RED14 – Indefinites in Discourse
June 27-28, 2014, Universität zu Köln
Svetlana Petrova
Bergische Universität Wuppertal
Synchronic variation and diachronic change in the expression of indefinite reference:
Evidence from historical German
Svetlana Petrova, Bergische Universität Wuppertal
[email protected]
1. Goals and Issues
•
•
•
•
•
a number of languages display competition between canonical and non-canonical
types of indefinites (see von Heusinger 2011 for an overview)
in the literature, non-canonical types have been related to specificity, i.e. to the notion
that the speaker has a particular referent in mind when using them, whereas canonical
indefinites have been shown to be ambiguous, i.e. indifferent regarding the
speaker’s intention to predicate about a particular referent
historical German provides evidence for competing types of indefinite expression,
incl. different indefinite determiners, disregarded in the general linguistic discussion
this study will survey the properties of non-canonical indefinites in historical German
from the point of view of the modern theoretic discussion and will outline that,
contrary to previous traditional suggestions, these types of expressions cannot be
reduced to specificity
in general, the analysis contributes to understanding diachronic developments in the
domain of indefinite reference
2. Data
• Old High German (OHG), the earliest attested stage of German (c. 800 to 1050),
displays variation between bare and different types of marked indefinites exemplified
in (1)a-c:
(1) a. man uuas hiuuiskes
fater
man was family-GEN.SG
father
‘There was a certain householder’ (T 203, 06)
Lat. homo erat pater familias
b. sum
man ha&eta
zuene suni
INDEF
man had
two sons
‘A man had two sons’ (T 202, 15)
Lat. Homo habebat duos filios
c. Giang zi
imo ein
centenari
went to
Him INDEF
centurion
‘A centurion went to Him’ (T 083, 09)
Lat. accessit ad eum centurio
• later development
o sum (cognate of the present-day English some) is lost in later German
o ein, etymologically related to the numeral ein ‘one’, gives rise to the mod.
German indefinite article ein
1
RED14 – Indefinites in Discourse
June 27-28, 2014, Universität zu Köln
Svetlana Petrova
Bergische Universität Wuppertal
• traditional work (summary in Petrova i.prep.) claims that marked indefinites
o indicate the existence of an individual but remain inexplicit regarding its
precise identity
o are missing in generic and negative contexts until in Middle High German
(MHG, c. 1050–1350) times
o denote referents with outstanding properties, incl. major protagonists which
will be resumed in the later discourse
• this alludes to properties of specific indefinites discussed in the literature:
o they presuppose the existence of a referent, consequently, the expressions
denoting such individuals are referring expression in the sense of Karttunen
(1976)
o the speaker knows the precise identity and relevant properties of that referent
o the referent displays a noteworthy feature, or is equipped with special
discourse prominence, e.g. it licenses discourse anaphors etc.
• pro’s and con’s of these analyses
o later development of German ein fits into Givón’s (1981) grammaticalization
scenario assuming that the evolution of indefinite determiners from numerals
involves the stage in which the numeral is a referential-specific marker
o the analyses are based on few data, e.g. for OHG, only the large texts are
taken, but incompletely searched, no systematic corpus studies so far
o the diagnostics of specificity and basic issues of the current discussion are not
considered
3. Corpus, distribution and frequency of types
•
complete survey of the entire OHG attestation, including so-called Minor documents
o marked indefinites are searched electronically wherever possible (TITUS word
searching tool), by using the glossaries, or by manual search
