m deciding when a content word was used as a filler, and when not, all fillers were maintained. T h e spoken language differs f r o m the written language in that utterances, or parts of utterances, are often repeated, or - in the middle of an utterance - the speaker r e f o r m u l a t e s w h a t s/he is going to say, resulting in the corpus of spoken language not being as structured grammatically as a corpus of written language. This m e a n s that a corpus of spoken language will have a more verbal character, and consequently it will not have as high a frequency of nomináis per word as a corpus of written language.

4.2. T h e tagging of the texts I tagged the corpus for morphological case, marking nouns, adjectives and personal pronouns for word category. I also tagged for syntactic functions, thematic roles and genre. It is possible to carry out a f r e q u e n c y study of morphological case on t w o levels: the word level and the phrase level. A study on the phrase level will allow us to search for covariation of variables and possible frequency relations between morphological case and syntactic f u n c t i o n s or thematic roles. That was my primary goal here. However, I also wanted to c o m p a r e my study with the 1991 frequency study, and thus I tagged my material for word category. Due to space limitations I only tagged nouns, adjectives and personal pronouns. T h e tagging of the texts was done in the statistical program S P S S 6.1, with one lexical word per line, i.e. with the text in the first column and the following six variables in each s u b s e q u e n t c o l u m n : the variable Word category has three values, i.e. noun, adjective and (personal) pronoun; the variable Morphological case has four values, i.e. nominative, accusative, dative and genitive; the variable Syntactic function has 11 values, i.e. subject, p r e d i c a t i v e c o m p l e m e n t , direct object, indirect object, object of preposition, adverbial,

Morphological case, syntactic functions and thematic roles in Icelandic

163

(nominal) attribute, apposition, special object, αί-predicative and sentence external phrase. 3 The variable Thematic role has 19 values, i.e. Agent, Cause, Content, Theme, Station, Experiencer, Cognizer, Perceiver, Beneficiary, Instrument, Comitative, Goal, Reason, Source, Measure, Manner, Time, Location and Path. The variable Text has 51 values, as the number of written texts is 50, i.e. 51 together with the spoken Icelandic material. Finally, the variable Genre has six values, i.e. five different genres of written Icelandic and one of spoken Icelandic. This is summarized below: (23)

Var. 1 Word category: noun, adjective, pronoun. Var. 2 Morphological case: nominative, accusative, dative, genitive. Var. 3 Syntactic functions: subject, predicative, direct object, indirect object, object of preposition, adverbial, (nominal) attribute, apposition, special object, αί-predicative and sentence external phrase. Var. 4 Thematic Roles: Agent, Cause, Content, Theme, Station, Experiencer, Cognizer, Perceiver, Beneficiary, Instrument, Comitative, Goal, Reason, Source, Measure, Manner, Time, Location, and Path. Var. 5 Text: 51. Var. 6 Genre: Icelandic fiction, Translated fiction, Biographies and memoirs, Nonfiction, Teenage and children's literature, constituting the corpus of Written Icelandic; Spoken Icelandic.

With regard to the analysis of case forms, whenever a form was ambiguous between two case forms the substitution method was used to disambiguate the form; i.e. the word was replaced with a word from another declension which does not have identical forms for the two relevant cases.

5. A F r e q u e n c y c o m p a r i s o n between this study and the 1991 study

In order to establish whether the figures obtained from my small corpus could be regarded as valid for Icelandic I compared them with the figures from the 1991 study ( I s l e n s k ordtídnibók). In the 1991 study, nouns, personal pronouns and adjectives, among other categories, were tagged for case. For reasons of space, only the results for nouns are presented in the following table, together with the results of my own study. In Table 3, the 1991 study is shown to the left and my study (2001) to the right.

3

Although the sentence external phrases do not constitute a single syntactic function per se, they are treated as a separate group in my analysis.

164 Genre 1 Icelandic fiction

Johanna

Case Nom Acc Dat Gen

Σ 2 Translated fiction

Nom Acc Dat Gen

Σ 3 Biographies and memoirs

4 Nonfiction

Nom Acc Dat Gen

Σ Nom Acc Dat Gen

Σ 5 Children's literature

Nom Acc Dat Gen

Σ Total

Nom Acc Dat Gen

Σ

1991 f 6,459 6,859 6,632 1,682

2001

% 29.9 31.7 30.7 7.8

21,632 7,050 6,323 6,196 1,983

32.7 29.3 28.7 9.2

30.1 26.8 29.8 13.3

28.3 23.3 29.0 19.3

122,623

330 311 303 74

32.4 30.5 29.8 7.3

381 394 467 209

26.2 27.2 32.2 14.4

477 306 476 261

31.4 20.1 31.3 17.2

1,520 36.8 30.8 26.4 6.0

20,735 38,249 34,211 35,553 14,610

28.5 35.9 28.5 7.1

1,451

31,259 7,633 6,394 5,468 1,240

%

1,018

27,445 8,856 7,280 9,076 6,047

f 326 411 327 81 1,145

21,552 8,251 7,355 8,181 3,659

Barddal

420 311 257 44

40.7 30.1 24.9 4.3

1,032 31.2 27.9 29.0 11.9

1.934 1.733 1.830 669 6,166

Table 3: Frequencies of morphological case, nouns and genres, 1991 and 2001

31.4 28.1 29.4 10.8

Morphological

case, syntactic functions

and thematic

roles in

Icelandic

165

The total figures in Table 3, showing the percentage frequencies of morphological case of nouns, are almost identical for all genres. The maximal difference between the genitives is 1.1% (10.8 vs. 11.9%), and the minimal difference between the accusatives is 0.2% (27.9 vs. 28.1%). The rates of the morphological cases distributed across the genres show the same results in the two investigations, only with more variance. The smallest difference is 0.3% in the case of nominatives in genre 2 Translated fiction. The greatest difference is 4.2% in the case of accusatives in genre 1 Icelandic fiction. There are some comments to make on the data in Table 3. Most differences in the frequencies between the cases in the 1991 study are also visible in my corpus. Starting with genre 1 Icelandic fiction, the accusative is more frequent than the nominative in both studies. Conversely, in genre 2 Translated fiction, 4 Nonfiction and 5 Teenage and children's literature, the nominative is always slightly more frequent than the accusative. Otherwise nominative, accusative and dative range from being approximately 26% to being around 31%, with some variance. One exception to this is 35.9% accusatives in genre 1 Icelandic fiction. Likewise, the frequency of the accusative in genre 4 Nonfiction is 20.1%, or 3.2% lower than in the 1991 study. The nominative in genre 5 Teenage and children's literature is 40.7%, i.e. 3.9% higher than the nominative in the 1991 study. Finally, the frequency of the dative in genre 5 Teenage and children's literature is only 24.9%, compared to 26.4% in 1991. However, even though the percentage differences vary more when we consider the respective genres than when measuring the totality of the rates presented in the last column in Table 3, the tendencies remain the same. By that I mean that if a nominative rates highest within a genre, it does so in both studies, if a genitive rates lowest, it does so in both studies, etc. The distribution of the genitive is also noteworthy. In genre 1 Icelandic fiction it is 7.8 vs. 7.1%, in genre 2 Translated fiction it is 9.2 vs. 7.2%. However, in genre 3 Biographies and memoirs it rates much higher, 13.3 vs. 14.4%, and in genre 4 Nonfiction it rates still higher (19.3 vs. 17.2%). Finally, in genre 5 Teenage and children's literature, it is much lower (6.0 vs. 4.3%). This might indicate that verbs selecting genitive objects, or more likely, that genitive attributes are used more often in the non-fictional literature (Biographies and Nonfiction) than in the fictional literature (Icelandic fiction, Translated fiction and Teenage and children's literature), and that within the nonfiction literature, Biographies contain fewer genitive attributes than the Nonfiction. The frequencies of nominatives are approximately the same as the frequencies of accusatives and datives, apart from genre 5 Teenage and children's literature. Here the number of nominatives is higher than in the other genres, i.e. 36.8 vs. 40.7%, while nominatives range from 26.2% in genre 3 Biographies and memoirs in this study to 32.7% in genre 2 Translated fiction in the 1991 study. To sum up so far, a comparison of the total frequencies of case marking on nouns across the two corpora indicates that my corpus containing only 25,000 words (5% of the size of the comparison material) can be considered as highly representative of the five genres in spite of its smallness. Comparing the frequencies of case forms of nouns in Icelandic with similar figures from other languages, it turns out that Icelandic differs from them. Greenberg (1966: 38) provides statistics from Sanskrit, Latin and Russian in a comparative study on the frequencies of direct (nominative and accusative) and oblique cases (dative, genitive and others). Svavarsdóttir (1993: 52) points out that the direct cases, in Icelandic, are somewhat less common

166

Johanna

Barddal

than in Greenberg's material, but nevertheless, in Icelandic they are more c o m m o n than the oblique cases: Sample size Sanskrit Latin Russian

93,277 8,343 6,194 122,623

Icelandic

Direct

Oblique

72.5% 68.7% 65.2% 59.1%

27.5% 31.3% 34.8% 40.1%

Table 4: A comparison of frequencies of direct and oblique case forms A s w e have seen f r o m Table 3 above, the frequency of the dative is high in the corpora, and this might be a reason for the high frequency of oblique case f o r m s in Icelandic.

6. Frequencies of morphological case, syntactic functions and thematic roles

6.1. Morphological case and syntactic functions B e f o r e presenting my analysis and conclusions, I would like to m a k e s o m e c o m m e n t s on the inventory of syntactic functions applied in this paper. I distinguish b e t w e e n 11 f u n c tions, as discussed above (see (23)). T h e function special object has been introduced to capture a certain kind of object which occurs in its ' l e x i c o n ' f o r m (i.e. nominative), but which is still, strictly speaking, an object: (24)

Tökum

bara

hugtakiö

kraftur

take

just

the concept

force (nom) which is

sem

er[...]

'Let's just take the concept 'force' as [ . . . ] '

(Hug 1996: 108-109)

T h e s e constituents are often objects of verbs with the meaning say, shout and so on. Sometimes they can also be analyzed as appositions or in s o m e cases even as sentence external phrases. T h e function αί-predicatives includes predicatives with the comparative particle sem 'as' and eins og ' l i k e ' . T h e s e predicatives inherit the same case f o r m as their correlates in the matrix clause and can therefore occur in all morphological cases: (25)

a.

Ràniô[...]

var

aöeins haegt

aö skilja

sem

sviviröilega

robbery (acc)

was

only

to

as

a horrible

possible

understand

hefndarrádstofun [...] revenge (acc)

'The robbery [...] could only be understood as a horrible revenge [ . . . ] ' (Fra 1997: 15-17)

Morphological b.

case, syntactic functions and thematic roles in Icelandic

Á

heilsuhaelinu

var

Hálfdáni

at

the sanitary

was

Hálfdán (dat) received

sjúklingi

tekiö

eins og as

167

lang^rádum a much longed-for

[...]

patient (dat)

'Hálfdán was welcomed as an eagerly awaited patient [ . . . ] '

(Han 1997: 126-128)

Subjects cliticized on verbs are always tagged as subjects and nominatives. They are therefore included in this study. Cliticized subjects are c o m m o n in imperatives (26a) and questions (26b) in Icelandic: (26)

a.

En

segöu

mér[...]

but

tell-you

me

'But tell me [ . . . ] ' b.

( f j ó a a r s á l i n 1996-1997)

Hvert

varstu

aö fara?

where

were-you

to

go

' W h e r e were you going?'

(Pjóóarsálin 1996-1997)

T h e r e is o n e exception to cliticized subjects being tagged as subjects and n o m i n a t i v e s , namely the c o m p l e x heyrdu, which literally means 'listen y o u ' . This expression is used as a filler and it is very c o m m o n in spoken Icelandic. Therefore I have not treated it as having any internal structure, and it is excluded f r o m my analysis. Finally, I w o u l d like to mention that conjoined syntactic elements are not counted in m y study, since that would indicate double counting of syntactic functions. This m e a n s that a subject c o n t a i n i n g two nomináis, c o n j o i n e d with for instance og ' a n d ' , is only c o u n t e d once. This holds for the phrasal level but not for the sentence level. T h e distribution of morphological case across syntactic functions is shown in the following table, for all the genres investigated: Nominative Subject Direct object

4,351 110

Indirect Object Object of preposition Attribute Adverbial Predicative Ai-predicative Sentence external phrase Apposition Special object

Accusative 49 1,268 5 1,369

3 846 52 248 127 25

Dative

Genitive

221 478

9 38

74

158

2,185 16 37

17 12 11 21

5 8 11 31

306 417 56 1 2 14

Table 5: Distribution of morphological case across syntactic functions T h e m a i n conclusions which can be d r a w n f r o m the figures presented in Table 5 (with regard to the syntactic f u n c t i o n s traditionally associated with o n e particular case) are summarized in (27):

168 (27)

Johanna

I.

Barödal

a. b. c. d. e. f. g.

The The The The The The The

subject is most frequently a nominative. direct object is most frequently an accusative. indirect object is most frequently a dative. object of a preposition is most frequently a dative. nominal attribute is most frequently a genitive. adverbial is most frequently an accusative. predicative is most frequently a nominative.

II. a. b. c. d.

The The The The

nominative is most often a subject. accusative is most often a direct object or the object of a preposition. dative is most often the object of a preposition. genitive is most often an attribute.

These conclusions are in accordance with our expectations and our knowledge about Modern Icelandic. However, some facts are worthy of further comment: it is interesting that dative direct objects represent 25.2% of the direct object tokens in Icelandic, and also that datives are 56.6% of the objects of prepositions (see the real figures in Table 5 above). The other way round, looking at all dative tokens, it turns out that objects of prepositions represent 71.2% of all datives. The figures for dative objects (as compared to all object tokens), i.e. 25.2%, are extremely high in the light of generative theories which assume that the dative is 'lexical' or 'idiosyncratic'. Another fact worth noticing is that nominative objects are more common than genitive objects. This is definitely not to be expected, considering the fact that traditional grammar assumes that the nominative is the case for subjects, and the accusative, dative and genitive are the cases for objects. My frequency figures show that the nominative is definitely not a 'lesser' object case than the genitive is. Moreover, this is a consequence of a purely syntactic definition of subjects and objects, where preverbal subject-like accusatives, datives and genitives behave syntactically as nominative subjects, and postverbal object-like nominatives behave syntactically as accusative, dative and genitive objects (see references in section 1 above). As to the last four syntactic functions presented in Table 5, as-predicatives occur most often in the nominative, but also in other case forms. Most extra-sentential phrases are nominatives, which is not surprising, given the fact that the category includes, for instance, vocatives and proper names, which often occur outside the proper clause. Appositions are more often nominatives than any other case, and special objects are only nominatives, and not surprisingly so, since they are the so-called 'dictionary' forms. Consider the following two tables, Table 6 with total figures of all the written genres and Table 7 with the figures of the corpus of spoken Icelandic:

Morphological

case, syntactic functions

and thematic

roles in

Icelandic

169

Nominative Accusative Dative Genitive Subject 2,634 32 111 9 Direct object 37 809 300 28 Indirect Object 5 49 Attribute 13 378 Object of preposition 1000 1,612 247 Adverbial 1 94 34 31 Predicative 1 485 15 5 Ai-predicative 40 10 6 3 Sentence external phrase 71 3 1 Apposition 14 14 93 26 Special object 21 Table 6: Distribution of morphological case across syntactic functions in the written genres Genitive Accusative Dative Nominative 17 110 Subject 1,715 178 10 Direct object 459 73 25 Indirect object 39 3 Attribute 573 59 Object of preposition 369 22 64 6 2 Adverbial 2 Predicative 360 2 2 As-predicative 12 10 177 8 Sentence external phrase 5 34 7 Apposition Special object 3 Table 7: Distribution of morphological case across syntactic functions in the spoken genre I remind the reader that the written language corpus (Table 6) consists of 25,000 words against the spoken language's 15,000 words (Table 7). The main difference between the two corpora is that oblique subjects, especially dative subjects, are more common in the spoken language than in the written genres. This might be due to the fact that the corpus of spoken Icelandic is based on radio programs where the audience is encouraged to phone in and express opinions on matters under discussion. Since many verbs which select dative subjects are verbs expressing feelings and opinions, it is expected that they are frequent in such radio programs. On the other hand, it may also be the case that the spoken language is more 'subjective' than the written genres, and therefore verbs selecting oblique subjects rate higher in the spoken varieties, while the written genres are more 'objective', yielding lower rates for verbs expressing feelings and opinions. Compare now the percentage rates of subjects and their morphological case in the written genres to the figures from the spoken language corpus:

170

Johanna

Written Icelandic f 2,634 32 111 9 2,786

Nom Acc Dat Gen Total

Spoken Icelandic

Barödal

Total

%

f

%

f

%

94.5 1.2 4.0 0.3 100.0

1,715 17 110

93.1 0.9 6.0

1,842

100.0

4,349 49 221 9 4,628

93.9 1.2 4.7 0.2 100.0

Table 8: Percentages of subjects in different case forms It is amazing that the correlation between the function of subject and morphological case is so similar in written and spoken language (see Table 8). Nominative subjects rate between 93.1 and 94.5% in both varieties. Notice that the number of accusative subjects is proportionally higher in the written genres, while the number of dative subjects is proportionally higher in the spoken language. This might be due to the fact that accusative subjects, more often than dative subjects, encode non-human entities, typical of 'objective' verbs not referring to feelings and opinions, as in the sentences ána (acc) lag di 'the river froze' and daginn (acc) lengir 'the day becomes longer'. Such sentences are probably more common in written Icelandic than in the spoken language. I now proceed to the proportional figures for direct objects: Written Icelandic f Nom Acc Dat Gen Total

37 809 300 28 1,174

% 3.1 68.9 25.6 2.4 100.0

Spoken Icelandic f 73 459 178 10 720

% 10.2 63.7 24.7 1.4 100.0

Total f

%

110 1,268 478 38 1,894

5.8 67.0 25.2 2.0 100.0

Table 9: Percentages of direct objects in different case forms As is evident from Table 9, the majority of direct objects (i.e. 67%) are in the accusative case. The datives' share is, however, substantial, i.e. around 25%. Genitive objects are few (2%), while the frequency of nominative objects varies. They are more common in the spoken corpus than in the written corpora, and the difference is quite large, 3.1 vs. 10.2%. Since nominative objects only occur with verbs which have a dative subject, and dative subjects rate lower in the written genres than in the spoken material, we would also expect nominative objects to rate higher in the spoken corpus. It is further interesting, as already stated above, that nominative objects are more common than genitive objects, which is unexpected given the assumptions of traditional grammar. To sum up so far, the tables for the frequencies of morphological case across syntactic functions have shown the following tendencies: (28)

a. b. c.

An overwhelming majority of subjects are encoded with nominative case. Subjects and predicatives are responsible for almost all nominatives. Oblique subjects are low-frequency constructions, with similar frequency in the different genres.

Morphological

d. e. f. g.

case, syntactic

functions

and thematic

roles in

Icelandic

171

A clear majority of indirect object tokens are in the dative case. T w o thirds of the direct object tokens are accusatives, and approximately one fourth is in the dative. Almost all nominal attributes are genitives, and approximately half of the genitives are attributes. Most adverbials are accusatives.

6.2. Morphological case, thematic roles and syntactic functions 6.2.1. The inventory of thematic roles I start by listing the thematic roles used in this research: (29)

a.

Agent: the person that initiates or volitionally performs the action expressed by the predicate. b. Cause: the thing or force which causes an effect on an affected entity. c. Theme: the person or thing undergoing or moved by the event expressed by the predicate. d. Station: the person or thing located somewhere in space or time. e. Experiencer: the person who experiences the psychological effect expressed by the predicate. f. Perceiver: the person who perceives the effect expressed by the predicate. g. Cognizer: the person who has the cognitive skills denoted by the predicate. h. B e n e f i c i a r y / R e c i p i e n t : the entity that benefits from the event expressed by the predicate. i. C o n t e n t : the entity that has attention directed towards it, or is the content of the predicate. j. Goal: the entity towards which the event expressed by the predicate is directed, k. S o u r c e : the entity from which something is moved/moves as a result of the event expressed by the predicate. 1. Instrument: the entity used to perform the event expressed by the predicate, m . Path: the path something moves on during the event expressed by the predicate, n. Location: the place in which the event expressed by the predicate is situated, o. Time: the entity denoting time of reference. p. M a n n e r : the entity denoting the manner in which the event expressed by the predicate is carried out. q. M e a s u r e : the entity denoting a measurement, which is a part of the event expressed by the verb, r. Reason: the purpose given for the event denoted by the predicate, s. Comitative: the entity being together with another entity participating in the event expressed by the predicate.

This inventory of thematic roles deserves some comments. Consider first the syntactic distribution of thematic roles. The role Beneficiary can be realized as a subject (30a) or an indirect object (30b):

Johanna

172 (30)

a. b.

Barddal

She got the book. (Subj) I sent her the book. (IObj)

Distributional variation is also found for Themes which can be realized as direct objects (31a), subjects (31b) and objects of prepositions (31c): (31)

a. b. c.

I borrowed a book. (DObj) The book fell on the floor. (Subj) I wrote in the book. (Obj of prep)

Distributional facts also show that thematic roles cannot be considered labels for argument slots or structural positions. There is neither a one-to-one relation between syntactic functions and thematic roles nor between thematic roles and structural positions. Instead, it has to be assumed that the roles originate in the meaning of the predicate. Most current theories view them, not as semantic primitives, but as derived from the basic meaning of the verb or the predicate. That is, they are seen as the direct result of the event denoted by the predicate (Croft 1998, Arad 1998, Barödal 2001a). A more abstract position is taken in recent approaches of Construction Grammar, for instance in Goldberg (1995), where argument structure constructions are assumed to be generalizations over the verbs that occur in them. This means that constructions are assumed to exist on the basis of semantically defined groups of verbs, with the consequence that the same structure can be utilized for many groups of verbs and, thereby, be a part of many constructions. Compare also the following two inchoative constructions in Icelandic (see further Barödal 2001c): (32)

a.

b.

Hann

byrjaöi aö tala,

he

began

to

talk

'He began to talk.' Hann tók til viö aö tala, he

took

to

with

to

talk

'He began to talk.' (33)

a.

b.

Glasiö

byrjaöi aö brotna.

the glass

began

to

break

'The glass began to break.' *Glasiö tók til viö aö brotna. the glass

took

to

with

to

break

The Icelandic inchoative auxiliary byrja 'begin' is a subject-to-subject-raising verb, with an open subject slot, selecting all kinds of main verbs, while taka til vid ad 'begin' is a control verb only selecting agentive main verbs. The result is that the inchoative byrja does

Morphological case, syntactic functions and thematic roles in Icelandic

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not assign a thematic role to its subject, while the inchoative taka til vid ad does so, namely the role of Agent. Moreover, following Croft (1998) I use the the causal/aspectual structure of a sentence as the main indicator of the thematic roles of the arguments. This can be illustrated as in the following: (34)

a. b. c. d.

I bought a book. Agent Theme He danced. Agent He fell. Theme The book is on the table. Station

Transitive

Construction

Intransitive

Construction

Intransitive

Construction

Predicate

Construction

The subject of the verb buy in (34a) is an Agent as it transmits force onto another entity, which again is affected in some way, and is thus a Theme. In (34b) the subject acts, even though it does not act upon another entity, hence it is also an Agent. In (34c) the subject is affected and is therefore categorized as a Theme. For subjects of the Predicate Construction, which are inherently stative as in (34a), I will use the label Station. This is valid for verbs like be, have, own, sit, stand and so on. I distinguish between Agent and Cause to capture the difference between the subject of verbs in ordinary transitive clauses and the (non-human) subject of "affecting predicates": (35)

a.

Eg

keypti bókina.

I (nom) bought

b.

Bókin

the book (acc)

truflaöi mig.

the book (nom) bothered

c.

me (acc)

Snjórinn

braeddi

isinn.

the snow (nom)

melted

the ice (acc)

The roles of Goal, Source, Path and Location are assigned on the basis of the meaning of the predicate and the meaning of the preposition. This is illustrated in the following examples: (36)

a. b. c. d. e.

Hann er i Reykjavik. 'He is in Reykjavik.' Hann er frá Reykjavik. 'He is from Reykjavik.' Hann kom frá Reykjavik 'He came from Reykjavik.' Hann fer til Reykjavíkur. 'He goes to/leaves for Reykjavik.' Hann fór i gegnum Reykjavik. 'He went through Reykjavik.'

Location Source Source Goal Path

174

Johanna Barödal

Notice further that I define the thematic role Experiencer more narrowly than Maling (1999) and Jónsson (1999). Maling (1999) gives the following examples (adapted from Barödal 1993) as minimal pairs of verbs assigning either the accusative or the dative case to their objects: Hún J)urrkar barninu. she

dries

the child (dat)

'She dries the child (with a towel). Hún Jjurrkar handklaeöiö. she

dries

the towel (acc)

'She dries the towel.' (38)

a.

b.

