2013-09-16 Definition Past- and perfective-based directive strategies: a cross-linguistic comparison AXEL SVAHN Imperatives and other Directive Strategies Workshop Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea September 20, 2013 The phenomenon under discussion differs from: • Primary imperative strategies in perfective contexts (Russian is good example) • Syncretism between primary imperative strategies and past tense/perfective forms • Overgeneralized use of past tense forms in child grammar Definition • Use of past tense / perfect, perfective aspect markers in perfective context as non-imperative (i.e. alternative) directive strategy Japanese: Doi-ta, doi-ta! move.away-PAST move.away-PAST ‘Get out of my way!’ (lit.) ‘[You] got out of [my] way!’ German: Still ge-stand-en! Still PTCP-stand-PTCP ‘Stand still!’ (lit.) ‘[Has] stood still!’ Concept of “perfective directive stategies” crosslinguistically interesting? Research questions 1. What similarities in usage properties are found in directive strategies of this kind? 2. How similar are they in terms of their historical development? 3. How can we account for their development/function(s)? Svahn (2010) • Cluster of grammatical, sociopragmatic properties fruitful for crosslinguistic comparison? Languages: Japanese, German, Russian, Polish, Persian, Mandarin Chinese, Swedish • Superficial resemblence based on cooccurrence of terms such as ”perfect”, ”past”, ”perfective” + ”imperative”, ”command” in grammars/papers on different languages? Usage restrictions, productivity, likely paths of grammaticalization Compared in terms of: Conclusion: Differ in all three, but perfectivity, urgency, informality, usage restrictions (of different kinds) appear consistent 1 2013-09-16 Other languages 2nd pers. directive strategy Dutch (Coussé and Oosterhof 2012) Manambu? (Aikhenvald 2010:279) Georgian, Laz, Galo? (Mauri and Sansó 2011:3509) Classical Hebrew? Latin? Cantonese? (p.c.) Baining, Trukese (Bybee, Perkins, and Pagliuca 1994:212) Basque? (data found in de Rijk 2008) Ku Waru (Aikhenvald 2010:27) Immediate future Abkhaz, Baining (Bybee, Perkins, and Pagliuca 1994:95) “I'm off / let's go” Turkish, Kurdish (Tavangar and Amouzadeh 2006:99) Nheengatú (Svahn 2012), data found in da Cruz (2011) Uzbek, Tatar, Shor? (Aikhenvald 2010:269) ”Let’s go/ We’re off” usages Ja poše-l!/ My poš-li! I go-PAST-1SG we go-PAST-1PL I’m/We’re going!’(lit. ‘I/We went!’) (Russian) Ere ya-su=wã AFFINCENT 1plA-go-PFT ‘Let’s go!’ (da Cruz 2011:337) (Nheengatú) ”Let’s go/ We’re off” uses more common than non-inclusive second person strategies? ”Let’s go/ We’re off” uses (cont.) Areal/genetic connections? • Hypothesis (Svahn 2010:33) past/perfective for certain future = more likely to also have past/perfective directive strategy than languages that do not • German/Dutch? • Better generalization: Second person-oriented perfective-based directive strategies > likely first person also? Pragmatic perfectivity bias We assume that the typical and most frequent imperative will involve an appeal to the hearer(s) to achieve something, to perform the action as a whole and not merely to be engaged in the activity or part of it. (van der Auwera et al. 2009:100) • Russian/Polish? Mauri and Sansó (2011:3509): “In Kartvelian languages, for instance, the use of past perfective constructions to express directive situations addressed to 2nd person performers is common” Temporal deictic projection […] future events, states or processes are envisaged as having already materialized [...] although the future as such is not observable, [...] we are enabled, through metaphorization, to observe it by attributing to it an intrinsic property associated with the past: certainty of occurrence. (Tavangar and Amouzadeh 2006:98) • Possible interaction between general pragmatic (conventionalization of conv. implicature, pragmatic perfectivity bias) and language specific factors (existence of conventionalized ”certain future” pasts etc.) 2 2013-09-16 Motivations for non-imperative directive strategies What to ”allow”? • Aikhenvald (2010:256): filling a gap – […] expressing a meaning a straightforward imperative may lack • Negation possible in some languages: Chinese, Dutch, (Basque?) • Heinold 2012a: Different alternative forms cover gaps in the morphological paradigm of the imperative (in terms of possible addressees etc.) • Heinold (forthcoming): “Facethreateningness” not absolute in German • Svahn: Restriction in interpretation/function • More complex restrictions than boundedness/completion involved? Heinold (forthcoming) Mandarin Chinese “there are semantic and syntactic restrictions on the German participleIMP construction: semantically a participant must be affected by the action designated by the verb or a spatial path must be gone through“ • Directive utterances involving “le” appear to prefer overt objects (although pro-drop in general) • Chī ! / *Chī le! / Chī fàn le! “Eat / Eat (food)!” Northeastern Mandarin: • Chī “Eat!” > Chī bǎ! > Chī le! particle/PP-object > direct object > no object Aikhenvald (2010:279) Conclusion imperative (simple command) > • Phenomenon should be distinguished from ”perfective imperatives” proper desubordinated sequencing clause (strong command) > • Properties vary depending on language, but similar tendencies exist Manambu: desubordinated completive medial clause (very strong command) • More detailed surveys of individual languages, comparative studies needed 3 2013-09-16 References Aikhenvald, A. Y. (2010). Imperatives and Commands. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bybee, J.L., Perkins, R.D. & Pagliuca, W. (1994). The evolution of grammar: tense, aspect, and modality in the languages of the world. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. da Cruz, A. (2011). Fonologia e Gramática do Nheengatú. A língua geral falada pelos povos Baré, Warekena e Baniwa. PhD Dissertation. Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam. de Rijk, R. (2008). Standard Basque: A Progressive Grammar. MIT Press. Coussé, E. & Oosterhof, A. (2012). Het imperativisch participium in het Nederlands. Vorm, betekenis en gebruik [The imperative past participle in Dutch. Form, meaning and use] In: Nederlandse Taalkunde 17: 26-55. Thank you for listening! Heinold, S. (Forthcoming). Directive Past Participles in German: Aspectual Constraints for a Gradual Acceptability. Preprint. Heinold, S. (2012b). "Imperatives and their Functional Synonyms in the German Standard and in the Military Language." PowerPoint presentation. SLE - 45th Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea. August 2012, Stockholm, Sweden. Heinold, S. (2012a). "Functional Synonyms of Imperatives in German and Finnish". PowerPoint presentation. International Conference of Nordic and General Linguistics. April 2012, Freiburg. Mauri, C and Sansò, A. (2011). How directive constructions emerge: Grammaticalization, constructionalization, cooptation. Journal of Pragmatics 43: 3489-3521. Svahn, A. (2010). The perfective imperative in Japanese: A further analysis. Master's thesis, Lund University. Tavangar, M. & Amouzadeh, M, (2006). Deictic projection: an inquiry into the future-oriented past tense in Persian. Studia Linguistica 60 (1): 97–120. van der Auwera, J., Malchukov, A. & Schalley, E. (2009). Thoughts on (im)perfective imperatives. In Helmbrecht, J., Nishina, Y., Shin, Y-M., Skopeteas, S., Verhoeven, E. (eds.), Form and Function in Language Research. Papers in Honour of Christian Lehmann. Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin. 93–106. 4
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