o a representative number of occurrences of bare nouns has been collected by
manual search for all texts yielding examples of marked indefinites
•
Corpus in Table 1
o list of texts which yield examples of marked indefinite expressions in
chronological order, grouped together into smaller successive sub-periods of
30 years of duration each
o estimated total number of tokens of each document, and the total number
occurrences of different types of marked indefinite noun phrases and the
proportion of these types among the total of indefinite noun phrases for each
text
•
general observations
o sum is the only marker of indefiniteness in the early phases of the attestation
and then it disappears, being replaced by ein, which in the beginning is only
attested as a numeral
o the only document in which we have a triple system is Tatian (Phase II)
o proportion of marked indefinites still low in during the entire OHG period, but
there is a tendency of increase of ratio of modified expressions for both sum
and ein
2
RED14 – Indefinites in Discourse
June 27-28, 2014, Universität zu Köln
Svetlana Petrova
Bergische Universität Wuppertal
Table 1: Corpus
Text and Age of Composition
Phase I (790-830)
Pariser Codex (790-800)
Monsee Fragments (c. 810)
Phase II (830-860)
Tatian (by 840)
Phase III (860-890)
Otfrid (by 871)
Ludwigslied (882)
Phase IV (after 890-920)
Georgslied (896)
Christius und die Samariterin (908)
Phase V (after 920)
Der Ältere Physiologus (11th century)
tokens
bare N
sum N
ein N
5.200
2.300
26
36
1 (4%)
4 (11%)
---
38.500
136
22 (8%)
10 (4%)
78.500
400
97
6
---
80 (24%)
1 (14%)
420
250
3
4
---
4 (57%)
2 (33%)
1.900
9
--
22 (71%)
4. Analysis
•
I tested the behavior of all types of indefinite expressions with respect to the following
factors considered relevant for specific indefinites
i. scopal behavior in opaque environments
ii. referentiality and presupposition of the existence of a referent
iii. the speakers’ familiarity with this referent (epistemic specificity)
iv. condition of relevance, e.g. discourse prominence
4.1 Scopal behavior
•
Fodor and Sag (1982) investigate the scopal properties of indefinites in the presence of
semantic operators (quantificational expressions, negation, modal and intentional
verbs) and establish the notion of wide scope, or referential specificity, in contrast to
quatificational indefiniteness
•
the traditional literature was unaware of this diagnostics but some examples cited
therein give rise to assume that modified indefinites take scope over operators
(2) ich
muoz einer
frowen
rûmen
diu
lant
I
may INDEF-DAT.SG
lady-DAT.SG praise
the
lands
‘I have reason to praise the lands of a Lady’ (Kürenb, 9, 31; von Kraus 1930: 3)
a.
b.
ok
•
already in Phase I, there is evidence that sumN gives rise to narrow-scope readings
#
there is a lady such that I may praise the lands of this lady
I may praise the lands of a lady, mo matter which one
(3) uuellemes
fona dir
sum
zeihhan
ga sehan
want-1PL from you-DAT.SG INDEF
sign-ACC.SG see-INF
‘we want to see a sing from you’ (MF 06, 27)
a. #there is a certain sign such that we want so see that sing
b. okwe want to see a sing, no matter which
3
RED14 – Indefinites in Discourse
June 27-28, 2014, Universität zu Köln
Svetlana Petrova
Bergische Universität Wuppertal
4.2. Referentiality and presupposition of existence
•
a condition on specificity is that the indefinite denotes a single individual that acts as a
discourse referent (Karttunen 1976)
•
OHG sum/ein N do not necessarily act as referential expressions
o they are allowed in hypothetical contexts (4)–(5)
o against the statements in the traditional literature, ein is attested in generic (6) and
predicative uses (7) already in the OHG attestation
o in these cases sum/einN fails to refer to a unique individual that exists in the
context
(4) uuirdit
imo
gitaan sum
pina