Hún

greiöir

barninu.

she

combs

the child (dat)

'She combs the child.' Hún greiöir hàriô she

combs

á

the hair (acc) on

sér. herself

'She combs her hair.' Maling assumes that human dative objects (as in (37a) and (38a)) are Experiencers, while the non-human accusative objects are Themes ((37b) and (38b)). In this study I define Experiencers as the thematic roles of arguments of verbs which express feelings, and not as the thematic roles of arguments capable of having feelings, as is the implicit assumption of both Maling (1999) and Jónsson (1999). These scholars seem to classify every animate object as an Experiencer, i.e. an argument with the features [+human] and [+dative]. In fact, the assumption that dative subjects are always Experiencers (or Goals in passive sentences) has given rise to a new definition of case assignment in Icelandic, called 'thematic case assignment' (see Zaenen/Maling/Thráinsson 1985). For psych-verbs I distinguish between "emotive verbs", "cognition verbs" and "perception verbs". This is done in order to investigate to what extent there is a correlation between dative subjects and psych-verbs. I confine the label Experiencer to emotive verbs, while using labels as Perceiver for perception verbs and Cognizer for cognition verbs. (39)

a.

b. c.

d.

Verbs with Experiencer subjects: gledjast 'be happy', hrœdast 'be scared', verda fyrir vonbrigdum 'become disappointed', vera gladur 'be happy', vilja 'will', Jburfa 'need', óska e-s 'wish for sth', etc. Verbs with Perceiver subjects: heyra 'hear', sjá 'see', birtast 'appear', lykta 'smell' etc. Verbs with Cognizer subjects: halda 'think', muna 'remember', hugsa 'think', skilja 'understand', skynja 'sense', vita 'know', kunna 'know how to', vera sammála 'agree', meina 'have an opinion', virda 'respect', lœra 'learn', skoda 'look at', œtla 'intend'. Verbs with Agent subjects: J?akka 'thank', lesa 'read', segja 'say', try Ila 'drive fast', jpjóta 'rush', rökstydja 'argue', benda 'point out', gera 'do', vinna 'win'.

Morphological

case, syntactic

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and thematic

roles in

175

Icelandic

Note further that I use the label Content to include the objects, or prepositional objects of psych-verbs, such as be happy about something, etc. I do this because they are, strictly speaking, not affected, which is the defining criteria for Themes. Also, the label Content is used for objects of "verbs of having and owning". In that sense, Content is similar to a cognate object of a verb. The boundaries between the different classes can be fuzzy, and even vary for individual verbs. I believe, however, that there is a consensus on the most prototypical examples of these categories, while other examples may perhaps be considered as more peripheral, and thereby as belonging to two classes. This is the case, for instance, with virda 'respect' in (39c) above, which by some might be considered more of a cognition verb than an agentive verb. These differences in categorization judgements can, of course, result in statistical differences. Future investigations will have to bear this in mind.

6.2.2. Morphological case and thematic roles I will now consider the distribution of morphological case across thematic roles. The frequencies for all the text material are found in Table 10 below: Nom

Acc

Dat

Agent 1,406 Cause 35 Theme 232 428 201 Content 265 1,380 561 Station 1,679 8 Experiencer 134 230 38 Cognizer 404 3 27 Perceiver 109 5 Beneficiary 46 33 216 Goal 178 48 Reason 12 12 Source 12 177 3 Instrument 49 Comitative 41 7 Location 827 169 Path 41 118 Manner 172 33 6 Measure 5 150 Time 10 290 Table 10: Distribution of morphological case across thematic roles The following facts can be extracted from the figures in Table 10: (40)

I.

a. b. c.

The Agent/Cause is always nominative. The Theme is most frequently accusative. The Content is most frequently accusative.

Gen

4 95

82 18

2 54 11 23 13 8

176

Johanna

d. e. f.

P· q· r.

The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The

Station is most frequently nominative. Experiencer is most frequently nominative. Cognizer is most frequently nominative. Perceiver is most frequently nominative. Beneficiary is most frequently dative. Goal is most frequently accusative. Reason is most frequently genitive. Source is most frequently dative. Instrument is always dative. Comitative is most frequently dative. Location is most frequently dative. Path is most frequently accusative. Manner is most frequently dative. Measure is most frequently genitive. Time is most frequently accusative.

II. a. b. c. d.

The The The The

most most most most

g· h. i. j· k. 1. m. n. 0.

Barödal

frequent nominative is a Station. frequent accusative is a Content. frequent dative is a Location. frequent genitive is a Content.

There are certain figures which immediately attract one's attention in Table 10. First, the Agent and the Cause are always nominative. However, the most frequent nominative is certainly not an Agent but a Station. This means that most subjects are subjects of stative predicates. Furthermore, the Content is the most common role expressed by the accusative, much more common than Themes. Taken together, most Agents, Experiencers, Cognizers and Perceivers are nominative. The reason for this may be that they are more often subjects than for instance direct objects or prepositional objects. Most Beneficiaries, on the other hand, are dative, perhaps in part because almost all indirect objects are both Beneficiaries and datives, and partly because object Beneficiaries are often datives. Dative is also the most frequent case for Comitatives, Sources, Locations, and Manners, and is the only case for Instruments. Dative for Instruments is thereby the third example of a 100% correlation between a thematic role and a morphological case. Goals, Paths and Times are in the majority of cases accusative. The Reason, however, is most often in the genitive case, presumably as a result of the fact that it is often expressed together with the preposition til 'to' which governs the genitive. These figures clearly show a tendency for certain thematic roles to correlate with certain morphological cases, either absolutely, as is the case with Agents, Cause and Instruments, or highly, as is the case with Stations, Contents, Cognizers, Perceivers, Beneficiaries, Comitatives, Goals, Locations, Paths, Manners and Times. Two thematic roles are distributed relatively evenly between two or more morphological cases, namely Themes between nominative, accusative and dative, and Experiencers between nominative and dative. The relevant question to ask now is whether there is a direct causal connection between morphological case and thematic roles, or whether the correlations observed are consequences of the fact that certain morphological cases correlate with syntactic functions, which also correlate with thematic roles. The other possibility is that thematic roles correlate with syntactic functions, and that case correlates with thematic roles, so that it appears

Morphological

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Icelandic

as if morphological case correlates with syntactic functions. However, I cannot properly answer this question on the basis of the data presented here. I will return to the issue in section 6.2.3 and 6.2.4 below.

6.2.3. Syntactic functions and thematic roles I will now examine the distribution of thematic roles across syntactic functions, as summarized in the following table: Subject DObject IObject Obj. of prep. Agent 1,406 5 1 Cause 35 Theme 250 489 11 115 Content 188 4 899 1,210 Station 1,687 Experiencer 402 Cognizer 433 1 Perceiver 114 42 Beneficiary 59 132 62 Goal 308 Reason 41 Source 189 3 Instrument 30 1 18 50 Comitative 1,024 Location 1 153 Path 3 216 Manner 4 Measure 276 2 Time 7 Table 11 : Distribution of thematic roles across syntactic functions The following statements can be formulated on the basis of the figures above: (41)

I.

a. b. c. d. e. f. g· h. i. j· k. 1.

The The The The The The The The The The The The

Adverbial

25 14 12 20 173

178

Johanna

II.

m. n.

T h e Instrument is most frequently an object of a preposition, T h e Comitative is always an object of a preposition,

o.

T h e Location is most frequently an object of a preposition,

p.

T h e Path is most frequently an object of a preposition,

q. r. s.

T h e M a n n e r is most frequently an object of a preposition, T h e Measure is most frequently an adverbial, T h e T i m e is most frequently an object of a preposition.

a. b. c.

T h e most frequent subject is a Station. T h e most frequent direct object is a Content. T h e most frequent indirect object is a Beneficiary.

d. e.

T h e most frequent object of a preposition is a Location. T h e most frequent adverbial is Time.

Barddal

Several facts are not only noteworthy, they also contradict generally received views on the distribution b e t w e e n syntactic functions and thematic roles: Firstly, agentive subjects are less c o m m o n than subjects with the thematic role Station. This m e a n s that stative predicates are m o r e c o m m o n in language use than actional or agentive predicates. S e c o n d l y , T h e m e s are relatively evenly distributed among the three syntactic functions, subjects, direct o b j e c t s and objects of prepositions. This is unexpected given that the T h e m e is usually described as a typical direct object. Also, the most c o m m o n direct object is not in fact a T h e m e , i.e. an entity affected by the event denoted by the predicate, but rather a Content of s o m e sort. This is presumably a consequence of the fact that most transitive predicates, in l a n g u a g e use, are m o r e stative than actional, and by statives I m e a n verbs that take Stations, C o n t e n t s , E x p e r i e n c e r s , C o g n i z e r s and Perceivers. Thirdly, E x p e r i e n c e r s are a l w a y s subjects, not direct objects, m e a n i n g that a f f e c t i n g predicates w h i c h select the E x p e r i e n c e r as the s u b j e c t (I like this) are m u c h more f r e q u e n t l y used than a f f e c t i n g predicates which select the Experiencer as the object (This pleases me). In this investigation only 11 examples were found of the Stimuli-Experiencer construction. One was a dative and was coded as a Cognizer (see Table 11 above). The others were in the accusative case and were analyzed as Themes. Furthermore, the Beneficiary is most frequently a direct object and not an indirect object, p r e s u m a b l y d u e to the frequency of verbs like assist, help and support being higher than the f r e q u e n c y of verbs selecting an indirect object. T h e indirect object is most o f t e n a Beneficiary but there are some examples of indirect objects being T h e m e s or Contents. This is d u e to the fact that ditransitive verbs are in these cases not b e n e f a c t i v e verbs ( r à d a einhverjum (dat) bana 'kill s o m e b o d y ' ) . It is also interesting that the Goal, C o m i t a t i v e , Reason and Source are (almost) always objects of prepositions. Instruments are distributed a m o n g direct objects and objects of prepositions, Locations a m o n g direct objects, objects of prepositions and adverbials. Path, M a n n e r and M e a s u r e are distributed a m o n g objects of p r e p o s i t i o n s and a d v e r b i a l s , and T i m e a m o n g s u b j e c t s , d i r e c t o b j e c t s , o b j e c t s of prepositions and adverbials, though the T i m e is most often the object of a preposition. Further, seen f r o m the opposite angle, the object of a preposition is most often a Location and the non-governed adverbial phrase is most often a Time. H o w e v e r , even though s o m e of these findings contradict the a s s u m p t i o n s traditionally m a d e by linguists on the relation between syntactic functions and thematic roles, my results are nevertheless in accordance with previous knowledge: T h e A g e n t is a l w a y s a subject.

Morphological

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roles in

Icelandic

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Agents, Causes, Themes, Contents, Stations, Experiencers, Cognizers, Perceivers and Beneficiaries are thematic roles which are always encoded by core relations of the sentence (direct syntactic functions), while the Goal, Source, Instrument, Location, Path, Manner, Measure and Time are usually encoded by non-core relations of the sentence (indirect syntactic functions). This is clear from Table 11 where it is shown that the former thematic roles are distributed among many more syntactic functions within the upper part of the table, while the latter thematic roles are more or less confined to the rightmost part of the table. To conclude, not only Agents (and Cause), but also Experiencers, Cognizers and Perceivers (almost) always link to subjects. Themes, Contents and Beneficiaries, on the other hand, are more evenly distributed across the syntactic functions. I am now in a position to address the question whether the relation between thematic roles and case, noted in section 6.2.2 above, is a consequence of the fact that there is a correlation between thematic roles and syntactic functions, or whether there is a real correlation between the two. As noted above, Agents, Experiencers, Cognizers and Perceivers almost always link to subjects, yet they are not always encoded by the same morphological case. If their morphological encoding were a consequence of the fact that they are always subjects, it is expected that they are always encoded with the same morphological case, both within the category, and with each other. That is not the case. Agents are always encoded as nominatives, while Experiencers and Cognizers are encoded as nominatives, accusatives and datives, and finally Perceivers are encoded as nominatives and datives. These facts yield two alternative conclusions: (42)

a) Agents are case marked as subjects, thereby nominative; some Experiencers are also case-marked as subjects, but others are non-nominative, hence it is not the syntactic function that assigns the morphological case, but rather the thematic role. b) Of the four, Agents always have the same case marking, hence their nominative can be viewed as being thematically assigned, while Experiencers and Cognizers are distributed among three cases. There is a correlation between Agents and nominative, but not between Experiencers/Cognizers and any one particular case, hence there is no correlation between Experiencers and morphological case.

Both conclusions (a) and (b) are compatible with the data presented here. The non-core thematic roles, which mostly correlate with a single morphological case, as noted in 6.2.2 above, link in some cases only with an object of a preposition. That is true for the Goal, the Reason, the Comitative and the Source. The Instrument is linked with direct objects and objects of prepositions, always however with dative case. The Measure is more often linked with an adverbial phrase, while the others are most often linked with a prepositional phrase. It is difficult to know whether their case marking is a consequence of their argument-linking properties or whether there is an inherent relation between the meaning of a preposition and the morphological case it assigns.

6.2.4. Morphological case, syntactic functions and thematic roles I will now summarize the discussion in 6.2.2 and 6.2.3 in the following table of the three relevant variables, morphological case, syntactic functions and thematic roles:

Johanna Barddal

180 NOMINATIVE Subject Station Agent Cognizer Theme Experiencer Content Perceiver Beneficiary Cause Time Source ACCUSATIVE Subject Experiencer Content Cognizer Obj. of prep.

DATIVE Subject

DObject

Adverbial

1,679 1,406 404 231 230 156 109 46 35 7 3 38 8 3

Content Goal Location Time Path Theme Manner Beneficiary Source Reason Comitative Measure

496 178 169 150 101 70 33 23 12 12 7 2

Experiencer Cognizer Theme Content Beneficiary Station Perceiver Instrument

134 26 19 15 13 8 5 1

Content Theme Beneficiary Instrument Cognizer Location

192 130 123 18 1 1

Time Measure

30 4

109 1

DObject

Content Theme

Adverbial

Time

DObject

Content Theme Beneficiary Path Time

874 356 9 3 2

IObject

Content Theme Beneficiary

2 2 1

Adverbial

Time Path Measure

Obj. of prep. Location Content Source Manner Time Goal Theme Comitative Path Instrument Beneficiary Reason Measure ¡Object

Beneficiary Theme Content

3

138 14 3

826 352 177 172 120 48 43 41 41 30 19 12 2 61 9 2

Morphological

GENITIVE Subject

case, syntactic

Content

functions

and thematic

9

roles in

DObject

181

Icelandic

Content Theme

35 2

Obj. of prep.

Goal 82 Content Adverbial 51 Location Location 29 Measure Reason Manner 17 Manner 11 Time Path 11 Time 6 Theme 2 Comitative 2 Table 12: Morphological case, syntactic functions and thematic roles

25 13 12 2

The largest group of nominatives is Station subjects, the largest group of accusatives is Content objects, the largest group of datives is PP Locations, and the PP Goal is the largest group of the genitives. Agents, Causes and Stations are always subjects and (Stations are almost always) nominative. Instruments are always dative, mostly objects of prepositions. Experiencers are always subjects, most often nominatives, followed by datives and seldom accusatives. Cognizers are (almost) always subjects, most often nominatives, in a few cases datives and only in three cases accusatives. Perceivers are always subjects, most often nominative subjects but in five cases dative subjects. Indirect objects are in a majority of cases dative and Beneficiary. Note that the indirect objects that are accusatives are either Themes or Contents and only in one case a Beneficiary. Genitive subjects and genitive objects are almost always Contents. The conclusions to be derived from these facts are that there is a strong correlation between syntactic functions and morphological case, and between syntactic functions and thematic roles. There is also a correlation between thematic roles and morphological case. The figures for accusative and dative subjects reveal that for dative subjects, the majority have been assigned the thematic role Experiencer, but the Cognizer, Theme and Content form a substantial group. For accusative subjects, 77.5% of the tokens are Experiencers and the rest are Contents and Cognizers. Regarding Beneficiaries, an overwhelming majority of these are dative objects, in fact the largest group of Beneficiaries. The majority of dative objects exhibit the thematic role Content. These findings suggest that the dative of core relations can hardly be viewed as a morphological case for Experiencers, Cognizers, Perceivers and Beneficiaries since the dative is also used to encode ordinary Contents as often as it encodes the other groups, and also Experiencers, Cognizers and Perceivers are more often encoded as nominatives. However, it is a fact that the accusative is seldom used to encode Beneficiaries, for which purpose the dative is used. These findings further suggest that nominative is the case for Agents, while oblique case is not the case for Experiencers and Beneficiaries, but rather the case for non-agents since oblique case is used to encode all other roles than Agents.

182

Johanna

Barödal

6.3. Conclusions and theoretical implications The findings of this investigation of the frequency of morphological case in Icelandic give rise to the following conclusions: 1. Theories on the function of morphological case in Icelandic are only partly right. T w o earlier papers have discussed the function of the case system in Icelandic, namely Rögnvaldsson (1983) and Zaenen/Maling/Thráinsson (1985). Rögnvaldsson addresses the question of how Dative substitution affects the Icelandic case system. He argues that Dative substitution can actually be seen as a case-preserving change. Accusative subjects change into either the nominative or the dative, leaving the accusative free as the primary case for objects. Hence, on Rögnvaldsson's account, the four morphological cases in Icelandic have the following main functions: the nominative is the case for subjects and predicatives, the genitive is the case for nominal attributes, the accusative is the case for the direct object, and the dative is mainly the case for Experiencer subjects. However, this investigation has shown that there is a much stronger correlation between dative and Beneficiaries than between dative and E x p e r i e n c e s , and also that Experiencer subjects are more often nominatives than datives. Thus, Rögnvaldsson's hypothesis is not corroborated. Zaenen/Maling/Thráinsson propose three different case assignment processes in Icelandic: semantic case, such as the accusative of Time and Path and the dative of Instruments; idiosyncratic case, which is associated with certain other thematic roles; and functional case, which is the structural case assignment of nominative to subjects and accusative to objects. However, this research has shown that dative case on subjects, allegedly based on thematic roles, is far from being restricted to Experiencers and Beneficiaries, but can include most roles, except for Agents. Hence, my data do not support the hypothesis of Zaenen/ Maling/Thráinsson either. 2. The findings of the present paper indicate that morphological case correlates with both syntactic and semantic factors. With regard to syntax, subjects are almost a l w a y s nominative, the majority of direct objects are accusative, nominal attributes are almost always genitive and indirect objects are in the majority of cases dative. As to thematic roles, Agents, Causes and Themes are (almost) always nominative, Beneficiaries are in the majority of cases dative, Instruments are always dative, and accusative objects are almost always Contents. Consequently, encoding the subject as accusative, dative or genitive is a way to signal its non-agentivity. 3. The frequency of dative subjects, and also Experiencer subjects, shows variation according to registers, in that dative subjects are more common in spoken Icelandic than in written Icelandic, and almost non-existent in the more formal styles of the written language. Nominative objects, however, do not show any variation across the genres of the written language; here variation is only found between the written and the spoken material: nominative objects rate much higher in the spoken material. This suggests that research on oblique subjects and nominative objects in the history of the Germanic languages does not necessarily present an accurate picture of the situation, since this research is solely based on written sources. A comparison with diaries and private letters would be desirable. Thus, conclusions

Morphological case, syntactic functions and thematic roles in Icelandic

183

on oblique subjects in historical investigations have to take into account the type of genre being investigated. 4. The figures presented above on the frequency of dative direct objects cast serious doubt on the generative distinction between structural and lexical/idiosyncratic case and on the acquisition of the two cases. Within that framework it is assumed that the structural case is nominative for subjects and accusative for objects. It is further assumed that the case of accusative subjects, dative subjects, dative objects, genitive subjects and genitive objects is lexical or idiosyncratic. Lexical case has also been called thematic case ( Z a e n e n / Maling/Thráinsson 1985, Jónsson 1997-98). That entails that Experiencer and Beneficiary subjects receive dative case on the basis of their thematic roles. My investigation has shown that dative direct objects, being 25.2% of the direct object tokens, make up a considerable part of the total token figures for direct objects. Twenty-five percent seems very high for a lexical/idiosyncratic, and thus an irregular, phenomenon. What predictions does the distinction between structural and lexical case make about the acquisition of morphological case in Icelandic? Theories assuming this dichotomy would take structural case to be a default rule, meaning that the language learner does not have to learn which verbs select nominative subjects and accusative objects, while lexical case would have to be learned, for every individual verb or predicate, as an exception to this rule (see Pinker 1999 and his account of regular vs. irregular verbs). In other words, such theories would have to assume that verbs selecting nominative subjects and accusative objects are not stored in the lexicon as such or in the memory of speakers, but only verbs selecting accusative subjects, dative subjects and objects, and genitive subjects and objects. Given the fact that children are exposed to the alleged structural and lexical/idiosyncratic cases in the same way in their language environment, and that they supposedly do not store the verbs selecting structural case in their memory as such, it is necessary to assume that they have innate knowledge about the difference between structural and lexical case, and, in addition, that they have innate knowledge about which verbs select structural case. However, it seems highly problematic to me to assume that the language learner has innate knowledge about linguistic conventions. It also seems problematic to assume that the language learner should learn or treat verbs selecting accusative objects differently than verbs selecting dative objects. Recent research on the acquisition of morphological case in Icelandic (Siguröardottir 2000) has shown that the errors children make vary from 0-8% of all their tokens. Notice that normal morphological errors made by children during acquisition range from zero to 10% (see Ragnarsdóttir/Simonsen/Plunkett 1999 and Cruse/Croft in prep., Ch. 11 and the references cited there). Given a fundamental distinction between structural and lexical case, it is expected that children make errors which support this distinction, for instance, that children overgeneralize structural case at the expense of lexical case. This prediction is not borne out, however. When examining the errors reported by Siguröardottir (2000), I found that children substitute structural case for lexical case and lexical case for structural case. Also, within the two groups, i.e. structural and lexical case, children substitute one structural case for another structural case and one lexical case for another lexical case. Therefore, there is nothing in the acquisition of morphological case in Icelandic that supports the major distinction between lexical and structural case. On the contrary, children seem to acquire structural and lexical case in the same way.

184

Johanna

Barddal

Thus, it seems more reasonable to assume that an Icelandic child has to learn, for each verb or predicate, which case frame it is associated with. That is, the language learner has to learn the conventions of his/her language community, including which case construction is normally associated with which verb, i.e. Nom-Acc, Nom-Dat, Nom-Gen, Acc-Acc, D a t Nom, and so on. The Nom-Acc construction is only one of many case patterns, and each of them has to be learned by the language learner. The Nom-Acc construction is, however, the most common one, and the one least restricted semantically.

7. S u m m a r y

This paper reports on a frequency study of a text corpus in Icelandic. The study is motivated by the fact that Icelandic shows non-canonical case marking on both subjects and objects. The text material consists of six genres: five written genres and one spoken genre. Within the written genres, 10 texts, 500 words each, were used. The material is a 'well stratified' sample of 40,000 words, 25,000 from the written genres and 15,000 from a corpus of spoken Icelandic. In order to ensure that the material was representative the frequency of different case forms in each genre was compared with a corpus of 500,000 words, compiled for a word frequency study of Icelandic in 1991. It turned out that my corpus was highly representative, even though it was small. The texts were tagged in a statistical computer program, for three variables: morphological case, syntactic function and thematic role. The aim of the investigation was to find out whether morphological case correlates with syntactic or semantic factors. My main conclusions are: (i) (ii) (iii)

(iv)

The number of dative subjects and nominative objects varies according to registers. Historical research will have to bear this in mind. Theories of the function of morphological case in Icelandic have to be revised. Morphological case correlates statistically with both syntactic and semantic factors, and oblique case on subjects is not confined to Experiencers or Beneficiaries. Rather, it signals the non-agentivity of the referent denoted by the subject. The distinction between structural and lexical case cannot be maintained because of the predictions it makes about the acquisition of morphological case in Icelandic.

References

Allen, Cynthia L. (1986): Reconsidering the history of like. - In: Journal of Linguistics 22, 375-409. - (1995): Case marking and reanalysis. Grammatical relations from Old to Early Modern English. - Oxford: Clarendon Press. Arad, Maya (1998): VP-Structure and the syntax-lexicon interface. Doctoral dissertation. - University College London.

Morphological

case, syntactic functions

and thematic roles in

Icelandic

185

Barödal, Jóhanna (1993): Accusative and dative case of objects of some transitive verbs in Icelandic and the semantic distinction between them. - In: Flyktförsök: Kalasbok till Christer Platzack pâ femtioársdagen 18 november 1993, frân doktorander och dylika, 1-13, Lund. - (1998): Argument Structure, syntactic structure and morphological case of the impersonal construction in the history of Scandinavian. - In: Scripta Islándico 49, 21-33. - (2000): Oblique subjects in Old Scandinavian. - In: NOWELE 37, 25-51. - (2001a): The perplexity of dat-nom verbs in Icelandic. - In: Nordic Journal of Linguistics 24, 47-70. - (2001b): Case in Icelandic - A synchronic, diachronic and comparative approach. Doctoral Dissertation. - Lund: Dept. of Scandinavian Languages (= Lundastudier i Nordisk Sprâkvetenskap A 57). - (2001c): The role of thematic roles in constructions? Evidence from the Icelandic inchoative. - In: A. Holmer, J.-O. Svantesson, Â. Viberg (eds.): Proceedings of the 18th Scandinavian Conference of Linguistics 2000, 127-137. Lund: Department of Linguistics. - (submitted): The oblique experiencer first construction in Icelandic and German. Submitted to Linguistics, special volume on Radical Construction Grammar, ed. by William Croft. Barödal, Jóhanna/Eythórsson, Thórhallur (to appear): The change that never happened: The story of oblique subjects. - To appear in: Journal of Linguistics 39. Bernódusson, Helgi (1982): Ópersónulegar setningar [Impersonal clauses]. Master's thesis. University of Iceland. Blake, Barry J. (1994): Case. - Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chomsky, Noam. (1981, 7 1993): Lectures on government and binding. The Pisa Lectures. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Croft, William (1998): Event structure in argument linking. - In: M. Butt, W. Geuder (eds.): The projection of arguments: Lexical and compositional factors, 21-63. Stanford: CSLI. Cruse, D. Alan/Croft, William (in prep.): Cognitive Linguistics. - To appear in the Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics Series. Eythórsson, Thörhallur/Barödal, Jóhanna (in prep): Oblique subjects: A Germanic inheritance! Falk, Cecilia (1997): Fornsvenska upplevarverb [Old Swedish experiencer verbs]. - Lund: Lund University Press. Fillmore, Charles J. (1968): The case for case. - In: E. Bach, R.T. Harms (eds.): Universals in linguistic theory, 1-88. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Goldberg, Adele E. (1995): Constructions: A Construction Grammar approach to argument structure. - Chicago, London: University of Chicago Press. Greenberg, Joseph H. (1966): Language universals. - The Hague, Paris: Mouton. Haugan, Jens (1998): Passiv av norr0ne dobbelt objekt-konstruksjonar og subjektsp0rsmälet [The passive of Old Norse double object constructions and the subject debate]. - In: Norsk Lingvistisk Tidsskrift 16, 157-184. Haugen, Odd Einar (1993): Grunnbok i norr0nt sprâk [Text book in the grammar of Old Norse]. Oslo: Gyldendal. Janda, Laura A. (1993): A geography of case semantics: The Czech dative and the Russian instrumental. - Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Jónsson, Jóhannes Gísli (1996): Clausal architecture and case in Icelandic. Doctoral dissertation. University of Massachusetts at Amherst. - (1997-98): Sagnir meö aukafallsfrumlagi [Verbs selecting oblique subjects], - In: íslenskt mài og almenn málfrcedi 19-20, 11-43. - (1999): Case absorption with -st-verbs in Icelandic. Talk delivered at the 14th Comparative Germanic Syntax Workshop in Lund, 8-9 January 1999. Maling, Joan (1999): Verbs with dative objects. Ms. Brandeis University and Málvísindastofnun Háskóla Islands.

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Maling, Joan/Jónsson, Johannes Gísli (1995): On nominative objects in Icelandic and the feature [+human], - In: Working Papers in Scandinavian Syntax 56, 71-79. Nemvalts, Peep (1996): Case marking of subject phrases in Modern Standard Estonian. Doctoral dissertation. - Uppsala University (= Studia Uralica Upsaliensia 25). Petterson, Gertrud (1996): Svenska sprâket under sjuhundra âr. En historia om svenskan och dess utforskande [The Swedish language during seven hundred years. A history on Swedish and its research]. - Lund: Studentlitteratur. Islensk ordtídnibók [Icelandic word frequency book] (1991). Edited by Jörgen Pind. - Reykjavik: Oröabok Háskólans. Pinker, Steven (1999): Words and rules: The ingredients of language. - London: Phoenix. Ragnarsdóttir, Hrafnhildur/Simonsen, Hanne Gram/Plunkett, Kim (1999): The acquisition of past tense morphology in Icelandic and Norwegian children: an experimental study. - In: Journal of Child Language 26, 577-618. Rögnvaldsson, Eiríkur (1983): PágufallssJ'kin og fallakerfi í íslensku [Dative sickness and the case system in Icelandic], - In: Skima 16, 3-6. - (1991): Quirky subjects in Old Icelandic. - In: H.Á. Sigurösson (ed.): Papers from the twelfth Scandinavian Conference of Linguistics, 369-378. Institute of Linguistics, University of Iceland, Reykjavik. - (1996): Frumlag og fall aö fornu [Subject and case in the Icelandic Middle Ages]. - In: Islenskt mal og almenn mâlfrœdi 18, 37-69. Seefranz-Montag, Ariane v. (1983): Syntaktische Funktionen und Wortstellungsveränderung. Die Entwicklung 'subjektloser' Konstruktionen in einigen Sprachen. - München: Fink (= Studien zur theoretischen Linguistik 3). - (1984): 'Subjectless' constructions and syntactic change. - In: J. Fisiak (ed.): Historical Syntax, 520-553. Berlin: Mouton. Siguröardottir, Herdis (2000): Fallmörkun í barnamáli [Case marking in child language]. Ms. University of Iceland, Reykjavik. Sigurösson, Halldór Ármann (1989): Verbal syntax and case in Icelandic. Doctoral dissertation. University of Lund. - (1990-91): Beygingarsamrami [agreement]. - In: Islenskt mal og almenn mâlfrœdi 12-13, 3177. - (1992): The case of quirky subjects. - In: Working Papers in Scandinavian Syntax 49, 1-26. Thráinsson, Höskuldur (1979): On complementation in Icelandic. - New York: Garland. Wierzbicka, Anna (1981): Case marking and human nature. - In: Australian Journal of Linguistics 1, 43-80. - (1983): The semantics of case marking. - In: Studies in Language 7, 247-275. Yli-Vakkuri, Valma (1987): Aspect and the affective attitude of the speaker: Usage and meaning in grammatical case variation in Finnish. - In: M. Koski, E. Lähdemäki, Κ. Häkkinen (eds.): Fennistica festiva in honorem Göran Karlsson septuagenarii, 189-205. Âbo: Âbo Akademis Förlag. Zaenen, Annie/Maling, Joan/Thráinsson, Höskuldur (1985): Case and grammatical functions: The Icelandic passive. - In: Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 3, 441-483.

Barbro Landén/Valéria

Molnár

Passive as activity aspect. On the relation between aspectuality and passive: A comparative study of German and Swedish*

This article discusses similarities and differences between the German and Swedish passive systems within a theoretical framework that treats passive as activity aspect. The passive is defined as a morphological category ('shifter'), occupying an intermediary position between the two readings of the morphological active, ACTIVE and INACTIVE. It is argued that the passive is closely related to the categories of aspect, diathesis and actionality and that it creates an intersection of these verbal categories. T h e theoretical analysis shows that both Swedish and German have a wide range of passive interpretations. Our empirical study confirms, however, that there are relevant differences in the way these are formally realised. Even in cases where the two languages have alternatives that are structurally close, these are not completely equivalent in meaning.

1. Introduction

From a contrastive perspective, the German passive and its Swedish equivalents are one of the most interesting problem areas for translators and Swedish students of German alike. At first sight, the passive constructions of the two languages appear to be structurally quite similar. Yet on closer inspection, the passive systems of German and Swedish are organised somewhat differently, and structural similarity does not always correlate with equivalence in meaning. As regards periphrastic constructions, the two languages structurally largely parallel each other: German has two major passive types, the werden-passive, corresponding to the Swedish Wi-passive (cf. (1-G), (1-S)), and the sem-passive, structurally equivalent to the Swedish vara-passive (cf. (2-G), (2-S)). (1-G) Der Brief wurde mit the

letter

was

with

Tinte geschrieben, ink

written

'The letter was written in ink.' (1-S) Brevet letter-the

(Oksaar 1970)

blev

s k r i v e t med

bläck.

was

written

ink

with

(Oksaar 1970)

* W e would like to thank Ute Bohnacker (Lund University) for the translation of this article from German into English.

188

Barbro

(2-G) Achtzig Prozent da' Häuser eighty

percent

the

houses-GEN

Landén/Valéria

des Dorfs

sind zerstört,

the

are

village-GEN

destroyed

'Eighty percent of the houses in the village are destroyed.' (2-S) Attio procent av husen eighty

percent

of

i

houses-the in

byn

är

village-the are

Molnár

(Schubert 1982)

förstörda. destroyed

(Schubert 1982)

However, caution is advised when rendering passive constructions into the other language, since structural identity does not automatically evoke a contextually equivalent interpretation. Whereas the German clause in (3-G) with the werden-passive tends to refer strongly to the present (though future reference is possible too), its Swedish structural equivalent, the bli-passive of a verb like uppskatta, primarily has a future reading ((3-S), cf. Sundman 1987): (3-G) Der Präsident the

president

wird

geschätzt.

is

esteemed

'The president is highly thought of.' (3-S) Presidenten blir uppskattad president-the

is

esteemed

(Sundman 1987)

[om han lyckas if

he

med fredsförhandlingarna].1

succeeds with

peace-negotiations-the

'The president will be highly thought of if he succeeds in negotiating peace.' Since the periphrastic passive types in German and Swedish are not fully equivalent, different language-specific restrictions on periphrastic constructions apply when rendering a particular meaning in the other language, like the action in (4) below. In German, this event can only be expressed by the werden-passive, but in Swedish only by the vara-passive in certain cases. (4-G) Die Rolle wird the

part

is

von einem Amateurspieler aus

Borâs

by

Borâs

an

ausgezeichnet

gestaltet,

excellently

acted

amateur-actor

from

'The part is acted extremely well by an amateur from Borâs.' (4-S) Rollen är utmärkt part-the is

excellently

gestaltad av en amatôrskâdespelare fran

Borâs.

acted

Borâs

by an amateur-actor

from

(SAG 1999) Further complications arise because of a third passive type in Swedish, the so-called j-passive, which to some extent competes with the periphrastic constructions:

1

S o m e Swedish speakers do not regard this example as fully grammatical. The insertion of the particle nog ('probably'), however, seems to contribute to a higher degree of grammaticality for these speakers.

On the relation between aspectuality

(5-S')

and passive

189

Presidenten intervjuades igâr. president-the

interviewed-s

yesterday

'The president was interviewed on TV.' (5-S")

(6-S1)

Presidenten b l e v

intervjuad i

TV igâr.

president-the

interviewed

TV

was

on

yesterday

(Sundman

Rollen g e s t a l t a s utmärkt

av en amatôrskâdespelare frân

Borâs

part-the

by

Borás

act-s

excellently

an

amateur-actor

from

'The part is acted extremely well by an amateur from Borâs.' (6-S")

(SAG 1999)

Rollen är utmärkt

gestaltad av en amatôrskâdespelare frân Borâs.

part-the

acted

is

excellently

by

an

amateur-actor

1987)

from

Borâs

(SAG 1999) From a contrastive point of view, we are faced with a mismatch of a bipartite system (German) and a tripartite one (Swedish) and the fact that the two systems cannot directly be mapped onto one another because of language specific distributional patterns. We need to clarify the factors steering the language internal competition between the Swedish passive types and the regularities behind opting for periphrasis rather than the j-passive (or vice versa) when translating the German werden-passive and the sem-passive into Swedish. When comparing the passive systems of the two languages, it should be noted that the range of the s-passive is larger than that of the periphrastic types in Swedish and German and even extends to areas outside the domain of German passive constructions: (7-S')

Huset

ägdes

av ett äldre par.

house-the

owned-s

by

an

older

couple

'The house was owned by an older couple.' (7-S")

*Huset house-the

(7-G)

blev

ägt/

was

owned/ was

var ägt owned

av ett äldre par. by

an

*Das Haus wurde von einem alten Paar the

house was

by

an

old

(Oksaar 1970)

couple

older

couple

besessen/gehabt. owned/had

The present work endeavours to systematise the contrastive phenomena mentioned above and discuss them within a theoretical framework that treats the passive as activity aspect. The framework chosen not only takes into account features of argument structure, but also features of aspect and aktionsart relevant to passive formation (section 2). From a theoretical perspective, it is important to make these features explicit, in order to differentiate the passive from related structures, and in order to characterise conceivable variants in the passive system in detail. Having discussed the distribution of different forms in the core domain of the passive in the two languages at hand (section 3), we contrast the language-specific passive systems with each other in section 4. We mainly discuss the interpretation potential of passive types

190

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Molnár

in today's language systems, with occasional diachronic excursions in order to elucidate interesting contrasts between German and Swedish. The theoretical and contrastive insights thus gained are tested on some smaller-scale empirical material and developed further in section 5. In our contrastive analysis, we concentrate on translation alternatives of the German passive into Swedish and the priorities in assigning a particular Swedish passive type to a German passive construction. The data the empirical investigation is based on comes from two text types, non-fiction and fiction, German original texts and their Swedish translations. Although the empirical material is relatively limited, by examining different genres we can find out (i) whether the two languages vary in their readiness to use passives, and (ii) which tendencies there are in the use of the passive in the two genres examined. Thus our empirical analysis primarily concerns the translation of German passives into various Swedish passive constructions. However, we also briefly comment on those cases in our data where a German passive is translated as a non-passive construction. The motive for such non-passive translations proves to be relevant for defining the functional domain of the passive and its structural and functional relations to other constructions.

2. Theoretical background: passive as activity aspect

In order to compare passives across languages, we first need to clarify the notion of the 'passive' theoretically, determine its functions and its relevant forms. W e take a cross-linguistic approach and introduce a multi-dimensional model on which to base our systematic contrastive comparison of German and Swedish and the ensuing empirical analysis. The theoretical framework proposed here diverges from traditional approaches in that the passive is not purely treated as a relation-changing grammatical category. Irrespective of theoretical orientation, analyses of the active - passive relation have only paid attention to relation-changing processes. The literature virtually unanimously describes the function of the passive as a restructuring of the subject - predicate relation: the passive is treated either as a means to promote the object to subject position, or as a means to demote the agent which previously had subject status. The active sentence (8-G') and its passive equivalent (8-G") illustrate how syntactic relations are modified (object promotion and establishing a new subject - predicate relation) and how semantic roles and syntactic functions are thus reassigned (a patient-subject instead of an agent-subject; a generally optional prepositional agent phrase appears): (8-G') A G E N T = subject

PATIENT = object

Die

Nato

hat

die

Brücken

in Novi Sad

gesprengt,

the

Nato

has

the

bridges

in

blown-up

Novi

Sad

' N A T O blew up the bridges in Novi Sad.' (8-G") P A T I E N T = subject A G E N T - prepositional phrase Die Brücken in Novi Sad w u r d e n von der Nato g e s p r e n g t . the

bridges

in

Novi

Sad

were

by

the

Nato

'The bridges in Novi Sad were blown up by NATO.'

blown-up

On the relation

between

aspectuality

and

191

passive

Even though the majority of linguists assume that the most important function of the passive is the restructuring of arguments, many also note that this is accompanied by changes in predicate content. Here, the opposition of active and passive can differentiate event types ('Geschehensarten', Glinz 1952) such as action, process and state. The active is widely assumed to primarily describe an action, whereas the function of the passive is to depict an event as a process or state.

2.1. The model In contrast to the existing literature, in our theoretical model, the main function of the passive lies in its contribution to event type differentiation. We define the passive as one of the poles of the grammatical (verbal) category of activity aspect (cf. Molnár, in prep.). Thus we do not limit the categorial content of the passive (as opposed to the active) to argument structure ('diathesis'), but also include predicate features to do with aktionsart or aspect. We determine the function of the passive within the spectrum of event types, action (DO), process (GO) and state (BE), but not simply as a unilateral change of action into process or state. The literature, however, has only considered the possibility of stativising the predicate (Givón 1970, 1981) or the "inactivization of the situation denoted by the verb" (Haspelmath 1990: 32), a phenomenon also described as a change of DO-perspective into BE-perspective (Langacker/Munro 1975). Previous event-type-related analyses of the passive suffer from a number of shortcomings. For instance, it seems implausible to us to assume that the passive should always have an inactivating effect, i.e. the passive always being more 'passive' than the active. In our view, the nature of the passive can only be grasped if we understand the nature of the active and can adequately describe the relation between the two categories. Examples such as (9) and (10) as opposed to (11) show that the passive sentence (11) is not any more 'passive' in content than the active sentences (9) and (10): (9)

Er l i e g t i m

Sterben.

he

dying

lies

in-the

'He is dying.' (10)

Er i s t

tot.

he

dead

is

'He is dead.' (11)

Im

Orient-Express wurde nicht bloß elegant gemordet,

in-the

Orient Express

was

not

only

elegantly

murdered

sondern auch stilvoll serviert. but

also

stylishly

served

'On the Orient Express passengers not only were elegantly murdered but also served with style.' (Der Spiegel 11/1999, p. 115) When contrasting these active and passive sentences, activity and passivity appear to be reversed. The death described by the passive sentence is violent and presupposes activity,

192

Barbro Landén/Valéria

Molnár

whereas the active sentences do not describe cause and activity, but only a process or stative event. We may thus conclude that the passive may well be more active than the active.

2.1.1. The notion of 'active' If we want to discuss the relation between active and passive and its potential connection with event types, we think it is imperative that the notion of 'active' be made clear. First, note that the term 'active' is ambiguous, as it refers both to a form and a meaning. The active form of the morphological category voice (as liegt and ist in (9) and (10) above), contrasts with a passive form, werden + perfect participle or sein + perfect participle (as wurde gemordet and wurde serviert in (11)). Active also denotes the meaning of an action (DO). An action is associated with the idea that there exists an active external causer, an agent, that this agent is realised as the subject of the clause, and that the event often is dynamic in nature, as is the case for morden ('murder') and servieren ('serve'). Note, however, that not all active verb forms are active in meaning: liegen ('lie') in the expression im Sterben liegen ('in dying lie') and the verb sein ('be') do not describe actions, but rather refer to a process (GO) or state (BE). Thus, morphological active is a category with complex meaning representing two opposed poles, ACTIVE and INACTIVE (capitals denote reference to meaning). 2 The example in (12) below expresses an action, whereas the other three examples (13), (14), (15) refer to a state or a process: Active clauses - expressing ACTIVE: (12)

Die Nato hat über

100 Ziele

in Jugoslawien attackiert.

the

100

in

Nato

has

over

targets

Yugoslavia

attacked

'NATO attacked more than 100 targets in Yugoslavia.' Active clauses - expressing INACTIVE: (13)

Die Büchse der

Pandora

ist offen,

the

Pandora-GEN

is

box

the

open

'Pandora's box is open.' (14)

Die Büchse der

Pandora

ö f f n e t sich,

the

Pandora-GEN

opens

box

the

self

'Pandora's box opens/is opening.' (15)

Mir

graut vor dem

Krieg.

me-DAT

dread

war-DAT

of

the

Ί dread the war.'

2

T h e theoretical b a c k g r o u n d and the t e r m i n o l o g i c a l d i s t i n c t i o n s b e t w e e n the m o r p h o l o g i c a l c a t e g o r i e s 'active' - 'passive' and the interpretational categories 'ACTIVE' - 'INACTIVE' is disc u s s e d in great detail in Molnár (in prep.).

On the relation

between

aspectuality

and

193

passive

The contrast in meaning between ACTIVE and INACTIVE within the morphological category active shows up in three areas: aspect, diathesis and actionality. 1. The clause Die Büchse der Pandora ist offen expresses a state, motivating the term 'stative'. The aspectual opposition of state (BE) vs. action (DO) (X öffnet die Büchse der Pandora, 'Someone opens Pandora's box') is dominant here - although there is a difference with respect to the diathetic opposition, too (similar to Die Büchse der Pandora öffnet sich, discussed below). 2. In Die Büchse der Pandora öffnet sich the nature of the subject changes. The subject is not an agent, but a medium affected by a process, hence the term 'medium' ('middle' or 'mediopassive'). We have here a diathetic opposition of medial GO vs. active DO, based on argument structure. 3. The impersonal Mir graut vor dem Krieg also has a GO/BE perspective, rather than a DO perspective. For impersonal verbs such as grauen, the distinction between GO and BE is irrelevant; crucial, however, is the fact that the DO perspective is not chosen. The nature of the subject is not affected in impersonal constructions, as there is neither an agent (cf. middle) nor a subject. The opposition between GO/BE and DO concerns actionality. Relevant oppositions between ACTIVE and INACTIVE - within the aspectual domain, the diathetic domain, and the actional domain - are schematised in the model in (16).

(16)

Aspect

Diathesis

Actionality

ACTIVE

ACTIVE

ACTIVE

DO

DO

DO

BE

GO/BE

GO/BE

INACTIVE (Stative)

INACTIVE (Medium)

(Impers. INACTIVE constr.)

2.1.2. The relation between active and passive Having reflected on the notion of 'active', we can define the active - passive relation as follows: The morphological passive occupies an intermediary position between ACTIVE and INACTIVE. This means that the passive cannot be as active as ACTIVE active (DO), i.e. the passive cannot express an action seen from the point of view of the agent (with the agent as

194

Barbro Landén/Valéria

Molnár

subject) and with the obligatory realisation of the agent (which is the case in the active). Neither can the passive be as inactive as INACTIVE active (BE or GO), i.e. it cannot refer to a process or to a state without cause, cf. (17):

ACTIVE (active voice)

INTERMEDIATE LOCATION: passive

voice

INACTIVE (active voice)

There are also formal grounds for assuming an intermediary position for the passive, owing to the close genetic relations between passive morphology ('passive') on the one hand, and the interpretational categories ACTIVE, and INACTIVE on the other. The English construction was shut in example (18) is originally stative, expressing a state. (18)

The door was shut.

The Swedish passive form stängs in (19a) can be traced back to an inactive middle - as a matter of fact, this construction is ambiguous between a medial and passive reading in the modern language system. This ambiguity is not present in German (19b) - here the reflexive verb 'schließt sich' can only be used medially: (19)

a. b.

Dörren

stängs.

door-the

shut-s

Die Tür s c h l i e ß t s i c h . the

door shut

self

'The door closes.'

—> Die Tür wird the

door is-being

geschlossen. shut

'The door is (being) closed.'

A third construction, Finnish oste-taan in (20), is originally an indefinite, with an inflection corresponding to the English indefinite pronoun one. This construction can be translated as the English active construction one buys or as a passive one, is being bought'. (20)

Auto

oste-taan.

car(N)

buy-INDEF

'The car is being bought.'

(Andersen 1991)

Bearing in mind the genetic relationship between the passive, the ACTIVE, and the different types of INACTIVE (stative and middle), we understand better why exceedingly diverse con-

On the relation between aspectuality and passive

195

structions have been subsumed under the notion of 'passive'. Note, however, that depending on their origin, these constructions show varying degrees of activity: (i) (ii) (iii)

close to INACTIVE, with a stative and resultative reading (was shut, war geschlossen as being in the state of closedness), as in (18); in optimal INTERMEDIARY position, depicting a caused process (wird geschlossen as being in the process of being closed), cf. (19); or related to ACTIVE, with a so-called actional reading (oste-taan), as in (20).

The intermediary position options of the passive, anchored in the domain of aspect, diathesis, and actionality, are summarised in the model in (21): (21)

Aspect ACTIVE

Diathesis ACTIVE

Actionality ACTIVE

I

Passive (actional) Passive (resultative, stative)

t

INACTIVE (Stative) X w a s shut

Passive (processual) A

(Impers. INACTIVE (Medium) X stängs

INACTIVE constr.) X oste-taan

Both German and Swedish have the entire spectrum of passive types for differentiating degrees of activity, as shown in (21). In German, 'resultative' or 'stative' readings are mainly expressed by the sein + perfect participle construction (ist geschlossen), and in Swedish by the vara + perfect participle (ärstängt) (see the left column in (21)). This construction type is often termed statai passive ( ' Z u s t a n d s p a s s i v ' ) in the literature. The so-called 'Vorgangspassiv', primarily associated with processual readings, is expressed by German werden + perfect participle (wird geschlossen 'is being closed'), and in Swedish by bli + perfect participle (blir stängt 'is being closed') or the j-passive (stängs 'is being closed') (see the middle column in (21)). The 'actional' type is realised as the German werden-passive (wird getanzt) and the Swedish ¿-passive (in the right column in (21)). 3

3

The 'actional' type is typical of impersonal passives, which can only be derived from agentive verbs with [+human] subjects. In some approaches these passives are not considered passives at all, they are subsumed under the morphological category of active (Frajzyngier 1982, Maling/Sigurjónsdóttir 1997); in others, they are termed 'pseudo-passives' (Kirsner 1976).

196

Barbro Landén/Valéria

Molnár

2.2. A proposal for defining passive as activity aspect When defining the active - passive opposition as a verbal category, voice, we need to consider its close relation to other verbal categories, i.e. aspect, diathesis, and actionality. We treat the category of voice as an intersection of the other categories. By defining passive as 'activity aspect', we firstly emphasise the role of the passive in event type differentiation, and this involves argument-structural, aspectual and actional features. Since these features can be combined in different ways, a wide range of passive types is only to be expected. In the theoretical model outlined above, the status of a particular passive type derives partly from the construction's genetic origin and partly from its (re)interpretation in the synchronic language system. Secondly, the definition of the passive as activity aspect relates to its hypothesised intermediary position, in between active and inactive readings of the active, taking into account the particular contribution of the passive to meaning: passive constructions may refer to a type of event with an agent (and thus be action-like), but this agent is suppressed (at least in syntax), the action deactivated and the emphasis thus shifted towards process or state. Thirdly, passive as activity aspect is a grammatical way of changing perspective from action to another type of event (process and state). The opposition of active and passive allows for secondary differentiation of event types: passive morphology changes an action as encoded by the verbal lexeme into another event type, process or state, in the grammar. Thus the category voice is a 'shifter' (Jakobson 1957, Leiss 1992), so-called because it shifts or changes the inherent, lexical features of a verb. Passive morphology reduces the agentivity of the verb, disintegrating the agent syntactically and pushing him into the background, whilst retaining him semantically (and sometimes syntactically). Crucially, this shifter primarily uses morphological, rather than lexical or syntactic devices, and makes it possible to double perspectives extensively and systematically. As suggested above, in order to classify a construction as 'passive', both semantic(-syntactic) and morphological(-syntactic) conditions need to be met. There are two related, partially overlapping, though not equivalent semantic(-syntactic) conditions: the subject must not be the agent (e.g. Die Suppe kocht 'the soup boils'), and the agent must not be the subject (Die Suppe wird gekocht 'the soup is boiled'). In the literature, constructions that meet both conditions or only the first of them are categorised as so-called 'notional passives' (and as passive diathesis in so-called diathesis theories). However, according to our "intermediary model" in (21), the active construction Die Suppe kocht with the ergative verb kochen 'boil' (no agent, thus no subject agent) is an inactive variant of the active, on the periphery close to INACTIVE, and not in intermediary position. Only if the second condition is also met (there is an agent that is not the subject), will a construction be in intermediary position, as is the case for Die Suppe wird gekocht. As discussed above, there are further, formally anchored conditions on the shifter 'voice', viz. a morphological paradigm with a restricted inventory: certain periphrastic forms for German and Swedish, and a synthetic form in Swedish. However, the literature also mentions alternative forms that meet the semantic-syntactic conditions on activity aspect, e.g. so-called 'Funktionsverbgefiige' in German ('light verb constructions' e.g. Das Stuck kommt zur Aufführung 'the play comes to performance', i.e. 'the play is performed').