PASS.AUX-3SG.PRES him-DAT
done INDEF
sorrow
‘if tribulation arises’
Lat. facta autem tribulatione et persecutione (MF 09, 14)
(5) Yrhugis thar tho
eines
man, ther thir
si
irbolgan
concider there then INDEF-GEN man REL you-DAT.SG is-SBJ annoyed
‘if you recall a man who might be angry at you’ (O II, 18, 21)
(6) soso
ein
man sih
scal
werien
as
a
man REFL should
protect-INF
‘as a man is supposed to protect himself’ (O IV, 17, 13)
(7) er quat, Gorio
wâri
ein
goukelari
he said George
be-3SG.PRET.SUBJ INDEF
sorcerer
‘he said that St George was a sorcerer’ (G 5, 3)
4.3. Epistemic specificity
•
from the literature, we know that specific indefinites are incompatible with contexts in
which the speaker signals his/her ignorance about the identity of the referent (Givón
1981 on refenential xad in Hebrew, Ionin 2006 on indef. this N in English and Ionin
2013 on de-stressed one in Russian)
•
in OHG, sum/einN are attested in such contexts
(8) a. In
dhrim
fingarum
chiuuisso
dher heilego
in
three-DAT.PL
fingers-DAT.PL
certainly
the
holy
forasago
dhea dhrifaldun
ebanchiliihnissa
dhera
almahtigun
prophet
the
threefold
equality
the-GEN.PL almighty
gotliihhin
mit
sumes
chirunes
uuagu
uuac
divinity
with INDEF-GEN mistery-GEN scale-DAT
weighed
‘with the three fingers the holy prophet certainly weighted the threefold equality of the
almighty divinity by use of scales of some mystery’
Lat. sub quadam mysterii lance librauit (I 19, 15)
b. uns
duat
ein
man gilari
us-DAT
do-3SG.PRES.IND INDEF
man room
‘some man will offer us place [=to celebrate the Pasha]’ (O IV, 09, 10)
•
there are examples in which it is unnatural to assume that the speaker has
knowledge of the precise identity of the referent
4
RED14 – Indefinites in Discourse
June 27-28, 2014, Universität zu Köln
Svetlana Petrova
Bergische Universität Wuppertal
(9) arsteig In
einan
murbóum / thaz her
inan
climbed into INDEF-ACC.SG
sycamore.tree that he
him-ACC.SG
gisahi
saw-3SG.PRET.SUBJ
‘[Zachheus] climbed up into a sycamore tree in order to see Him [=Jesus passing by
there]’ (T 186, 30)
Lat. ascendit In arborem sicomorum
(10) Só
thiu selben
Kristes
kráft
then
this
same-GEN.SG
Christ-GEN.SG
power
eina
géislun […]
giflaht
INDEF-ACC.SG.FEM scourge-ACC.SG
bound
‘then, the power of the same Lord Christ bound a scourge’ (O II, 11, 09)
•
Oubouzar (2000) argues that in (9), the indefinite marker ein has a special function
of placing special emphasis on the respective referent, which I consider unnatural
“einan boum drückt nicht nur aus, dass es ich um einen Vertreter der Gattung handelt, sondern,
dass es der spezifische Baum ist, von dem aus Jesus gesehen werden kann = einan boum not only
denotes a single representative of the kind, but rather refers to the specific tree from which Jesus
can be seen“ (Oubouzar 2000, 259)
4.4. Relevance in terms of noteworthiness and discourse prominence
•
it has been argued that non-canonical indefinites introduce referents that bear
special relevance, pursued in the following two ways
•
relevance in terms of “noteworthiness”: Ionin 2006, building upon original
observations by Maclaran 1982, has argued that indefinite this in English is
felicitous in context in which the speaker states an unexpected, or noteworthy
property of the referent
•
relevance in terms of discourse prominence
o xad in Street Hebrew (Givón 1981, Wright and Givón 1987, 8) or
distressed odin in Russian (Ionin 2013) is infelicitous if the referent of
the indefinite expression is not mentioned in the subsequent discourse
o compared to ein N, referents of dieser and so’n higher tendency to be
anaphorically resumed in mod. German (Deichsel 2011, Deichsel and
von Heusinger 2011, von Heusinger 2012,)
•
referents of OHG sum/ein N display a higher discourse potential in terms of
number of anaphoric resumption (pilot study by Donhauser and Petrova 2012 on
indefinites in Otfrid and Tatian)