On the relation between aspectuality and passive

197

Aufführung, the deverbal eventive noun of the Funktionsverbgefiige, implies an agent, and as this agent does not appear as the subject of the clause, the conditions are met. Problems arise when the passive is to be distinguished from related constructions that do not quite match the above criteria and therefore are called 'notional passive' or 'passive synonyms' in the literature. From a theoretical perspective, it is desirable to have a systematic, fixed morphological passive paradigm, but it is problematic not to have set rules that limit the extent of perspective-doubling in the domain of voice. Also problematic is the fact that individual forms of the passive paradigm are not restricted to expressing activity aspect. They also have a variety of readings in the domain of the active, e.g. reciprocity, middle, deponent (with s-passive, see footnote 4) and state (with copular constructions, see examples (82) and (83) below). Moreover, when distinguishing the morphological passive from passive synonyms, the grammatical tradition of the language concerned exerts a strong influence, as we will see in our discussion of German and Swedish passive systems in the next section.

3. Passive constructions in German and Swedish

German and Swedish grammars tend to focus on periphrastic passive types, formed with the auxiliary werden or sein and the perfect participle in German, in Swedish with the corresponding auxiliary bli or vara plus the perfect participle, or synthetic s-passive.

3.1. The German passive For the German passive system it should generally be noted that there are only periphrastic forms left today; synthetic forms disappeared as early as during the Old High German period. The werden-passive and the sem-passive are the two major passive types, and owing to their aspectual readings, they have been referred to as 'Vorgangspassiv' ('processual passive') and 'Zustandspassiv' ('statai passive') in grammars since Meyer-Lübke (1925). The German passive system is strongly asymmetric: the werden-passive is considered to be the prototype, and regarded by a number of grammarians as the only morphological passive (Admoni 1970, Leiss 1992). The setn-passive is much more restricted diathetically, aspectually and actionally, and because of its formal and semantic peculiarities often excluded from definitions of the passive. The distribution of the two major German passive types can be schematised as follows:

198 (22)

Barbro Landén/Valéria werden-passive

Molnár

and sem-passive

The unmarkedness of the werden-passive has to do with its optimal position in the centre of the passive model, and its extension into other areas, depending on factors such as tense and transitivity of the verb (see (23) below). Diathetically, the werden-passive varies greatly, as it occurs both with promotion to subject position ( ' p e r s o n a l ' ) and without ('impersonal'). The agent can be spelled out, but is usually optional. 'Process' is the preferred aspectual reading of the werden-passive, though certain tense f o r m s also permit ' r e s u l t a t i v e ' and 'stative' readings. The 'actionality' c o m p o n e n t is important too: (impersonal) werden is the only passive type to express actionality of the highest degree. Thus, the werden-passive is most strongly differentiated on the activity scale: it is compatible not only with the central processual reading, but also with resultative and stative readings close to INACTIVE, and even with the ACTIVE-related actional reading. Its distribution is schematised in (23) (with the English translation of the relevant passive constructions in the footnote):

199

On the relation between aspectuality and passive (23)

werden-passive4

Aspect ACTIVE

Diathesis ACTIVE

χ wird überwacht χ wird zerstört

processimi '

stative

ACTIVE wird getanzt (ihm) wird vergeben

actional •

resultative

Actionality

χ ist zerstört worden χ wird (von [...]) überragt INACTIVE (Stative)

INACTIVE (Medium)

(Impers. INACTIVE constr.)

The sein-passive is a marked form in the German passive system. Compared to the werden-passive, it is restricted in every respect, diathetically, aspectually and actionally. As far as argument structure is concerned, the sein-passive is predominantly promotional (or 'personal'), whereas demotion is rare. There are further diathetic restrictions on sein, such that the agent may rarely be overt.5 As regards tense and aspect, the sem-passive is marked in that it is mostly formed with telic verbs, though occasionally atelic stative verbs are possible, too. 6 Only the event types result or state can be expressed by the sein-passive; process and actional readings are not possible in German today (in contrast to werdenpassive). As shown in the model in (24), the sem-passive is aspectually highly restricted and close to INACTIVE (stative):

4

5 6

ist zerstört worden - 'has been/was destroyed', wird aberragt - 'is over-towered', wird überwacht - 'is kept under surveillance', wird zerstört - 'is (being) destroyed', wird getanzt *'is danced', wird vergeben - 'is forgiven'. Special rules apply for the realisation of agents with stative verbs. In this article, we use the terms 'telic' and 'atelic' to distinguish between the two basic verb types, referring to [+limited] events vs. [-limited] events.

200 (24)

Barbro Landén/Valéria

Molnár

se/n-passive 7

Aspect

Actionality

Diathesis

ACTIVE

ACTIVE

ACTIVE

actional

*ist getanzt *x ist gegessen

processual

The most important aspectual characteristic of the ¿em-passive is its focus on an end state ('Endzustandsprofilierung', Zifonun 1992). Found mainly with telic verbs, it allows for two interpretations, resultant/resultative state ('Nachzustand') in (25) and characteristic state ('Zustand') in (26), cf. Strecker (1997: 1820):« (25)

Das Fleisch ist jetzt

endlich

gekocht.

the

finally

boiled/cooked

meat

is

now

'The meat is cooked at last.' (26)

(Strecker 1997)

Das Fleisch i s t jetzt

gekocht,

nicht gebraten,

the

boiled

not

meat

is

now

fried.

'The meat is boiled now, not fried.'

(Strecker 1997)

Atelic stative verbs (27) and some verbs with a non-resultative, non-causative reading (28) only permit a characteristic-state reading. These verbs depict relations and need an overt 'agent', a subject-like prepositional agent phrase (cf. Helbig 1987: 219f.): (27)

Die

Stadt i s t

von vielen Bergen

umgeben,

the

town

by

surrounded

is

many

mountains

'The town is surrounded by many mountains.' (28)

(Helbig 1987)

Die

Stadt war

durch

den Fluß in zwei Teile g e t e i l t ,

the

city

by

the

was

river

in

two

parts

'The city was divided into two parts by the river.'

7

8

divided

(Zifonun 1992)

ist eingerichtet - 'is furnished', ist umstanden - 'is surrounded', *ist gegessen - 'is eaten' *ist getanzt - *'is danced'. See also Brandt (1982).

On the relation

between

aspectuality

and

201

passive

3.2. The Swedish passive The Swedish passive system differs strikingly from the German one in that it has - beside two periphrastic passive types - a synthetic passive, which also is its core representative. The asymmetry found in Swedish is more complex than in German: whereas the German werden-passive and sein-passive coexist side by side, with few overlaps (recall (22)), the individual Swedish passive types compete with each other. Overlaps are frequent and have to do with the fact that the synthetic s-form occurs in basically all areas between the two poles ACTIVE and INACTIVE in our model. Thus, there is competition primarily between the synthetic i-passive and the two periphrastic forms (¿//-passive and vara-passive). This competition is controlled by various aspectual, diathetic and actional factors. Subtle differences between the Swedish passive forms make it exceedingly difficult to determine their complicated distributional patterns. However, in this chapter an attempt is made to describe and discuss s o m e of the relevant distributional regularities (for further discussion see Landén/Molnár, in prep.). Swedish also differs from German in another sense: the dominant Swedish passive form, the i-passive, is not limited to passive function, as is the case with German werden-passive. The s - f o r m is medial (or reflexive) in origin and can still have these functions alongside other functions - in Swedish today. 9 Since there is no 1:1 relationship between form and function - in contrast to werden-passive, the genuine passive type of German researchers working on the Swedish passive have always been aware that the passive cannot be identified on purely formal grounds, but have focused on the meaning of the category 'passive'. T w o extreme views have emerged in the literature: the passive is considered to be an important strategy for realising the subject differently and hence also a major way to topicalise (Sundman 1987). At the other extreme, the primary function of the passive is claimed to be the demotion of the agent (Holm 1952). Both viewpoints concentrate on argument structure, even though aspect and aktionsart factors are occasionally mentioned when competing passive types are discussed.

9

Verbs ending in -s also have a variety of other functions: deponent: hoppas

- 'hope', absolute: bitas

'divorce', middle: förstöras

'be destroyed'.

'bite', reciprocal: mötas

'meet', reflexive:

skiljas

202 (29)

Barbro Landén/Valéria

Molnár

The three Swedish passive types

The s-passive might be called the 'universal' Swedish passive type, as it has the highest frequency (cf. SAG 1999: 360) and a wide variety of uses (see (33) below). Diathetically the s-passive is unmarked; it occurs both with or without promotion, and allows two options of realising a reintroduced or resumed agent, [±] overt agent. The s-passive also has a wide aspectual distribution; it can occur both with telic and atelic verbs and denote processes, results and sometimes even states, depending on other grammatical features such as tense. The actional component of the Swedish s-passive is highly differentiated as well: it is the only passive type to express the highest degree of actionality, and can thus be used in demotional passives, as in (30). But it also occurs with verbs characterised by a lower degree of actionality (e.g. verbs of relation (31)), and predominates with non-actional, generic readings (32) (see also SAG 1999: 381). (30)

Det har s k ä m t a t s en del

om

era

it

about

your theories

has

joked-s

a

bit

teorier.

'Your theories have been made fun of quite a bit.' (31)

Huset

ägs

av en diplomat,

house-the own-s by

a

diplomat

'The house belongs to/is owned by a diplomat.' (32)

(SAG 1999)

(Sundman 1987)

Kungen ä l s k a s av alia. king-the

love-s

by

all

'The king is loved by all.'

(Sundman 1987)

On the relation between aspectuality

(33)

203

and passive

Swedish i-passive 10

Aspect

Actionality

Diathesis

ACTIVE

ACTIVE

ACTIVE

actional •

har skämtats χ tvättades

processual' resultative

χ hittades χ har skrivits

stative INACTIVE (Stative)

χ älskas ^ xägs INACTIVE (Medium)

(Impers. INACTIVE constr.)

As compared to the synthetic s-passive, periphrastic passive constructions are quantitatively underrepresented in Swedish, but they are relevant for language-internal and Swedish - German contrastive reasons. Language-internally, the functions of the periphrastic forms and the s-forms overlap except for the actionality domain. Cross-linguistically, the bli-passive and the vara-passive fulfil many of the functions of the German periphrastic passive forms, even though they are not fully equivalent. The ¿/i-passive is quite similar in form to the werden-passive: both constructions consist of an auxiliary and a perfect participle, and the auxiliaries are closely related in meaning. However, there is one formal difference: in Swedish, the perfect participle agrees overtly in gender and number with the subject, but in German it does not. Compare e.g. agreement in gender in (34a) in Swedish with the German examples (34b): (34)

a.

b.

Bilen

blev reparerad./

car-the.SG.UTRUM

was

Huset

repaired-UTR/ house-the.SG.NEU

'The car was repaired./The house was repaired.' Der Wagen/ D a s Haus/ D i e the.SG.MASC

car/

the.SG.NEU

house/

blev

reparerat.

was

repaired-NEU

Brücke

the.SG.FEM bridge

wurde repariert, was

repaired

'The car/the house/the bridge was repaired.' The distribution of the ¿//-passive can be schematised as in (35):

10

hittades - 'was found', har skrivits - 'has been written', tvättades - 'was washed', älskas - 'is loved', ägs - 'is owned by', har skämtats - 'χ have been made fun o f .

204

Barbro Landén/Valéria Molnár ¿/¿-passive 11

(35)

Aspect

Diathesis ACTIVE

ACTIVE

Actionality ACTIVE

actional χ blev intervjuad χ blir uppskattad

processual resultative

χ blev tvättad

stative INACTIVE (Stative)

NACTIVE (Medium)

(Impers. INACTIVE constr.)

As shown in (35), the ¿//-passive is not restricted to the resultative reading in the aspectual domain. It is compatible with atelic and telic verbs alike and can nowadays refer either to a result or a process. Diathetically, the bli-passive is restricted, as it is always promotional - with or without spelling out the agent. Demotion is a precondition for the highest degree of actionality in passives; but as there is no demotional variant, ¿//-passives cannot be strongly actional. Neither are there bli-passives with a low degree of actionality (i.e. statives). This is because in the bli-passive the processual reading is linked with action verbs, whilst e.g. psych verbs predominantly get a change-of-state interpretation by being used with the bli + perfect participle form (motivating future reference): (36)

Presidenten b l i r

uppskattad.12

president-the

esteemed

is

'The president is/will be thought highly of.'

(Sundman 1987)

Just like the bli-passive, the other periphrastic passive type in Swedish, the vara·passive, is restricted in diathesis and actionality: again there is no demotional, highly actional variant (cf. (37)). The vara-passive is always promotional, rarely with an agent, usually without. Aspectually however, the vara-passive is highly differentiated: both telic and atelic verbs may be used to express results, states, as well as processes.

" blev tvättad - 'was washed', blev intervjuad - 'was interviewed', blir uppskattad - 'is/will be 12

thought highly o f . With regard to the grammaticality judgement of this sentence, see footnote 1. Sundman regards the sentence as grammatical.

On the relation between aspectuality

(37)

205

and passive

vara-passive 13

Aspect

Diathesis

ACTIVE

ACTIVE

processimi resultative stative

•

Actionality ACTIVE

xäi

χ är mâlat χ är (mycket) läst

INACTIVE (Stative)

INACTIVE (Medium)

(Impers. INACTIVE constr.)

As to the distribution of the Swedish ^-passive and the two periphrastic types (illustrated above in (29)), certain domains of the Swedish passive are reserved for the ¿-passive, while many others allow two or even three passive types. Among the factors triggering the subtle differences between the competing types, the following are discussed in the literature: 'Handlungsorientierung' vs. 'Gegenstandsorientierung', the nature of the patient (e.g. [+] animacy) and the agent (e.g. [±] animacy, [±] intentionality), and the opposition of generic event vs. specific event (cf. Landén/Molnár, in prep.). It seems uncontroversial to assume that the i-passive is unmarked, i.e. the j-passive can occur with different types of verbs (telic and atelic verbs, action verbs, verbs of cognition, perception and relation) and depict different types of events, not only processes, but also results and states. Thus we expect fewest restrictions on s-passives, but numerous restrictions on the two periphrastic passives, which in principle only occur with action verbs, other types of verbs (verbs of saying and thinking, relational verbs etc.) being excluded (cf. Sundman 1987: 444, SAG 1999: 3830As regards the relation between the s-passive and the ¿»/¿-passive, these constructions only compete with each other when action verbs in the imperfect past are involved. Compare (38a) and (38b): (38)

a. b.

Ministern b l e v

avskedad.

minister-the was

dismissed

Ministern avskedades. minister-the

dismissed-s

'The minister was dismissed.'

(Sundman 1987)

With present tense forms, however, there are some aspectual and temporal differences: present s-form s refer to the present, while present tense ^//-passives, according to Oksaar, orient towards the future (Oksaar 1970: 90):

13

är mâlat - 'is painted', är (mycket) läst - 'is (much) read', är förföljd - 'is chased'

206 (39)

Barbro Landén/Valéria a.

Brevet

s k r i v s med

letter-the write-s

b.

Molnár

bläck.

with

ink

'The letter is being written in ink.' Brevet b l i r s k r i v e t med bläck. 1 4 letter-the is

written

with

ink

'The letter is being/will be written in ink.'

(Oksaar 1970)

The aspectual/temporal difference between the s-passive and the ¿/(-passive of action verbs is even more noticeable with psych verbs (e.g. verbs of emotion). Here the future reference of present tense b/i-passives mainly stems from the fact that the auxiliary bli refers to a change of state when combined with stative verbs (40a). The corresponding present tense of s-passives, however, has a generic interpretation, describing a characteristic quality of the subject (and not at all a change of state), cf. (40b): (40)

a.

b.

Han

b l i r ä l s k a d av alia. 15

he

is

loved

by

all

'He gets loved by all.' Han ä l s k a s av alia, he

love-s

by

all

'He is loved by all.'

(Oksaar 1970)

With relational verbs, however, the two passive types do not compete: only the s-passive is possible here: (41)

a.

*Huset

b.

'The house belongs to him.' Huset ä g s av honom.

house-the

house-the

blir ägt

av honom.

is

by

owned

o w n - s by

him

him

As for the relation between the s-passive and the v a r a - p a s s i v e , there are some cases where the two compete with each other, but in most cases, clear differences in meaning can be determined. Competition is mainly found with stative verbs, owing to the fact that both passive constructions allow a stative reading (cf. (42a,b)). Competition may also arise with action verbs for perfect tense s-passives (cf. (43a,b)). Here, both passive types can simultaneously depict the result of an action and a subsequent state. However, there is a slight difference: the sentence with the perfect s-passive (43b) focuses on the result, the one with the varapassive (42b) on the state: (42)

a.

Staden

är o m g i v e n

av en mur.

city-the

is

by

surrounded

a

wall

'The city is surrounded by a wall.'

14

15

With regard to the grammaticality judgement of this sentence, see footnote 1. Oksaar regards the sentence as grammatical. With regard to the grammaticality judgement of this sentence, see footnote 1.

On the relation between aspectuality and passive

b.

Staden

omges

city-the

surround-s by

207

av en mur. a

wall

'The city is surrounded by a wall.' (43)

a.

b.

Huset

är málat.

house-the

is

painted

'The house is painted.' Huset har màlats. house-the

has

painted-s

'The house has been painted.'

(Sundman 1987)

The two passive types are not always interchangeable, though; they clearly differ in meaning when used with telic action verbs in the present tense (cf. (44a, b)): the s-passive refers to a process, whereas the present tense vara-passive expresses the result of an action. Therefore, the (a) sentence in (44) is not synonymous with the (b) sentence: only the j-passive retains the denotative content of the underlying active form, while a sentence with a resultative vara-passive cannot be true simultaneously with a sentence with an active form or an s-passive: (44)

a.

b.

Huset

är mâlat.

house-the

is

painted

'The house is painted.' Huset mâlas. house-the

(Sundman 1987)

paint-s

'The house is (being/getting) painted.'

(Sundman 1987)

Summing up, the distribution of passive types is much easier to determine for German than for Swedish. Whereas the two periphrastic forms in German largely exist side by side, passive forms in Swedish overlap extensively because of a third, synthetic type. In a few cases, there is true competition between parallel forms, in most cases, however, the competing forms are not completely synonymous, but associated with different temporal-aspectual and actional readings, which are dependent on lexical, grammatical and contextual factors.

4. A contrastive description of passive systems

" N u n m u ß man allerdings vorsichtig sein: Passiv ist nicht gleich Passiv." [Now one has to be careful: passive is not the same as passive] (Weisgerber 1963: 55)

When comparing German and Swedish, the above quote from Weisgerber is all the more appropriate, as the passive constructions in the two languages are extremely similar in structure. This might lead us to assume that formal similarity should correlate with similarity in meaning. Using the model in (21) and referring to the passive systems of the two languages as schematised in (22) and (29), we will show the actual extent of such a correla-

208

Barbro Landén/Valéria Molnár

tion. We will also investigate how the German passive system covers those functions of the Swedish s-passive that lack a formal German correlate.

4.1. German and Swedish periphrastic passive constructions compared When comparing the vara-passive and the sein-passive, it should first be noted that these structurally equivalent constructions are equivalent in meaning in certain cases, viz. with resultative reading (45-S, G) and stative reading (46-S, G): (45-S)

(45-G)

Ättio

procent av husen

i

byn

eighty

percent

in

village-the are

of

houses-the

är

förstörda. destroyed

Achtzig

Prozent der

Häuser

des Dorfs

sind zerstört,

eighty

percent

houses-GEN

the

are

the

village-GEN

'Eighty percent of the houses in the village are destroyed.' (46-S)

(46-G)

Huset

är o m g i v e t av en stor trädgärd.

house-the

is

surrounded

by

a

big

Das Haus i s t

von einem großen

Garten

umgeben,

by

garden

surrounded

a

(Schubert 1982)

garden

the

house is

destroyed

big

'The house is surrounded by a large garden.'

(TSHplus 1987)

With atelic action verbs (47-S, G) and psych verbs (48-S, G), however, the vara-passive differs from the s^m-passive, mainly because the vara-passive is compatible with a dynamic process reading, whereas the sem-passive is not. The only way of rendering this vara-passive into German is the wercfen-passive (so-called 'Vorgangspassiv', 'processual passive'). Compare: (47-S)

Han • he

är f ö r f ö l j d

av tre

män.

is

chased

by

men

von drei

Männern v e r f o l g t ,

by

men

(47-G') *Er i s t he

is

(47-G") Er wird he

is

three

three

(Brandt 1982)

chased

von drei

Männern v e r f o l g t ,

by

men

three

chased

'He is being chased by three men.'

(Brandt 1982)

Restrictions on the functional domain of the iem-passive (as compared to the vara-passive) are also found with verbs of opinion, a subgroup of psych verbs. Although there is no dynamic, but a stative reading, the sem-passive cannot be used here, as it focuses on the end state ('Endzustandsprofilierung'). Again, German must use the werden-passive: (48-S)

Han

är ansedd

som

en stor

konstnär.

he

is

as

a

artist

regarded

great

(Brandt 1982)

On the relation between aspectuality and passive (48-G') *Er i s t als he

is

as

(48-G") Er wird he

is

209

ein großer Künstler betrachtet. a

great

artist

regarded

als

ein

großer Künstler betrachtet.

as

a

great

artist

regarded

'He is considered a great artist.' (49)

(Brandt 1982)

Contrastive problem 1: vara-passive vs. sem-passive

When comparing the bli-passive and the werden-passive, we think it best to start out with werden, as the range of the werden-passive is larger than that of the ¿/(-passive. From a contrastive point of view then, we primarily want to know when werden translates into bli and when not. With action verbs, both passives are equivalent, especially in the past tenses: (50-S)

Brevet

blev

letter-the w a s

(50-G)

s k r i v e t med

bläck.

written

ink

with

Der Brief wurde mit Tinte

geschrieben,

the

written

letter

was

with

ink

'The letter was written in ink.'

(Oksaar 1970)

However, with action verbs (51-S, G) and with psych verbs (cf. bli in (36)), the ¿/¿-passive (with bli in the present tense) often refers to the future, whereas the werden-passive (with werden in the present tense) mostly refers to the present: (51-S)

Brevet

b l i r s k r i v e t med

letter-the is

written

with

bläck. ink

Usually: 'The letter will be written in ink.'

210 (51-G)

Barbro Landén/Valéria Molnár Der Brief wird

mit Tinte

geschrieben.

the

with

written

letter

is

ink

Usually: 'The letter is being written in ink.'

(Oksaar 1970)

Note, however, that native speakers are often uncertain when determining the temporal interpretation of the ¿//-passive (future vs. present). The language system seems to be unstable here, and along with the future reading, a present reading, too, is increasingly being accepted. Stative verbs never occur with the ¿//-passive, and the constructional meaning of the blipassive cannot be stative. The auxiliary bli may combine with a verb with potential stative meaning (52-S), but this combination automatically triggers an action reading with future reference and excludes any stative reading of the ¿//-passive. German werden-passives, on the other hand, do allow stative readings (52-G): (52-S)

Staden

biir o m g i v e n

av en mur. (*with present tense interpretation)

city-the

is

by

surrounded

a

wall

'The city will be surrounded by a wall.' (52-G)

Die Stadt wird

von einer Mauer u m g e b e n ,

the

by

city

is

a

wall

surrounded

'The city is (being) surrounded by a wall.' (53) schematises the distributional differences between the Swedish ¿//-passive and the German werden-passive. (53)

Contrastive problem 2: bli-passive vs.

werden-passive

On the relation

between

aspectuality

and

211

passive

4.2. Swedish s-passive and its German equivalents We are confronted with different problems when rendering the s-passive into German. The synthetic passive is the unmarked passive type with the highest frequency and a functional range wider than German passives. Thus several questions arise: When does the s-passive not translate as a German periphrastic passive? And when it does, which of the two periphrastic types is an adequate equivalent in context? Which factors govern the choice between the two? The s-passive must be translated into German as a non-passive, e.g. in the case of relational verbs (54-S'-S"-G) and the syntactic construction 'subject with infinitive' (55S'-S"-G'-G"). Interestingly, it is just these cases that lack a Swedish periphrastic alternative to the s-passive, cf.: (54-S') Huset house-the

(54-S") *Huset

ägdes

av ett äldre par.

owned-j

by

blev

house-the was

(54-G)

an

older

(Oksaar

couple

ägt/var

ägt

av ett äldre par.

owned/was

owned

by

an

older

*Das Haus wurde/war von einem alten Paar the

house was

by

an

old

couple

1970)

couple

besessen/gehabt. owned/had

'The house belonged to an old couple.' (55-S') Han he

(55-S") *Han he

förmodas vara

mycket rik.

believe-i

very

be

blir/är

förmodad vara

mycket rik.

is

believed

very

be

(55-G') *Er w i r d / i s t vermutet sehr he is

believed

(55-G") Man vermutet, one

(TSHplus 1987)

rich

believes

very

rich

reich zu sein, rich

to

daß er sehr

reich ist.

that

rich

he

very

'He is believed to be very rich.'

be

is

(TSHplus 1987)

In these cases, the s-passive extends beyond the German passive system as shown in (56):

212 (56)

Barbro Landén/Valéria Molnár Constrastive problem 3: s-passive vs. the German passive system

When translating the s-passive into German, another contrastive problem arises: the Swedish periphrastic variants may influence which periphrastic passive type is chosen in German. In some cases, transfer from Swedish 'helps' to arrive at the correct choice, especially when translating s-passive action verbs with the werden-passive (57-S', S", G): «-passive = ¿/í-passive: (57-S') Brevet

skrevs

letter-the wrote-s

(57-S") Brevet

blev

letter-the was

11 (57-G)

—»

werden-pass'we:

med

bläck.

with

ink

s k r i v e t med

bläck.

written

ink

with

Der Brief wurde mit Tinte

geschrieben.

the

written

letter

was

with

ink

'The letter was written in ink.'

(Oksaar 1970)

In some cases - resultatives (58-S', S", G) and statives (59-S', S", G) - the s-passive can also be translated as a sew-passive: s-passive = vara-passive: (58-S') Nu now

har fabriken

lagts

ner.

has

closed-s

down

factory-the

(58-S") Nu är fabriken now

H (58-G)

—» s e i / i - p a s s i v e :

is

factory-the

Fabrik

stillgelegt.

now

factory

closed-down

the

1999)

(SAG

1999)

nerlagd. closed-down

Jetzt i s t die is

(SAG

'Now the factory is closed down.'

On the relation between aspectuality and passive

213

(59-S') Hans personlighet kännetecknades av lugn och klarhet. his

personality

characterised-s

by

calm

and

strength

(SAG

1999)

(59-S") Hans personlighet var kännetecknad av lugn och klarhet. his

personality

was

characterised

by

calm

and

strength

'His personality was characterised by calm and strength.' II (59-G)

(SAG 1999)

Seine Arbeit war durch

logische Schärfe

gekennzeichnet,

his

logical

characterised

work

was

by

sharpness

'His work was charactised by keen logic.'

(Brandt 1982)

However, problems arise in those cases where the Swedish s-passive competes with the vara-passive but cannot be translated as a German iem-passive. As discussed above (4.1), the functional range of the vara-passive goes beyond that of the German sem-passive. It can usually be covered by the werden-passive, e.g. with atelic action verbs (60-S', S", G', G"), but with psych verbs also a werden-passive translation is dubious (61-S1, S", G', G"). s-passive = vara-passive: (60-S') Rollen part-the

(60-S") Rollen part-the

g e s t a l t a s utmärkt

av en amatôrskâdespelare frân Borâs.

act-s

by

excellently

a

amateur-actor

from

Borâs

är utmärkt

gestaltad av en amatôrskâdespelare frân Borâs.

is

acted

excellently

(60-G') *Die Rolle the

-b s i i n - p a s s i v e :

part

by

a

amateur-actor

from

i s t von einem Amateurspieler aus

Borâs

is

Borâs

by

a

amateur-actor

from

Borâs (SAG

1999)

(SAG

1999)

(SAG

1999)

ausgezeichnet g e s t a l t e t , excellently

acted

(60-G") Die Rolle wird the

part

is

von einem Amateurspieler aus

Borâs

by

Borâs

a

amateur-actor

from

ausgezeichnet g e s t a l t e t , excellently

acted

'The part is acted extremely well by an amateur from Borâs.' (61-S') Han

ä l s k a s av hela

he

love-s

(61-S") Han he

by

är älskad av hela is

loved

(61-G') *Er i s t vom he is

folket.

whole people-the

by-the

by

folket.

whole people-the

ganzen Volk

geliebt,

whole

loved

people

214

Barbro Landén/Valéria

(61-G") ?Er wird he

is

vom

ganzen

Volk

geliebt,

by-the

whole

people

loved

Molnár

'He is loved by the whole people.' The chart in (62) illustrates the main problem area of translating the ^-passive into a German passive, i.e. those cases where the 5-passive competes with the vara-passive, but a iein-passive cannot be used (cf. examples (60), (61) above): (62)

Contrastive problem 4: s-passive (vara-passive) vs. se/n-passive

5. Empirical analysis

The data that our empirical investigation is based on comes from two types of text: fiction and non-fiction. Fiction is represented by Bernhard Schlink's 1995 novel Der Vorleser and its professional translation into Swedish by Lars Hansson. Our non-fictional data comprises 30 pages from 8 different German texts and their translations by four students on the translator programme in the German Department at Lund University. We thus have four Swedish translations each for every passive in the German original. 16 There are roughly as many translations of German passive forms in the two types of text, about 200 each: 231 instances in the novel, and 196 in the non-fictional texts (49 German passives with 4 Swedish translations each).

16

Note that (i) the students did not know the purpose of the investigation when carrying out the translation task, (ii) their educational backgrounds prior to enrolment in the translator programme were so diverse that it is implausible to attribute identical translations to identical instructions by teachers.

On the relation between aspectuality

and

passive

215

Our contrastive investigation will focus on the following questions of language-specific and genre-specific interest: Firstly, is there a quantitative difference in passive use for the two languages? And does genre motivate different frequencies in passives? Secondly, does the empirical material validate the passive model we have proposed on the basis of our theoretical and contrastive reflections? Which structural and meaning-related factors motivate the translator to opt for a particular passive type? Finally, we will discuss cases where a non-passive translation of German passive constructions has been chosen. We would like to emphasise that our ambition is not to give an exhaustive analysis of the differences between the languages examined. We have chosen to focus on contrastive problems from only one perspective and examined how the two main alternatives of the German passive (werden-passive vs. sein-passive) are rendered in Swedish translations. For a more detailed contrastive analysis of the passive constructions in translations - not only from German into Swedish but also from Swedish to German - see Landén/Molnár (in prep.).

5.1. A quantitative analysis of passive use There is no particular quantitative difference in passive use between the German and Swedish data in our material. The frequencies of passive types in the original German texts and their Swedish translations are largely the same, but still there is no 1:1 relationship between German and Swedish passives. Interestingly, a sizeable number of German passives (117/427, 27%) have been translated as active constructions in Swedish, as shown in Table 1:17

Table 1: German passive constructions translated into Swedish passive

non-passive

Total

Novel: Non-fiction:

148(64%) 162(82%)

83 (36%) 34(18%)

231 196(4x49)

Total:

310(73%)

117(27%)

427

Passives are distributed quite evenly across the texts representing the two genres examined. The non-fiction translations contain fewer passive constructions than expected, while passives in the translated novel are relatively frequent, which is also unexpected. Despite these differences it is difficult to draw any conclusions about genre-specific passive use, as the novel contains several episodes with legal jargon, on which the author, a professor of law, is an expert. As far as the frequencies of the major passive types are concerned, our texts largely confirm what the grammar books say: in German, the werden-passive is the dominating pas-

17

On the other hand, active constructions in German often correspond to passive constructions in Swedish.

216

Barbro Landén/Valéria Molnár

sive type, in Swedish, it is the s-passive. Combining the texts of the two genres we get the following result: out of a total of 280 German passive forms, 195 (70%) are werden-passives, and 85 (30%) sein-passives (cf. Table 2): Table 2: werde«-passive and sein-passive

in German original texts

Novel: Non-fiction:

werden-passive 153(66%) 42(85%)

se/n-passive 78 (34%) 7(15%)

Total 231 49

Total:

195(70%)

85(30%)

280

In the Swedish texts, the ¿-passive clearly predominates: out of 292 passive forms, 241 (82%) are ^-passives, and 51 (18%) periphrastic forms (cf. Table 3): Table 3: s-passive and periphrastic passive in translations into Swedish

Novel: Non-fiction:

5-passive 93 (73%) 148(90%)

periphrast. passive 35 (27%) 16(10%)

Total 128 164

Total:

241 (82%)

51 (18%)

292

When comparing the German passive types with their translation into Swedish passives, the German werden-passive overwhelmingly (94%) is translated as an s-passive (cf. Table 4). For the sm-passive, however, periphrastic translations are preferred (73%), cf. Table 5: Table 4: werden-passive

Novel: Non-fiction:

Total:

translated into Swedish passive werden - 5-passive werden = periphrast. passive 81 (86%) 13 (14%) φ li: 9, vara: 4) 150 (99.3%) 1 (0.7%) φΐί: 1, vara: 0) 231 (94%)

14 (6%)

Total 94 151

245

Table 5: sein-passive translated into Swedish passive Novel: Non-fiction:

Total:

sein - Λ-passive 9 (24%) 7 (22%)

16(27%)

sein = periphrast. passive 29 (76%) (vara: 25, bli: 4) 15 (68%) (vara: 15, bli: 0)

Total 38

44 (73%)

60

22

On the relation between aspectuality

217

and passive

5.2. German passive and its translations into Swedish passive: a comparison from an activity aspect perspective When introducing the category of activity aspect, our fundamental idea was to differentiate the spectrum of events between ACTIVE and INACTIVE. Based on the different origins of passive constructions and their synchronic interpretations we proposed four types of activity aspect for the passive, listed according to decreasing activity: actional, processual, resultati ve, stative. 18 (63)

Activity aspect alternatives

ACTIVE (active voice)

1r

actional

INTERMEDIATE LOCATION: passive voice ¡k

prpççssM resultative stative

INACTIVE (active voice) We will investigate these four types of activity aspect with regard to the passive types found in our empirical data from the two languages. The language-specific models (presented in (22) and (29)) will make an expedient point of departure for our analysis, as they give a general idea as to which passive types may express the different types of activity aspect in German and Swedish. A comparison of the two models clearly shows which Swedish passive constructions may serve as a translation of a particular German passive construction. Using the models in (22) and (29), we can now predict how to realise the different types of activity aspect, and compare this with the realisation in our material, first (i) actional and processual types, then (ii) results and states. We will start with the prototypical Swedish equivalents of German passive types that are predictable on the basis of (22) and (29) and then look at various problematic cases. Our discussion of marked translations concerns those cases where a German passive has been translated into Swedish with a possible, but not the most obvious form. It is of theoretical interest whether this Swedish form modifies the activity aspect of the German original. We will try to illuminate the relevant grammatical factors regulating the selection of such non-prototypical equivalents.

18

The underlining of 'processual' in (63) marks the 'prototypical' passive variant.

218

Barbro Landén/Valéria

Molnár

5.2.1. 'Vorgang' - actional and processual types As expected, the processual passive is the major and most frequent type of 'Vorgangspassiv' (processual passive) in our data. The (impersonal) actional passive does occur as well, but is much rarer (two instances only, in Der Vorleser). In German, both actional and processual activity aspect are expressed by the werden-passive. In Swedish, processual aspect is expressed by all three passive types, but actional aspect only by the unmarked ¿-passive. (64) illustrates the two process-related passive domains simultaneously for German and Swedish: (64) Actional and processual passive in German and Swedish

In accordance with the grammar books, the werden-passive is translated as ¿-passive in the overwhelming majority of cases (in 231 cases) and only marginally as some other passive: 10 times as ¿//-passive, 4 times as vara-passive. In the remaining 69 cases, non-passive translations are chosen or the passive part of the sentence is left out. In the novel Der Vorleser, the unmarked translational equivalent of the processual werden-passive is the i-passive, cf. (65-G, S): (65-G)

(65-S)

Die Klasse

wurde a u f g e l ö s t und auf drei

Parallelklassen

verteilt,

the

was

parallel-classes

distributed

class

dissolved

and

on

three

Klassen

upplöstes

och fördelades

pâ de tre

parallellklasserna.

class-the

dissolved-s

and

on

parallel-classes-the

distributed-s

the three

'The class was dissolved and divided up into three parallel classes.' The same tendency holds for the non-fictional texts: in almost 100% of the cases (150/151), the four translators-to-be opt for an j-passive translation of a processual werden-passive, illustrated below with an example from the text Secession. For reasons of space, we only cite one of the translations:

219

On the relation between aspectuality and passive (66-G)

(66-S)

Der plastische Schmuck

wurde

von Othmar Schimkowitz

und K o l o

the

was

by

and

plastic

ornament

O

S

Κ

Moser g e s c h a f f e n , die

von Olbrich entworfenen

bronzbeschlagenen

M

by

bronze-fitted

created

the

O

designed

Türflügel

wurden ursprünglich von Georg Klimt a n g e f e r t i g t

und später

door-wings

were

and

originally

durch

Kopien

ersetzt,

by

copies

replaced

by

G

Κ

manufactured

later

Den

plastiska dekorationen s k a p a d e s

av O. Schimkowitz

och K . Moser,

the

plastic

by

and

decoration-the

created-s

O

S

Κ

M

De

bronsbeslagna

dörrflyglarna s o m

Olbrich désignât

tillverkades

the

bronze-fitted

door-wings-the that

O

manufactured-s

designed

ursprungligen av Georg Klimt men

ersattes

señare av kopior.

originally

replaced-s

later

by

G

Κ

but

by

copies

'The plastic ornaments were created by Othmar Schimkowitz and K o l o Moser; the bronze-fitted doors designed by Olbrich were originally manufactured by G e o r g Klimt, later to be replaced with copies.' The a b o v e translations with an 5-passive include both animate and inanimate subjects. However, a ¿»/('-passive seems to require an animate subject (for discussion see Engdahl 1999): (67-G)

[...]

an meinem

Geburtstag

im

Juli w u r d e

ich

im

Schwimmbad

on

birthday

in

July

was

I

at-the

swimming-pool

my

gefeiert [...] celebrated

(67-S)

Pâ min

födelsedag

i

juli b l e ν

jag

firad

on

birthday

in

July

I

celebrated at

my

was

pâ badet [...] pool-the

'On my birthday I was celebrated at the swimming pool.' W e did, however, find one translation with the ¿/(-passive (in Secession) does not meet the requirement on animacy: (68-G)

(68-S)

Die kubische Wirkung [...] w i r d

durch

das

zarte,

the

by

the

delicate

cubic

effect

is

vegetabile Dekor

[...]

ad absurdum

geführt,

plant

[...]

to

led

decoration

absurdity

where the subject

Den

kubiska

verkan

blir

overdriven

genom

den mjuka växtdekoren [...]

the

cubic

effect

is

exaggerated

by

the

soft

plant-decoration

'The cubic effect [...] becomes absurd with the delicate plant ornaments [ . . . ] ' Here, also an 5-passive translation (överdrivs 'exaggerate-^') would be possible and preserve the original processual reading. Choosing a ¿/¡'-passive slightly modifies the activity aspect,

220

Barbro Landén/Valéria

Molnár

backgrounding the process and focusing more on the result ('Nachzustand'). This is done by using the bli-passive together with the participial form overdriven ('exaggerated'), which includes the meaning of the original ad absurdum ('to absurdity'). Activity aspect is also modified in those cases in our data where the werden-passive is translated as a vara-passive. In the example (69-G, S), the processual reading of the original has quite clearly been shifted towards a stative one: (69-G) Dann

merkte sie, daß sie beobachtet wurde [...]

then

(69-S)

noticed

she

that

she

observed

was

Sä kände hon att

hon var iakttagen [...]

so

she

felt

she

that

was

observed

'Then she noticed that she was being observed [...]' Translations of the werden-passive as vara-passive are unexpectedly rare in our data; there are only two such instances in the novel and none in the non-fictional texts. In the first case (see (69) above), the activity aspect has shifted from process to state, in the second case an idiomatic Swedish expression is used (70): (70-G)

[...] sie s e i am 21. Oktober 1922 bei Hermannstadt geboren worden [...] she be

(70-S)

Ja,

on

21

October

1922

near H.

born

hon var född den 21 oktober 1922 i

Hermannstadt[...]

she

H.

was

born

the

21

October

1922

in

was

'Yes, she was born on 21 October 1922 near Hermannstadt [...]' There are no clear instances of the actional werden-passive in our data. (71-G) constitutes a borderline case in German: Mittag in the expression Mittag essen ('lunch eat', i.e. 'have lunch') is no prototypical referential object in the active and is not promoted in the passive. This type of werden-passive interestingly translates as an idiom in the active voice in Swedish. (71-G) Um halb zwei wurde Mittag at

(71-S)

half

two

was

gegessen,

lunch

eaten

Hal ν tvâ var det lunch hemma. half

two

was

it

lunch

at-home

'At half past one there was lunch.' (72-G) illustrates the processual werden-passive, but when this is translated into Swedish, it gets shifted into the actional domain: the object dieses Zimmer ('this room') of the active sentence is not promoted to subject in the Swedish translation, but turns into a sentenceinitial locative adverbial, with an impersonal passive construction: (72-G) Dieses this

Zimmer wurde im room

was

Winter fast

in-the winter

almost

nie

beheizt [...]

never

heated

221

On the relation between aspectuality and passive (72-S)

I

det

rummet

eldades det

nästan aldrig om vintern [...]

in

this

room-the

heated-s

almost

it

never

in

winter-the

'This room was hardly ever heated during the winter.'

5.2.2. Result and state (73)

Resultative and stative passive in German and Swedish

Aspect

Diathesis

Actionality

ACTIVE

ACTIVE

ACTIVE

resultative stative INACTIVE (Stative)

INACTIVE (Medium)

(Impers. INACTIVE constr.)

We will discuss the resultative and the stative aspect together here, as the two are very close in form and meaning. With certain verb types and tense forms, the activity aspect is restricted to one of the two, result or state. An activity aspect is not clearly fixed with other verb types, such as action verbs and psych verbs; here result and state are so closely entwined that they cannot be separated. 'Result' implies of course that a new state is reached, but can either focus on reaching this state or on the state itself. In German, the combination of result and state is expressed by the sem-passive, and in Swedish, surprisingly, only by the periphrastic vara-passive. The following examples from the novel may illustrate how the sein-passive is translated as a vara-passive, for an action verb in (74) and a psych verb in (75): (74-G)

(74-S)

Er war

mit blauem,

schmierenden Kugelschreiber geschrieben [...]

it

with blue

smudging

was

biro

Den

var s k r i v e n

med

blâ, smetig

kulpenna [...]

it

was

with

blue smudgy

biro

written

'It was written with a smudgy blue biro [...]' (75-G)

(75-S)

Ich verstand,

daß sie

gekränkt

war.

I

that

she

offended

was

Jag förstod

att

hon var sárad.

1

that

she

understood

understood

was

Ί knew that she was offended.'

hurt.

written

Barbro Landén/Valéria

222

Molnár

The activity aspect is immediately set to either result or state, or it is shifted towards the processual domain if a resultative-stative .sem-passive is translated as an s-passive. As illustrated in (76-S), this ^-passive refers to the preceding process and receives its simultaneous resultative interpretation from the perfect tense form: (76-G)

(76-S)

Als s e i ich

verdammt

zu einer [...] Fahrt

as

doomed

to

be

I

a

im

leeren Wagen [...]

journey in-the

empty

carriage

Som om jag

dömts

till

att skaka

fram i

denna

vagn[...]

as

doomed-s

to

to

along

this

carriage

if

I

shake

in

'As if I had been doomed to a journey [...] in this empty carriage.' However, when there is no perfect or pluperfect tense form, the resultative interpretation vanishes and only the processual one is retained, as shown in (77-S) for the present tense spassive and for the imperfect tense in (78-S). Similar examples can also be found in the non-fictional texts. (77-G)

(77-S)

Sie [...]

betrat

she

entered their world

ihre Welt,

wie man

staunend eine

ferne Reise

as

amazed

long

one

a

ein

Schloß betritt,

in das man

eingelassen

ist [ . . . ]

a

castle

in

admitted

is

[...]

enters

utan

steg

that

in i to

one

tut

journey makes

deras värld som

en längväga resenär

eller

their

a

or

but

stepped in

som

när

man

släpps

in i

world

ett slott [...]

like

when

one

admit-s

in

a

to

like

faraway

traveller

oder or

castle

'She entered their world amazed like a traveller from faraway or like someone being admitted to a castle [...]' (78-G)

(78-S)

[...]

alle Besucher meinten, sie

vor

uns zu haben, [...]

all

before

us

visitors

thought

her

to

have

die

Frau, [...], die

alles das tat, wessen Hanna a n g e k l a g t

war.

the

woman

all

was

[...]

who

that

did

o f - w h i c h Hanna

accused

for

alia andra var saken

klar: just sä mäste de

ha

settut,

for

all

clear

have

looked

others w a s

thing-the

just

so

must

they

kvinnorna [...] som

gjort allt detsom

Hanna a n k l a g a d e s

for.

women-the

done

Hanna

of

that

all

that

accused-s

'[...] for everyone else, it was clear: this is what they must have looked like, the women [...] who had done all the things Hanna was accused of.' In German too, resultative readings may simultaneously refer to the process prior to the result. This is achieved by a perfect or pluperfect werden-passive of an action verb. These cases translate into Swedish perfect or pluperfect tense i-passives, see (79-G, S):

On the relation between aspectuality and passive (79-G)

[...] die

der

Koks

häufte

sich

bis zur

Luke unter der Decke, durch

the

coke

piled-up

self

till

hatch

er von

which it

(79-S)

223

[...]

from

to-the

under

the

ceiling

through

der Straße in den Keller g e s c h ü t t e t worden war. the

street

in

the

cellar

poured

been

kokshögen tornade upp sig ända till luckan the coke-pile

towered

up

self

right

to

vid taket

hatch-the

near ceiling-the

dar

den hade

östs

ner

i

källaren

frán

gatan.

where

it

poured-s

down

in

cellar-the

from

street-the

had

was

'[...] coke piled up right up to the hatch by the ceiling through which it had been poured into the cellar from the street.' Unambiguous stative readings only occur with sem-passives of atelic stative verbs (80-G) and telic action verbs (81-G). Here, the relation between two elements is expressed via an obligatory prepositional phrase that replaces the subject without truly being an agent. In Swedish, both the í-passive (80-S) and the vara-passive (81-S) are possible here: (80-G)

(80-S)

Die Tür war von Säulen

flankiert,

the

flanked

door w a s

by

pillars

[...]

Porten

flankerades av tvâ pelare [...]

door-the

flanked-s

by

two

pillars

'The door was flanked by two pillars [...]' (81-G)

(81-S)

Die Luft war frisch. Sie war erfüllt

vom

Zwitschern der

Vögel.

the

by-the

twittering

birds-GEN

[...]

air

was

fresh

it

was

filled

Den

var f y l l d av fâgelkvitter.

it

was

filled

by

the

bird-twittering

'The air was fresh, full of chirping birds.' Passive constructions that refer to psychological states lie in an area in between active and passive. Both languages only permit periphrastic passives here, with the auxiliary sein in German and vara in Swedish. Whilst the participle usually is that of an action verb, the combination with a stative auxiliary yields a 'Nachzustand' (resultative) reading. Many of these action verb participles have become lexicalised, and the passive is reinterpreted as a purely stative copular construction (cf. (82), (83)): (82-G)

Ich kann nicht beschreiben, wie empört ich war. I

(82-S)

can

not

describe

how

Jag var ohyggligt upprörd. I

was

terribly

upset

Ί was furious beyond description.'

furious

I

was

224 (83-G)

(83-S)

Barbro Landén/Valéria Molnár Ich verstand,

daß sie

gekränkt

war.

I

that

she

offended

was

Jag förstod

att

hon var sârad.

I

that

she

understood

understood

was

hurt

Ί knew that she was offended.' Some cases clearly show that the participle has been lexicalised, e.g. when it is prefixed with negative un- (84-G) and can thus be classified as an adjective: (84-G)

(84-S)

Also war sie

doch

nicht so unberührt und unbeteiligt, [...]

so

after-all

not

was

she

so

unaffected

and

indifferent

Alltsâ var hon ändä

inte sâ oberörd

och likgiltig [...]

so

not

and

was

she

after-all

so

unaffected

indifferent

'So she wasn't quite as unaffected and indifferent [...]' German copular íe/n-constructions (85-G) translate as vara + perfect participle, but many Swedish psych verbs can also combine with the auxiliary bli. This option occurs quite regularly, even though bli induces a change in activity aspect (85-S). Note, however, that these copular constructions are active both in German and Swedish: (85-G)

Vermutlich war meine Mutter besorgt, [...] probably

(85-S)

was

my

Mor

blev

mother

was/got probably

vai

mother

worried

bekymrad [...] worried

'Probably my mother was worried [...]' In sum, the translation data examined confirm the frequency and distribution of Swedish passive types as expected on the basis of our theoretical model, at least as far as translations into Swedish passive forms are concerned. Surprisingly, however, many German passive constructions are translated as Swedish non-passives. In these cases, the activity aspect is sometimes retained, but more often modified, for a variety of reasons to be discussed below.