•
confirmed by the data in the complete OHG corpus investigated here
•
nevertheless, OHG sum/einN may refer to an individual may remains unresumed in
the following context, see the context of (9) above, repeated as (11), and (12) from
Otfrid, which occurs is discourse final position (last sentence of a chapter)
5
RED14 – Indefinites in Discourse
June 27-28, 2014, Universität zu Köln
Svetlana Petrova
Bergische Universität Wuppertal
(11) arsteig In
einan
murbóum / thaz her
inan
climbed into INDEF-ACC.SG
sycamore.tree that he
him-ACC.SG
gisahi /
uuanta
her
thanan
uuas fartenti /
saw-3SG.PRET.SUBJ because
he
thereby
was passing
Inti
mitthiu
her
quam zi
thera
st&ti /
and
as
he
came to
this-DAT.SG.FEM place
scóuuuonti
ther heilant gisah ínan /
Inti
quad zi
imo
looking
the
Lord saw him-ACC.SG and
said to
him
‘[Zacheus] climbed onto a sycamore tree in order to be able to see Him because he was
about to pass by. And when He arrived to that place, the Lord looked upon and saw him
and told to him[…]’ (T 186, 30ff)
(12) joh
fuar mit
sinen
thanana
in
eina
wuastina
and
went with his-DAT.PL from.there
in
INDEF-ACC desert
‘and went with his disciples from there to a desert place’[End of Book III, Chapter 25]
(O III, 25, 40)
4.5. Interim conclusion
•
•
marked indefinite expressions in OHG are ambiguous themselves
obviously, they widen their domain of reference at a very early stage of their
development
5. Stages of development
•
•
(13)
Heine’s (1997) evolutionary scale
Stage I
numeral
INDEF functions as a numeral (‘one’) exclusively
Stage II
presentational marker
INDEF introduces a new referent which is resumed in the following
discourse
Stage III
specific-unresumed
INDEF denotes a novel referent but may remain unresumed
Stage IV
non-specific/
non-referential
Stage V
indefinite determiner
INDEF denotes an entity with no precise identity
(INDEF which is no referring expression, e.g. free choice indef,
generic indefinites)
with all kinds of nouns, incl. nominal predicates
•
5.1.
Heine’s (1997) typological description distinguishes different semantic sub-classes
of indefinite expression
they provide different stages of an evolutionary scale of numerals to indefinite
determiner that goes beyond the 3-stage model proposed by Givón (1981)
this development can be traced back for OHG sum/ein N already during the OHG
period
sum N
•
•
•
it has a relatively short history of attestation but also occurs in Gothic (4th century)
originally, sum has a quantificational function = some of ()
Fobbe (2004) claims that Goth. sums is confined to referential expressions (Stage
I, II, III)
6
RED14 – Indefinites in Discourse
June 27-28, 2014, Universität zu Köln
•
Svetlana Petrova
Bergische Universität Wuppertal
In OHG, we find examples of the following stages
Stage I
sum as a quantifier (indicates a not nearly specified group of referents)
(14) sume
man
quatun
INDEF-NOM.PL.
men said
‘Some people said’ (MF 38, 25)
Lat. homines dicebant
Stage II
presentational marker/ + resumption
(15) sum
tuomoi
uuas in
sumero
INDEF -NOM.SG. judge
was in
INDEF-DAT.SG.FEM
theri
niforchta
got
DEM-NOM.SG.MASC Neg-feared God
‘a certain judge lived in a town, he didn’t fear God’ (T 200, 31)
Lat. Iudex quidam erat In quadam ciuitate / qui deum non timebat
burgi/
town
Stage III
referring expression/- resumed (the town exists, it is the one where
Martha and Lazarus live, but it is unresumed)
(16) uuard
tho […]
thaz her
selbo
giang in
suma
happened then
that he
himself
went in
INDEF-ACC.SG
burgilun /
inti
sum
uúib martha
ginemnit
town
and
INDEF
gill
Martha
called […]
‘it happened […] that he himself went to a town, and a gild called Martha … (T 99, 19)
Lat. quoddam castellum
stage IV
no individual identifiable (+free choice indef, -generic)
(17) uuellemes
fona dir
sum
zeihhan
ga sehan
want-1PL from you-DAT.SG INDEF
sign-ACC.SG see-INF