5.3. Passive and its competitors: morphological passive in German original texts vs. Swedish active translations When translating German passive constructions with non-passives in Swedish, the activity aspect is modified to some degree or other. Note that while these non-passive constructions are formally in the active voice, their interpretation is not restricted to ACTIVE but also extends to INACTIVE and 'notional passive'. By notional passive we mean morphologically active constructions that meet the same condition on the agent as morphological passive constructions do: the agentive component of the event need not be syntactically realised, but when it is realised it cannot be the subject (cf. section 2.2). This condition is often met by

On the relation

between

aspectuality

and

225

passive

constructions that contain a nominalised action verb. Take for instance the following sentence with a 'light verb construction' ('Funktionsverbgefüge'), Die Methode kam zur Anwendung ('the method came to use', i.e. 'The method was used.') Here, Die Methode is the subject, while Anwendung, the deverbal eventive noun of the 'light verb construction', implies an agent. The German passive constructions in our data are translated in a variety of ways, but here we shall only discuss the most common ones: (i) nominalisation of action verbs, preserving the original activity aspect, (ii) several verb types in the active voice: these are either action verbs with an ACTIVE reading and a specified agent-subject or generic pronoun man ('one'), or verbs with an INACTIVE reading with a non-agenti ve subject (e.g. Die Suppe kocht 'the soup boils'). Many non-passive translations belong to this category. These are the two major alternatives to the Swedish morphological passive, and they appear as translations of actional and processual werden-passives as well as resultative and stative .sem-passives. Nominalisation with a certain active verb can affect the aspectual character of the sentence, illustrated in (86-S) below for a durative verb (hálla pâ 'hold on', i.e. 'continue') that is strongly progressive. Nominalisation is an unmarked way of placing verbal content - as a subject - in sentence-initial position, in order to preserve the original perspective in the Swedish translation: the event is functioning as the topic, the point of departure for the predication. In contrast, a participial topic would have been an extremely marked or ungrammatical choice in Swedish. (86-G)

(86-S)

Verhandelt

wurde montags bis donnerstags [...]

negotiated

was

Monday

to

Thursday

Förhandlingarna höll pâ ftân

mândag till

torsdagt·..]

negotiations-the

Monday

Thursday

continued

from

to

'They negotiated Monday to Thursday [...]' In our data, nominalisations often occur in an emphatically durative or iterative context. This is achieved in German by repeating the verbal prefix um- in combination with a werden-passive (87-G). In Swedish however, the adjective evigt ('eternal') is combined with nominalisation to mark the event as atelic and pejorative (87-S): (87-G)

(87-S)

Das Fenster ging zur

Bahnhofstraße

und da' Blick

auf das Gelände

the

Bahnhofstraße

and

of

window

went

to-the

the

view

the

site

des ehemaligen Bahnhofs,

das um-

und u m g e w ü h l t wurde [...]

the

that

and

former

train-station-GEN

again-

again-dug-up

was

Fönstret

lâg mot

Bahnhofstraße

och hade utsikt över det

tidigare

window-the

lay

Bahnhofstraße

and

former

to

had

view

of

the

stationsomrâdet

dar

det

var ett e v i g t grävande o c h

bökande [...]

station-area-the

where

it

was

grubbing

an

eternal

digging

and

'The window looked out on Bahnhofstraße and seeing the site of the old train station, which was dug up again and again [...]'

226

Barbro Landén/Valéria

Molnár

Surprisingly often, German passives are rendered in Swedish as verbs in the active voice. By translating the werden-passive into an active construction, the agent can more easily be expressed in Swedish, namely as an active subject. Often this kind of 'activisation' leads to a change of perspective, as the agent phrase of the passive in (88-G) becomes the subject and thus the unmarked topic of the active sentence in (88-S): (88-G)

mußte Hanna von ihrem Anwalt [...] dazu

überredet werden,

had-to

persuaded

Hanna

by

lawyer

her

sich

einverstanden

zu erklären.

self

consent

to

(88-S)

to

be

declare

mäste

Hannas advokat[.. .] e v e r t a l a henne att ge

sitt

samtycke.

had-to

Hannas

her

consent

lawyer

persuade

her

to

give

'[...] Hanna had to be persuaded by her lawyer to give her consent [...]' Activisations of this sort do not require that a specific agent be overtly expressed in the German original. In cases where the agent is an institution, generic man ( ' o n e ' ) is particularly well suited to take on the function of subject in the active voice: (89-G)

1910 wurde das Weinmuseum [...] e r ö f f n e t . 1910

(89-S)

was

[...]âr year

the

wine-museum

opened

1910 inrättade

man[...]

ett speciellt

vinmuseum,

1910

one

a

wine-museum

established

special

'In 1910, the Wine Museum was opened [...]' Werden- and jem-passives are often translated as active verbs with INACTIVE meaning, the agent vanishes or gets changed into an adverbial phrase: (90-G)

(90-S)

Ich

hörte

I

listened the

den Wagen cars

nach,

bis

ihr

to

until

their sound

des Verkehrs

geschluckt

wurde,

the

swallowed

was

traffic-GEN

Geräusch

vom

Rauschen

by-the

roar

Jag lyssnade tili

bilama

tills

deras brummande

drunknade

I

cars-the

until

their

drowned

listened

to

i

trafikbruset.

in

traffic-roar-the

droning

Ί listened to the sound of the cars until it got drowned in the roar of the traffic.' The German construction does, however, not always confine the translator to a particular activity aspect or the direction into which it may be modified. The non-passive translation of the s m - p a s s i v e in (91) illustrates the translator's freedom: in (91-S) the translator preserves the resultative constructional meaning, but strongly 'activises' it by choosing an action verb in the active voice and perfect tense. The alternative translation in (91-S') is less active

On the relation between aspectuality and passive

227

in meaning, because of the verb motbevisa ('refute'), which prefers an inanimate subject. The present tense form also shifts the aspectual meaning towards that of a durative process: (91-G)

, womit die so-that

(91-S)

the

Mär

von der öden Stadtlandschaft widerlegt i s t .

tale

of

[...] , och därmed har and

so

the

bleak

townscape

have

w e also

refuted

misconception-the

omrâdet

bara

är ett sterilt industriomrâde.

that

area-the

only

is

a

(91-S') Ett faktum som alltsâ fact

that

thus

trista

stadslandskapet.

boring

townscape-the

is

vi ocksâ vederlagt missuppfattningen

att

a

refuted

sterile

industrial-area

m o t b e v i s a r ryktet

om

det

refutes

about

the

reputation-the

Ά fact which shows that the tale about the sterile townscape just isn't true.'

6. Conclusion

We have used the theory of activity aspect to contrastively discuss and systematically describe the similarities and differences between the German and Swedish passive systems. Based on the morphological opposition of active and passive voice, we have suggested the following way of differentiating activity aspect: the morphological passive occupies an intermediary position between ACTIVE and INACTIVE, the two readings of the morphological active voice. We have also tried to show that the potential spectrum of the passive is to be divided into different types of activity aspect, depending on whether the passive is primarily motivated by aspect, diathesis or actionality. The aspectual type is related to INACTIVE and has a stative or resultative interpretation; the actional type is close to the ACTIVE reading of the morphological active. The centre of the passive spectrum, however, is occupied by the diathetically anchored type depicting processes. Whilst both Swedish and German have the entire range of passive interpretations, there are differences in the way these are formally realised, which creates considerable contrastive problems. And even though the two languages have periphrastic passives that are structurally close, these are not completely equivalent in meaning. Our empirical investigation confirms earlier observations on correspondences between the German and the Swedish passives: the dominant i-passive is supplanting periphrastic passives in the passive domain. When German passives are translated into Swedish, variation is achieved by making use of non-passive alternatives. Non-passive alternatives often slightly modify activity aspect, due to language-internal and (con)textual factors, and not simply because of the translator's arbitrary choice. We have pointed out some of the factors influencing the translation of German passives into Swedish. However, the complex crosslinguistic relations in the passive domain call for larger empirical studies and more detailed contextual investigations.

228

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Molnár

References

Secondary literature Admoni, Wladimir (1970): Der deutsche Sprachbau. - München: Beck. Andersen, Paul K. (1991): A new look at the passive. - Frankfurt: Lang. Anward, Jan (1981): Functions of passive and impersonal constructions. A case study from Swedish. Ph.D. Dissertation. Department of Linguistics. Uppsala University. Brandt, Margareta (1982): Das Zustandspassiv aus kontrastiver Sicht. - In: Deutsch als Fremdsprache 19, 28-34. Brandt, Margareta/Persson, Ingemar/Rosengren, Inger/Andersson, Sven-Gunnar (1987): Tysk syntax för högskolebruk. - Lund: Liber läromedel (= TSH-plus). Brinker, Klaus (1971): Das Passiv im heutigen Deutsch. Form und Funktion. - München, Düsseldorf: Max Hueber Verlag/Pädagogischer Verlag Schwann (= Heutiges Deutsch. Reihe I: Linguistische Grundlagen, Bd. 2). Engdahl, Elisabeth (1999): The choice between ¿»¿i-passive and i-passive in Danish, Norwegian and Swedish. - In: NORDSEM Report 3. Eroms, Hans-Werner (1992): Das deutsche Passiv in historischer Sicht. - In: L. Hoffmann (ed.): Deutsche Syntax. Ansichten und Aussichten, 225-249. Berlin, New York: de Gruyter (= Jahrbuch für Institut für deutsche Sprache 1991). Frajzyngier, Zygmunt (1982): Indefinite agent, passive and impersonal passive. A functional study. - In: Lingua 58, 267-290. Givón, Talmy (1979): On understanding grammar. - New York: Academic Press. - (1981): Typology and functional domains. - In: Studies in Language 5, 163-193. Haspelmath, Martin (1990): The grammaticalization of passive morphology. - In: Studies in Language 14, 25-72. Helbig, Gerhard (1987): Zur Klassifizierung der Konstruktion mit SEIN + Partizip II (Was ist ein Zustandspassiv?). - In: Centre de Recherche en Linguistique Germanique (ed.): Das Passiv im Deutschen. Akten des Kolloquiums über das Passiv im Deutschen. Nizza 1986, 215-234. Tübingen: Niemeyer (= Linguistische Arbeiten 183). Helbig, Gerhard/Buscha, Joachim (1991): Deutsche Grammatik. Ein Handbuch für den Ausländerunterricht. - Leipzig: VEB Verlag Enzyklopädie. Holm, Gösta (1952): Om s-passivum i svenskan. - Lund: CWK Gleerup (= Lundastudier i nordisk sprâkvetenskap 9). Jakobson, Roman (1957): Shifters, verbal categories, and the Russian verb. - Harvard University. Kirri, Arro (1974): Diatesstudier i svenskt talsprlk. - In: C. Platzack (ed.): Svenskans beskrivning 8, 144-159. Lund, Institutionen för nordiska sprâk. Kirsner, Robert S. (1976): On the subjectless 'pseudo-passive' in Standard Dutch and the semantics of background agents. - In: C. Li (ed.): Subject and topic, 385-415. New York: Academic Press. Landén, Barbro/Molnár, Valeria (in prep.): Das Passiv als Handlungsaspekt. Überlegungen zum Verhältnis von Aspektualität und Passiv auf der Grundlage eines deutsch-schwedischen Sprachvergleichs. Langacker, Ronald. W./Munro, Pamela (1975): Passives and their meanings. - In: Language 514, 789-530. Leinonen, Marja/Östman, Jan-Ola (1983): Passive patterns in Russian and Swedish. - In: F. Karlsson (ed.): 7th Scandinavian Conference of Linguistics I, 175-198.

On the relation between aspectuality

and passive

229

Leiss, Elisabeth (1992): Die Verbalkategorien des Deutschen. Ein Beitrag zur Theorie der sprachlichen Kategorisierung. Habilitationsschrift. - Berlin, New York: de Gruyter. Maling, Joan/Sigurjónsdóttir, Sigriöur (1997): The "New passive" in Icelandic. - In: BUCLD 21, 378-389. Molnár, Valéria (in prep.): Zum Passivbegriff aus typologisch-historischer Perspektive. Oksaar, Eis (1970): Zum Passiv im Deutschen und Schwedischen. - In: Probleme der kontrastiven Grammatik, 82-106. Düsseldorf: Schwann (= Jahrbuch des Instituts für deutsche Sprache 1969). SAG (1999): Svenska Akademins Grammatik. Vol. 4. Ulf Teleman, Staffan Hellberg, Erik Andersson (eds.). - Stockholm: Norstedts Ordbok. Schubert, Klaus (1982): Aktiv und Passiv im Deutschen und Schwedischen. Ph.D. Dissertation. Kiel. Strecker, Bruno (1997): Das Passiv (und die Familie der grammatischen Konversen). - In: G. Zifonun, L. Hoffmann, B. Strecker (eds.): Grammatik der deutschen Sprache. Band 3, 17891880. Berlin, New York: de Gruyter. Sundman, Marketta (1987): Subjektval och diates i svenskan. - Âbo: Àbo Akademis Förlag. Weisgerber, Leo (1963): Die Welt im 'Passiv'. - In: Die Wissenschaft von deutscher Sprache und Dichtung. Methoden, Probleme, Aufgaben, 25-59. Stuttgart: Klett (= Festschrift für F. Maurer zum 65. Geburtstag). Zifonun, Gisela (1992): Das Passiv im Deutschen. Agenten, Blockaden und (De)Gradierungen. In: L. Hoffmann (ed.): Deutsche Syntax. Ansichten und Aussichten, 250-275. Berlin, New York: de Gruyter (= Jahrbuch des Instituts für deutsche Sprache 1991).

Sources Fiction: Schlink, Bernhard (1995): Der Vorleser. - Zürich: Diogenes Verlag (Übersetzung Schwedische: Hansson, L. 1998. Högläsaren. - Stockholm: Albert Bonniers Förlag).

ins

Non-fiction: (1) Friedrichstrasse 12 - Secession In: Lehne, Andreas: Jugendstil in Wien. J & V Edition Wien. Verlagsgesellschaft m.b.H. 1990, S. 16-17. (2) Historisches Museum der Pfalz Prospekt, Historisches Museum der Pfalz. Speyer. 1995. (3) Scania - eine ideale Ergänzung für VW In: SZ 29./30. November 1997. (4) Denkfabriken gegen den Kohlenstaub In: Geschäftswelt 9/95, S. 22.

230

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(5) Von der Planwirtschaft zur Marktwirtschaft. In: Zawadzky, Karl: Von der Planwirtschaft zur Marktwirtschaft. Die Treuhandanstalt hat ihre Aufgabe der Privatisierung erfüllt. Weg frei für einen wettbewerbsfähigen Mittelstand. In: INTER NATIONES BONN. Basis-Info 9/95 Wirtschaftspolitik. (6) Arbeitgeber und Arbeitnehmer im Betrieb In: Ashauer, Günter: Grundwissen Wirtschaft. 1994. Stuttgart etc.: Klett. S. 79-80, 84-86. (7) Struktur und Entwicklung der Bevölkerung in ihrer Bedeutung für die Wirtschaft des Landes. In: Ashauer, Günter: Grundwissen Wirtschaft. 1994. Stuttgart etc.: Klett. S. 16-20. (8) Wirtschaftsordnung und Wirtschaftspolitik In: Tatsachen über Deutschland. 1996. Fankfurt am Main: Societätsverlag. S. 258-261.

Johanna Barddal/Valéria

Molnár

The passive in Icelandic - compared to Mainland Scandinavian*

Our main concern in this article is to analyze and to explain the passive in Icelandic. In order to reach this goal we put forward a theoretical model, based firstly on the general framework of Construction Grammar, in which the construction is defined as a form-meaning correspondence, and secondly on the theory of the passive as activity aspect, developed in Molnár (in prep.). The delimitation of the passive from the active as suggested in the above mentioned model makes it possible to predict a wide range of passive constructions with different formal and functional properties. We also discuss the relation of different periphrastic and synthetic passive constructions in Icelandic to the typologically and historically represented types of passive in the world's languages, with special regard to Germanic and Scandinavian at their different historical stages. It will be shown that Icelandic has a very poor inventory of verbal components in its passive formation, compared to the other Germanic languages. Despite this poverty of its components, the passive construction in Icelandic is abundantly differentiated into subconstructions, due to the possibilities given by case morphology, agreement, word order and (in)definiteness. This diathetical and morphosyntactic variation makes it possible to express a great number of aspectually, diathetically and actionally coloured passive types in Icelandic.

1. Introduction

Hitherto, both in traditional g r a m m a r and modern linguistic theories, the passive has primarily been discussed with regard to its structural properties. T h e m a i n f o c u s has been on the changes in structural relations achieved by passivization, i.e. the promotion of the object of the active sentence to subject status, on the one hand, and the demotion of the subject of the active sentence to an optional agent phrase, on the other. This is illustrated in ( l a - b ) : (1)

a. b.

T h e boy stole the book. T h e book was stolen (by the boy).

Active Passive

L a n g u a g e s h a v e different structural possibilities tó express similar c h a n g e s of syntactic f u n c t i o n s . D i f f e r e n t grammatical theories have concentrated on the f o r m a l aspects of the p h e n o m e n o n , while the functional complexity of passive vs. active has not been satisfactorily accounted for. The explanation for the existence of the passive has almost exclusively been restricted to the relation-changing processes, either in the promotional or the d e m o * We thank the following people for comments and/or discussions: Bill Croft, Hans-Olav Enger, Elisabet Engdahl, Joninn Hetland, Helgi Skúli Kjartansson, Joan Maling, Christer Platzack, and the audience at the "Research seminar" at the Scandinavian Department in Lund, 3 May 2000, where an earlier version of this work was presented. This research is supported in part by the first author's grant from the Icelandic Research Fund for Graduate Students.

232

Johanna Barôdal/Valéria

Molnár

tional direction. In this paper we argue for the expansion of the functional d o m a i n of the passive, i.e. for the integration of diathetical and aspectual properties in the analysis of the active-passive alternation. Such a model is necessary to account for the wide range of possible, and existing, passive constructions in the Scandinavian languages. In particular, the p a s s i v e in Icelandic has a great diversity of structural and interpretational possibilities, s o m e of which have been neglected in the literature, while others have not been accounted for in a coherent way. Icelandic is of special interest since the passive system is a very differentiated and dyn a m i c one. T h e Icelandic active-passive alternation creates a challenge to every theory of passive. In our view, an adequate theory of the passive voice has to provide an explanation for the e m e r g e n c e of new structural and functional alternatives, and it has to be able to relate the innovations to the already existing constructions. O n e such innovative construction already m e n t i o n e d in the literature in connection with passivization is the so-called " N e w p a s s i v e " . This p h e n o m e n o n was first discussed by Kjartansson (1991) and has recently been taken up again by Maling/Sigurjónsdóttir (1997: 379): (2)

i>aö var

lamiö

mig

á

leikvellinum.

there was

hit

me (acc)

on

the playground

N e w passive

Ί was hit on the playground.' This e x a m p l e illustrates that the N e w passive does not fulfil the above mentioned criteria of r e l a t i o n - c h a n g i n g operations typical of the canonical passive represented in the E n g l i s h sentence in ( l b ) . Only demotion of the agentive constituent (of the subject in the active sentence) has taken place while the "active" object remains in situ with its original accusative c a s e m a r k i n g . Interestingly, Standard Icelandic allows constructions partly similar to the N e w passive, but only in cases of indefinite constituents, a p h e n o m e n o n k n o w n as the D e f i n i t e n e s s E f f e c t (see for instance Sigurösson 1989). In such a case the " a c t i v e " object can, in one sense, be considered to be promoted, since it carries nominative case, but not in another sense, since it is not promoted to the first position of the sentence, i.e. to topic. (3)

P a ö var

laminn

strákur

á

leikvellinum.

there was

hit

a boy (nom)

on

the playground

Indefinite passive

Ά boy was hit on the playground.' T h e N e w passive is analyzed by Maling/Sigurjónsdóttir (1997) to be a case representing the active voice ( s y n t a c t i c a l l y active in their terminology). In our theoretical f r a m e w o r k , h o w ever, such a construction would qualify as one subtype of passive, since our theory predicts a variety of passive constructions with different diathetical and aspectual properties. A n o t h e r p h e n o m e n o n relevant to our discussion is the alternation observed within the promotional passive type in Icelandic. Verbs selecting oblique (dative and genitive) objects in the active voice retain the m o r p h o l o g i c a l case of this constituent w h e n p r o m o t e d to subject in the passive voice: (4)

a.

Strákurinn

stai bókinni.

the boy (nom) stole the book (dat) 'The b o y stole the b o o k . '

Active

The Passive in Icelandic - compared to Mainland Scandinavian b.

Bókinni

var

the book (dat) was

stoliö.

233 Passive

stolen (-agr)

'The book was stolen.' However, the dative assigning verbs can also show up with the "active" object promoted to nominative case in the passive. In contrast to (4b) the past participle in (5) agrees in gender and number with the subject: (5)

Bókin

var stolin.

the book (nom)

was

Adjectival passive

stolen (+agr)

'The book was stolen.' This alternation pattern is scarcely noticed in the literature on the passive in Icelandic (see however Sigurösson 1989: 326, Thráinsson 1986: 44ff. and Friójónsson 1989: 74ff.). T o account for the formal and functional differences between (4b) and (5) it is not sufficient to assume that the active-passive alternation is exclusively diathetically motivated. As we will show below, aspectual properties are crucial in giving a satisfactory explanation for the existence of these two subtypes of the passive in Icelandic. The aim of this paper is to present a theory of the passive which can account for the wide variety of subtypes within the passive voice. Our account relies on the main assumptions formulated in Molnár (in prep.) and Landén/Molnár (this volume) according to which the opposition of active vs. passive is fundamentally regarded as activity aspect. Further, we adapt the theoretical framework of Construction Grammar (Goldberg 1995, Kay/Fillmore 1999, Cruse/Croft in prep.) into which we intend to integrate the theory of activity aspect. This will be done in section 2 below. Section 3 gives an overview of the passive in Icelandic, with a special focus on two interesting phenomena, i.e. the New passive ((2) above) and the relation between case/agreement alternation and aspect ((4b) and (5) above). In section 4 we present the main passive alternatives in the Scandinavian languages. When comparing the passive in Icelandic and Swedish, two phenomena of special interest will be discussed, i.e. the difference in formation of the periphrastic passive and the difference in the distribution of the synthetic s-form. After having discussed the passive of the Scandinavian languages, in particular the passive in Icelandic, from a typological and diachronic perspective (section 5), we will close the paper with a summary in section 6.

2. Theoretical assumptions

2.1. Construction Grammar The central theoretical assumption of Construction Grammar (Goldberg 1995, Kay/ Fillmore 1999, Cruse/Croft in prep.) is that constructions are the basic units of language, consisting of both meaning (or function) and form, independently of the lexical items occurring in them. Constructions are defined in the following way (Goldberg 1995: 4):

234 (6)

Johanna Barddaì/Valéria

Molnár

C is a C O N S T R U C T I O N iff d e f C is a form-meaning pair such that some aspect of F¡ or some aspect of S¡ is not strictly predictable from C's component parts or from other previously established constructions.

As apparent from the definition above, the defining criterion of the construction is that its meaning and form are not compositionally derived from other independently existing constructions in the language. This means that form and meaning together contribute to a whole, not dividable into subparts without a loss of the constructional meaning. Morphemes are clear cases of such form-meaning correspondences, not predictable from anything else, but even more complex structures fulfil the criteria of constructions. Kay and Fillmore (1999) discuss one type of construction, the so-called "What is X doing Y ?" construction. In this case we have a question containing slots that are partly lexically filled. This construction does not primarily describe a scene but has the pragmatic function of signalling this scene's incongruity, paraphrasable as how come (1999: 4): (7)

Waiter, what's this fly doing in my soup?

There are also constructions that are lexically unfilled, only consisting of syntactically defined slots. Goldberg (1995) addresses the problem of such constructions which she refers to as argument structure constructions. Consider the following example (Goldberg 1995: 3): (8)

Pat sneezed the napkin off the table.

In (8) the intransitive verb sneeze occurs in the so-called Caused-Motion construction:

(9)

Caused Motion X C A U S E S Y T O M O V E Z(loc)

Subj V Obj Obi

The left-hand column in (9) specifies the semantic composition of the construction and the right-hand column gives its syntactic form. The verb sneeze does not subcategorize in the lexicon for 'Caused Motion' with three argument slots. The meaning 'to cause something to move somewhere' has to be attributed to the construction as a whole. This is one of the main reasons for the assumption that constructions exist independently of the lexical items occurring in them. In (8) above the 'Caused Motion' interpretation has to be assigned exclusively by the construction and cannot be traced back to the lexical meaning of the verb. Therefore constructions have to be assumed to have a meaning of their own, on a more abstract level. A further basic assumption of Construction Grammar is that the construction is the basic linguistic entity (Goldberg 1995) and that all linguistic knowledge is represented as constructions and networks of constructions (Cruse/Croft, in prep.). Furthermore, Cruse/Croft, when discussing the semantic interpretation rules of constructions, argue that it is necessary to assume different degrees of schematicity for all syntactic expressions, ranging from concrete, partly lexically filled types, including idioms and verb specific constructions, to abstract, syntactically regular and lexically unfilled patterns, such as the ordinary transitive construction (see also Croft 2000). Cruse/Croft, however, point

The Passive in Icelandic - compared

to Mainland

235

Scandinavian

out that the difference between these types is not due to the noncompositionality of the former and the compositionality of the latter type, but rather that the former's rules of semantic composition are more specialized while the latter's are more general. Their view of the semantic interpretation of constructions might seem to contradict Goldberg's criterium of noncompositionality (see (6) above). In fact, however, Cruse/Croft's specific rules of semantic composition correspond to Goldberg's assumption of non-compositionality. There are good reasons for assuming that the passive exists as a construction of its own, with a function and form not strictly predictable from the properties of its components. The (specific) constructional character of the passive is easy to detect in the "true" passive in English: (10)

The window was broken.

(10) above has two aspectual readings: one processual and one stative. The processual reading cannot be derived from the simple composition of the individual parts. The lexically determined aspectual meaning of the components can only lead to a stative interpretation, since broken is inherently resultative and was is inherently stative. The processual reading can only be gained by assuming that it is assigned by the construction as a whole. Another example serving as evidence for the non-compositionality (specific interpretation) of the aspectual meaning of the passive can be taken from German: (11)

Das Haus

wird

bewacht,

the

becomes

guarded

house

'The house is being guarded.' The inherent aspectual meaning of the German verb werden 'become' is telic, 1 since it refers to a change from one state to another. This aspectual meaning was still availabe in the Old High German equivalent of (11), but is now lost in the werden-passive of Modern High German (see also section 5 below). As is obvious from the English translation, the Werden-passive has an atelic interpretation today and refers to an ongoing process. By assuming that the passive is a construction of its own with a specific constructional meaning, we can explain the fact that the aspectual interpretation of the werden-passive is not derivable from its parts. It is not only the aspectual meaning of the passive which is non-compositional and therefore has to be assigned by the construction, but there are indications that even the interpretation on the relational level (i.e. the demoted agent) is constructionally determined. This can be illustrated in the following pair of examples from the Impersonal passive in Icelandic (Sigurösson 1989: 320): (12)

a.

Paö

var setiö á

gólfinu allt kvöldiö.

there

was

the floor

sat

on

all

Impersonal passive

evening

One/people sat on the floor all evening.'

1

The terms 'telic' vs. 'atelic' are used for the main aspectual opposition [+limited] vs. [-limited] - where no morphological category of 'aspect' is present to express this distinction (as in the case of English, German and the Scandinavian languages in opposition to Russian).

236

Johanna Barddal/Valéria Molnár b.

*f>aö var setiö í

gildru allt kvöldiö.

there

a trap

was

sat

in

all

evening

As Sigurösson points out, the passive of sitja 'sit', i.e. varsetid 'was sat' only allows a volitional reading of the event, as in (12a). On the other hand, (12b) is ungrammatical since one usually doesn't sit in a trap of one's own free will. This obligatory volitional reading of the event is enforced by the construction preconditioning an agentive performer. Yet another argument for adopting the constructional approach is the existence of identical structures with different interpretations, on the one hand, and the possibility of different structures with the same interpretation, on the other. This phenomenon can be found in cross-linguistic comparison, and even within the same language. The following examples from Icelandic (13a) and Swedish (13b) show the lack of one-to-one correspondence between form and function in genetically closely related languages: (13)

a.

b.

Bókin

seldist.

the book

sold-s

Middle

'The book sold easily.' Boken sâldes. the book

Passive

sold-s

'The book was sold.' In those examples, we have the same morphological form, i.e. -st in Icelandic and its Swedish counterpart -s, with an important difference in meaning: The Icelandic example in (13a) is a description of a property of the book, i.e. the middle, while the Swedish example in (13b) refers to a single event in which the book was sold by somebody, hence an instance of the passive construction. Conversely, there are also examples of different morphological/syntactic structures with the same meaning: (14)

a.

Bókinni

var stoliö ígaer.

the book (dat) was

b.

stolen

'The book was stolen yesterday.' Boken stals igâr. the book

stole-s

Passive

yesterday

Passive

yesterday

'The book was stolen yesterday.' The Icelandic example (14b) contains a periphrastic passive, which is the ordinary passive in Icelandic, while the Swedish example (14b) is originally medium, which has developed to become one of the main passive alternatives in Swedish. In (14) we therefore have examples of different forms conveying the same meaning. Methods which take either the formal aspect or the functional aspect into consideration yield misleading conclusions for examples such as (13) and (14) above. Only by assuming a constructional analysis can we explain a necessary cooccurrence of a form and a meaning, as a prerequisite for a satisfactory analysis of a certain passive type.

The Passive in Icelandic - compared to Mainland

Scandinavian

237

2.2. Voice as activity aspect So far we have argued for a constructional analysis of the passive, and consequently for the assumption that it is a construction of its own, i.e. a form and meaning correspondence. Our next step is to define the passive construction by delimiting its form and function from the active construction. The content of the alternation between the active and the passive, which are representatives of the category voice, can be pinned down as activity aspect. The active-passive opposition makes it possible to express different degrees of activity. According to our hypothesis the passive voice is opposed to both the ACTIVE pole and the INACTIVE pole represented within the active voice. The constructional options within the active voice comprise everything from highly active content (15a) to different variants of inactive content (15b and 15c): (15)

a. b. c.

Peter killed the taxi driver. Active content: activity The taxi driver died. Inactive content: process The taxi driver is dead. Inactive content: state

By making use of a passive construction as in (16), the description of the above mentioned situation, i.e. the fate of the taxi driver, is neither as active (15a) nor as inactive (15b-c) as it is when using the alternatives within the active voice: (16)

The taxi driver was killed (by Peter).

Passive

In our view, the difference between (15a) and (16) is not only related to the diathetical change, i.e. the change in perspective, but also to the degree of activity: in (15a) the event is presented as an action and the cause relation is foregrounded, while in (16) the cause relation has been backgrounded and can even be syntactically detached (compare the optionality of the ¿ry-phrase) leading to the foregrounding of the process part of the event. On the other hand, the process in (16) can be regarded as more active than the process in (15b), since in (16) the process is caused by somebody, while the process of dying in (15b) lacks this implication. Thus, the active voice contains two extreme poles on the semantically defined activity scale, referring to highly active actions (DO), on the one hand, and to inactive event types, process (GO) and state (BE), on the other. On this activity scale the passive takes an intermediate position: 2

2

Langacker/Munro (1975) consider the opposition between DO and BE as fundamental to the analysis of passives. Also in Platzack (1979) we find the distinction between GO and BE (based on Jackendoff 1976).

238

Johanna Barddal/Valéria

(17)

Molnár

ACTIVE (active voice)

INTERMEDIATE LOCATION: passive

voice

INACTIVE (active voice)

T h e ACTIVE/INACTIVE opposition within the active voice manifests itself within three domains: the aspectual domain, the diathetical domain and the actional domain: (i)

Within the aspectual domain the important distinction can be defined as the contrast between DO and BE, i.e. between activity and state. T h e meaning of the I N A C T I V E , in this case, is stative: for e x a m p l e " X is dead".

(ii)

Within the diathetical domain, it is the character of the subject, and thereby the subject-predicate relation, which is at issue. In the ACTIVE pole of the active the subject is agentive, while in the INACTIVE pole it is "medial", being the underlying " o b j e c t " of a process. This type of INACTIVE (GO/BE) is referred to, within other linguistic traditions, as medium. In the Scandinavian languages, the m e d i u m is r e p r e s e n t e d morphologically by a verb f o r m constructed with the suffix - i in Swedish, D a n i s h and N o r w e g i a n Bokmâl, and with -st in Icelandic, Faroese and N o r w e g i a n N y n o r s k .

(18)

a.

Dörren öppnas. 3 the door

b.

'The door opens.' Dyrnar opnast. the door

Swedish

open-s

Icelandic

open-s

'The door opens.' (iii)

3

E s s e n t i a l l y , the a c t i o n a l d o m a i n is i n v o l v e d w h e n f o r m i n g the s o - c a l l e d " i m p e r s o n a l " sentences, representing either a process (GO) or in s o m e cases a state (BE) of the INACTIVE. T h e contrast between ACTIVE and INACTIVE in this d o m a i n can neither be traced back to the agentive vs. nonagentive character of the subject, nor to the aspectual difference between the d y n a m i c reading of ACTIVE and the stative reading of INACTIVE. The crucial difference between DO vs. GO/BE lies in the presence or absence of the actional component: while there is an agent realized as the subject in the ACTIVE pole of the active voice, there is neither an agent nor a subject in the impersonal sentences of the INACTIVE pole. See the following e x a m ples f r o m Icelandic (19a) and German (19b):

This Swedish example is ambiguous between a middle and a passive reading.

The Passive in Icelandic - compared to Mainland Scandinavian (19)

a.

Núna

kvöldar.

now

becomes-evening

239

'It is becoming evening.' b.

Mir

graut

vor Wölfen. 4

me (dat)

fears

for

wolves

Ί am afraid of wolves.' The semantic opposition between the ACTIVE and the INACTIVE poles of the active voice, located in these three different domains, can be summarized in the following way:

(20)

Aspect

Diathesis

Actionality

ACTIVE

ACTIVE

ACTIVE

DO

DO

DO

BE

GO/BE

GO/BE

INACTIVE (Stative)

INACTIVE (Medium)

X is dead

X opnast

(Impers.

I N A C T I V E constr.) 0 kvöldar

The passive takes, within these three domains, an intermediate position between the ACTIVE pole and the three different types of the INACTIVE pole, i.e. stative, medium and impersonal. This model makes it possible to delimit the "passive area" from the "active surroundings" (containing both ACTIVE and INACTIVE), and to define the overall constructional meaning of the passive as taking an intermediate position in three different functional domains. This complex system leads to a necessary further differentiation of the passive construction into several subtypes. The exact character of each subtype depends on the domain in which the opposition between the active and passive is located. I f the active-passive opposition lies mainly within the aspectual domain (on the DO vs. BE axis) then the constructional meaning can be described as being very close to the

4

Icelandic exhibits superficially similar structures with a dative Experiencer in first position: (i)

Mér

líkar

viö

Guömund.

me (dat)

like

with

Gudmund (acc)

Ί like Guömundur.' S i n c e the dative E x p e r i e n c e r behaves like a syntactic subject in Icelandic (see for instance Zaenen/Maling/Thráinsson

1 9 8 5 ) as opposed to G e r m a n , the Icelandic construction does not

qualify as an impersonal I N A C T I V E . Instead it is an instance o f the stative I N A C T I V E located in the left-hand sphere o f the model in ( 2 0 ) .

240

Johanna Barddal/Valéria

Molnár

INACTIVE pole (stative) of the active voice. In that case we have to distinguish between two different passive constructions, which are superficially similar but which have different meanings, i.e. either a resultative or a stative meaning: (21)

The fish is fried.

a.

Stative passive

b. Resultative passive (21) has both a stative reading, referring to a property of the fish as being fried (The fish is fried, not cooked.), and a resultative reading, where the state of the fish is regarded as the result of the frying activity (The fish is fried by now.). On the other hand, if the usage of a passive construction is primarily "actionally" motivated, i.e. if the agent demotion is the relevant factor, which is the case in the impersonal passive, then the constructional meaning of the passive subtype is closely related to the ACTIVE pole of the active voice. We refer to this passive type as actional passive: (22)

Hier

wird

getanzt.

here

becomes

danced

Actional passive

'People are dancing here.' or 'Some dancing is going on here.' In languages which allow the actional passive, the demoted agent must usually be a volitionally acting person. The optimal intermediate position on the ACTIVE-INACTIVE axis is taken by the diathetically motivated passive. In this case there is a promotion to the subject position without leading to stativity or resultativity. Thus, the aspectual difference between ACTIVE active and the processual passive is minimal, with the main emphasis being on altering the subject-predicate relation: (23)

Das Haus

wird

gebaut.

the

becomes

built

house

Processual passive

'The house is being built.' The location of the distinct subtypes of the passive construction in the three different functional domains (on the horizontal axis) and on the activity scale (vertical axis) is illustrated in the following model:

The Passive in Icelandic - compared

(24)

Aspect ACTIVE (DO)

Passive (BE DONE BE)

t

INACTIVE (BE)

to Mainland

241

Scandinavian

Diathesis ACTIVE (DO)

Passive (GO BY)

Actionality ACTIVE (DO)

I

Passive (GOBY)

A

INACTIVE (GO/BE)

INACTIVE (GO/BE)

In this section, we have argued for the thesis that the active-passive alternation should be defined as the category expressing activity aspect. The function of this category is to reach a further differentiation of events on the activity scale. As we have shown, a certain differentiation of event types is already possible in the active voice. We have divided those types into two main groups, ACTIVE and INACTIVE, containing the event type DO, on the one hand, and GO and BE on the other. Through different structures within the passive voice, we can express further subtypes of events located between ACTIVE and INACTIVE, such as GO BY and BE DONE. By the type GO BY we refer to a process which can be traced back to an agentive performer located either in the diathetical or in the actional domain. The type BE DONE denotes a state coming into existence as a result of an action located within the aspectual domain. Activity aspect is the grammatical category for expressing different event types structurally, and within that category the passive is a structural way of describing an activity as less active, though not completely inactive (see the discussion of the "intermediate" position of the passive). That is the general content of the passive construction as opposed to that of the active. The general constructional meaning of the passive voice, as defined in our model above, operates within three functional domains. A natural consequence of the complexity of the system is the existence of a wide range of passive constructions, each of them motivated mainly by one of the functional domains, either aspectually, diathetically or actionally. The constructional meaning of each subtype is dependent on the relevant functional domain and the location within that domain. Finally, we would like to point out that the analysis of the passive as a construction eliminates one of the main problems arising within the transformational approach. As is wellknown, the transformational tradition postulates the preservation of meaning when shifting from the active voice to the passive voice, thereby restricting the interpretation of passive and passivization in an inadequate manner. As is apparent from our discussion, however, it is necessary to assume certain modifications in the constructional meaning when changing the voice type. Our theoretical framework makes it possible to give a coherent account, not only of core representatives of the passive voice, but also of the peripheral instances.

242

Jóhanna Barddal/Valéria Molnár

3. The passive voice in Icelandic

3.1. Overview Icelandic is, in our view, the perfect object of study, when analyzing the form and meaning of the category of activity aspect, since Icelandic exhibits a great diversity of constructions qualifying as passive candidates. Many of these have been deprived of the status of passive, because in different theories of voice different structural and semantic criteria have been given preference. Constructions without the preferred structural and/or semantic properties have thus been excluded from the passive voice. Within several approaches, the canonical representative of the passive has been assumed to fulfil two syntactic criteria: promotion of the patient to subject in the nominative case, and demotion of the agent to an optionally realized adjunct (see examples ( l a - b ) above). Notice that no change of the aspectual type is, however, assumed through this voice shift. As pointed out in the literature, morphology plays a crucial role in many languages, when expressing these syntactic changes (see section 5 below). In the literature, the following constructions have, unanimously, been accepted as passive in Icelandic (Zaenen/Maling/Thráinsson 1985, Thráinsson 1986 and Sigurösson 1989): (25)

a.

Bókin

var keypt.

the book (nom) was

b.

'The book was bought.' Bókinni var stoliö. the book (dat) was

c.

Oblique passive

stolen

'The book was stolen.' Pad var dansaö á ballinu. there

was

danced

Nominative passive

bought

on

Impersonal passive

the ball

'People danced at the ball.' In examples (25a-b) the "active" object has been promoted to subject. As has been argued for in detail elsewhere (Zaenen/Maling/Thráinsson 1985, Sigurösson 1989) Icelandic allows not only subjects in the nominative case but even in oblique cases, i.e. dative and genitive subjects are possible in the passive. The last example (25c) is surely not promotional, but since it fulfils one of the main criteria of passivization, namely the demotion of the agent, there is a consensus, at least in the Icelandic literature, on its status as passive. Regarding the terminology used in this paper, note that although every constructional alternative of the passive presupposes a demotion of the agent, only those subtypes which lack the promotion of the patient are called demotional. The types where the patient is promoted, either to subject or to topic, we call promotional passive. As expected, the promotional types of the Icelandic passive are located in the middle and in the left-hand sphere of the passive area: the Nominative passive comprises both spheres (see the model in (24)) while the Oblique passive is restricted to the middle field. The demotional alternative, i.e. the Impersonal passive, on the other hand, is situated in the far right and upper part of the model in (24). Thereby, the Impersonal passive, with its actional character, is much closer to an ACTIVE reading than the promotional types (compare also

The Passive in Icelandic - compared

to Mainland

243

Scandinavian

the label verknadarmynd 'action form' suggested by Friöjonsson (1989: 99ff.) for the Impersonal passive in Icelandic). These promotional types, on the other hand, can be further differentiated into a stative, resultative and a processual type. The Oblique passive only allows for the processual reading, while the Nominative passive of Icelandic is ambiguous with respect to aspect. It can be interpreted as processual, resultative and stative. Even though the above mentioned passive types in Icelandic cover the main aspectual alternatives within the passive field, the picture is still not exhaustive, since the passive in Icelandic involves even more fine-grained distinctions. We will now give a full overview of the constructions we would like to subsume under the passive voice in Icelandic (the types to be discussed below are in bold face): Nominative passive (promotion + nominative) a stative/resultative b processual Oblique passive (promotion + oblique) always processual Prepositional passive (promotion + PP) Indefinite passive (no promotion + nom [indef]) New passive (no promotion + no nom [def]) Impersonal passive (expletive (intrans V)) Table 1 : Differentiation of the passive construction in Icelandic with regard to promotion/demotion and actional/aspectual features As shown in Table I, two of the further passive variants, i.e. the Prepositional and the Indefinite passive, are situated on the boundary between the processual and the actional passive. Notice that there are internal differences within both the Prepositional and the Indefinite passive: The presence or absence of topicalization creates the dividing line within the Prepositional passive ((26a-b) below). As to the Indefinite passive, its subject can occur in different case forms, i.e. nominative (27a), dative (27b) and genitive (27c), inducing agreement only in the case of the nominative. The New passive is most closely related to the Impersonal passive (which in Icelandic is always derived from intransitive verbs) and represents the actional type (28). The New passive also shares with the Prepositional passive and the Indefinite passive the property of lacking promotion of the underlying object to the subject position:

244 (26)

Johanna Barddal/Valéria Molnár a.

b.

Aö

skemmtikraftinum var hlegiö.

at

the comedian (dat)

a.

b.

was

laughed at

the comedian (dat)

i>aö

voru keyptar margar baekur.

there

were

Prepositional passive (+topical)

bought

many

(-topical)

Indefinite passive

books (nom)

'Many books were bought.' Paö var stoliö mörgum bókum. there

c.

laughed

'The comedian was laughed at.' f>aö var hlegiö aö skemmtikraftinum. there

(27)

was

was

stolen

many

books (dat)

'Many books were stolen.' f>aö var saknaö margra bóka. there

was

missed

many

books (gen)

'Many books were missing.' (28)

a.

b.

Paö

var keypt

bókina/hana.

there

was

book/it (acc)

New passive

'The book/it was bought/purchased.' Paö var stoliö bókinni/henni. there

c.

bought

was

stolen

the book/it (dat)

'The book/it was stolen.' Paö var saknaö bókarinnar/hennar. there

was

missed

the book/it (gen)

'The book/it was missing.' By defining the passive, within our theory, as being one of the two main structural representatives of the category activity aspect, the great diversity of passive constructions within one language does not create a problem. On the contrary, since the activity aspect covers three different functional domains, an aspectual, diathetical and actional one, we would expect a wide range of passive constructions, depending on the influence of each domain. From our overview of Icelandic it is clear that the diathetical and the actional domains in particular are widely differentiated. The actional domain in Modern Icelandic can even be considered dynamic and expanding since new constructions are entering the system.

3.2. Two controversial phenomena: the New passive and aspectual opposition between the Nominative passive and the Oblique passive Comparing our theory of the passive to traditional, diathetically oriented theories, two important issues in Icelandic deserve special attention: firstly, the emergence of the New passive, and secondly the aspectual contrast within the promotional passive type, illustrated by the following pair of examples (see also (4b) and (5) above): "Bókinni var stoliö" vs. "Bókin var stolin". We will now discuss each in turn. The New passive, exemplified in (28) above, deviates in several respects from the canonical passive. The most significant difference between the two can be traced back to

The Passive in Icelandic - compared to Mainland Scandinavian

245

the component of promotionality. The New passive lacks this component and is similar to the Impersonal passive, the Indefinite passive and the Prepositional passive in that all of these types are demotional, and consequently subsumed under the actional passive type. However, the New passive differs from the Indefinite passive in allowing not only a lexically case-marked argument (in dative (28b) or genitive (28c)) but also an argument in the structural case (accusative (28a)), which surprisingly is not promoted to subject and retains its case in the passive sentence. Another astonishing feature of the New passive is that the lexically or structurally case marked argument is not indefinite, as is the non-promoted argument of the Indefinite passive. We concur with Kjartansson (1991) in viewing certain instances of the Prepositional passive as a possible link between the already existing demotional passive constructions and the New passive: (29)

Paö var leikiö á

mig.

it

me (acc)

was

tricked

on

Prepositional passive

'Some trick was being played on me.' (30)

I>a9 var plataö mig. it

was

tricked

New passive

me (acc)

'Some trick was being played on me.' The fact that synonymous verbs taking different complements exist, i.e. either a verb selecting a prepositional phrase containing a preposition governing the accusative, as in (29), or a verb selecting an object in the accusative case, as in (30), may have contributed to the emergence of the New passive. The identity of the case forms, assigned by a preposition, on the one hand, and by the verb, on the other, together with the synonymy of the verbs, gives rise to a reanalysis of the preposition into a particle. That means that leika á 'trick' will be reinterpreted as a particle verb, and the example in (29) thereby creates an intermediate instance between the already existing passive constructions and the New passive. Another possible analysis is that the New passive is an expansion of the Indefinite passive in the sense that the New passive is not restricted to an indefinite noun phrase in the nominative, dative and genitive but allows definite noun phrases in all four morphological case forms (i.e. even in the accusative). A third alternative is to relate the emergence of the New passive to the Impersonal passive by allowing not only intransitive verbs to occur in this actional domain but even transitive verbs. On such a view, the New passive is only an expansion of the Impersonal passive. The great perplexity of the New passive is that it contains passive morphology while its syntax is more active-like. Maling/Sigurjónsdóttir, in their analysis (1997), emphasize the importance of the "active" syntactic behaviour of the New passive, arguing that the New passive really belongs to the active voice, at the cost of the passive morphology. Under their hypothesis the following predictions are made (1997: 380): (31)

a. b. c. d.

Binding of anaphors should be possible. Subject control of participial adjuncts should be possible. No agentive fry-phrase is possible. The "New passive" should not be restricted to "unergative" verbs.

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T h e alleged evidence for the first three predictions in (31) is used in support of the hypothesis that there is a subject position in the N e w passive, which is filled with a phonologically null small pro. This is assigned both a "subject theta-role" and nominative case and "gets interpreted either as an indefinite h u m a n or humans, or as a generic subject" (p. 380). T h e y a s s u m e f u r t h e r that the expletive jxtd is inserted at S-structure in order to satisfy the V2constraint. A c c o r d i n g to Maling/Sigurjónsdóttir, the fact that their predictions are borne out is taken as a strong a r g u m e n t in favour of the thesis that the N e w passive actually is "syntactically active". In our view, their arguments for the existence of a small pro subject d o not hold. Especially two of their predictions (31b, d) are questionable. With respect to (31b), i.e. the subject control of participial adjuncts, in our view both their theoretical premises and their evaluation of the data are problematic. They give the following examples (1997: 384): (32)

a.

b.

Hjónin

dönsuöu valsinn

skellihlaejandi.

the couple

danced

laughing-uproariously

the waltz

'Roaring with laughter, the couple danced the waltz.' *Valsinn var dansaöur skellihlaejandi. the waltz

was

danced

laughing-uproariously

F r o m the contrast in grammaticality of these two examples, they conclude that certain participial adjuncts, like skellihlcejandi require a subject controller. This should even explain the ungrammaticality of (33): (33)

*i>aö var d a n s a ö there was

danced

skellihlaejandi

á

skipinu.

laughing-uproariously

on

the ship

(33) contains an Impersonal passive, a sentence without a thematic subject, in which, according to them, the cooccurrence with a participial adjunct is disallowed. W e disagree with t h e m on their grammaticality j u d g e m e n t of (33). T h e first author's intuition as a native speaker accepts (33) as entirely grammatical. The grammaticality of this e x a m p l e implies that controlling of an agentive subject is not an absolutely necessary condition for the presence of certain participial adjuncts. Subject control of these participles is only required if the sentence contains a subject. That explains the ungrammaticality of (32b), w h e r e the subject, waltz, is not a proper controller. In impersonal sentences, on the other hand, subject control is not required for licensing of participial adjuncts. They can be controlled by the underlying agent in impersonal passive sentences which d o not contain a thematic subject. It m a y be that (33) is not uniformly accepted by all native speakers. H o w e v e r , the following examples, suggested to us by Helgi Skúli Kjartansson and construed according to the same pattern do not give rise to any controversy regarding their grammaticality: (34)

Svona

var haldiö áfram,

syngjandi og

dansandi,

fram

such

was

singing

dancing

forward on

carried

on

and

' T h u s they continued, singing and dancing, long into the night.' (35)

Siöan

var

drepiö

hikandi

á

dyr.

then

was

knocked

hesitantly

on

door

'Then there was a hesitant knock on the door.'

á

rauöa

nótt.

red

night

The Passive in Icelandic - compared to Mainland

Scandinavian

247

Thus, these examples clearly show that in impersonal passives the adjunct need not be licensed by a grammatical subject but that an underlying agent can also be an appropriate licenser. Maling/Sigurjónsdóttir maintain that participial adjuncts are allowed in New passive sentences. The following example, constructed by us, illustrates the grammaticality of participial adjuncts in the New passive: (36)

t>aö var lesiö bókina

skellihlasjandi.

there

laughing-uproariously

was

read

the book (acc)

'Roaring with laughter, one read the book.' As opposed to Maling/Sigurjónsdóttir, we consider the New passive to be similar to the Impersonal passive, in that both lack a thematic subject. The occurrence of participial adjuncts in these constructions is, in our view, evidence of two things. Firstly, it shows that there is an underlying agent licensing the adjunct, and secondly that there is no thematic subject in the sentence, because if that were the case, the control of the participial adjunct by the underlying agent would be impossible, as shown in (32b) above. Consequently, the empirical data and our modified conditions for controlling participial adjuncts have led us to the opposite conclusion, namely that there are no reasons whatsoever for assuming that there is a thematic subject in the New passive. We now turn to the second problem concerning Maling/Sigurjónsdóttir's theoretical premises behind their prediction in (3Id), that the New passive should not be restricted to unergatives. This prediction is based on the observation that ergative verbs (i.e. intransitive verbs without an agent) do not passivize. Since they argue that the New passive actually is syntactically active it is predictable that even ergatives can occur with this "impersonal" morphology. For ergatives which can be combined with impersonal morphology by users of the New passive, they give the following example (1997: 387): (37)

Paö var dottiö í

hálkunni fyrirframan blokkina.

there

the ice

was

fallen

on

in front of

the apartment building

'Someone fell on the ice in front of the apartment building.' We argue that the verb detta 'fall' in (37) can have both an ergative and an unergative reading (or structure) depending on the character of the "active" subject. This verb, and similar verbs discussed in the literature as ergatives, are interpreted as such because of the non-intentionality and therefore non-agentivity of the subject. However, we claim that together with the feature [+human] and even more with the feature [+dynamic] and/or [+volition] they have the potential of being interpreted as unergatives, i.e. as agentive and actional verbs. Maling/Sigurjónsdóttir also note that the feature [+human] is a necessary condition for implementing the impersonal morphology of unaccusative verbs in Polish and Irish. They also point out that the presence of the feature [+volition] with Icelandic "ergative" verbs renders the examples much more grammatical. Thereby, examples like (37) above are not different from Impersonal passives of actional verbs like dansa 'dance'. The conclusion to be drawn is that the New passive of verbs like detta 'fall' should not be analyzed as a syntactically active sentence but rather as an instance of an Impersonal pas-

248

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sive of unergative verbs. Thereby (37) above cannot be considered evidence for the claim that the New passive is syntactically active with a small pro subject. Within our model, the emergence of constructions like the New passive is easy to explain. Since in a language like Icelandic, the passive voice utilizes a great number of combinations of diathetical, aspectual and actional features, the development of further variants is not unexpected. It is also compatible with our definition of the passive that the New passive, despite its active-like syntax, counts as a representative of the category passive voice. Since we assume that passive constructions can even be located in the actional domain, where promotion is not required, the constructional meaning of the New passive is much more activelike, i.e. actional, than the canonical processual passive. The constructional meaning of the actional passive can also enforce an actional reading on actionally ambiguous verbs (see for instance Arad 1998: 44-57 for a discussion on intransitive verbs behaving either as unergatives or unaccusatives depending on which constructions they occur in). Given the fact that the main motivation for using this actional passive type is the suppression of an indefinite or generic agent, it is clear that an agentive fry-phrase is not optimal. That is one of Maling/Sigurjónsdóttir's predictions (see (31c)), however, based on quite different premises. Even their other predictions are fully compatible with our analysis that the New passive is an actional passive type. A further advantage of our theory is that we are not forced to say that the New passive is active, despite its passive morphology. Our analysis predicts that the New passive behaves similarly to the Impersonal passive, in that they are equally actional, while Maling/Sigurjónsdóttir's analysis predicts that the New passive is more actional than the Impersonal passive. Thus investigations like the one carried out by the above mentioned authors should reveal a difference in the behaviour of the two passive types, if the analysis of Maling/Sigurjónsdóttir is correct, but no difference in their behaviour, if our analysis is on the right track. Their analysis is not convincing since it does not include a comparison with the Impersonal passive, but only tests the New passive. Furthermore, Maling/Sigurjónsdóttir's conclusions are based on grammaticality judgements on the New passive and not on authentic examples. They have carried out research with constructed examples of the New passive and asked teenagers in two regions of Iceland to judge the grammaticality of those examples. The main problem with this type of investigation relying on grammaticality judgements, in our view, is that it only measures how similar a string is to an already existing string, and does not measure the actual behaviour of the phenomenon under investigation. Thereby there is no guarantee that the New passive ever will behave in the way they predict. Our theory captures the fact that there is a very close correlation between the argument structural relations (promotion/demotion) and the actionality degree of the passive: the lack of promotion correlates with a high degree of actionality (see also Givón 1979). Our next task is to show that argument structural relations also have an impact on the aspectual character of the passive construction. We now leave the right-hand actional domain of the activity aspect and move to the left-hand aspectual domain of our model. Consider the following examples:

The Passive in Icelandic - compared to Mainland Scandinavian (38)

a.

b.

Stráknum

var boöiö í

veisluna.

the boy (dat)

was

the party

invited

to

'The boy was invited to the party.' Strákurinn var boöinn í veisluna. the boy (nom) was

invited

to

249

Processual passive

Stative passive

the party

'The boy was invited to the party.' In (38a), which contains a dative subject, only the processual reading is available, while the aspectual reading of the example in (38b), with the nominative subject, can only be stative. In this pair of examples, where the verb bjóda 'invite' has a choice between two different passive constructions, i.e. the Dative subject construction and the Nominative subject construction, it is particularly clear that the differences in morphosyntactic properties of the arguments are closely related to the aspectual character of the constructions above. 5 It should be pointed out, however, that not all verbs assigning dative to their objects can occur in both the Dative subject construction and the Nominative subject construction in the passive voice, as in the examples in (38) above (see also Sigurösson 1989: 334). This may be due to inherent semantic or aspectual properties of these verbs. The restriction that they are only compatible with the Dative subject construction in the passive is probably due to the fact that they are inherently processual, as for instance verbs of motion, like sparka 'kick' and kasta 'throw'. Thereby they are naturally excluded from the Nominative subject construction which is stative. However, only verbs selecting for dative objects in the active voice have a choice between occurring in the two passive constructions. Verbs selecting for accusative objects do not have this choice and always occur with the Nominative subject construction in the passive voice: (39)

a.

Strákurinn

keypti bókina.

the boy

bought

the book (acc)

'The boy bought the book.'

5

As for certain ergative verbs in Icelandic, we find case alternation between Dative subjects and Nominative subjects, which superficially resembles the case alternation of subjects in the passive voice of dative assigning verbs (see for instance Rögnvaldsson 1984): (i) Búdin opnar. the shop (nom)

(ii)

opens

'The shop opens.' Büöinni lokar. the shop (dat) closes

'The shop closes.' (iii) Buöin lokar. the shop (nom) closes 'The shop closes.' Since the ergative verb loka 'close' assigns dative to its subject, the construction in (ii), and not the one in (iii), can be considered as the standard variant. It is interesting, however, that there is a development in the direction of using the construction in (iii), which contains a Nominative subject.

Jóhanna Barddal/Valéria Molnár

250 b.

Bókin

var

the book (nom) was

c.

keypt. bought

'The book was bought.' *Bókinni var keypt. the book (dat) was

bought

No constructional alternation for the verb kaupa 'buy' in (39) is thus possible and the same construction, i.e. the Nominative subject construction, can be used with both aspectual readings, i.e. the processual and the stative reading, in the passive voice: (40)

a.

Bókin

var keypt

the book (nom) was

b.

bought

í gaer

(af

stráknum).

yesterday

(by

the boy)

'The book was bought yesterday (by the boy).' Bókin var keypt og ekki lánuó. the book (nom) was

bought

and

not

Processual passive

Stative passive

borrowed

'The book was/had been bought, not borrowed.' To sum up, the passive voice in Icelandic shows a very fine-grained differentiation of constructions, containing many subconstructions within the category of activity aspect, ranging from stative/resultative in the left-hand field of our model to the processual and actional subconstructions on the right periphery, with several intermediate types. This can be demonstrated schematically in the following way: (41)

Aspect

Diathesis

Actionality

ACTIVE

ACTIVE

ACTIVE Impers, pass. New pass! Indef. pass. Prep, pass

Oblique pass. Nom, pass,

Nom. pass. INACTIVE

INACTIVE

INACTIVE

The Passive in Icelandic - compared to Mainland

Scandinavian

251

4. A c o m p a r i s o n of Icelandic and Mainland Scandinavian

4.1. The periphrastic passive The Scandinavian languages have in common the possibility of forming the passive with an auxiliary corresponding to English 'be' or 'become', plus a perfect participle. In Icelandic, Swedish and Norwegian Nynorsk the subject, if it is case marked as nominative, induces agreement in person and gender with the perfect participle, while Danish and Norwegian lack such agreement: (42)

Husiö

var byggt.

the house (nom) was

Icelandic

built

'The house was built.' (43)

a.

Huset

blev

byggt.

Swedish

the house became built

b.

'The house was built.' Huset var byggt. the house was

Swedish

built

'The house was built.' (44)

a.

Huset

blev

bygget.

Danish

the house became built

b.

'The house was built.' Huset var bygget. the house was

Danish

built

'The house was built.' (45)

a.

Huset

ble

bygd.

Norwegian Bokmâl

the house became built

b.

'The house was built.' Huset var bygd. the house was

Norwegian Bokmâl

built

'The house was built.' In Icelandic, the periphrastic passive can only be formed with the auxiliary vera 'be', while in the Mainland Scandinavian languages there are two options available: ν cere (Danish/Norwegian), vara (Swedish) 'be', blive (D), and bli (S/N) 'become'. The verb vera in Icelandic is employed as a passive auxiliary in all three functional domains, it is used in stative, resultative, processual and actional passive constructions. Since the Mainland Scandinavian languages, on the other hand, utilize both the stative auxiliary and the telic auxiliary in the passive voice, it is often the case that the stative auxiliary occurs in the stative passive construction and the telic auxiliary in the processual or the actional passive construction. However, there are cases where the aspectual/actional interpretation of the passive construction does not correspond to the inherent aspectual

252

Johanna Barddal/Valéria

Molnár

meaning of the passive auxiliary (see Landén/Molnár, this volume, for a discussion of the passive in Swedish and German): (46)

a.

b.

Han

är förföljd

he

is

av tre

persecuted by

män.

three

men

'He is being persecuted by three men.' Han blir uppskattad vad han he

becomes

appreciated

(Brandt 1982) an gor.

whatever he

does

(Landén/Molnár, this volume)

'He is appreciated whatever he does.'

(46a) is an example of the processual passive construction in spite of the auxiliary being inherently stative, and the aspectual interpretation of (46b) is atelic despite the inherent atelicity of bli 'become' (see also section 2 above). However, Icelandic exhibits structures within the passive voice which are superficially similar to the Swedish bli-passive: (47)

a.

Husiö

veröur

byggt af sasnsku

the house becomes (près) built

b.

by

a Swedish

fyrirtaeki.

Icelandic

company

'The house will be built by a Swedish company.' ??Husiö varö byggt af saensku fyrirtaeki. Icelandic the house

became (imperi)

built

by

a Swedish

company

Compare the examples in (47a-b) with their Swedish counterparts: (48)

a.

Huset

blir

byggt av ett svenskt företag.

the house becomes (près) built

b.

by

a

Swedish

'The house is being built by a Swedish company' or 'The house will be built by a Swedish company.' Huset blev byggt av ett svenskt företag. the house became built

by

a

Swedish

Swedish

company

Swedish

company

'The house was built by a Swedish company.' The difference in grammaticality of the examples in (47) is evidence of the temporal character of verda in Icelandic, i.e. it is not a passive auxiliary at all, but only an auxiliary expressing future, as in ordinary copula constructions (hann er veikur 'he is ill* vs. hann veröur veikur 'he will be ill'). This explains the disinclination of verda to occur in the past tense as in (47b). In Swedish, on the other hand, bli serves as a passive auxiliary, and can refer to processes in the present tense, but, of course, like all present forms it can even be used adequately in future contexts, hence the two possible interpretations of (48a). The fact that bli can be used in the past tense in Swedish (48b) shows clearly that it is not a temporal but a passive auxiliary.

The Passive

in Icelandic

- compared

to Mainland

253

Scandinavian

4.2. The i-form In Mainland Scandinavian, there is yet another formal option of expressing passivization, the so-called s-passive. The i-form is originally reflexive, a clitization of the Old Scandinavian reflexive pronoun sik ' s e l f . The i-form in Modern Scandinavian is a multi-functional form: it can still occur with the reflexive/reciprocal reading, but the form has several other functions apart from the reflexive (see below), one of them is the passive. There are, however, great differences within the field of application of the s-passive in the Mainland Scandinavian languages. The s-passive is the most differentiated and developed in Swedish, while its use is restricted by several factors in Danish and Norwegian (Engdahl 1999, Heltoft 1994, Heltoft/Falster Jacobsen 1996). Heltoft and Heltoft/Falster Jacobsen argue that the choice of i-passive in Danish is influenced by mood, and has a generic objective reading, as opposed to the specific event reading of the periphrastic passive: (49)

a.

b.

Der

tales

there

speak-s not

ikke mere dansk i more

Danish

in

Skâne.

'Danish is no longer spoken in Scania.' Der bliver (ofte) talt dansk i Skâne. there

becomes

often

spoken

Danish

Generic

Scania

in

Specific

Scania

'Danish is (often) spoken in Scania.' Norwegian is similar to Danish as regards the distribution of the synthetic and periphrastic passive. 6 In Icelandic, on the other hand, the s-form is primarily used for other functions than the passive (Ottósson 1986, 1993, Sigurösson 1989): (50)

a.

b.

Hann

settist í

stólinn.

he

sat-s

the chair

in

'He sat down on the chair.' Pau kysstust í garöinum. They

kissed-s

in

Reflexive

Reciprocal

the park

'They kissed each other in the park.'

6

Engdahl discusses other grammatical features of relevance for the choice between passive alternatives, amongst others the non-availability of the past and perfect tenses of s o m e passive types (1999: 6): "One thing that clearly affects the choice of passive forms in Danish and N o r w e g i a n is the fact that the morphological passive, the one obtained by adding -s to the tense marked verb, is only productively used in the present tense and in the infinitive". T o us it seems that the temporal restrictedness of the synthetic passive in Danish and Norwegian is not a factor affecting the choice between different passive alternatives, but rather a natural consequence of the fact that the reading of the i - p a s s i v e is generic. Obviously generic expressions only need the present tense or the infinitive (for a different analysis of this question see also Enger 2000).

254

Johanna Barddal/Valéria

c.

d.

Hann

feröaöist í

sumar.

he

travelled-s in

summer

'He travelled this summer.' Dyrnar opnast. the door

Molnár

Deponens

Medial

opens-s

'The door opens (by itself)·' Interestingly, the passive use of the s-form in Icelandic is also possible, but compared to the other Scandinavian languages it is very restricted. Only a few examples containing an sform of the verb (-st in Icelandic) qualify as instances of the passive, namely those which have a demoted agent. Further, this agent must be generic, which again leads to a modal (deontic or epistemic) reading of the si-form: (51)

a.

b.

Geymist í

kaeli.

keep-s

refridgerator

in

Deontic passive

'To be kept in a cold place.' Hropiö heyröist ekki! 7 the cry

heard-s

Epistemic passive

not

'The cry couldn't be heard!' Ottósson gives, however, an example with the verb velja 'choose' in the si-form without the modal generic reading (1986: 103): (52)

Hann valdist

í

nefndina.

he

in

the committee

chose-s

si-form

'He was appointed to the committee.' He points out that the si-form is chosen in order to emphasize the properties of the patient and to "shade" the properties of the agent. According to our defining criteria, example (52) clearly qualifies as a processual passive. However, this example is not fully accepted by all speakers of Icelandic (including the first author of the present paper). Presumably it is the actual, non-modal reading of the event, and the lack of genericity which makes this example problematic. To express an actual reading of an event in the standard language, the periphrastic form is demanded: (53)

Hann var valinn í

nefndina.

he

the committee

was chosen

in

Periphrastic passive

'He was appointed to the committee.' In sum, the distribution of vera-passive and its relation to the si-form in Icelandic is illustrated in the model below:

7

This example is a borderline case between a passive and a medium reading, since it can also be interpreted as describing a property of the subject cry.

The Passive in Icelandic - compared

to Mainland

Scandinavian

255

In Swedish, on the other hand, the distribution of the two periphrastic passive constructions, vara-passive and ¿»/i-passive, and the synthetic s-passive, shows the following pattern:

5. Typological and diachronic reflections

Our point of departure is that the two main alternatives of voice in our model, i.e. the active and the passive, should be regarded as two "macro constructions", dividable into several internal subtypes or "micro constructions". Since a construction is defined as a form and meaning (function) correspondence, it is necessary from a typological point of view to delimit both the formal and the functional domain of the construction. As to the universally relevant properties within the functional domain of the passive, the following are encountered in the literature (see for instance Givón 1981):

256 (56)

Johanna Barddal/Valéria i.

Molnár

T h e impersonal domain

ii. T h e topic-assigning domain iii. T h e stative/de-transitive domain T h e first t w o d o m a i n s are relation changing domains, and the third one is an aspectual domain: the first one corresponds to our actional field, the second one to our diathetical field, and the last one to our aspectual field. Although all the three relevant functional d o m a i n s of the passive are mentioned in the literature, only one of the d o m a i n s is usually regarded as the essential one. It is most often one of the relation-changing d o m a i n s that is assigned defining status w h e n delimiting the passive f r o m the active voice. Our model d i f f e r s f r o m previous accounts in that we emphasize the equal influence of all three d o m a i n s in delimiting the category of voice, h e n c e the term activity aspect (see subsection 2.2 above). A f u r t h e r d i f f e r e n c e is that we d o not consider the aspectual change within passivization to lead to an obligatory stativization, as is generally assumed. Givón states (1981: 168): " [ . . . ] the c l a u s e b e c o m e s s e m a n t i c a l l y less active, less transitive, m o r e stative", and m o s t linguists agree on that. Instead w e have argued for the intermediate location of the passive, in between the ACTIVE and INACTIVE poles of the active voice. However, its reading is not necessarily more stative than that of the (INACTIVE ) active (see (24) above). A s to the formal side of the passive, Keenan (1985) proposes in his typological investigation of passive f o r m s in the world's languages a division into two main types of passive f o r m a t i o n : strict m o r p h o l o g i c a l passive (synthetic passive in our t e r m i n o l o g y ) and periphrastic passive. H a s p e l m a t h (1990) shows in a diachronic-typological survey of passive m o r p h o l o g y , based on 6 0 languages included in his so-called " G r a m c a t material", that the periphrastic formation of the passive is mainly represented in the Indo-European languages and is typologically underrepresented (6 languages) compared to the synthetic alternatives. H e divides the synthetic passive formation into six different types (1990: 28ff.): Additional stem affix (25 languages). Extra-inflectional affix (3 languages), iii. Differential subject person markers (2 languages), i v. Particle (1 language). v. Alternate stem affix (1 language). vi. Sound replacement (1 language). F r o m the choice provided by this typological pattern, G e r m a n i c utilizes two possibilities: the periphrastic passive and the passive formation with the extra-inflectional affix ((57ii) above). T h e periphrastic passive with the auxiliaries corresponding to be and/or become is f o u n d in all the modern G e r m a n i c languages, while the synthetic type is restricted to the M a i n l a n d Scandinavian languages. Passive formation in Icelandic is thus morphologically poorer than that of Swedish, Danish and Norwegian, since the status of the Icelandic synthetic type is only marginal. Even the periphrastic passive is s o m e w h a t restricted c o m p a r e d to M a i n l a n d Scandinavian, with only one passive auxiliary as opposed to t w o auxiliaries in the other languages. Icelandic, on the other hand, has a rich inventory of other types of morphosyntactic devices, such as variation of case, agreement, word order and definiteness, providing the formal basis for different passive subconstructions. These formal distinctions

The Passive in Icelandic - compared to Mainland

Scandinavian

257

make possible the existence of various diathetical and aspectual types within the passive voice in Icelandic. Regarding the emergence and development of the passive, diachronic studies have found that the formal devices of passive constructions are derived from originally active forms, and can be regarded as a result of a reanalysis of active forms (v.d. Gabelentz 1861, Schachter 1983). The development of passive morphology in the world's languages has been assumed to follow a limited number of paths. Haspelmath (1990) proposes four different paths along which the development can run: (58)

i.

Inactive auxiliary + past participle

ii.

Causative aux —» causative - 4 reflexive-causative —» passive

resultative —» passive

iii. Refi, noun/pronoun —» reflexive —> anticausative passive iv. Pi. pronoun/generic person noun —» generic subject constr. desubjective

passive

Within the Germanic languages, two of the paths suggested by Haspelmath are represented, the one with the combination of an inactive auxiliary and a past participle developing into the periphrastic passive (58i), and the one with a reflexive pronoun developing into the synthetic passive (58iii). Relating these alternatives of passive evolution to our model, it is clear that Germanic has used the INACTIVE forms of the active voice as a source for passive formation, i.e. the stative/resultative and the medium. The other direction of the development of the passive, i.e. using the ACTIVE of the active voice as a source (Haspelmath's last alternative (58iv)) is absent in Germanic. This pattern, however, is found in Finnish, where the generic subject construction has developed into an actional passive construction (example cited from Andersen 1991): (59)

Auto

oste-taan.

car (nom) buy (Indef)

'The car is being bought' or literally O n e bought the car.' Most of the Germanic languages, however, have actional passive constructions, as discussed above, but with a different historical origin. The actional passive in German and Scandinavian is a result of a further expansion either of the periphrastic passive (German, Icelandic, Norwegian and Danish), or of the synthetic i-passive (Swedish). Concerning the distribution of the synthetic and periphrastic passive alternatives in the historical development of the Germanic languages, it is interesting to note that during the Proto-Indoeuropean period the synthetic type, the so-called mediopassive, was the only existing passive construction. At that time, the form was used for expressing both the medium and the passive, as is also indicated by the name. This original mediopassive construction was prominent in Gothic and sporadically found in the written sources of Old High German. However, the periphrastic passive constructions, first and foremost the one with the auxiliary wesan 'be' together with the past participle, but also the one with werdan 'become' plus the past participle, soon took over and dominated the passive scene. The further development of the passive has taken different directions in the Germanic languages: whereas the periphrastic passive with the auxiliary corresponding to be continued to be the most central passive construction in, for instance, English and Icelandic, its

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Molnár

domain has become restricted in other Germanic languages, like German and Mainland Scandinavian. Either the competing periphrastic alternative with the auxiliary corresponding to become has developed into the canonical passive, as in German, or new types of synthetic passive have emerged, as in Swedish, Norwegian and Danish. In the languages where the combination of be plus the past participle remains the dominant passive construction, as in Icelandic and English, it comprises all the aspectual types existing in that language, i.e. in English it comprises the stative, resultative and the processual, while in Icelandic it comprises all possible aspectual domains of our model, i.e. in addition to the above mentioned three possibilities of English also the actional type. 8 In the other languages, where we have a competition between the periphrastic and the synthetic passive, there exists a division of labour between the two, such that the periphrastic be-passive is more or less restricted to the stative reading, while the i-passive either provides the main means of expressing the processual passive (Swedish), or can be used with a processual reading (Danish and Norwegian). As mentioned above, the s-passive in Danish and Norwegian is mainly used in generic contexts. In German, on the other hand, the èe-passive has a stative or a resultative reading, whereas the processual interpretation can only be gained by using the werden-passive.

6. Conclusions and summary

Our main concern in this paper has been to define, analyze and to explain the passive in Icelandic. In order to reach this goal we have put forward a theoretical model, based firstly on the general framework of Construction Grammar, in which the construction is defined as a form-meaning correspondence, and secondly on the theory of the passive as activity aspect, developed in Molnár (in prep.). This theoretical background has made it possible to delimit the passive voice, as a construction, from the active voice, and to differentiate between the different subconstructions within the category of the passive voice. We have divided the category of active into two different actional poles: the ACTIVE and the INACTIVE pole. The passive construction takes an intermediate position between these two poles on the activity scale, thereby rendering an activity less active than the ACTIVE and more active than the INACTIVE. We have further argued for the intermediate position of the passive to be lo8

It is interesting to note that the processual reading of the periphrastic be-passive in the present tense, both in English and in Icelandic, requires the implementation of the progressive construction. In English the progressive is formed with the auxiliary be plus V+ing (i), whereas the progressive in Icelandic consists of the infinitive of vera 'be' plus a