‘we want to see a sing from you’ (MF 06, 27)
Stage V
predicative use (no stage V)
5.2. ein N
all occurrences of OHG ein in Phase I involve a numeral
but already within the OHG period, ein spreads to cover all stages of indefiniteness
 complete development
Stage I
numeral
(18) oh
ist
in
dhesem
dhrim heidem
ein
namo
also is
in
this-DAT.PL three things-DAT.PL
one
name
‘there is one single name for these three things as well’ (I 13, 21)
Lat. unum nomen
•
•
Stage II
presentational marker/ + resumption
(19) so quam ein
wíbi
thara tho /
so came INDEF
woman
there to
wazares
giholoti
water-GEN.SG fetched-3SUBJ.PRET
‘A woman came there to fetch water’ (O 2 14, 13)
tház […]
that
sii
she
thes
the-GEN.SG
7
RED14 – Indefinites in Discourse
June 27-28, 2014, Universität zu Köln
Svetlana Petrova
Bergische Universität Wuppertal
referring expression/- resumed (the mountain exists  Sermon on the
Mount, but it is unresumed)
(20) ufan
einan berg
giang
unto
a
mountain
went
‘[He] went up onto a mountain’ (O 2, 15, 14)
Stage III
Stage IV
no individual identifiable (+free choice indef, +generic)
(21) a. uns
duat
ein
man gilari
us-DAT
do-3SG.PRES.IND INDEF
man room
‘some man will offer us place [=to celebrate the Pasha]’ (O IV, 09, 10)
b. thaz thaz éwiniga
lib
lérta
thar ein
armaz wib
that the
eternal
life
taught
there INDEF poor
woman
‘that He taught eternal life to a poor woman’ (O 2, 14, 84)
Stage V
predicative use
(22) er quat, Gorio
wâri
ein
he said George
be-3SG.PRET.SUBJ INDEF
‘he said that St George was a sorcerer’ (G 5, 3)
goukelari
sorcerer
6. Conclusion
•
•
•
on the basis of OHG data, we may observe the development of two types of modified
indefinites
none of them is restricted to specificity, in contrast to previous claims
they undergo changes in that they widen their domain of use very quickly, spreading
over the stages of indefinites distinguished by Heine 1997.
References
Deichsel, A. 2011. The Discourse effects of the indefinite demonstrative dieser in German. In Proceedings of 2011 ESSLLI
Student Session, Lubljana, 70-78.
Deichsel, A. and von Heusinger, K. 2011. The Cataphoric Potential of Indefnites in German. Anaphora and Reference
Resolution. 8th Discourse Anaphora and Anaphor Resolution Colloquium. DAARC 2011 Faro, Portugal, October 6-7,
2011, eds. I. Henrickx, S. L. Devi, A. Branco and R. Mitkov, 144 –156. Berlin: Springer.
Donhauser, K. and Petrova, S. 2012. Sprachliche Strategien zur Aktivierung und Deaktivierung von Diskursreferenten in
deutschsprachigen Texten des Mittelalters. In UnVerfügbarkeit, ed. I. Kasten. Special Issue of Paragrana. Internationale
Zeitschrift für Historische Anthropologie 21(2), 159-176.
Fobbe, E. 2004. Die Indefinitpronomina des Deutschen. Heidelberg: Winter.
Fodor, J. and Sag. I. 1982. Referential and quantificational indefinites. Linguistics and Philosophy 5(3), 355-398.
Givón, T. 1981. On the development of the numeral ‘one’ as an indefinite marker. Folia Linguistica Historica 2, 35–53.
Heine, B. 1997. Cognitive Foundatins of grammar. Oxford: OUP.
Ionin, T. 2006. This is definitely specific. Natural Language Semantics 14, 175-234.
Ionin, T. 2013. Pragmatic variation among specificity markers. Differnet kinds of specificity across languages, eds. C. Ebert
and S. Hinterwimmer, 75-103. Berln: Springer.
Karttunen, L. 1976. Discourse referents. Syntax and Semantics 7, 363-385.
Maclaran, R. 1982. The semantics and pragmatics of the English demonstratives. PhD-Thesis, Cornell University.
Oubouzar, E. 2000. Zur Entwicklung von ein in der Nominalgruppe des Althochdeutschen. Zur Geschichte der
Nominalgruppe im älteren Deutsch. Festschrift für Paul Valentin, ed. Y. Desportes, 255-268. Heidelberg: Winter.
Petrova, S. in. prep. Synchronic variation and diachronic change in the expression of indefinite reference: Evidence from
historical German.
Szczepaniak, R. 2009. Grammatikalisierung im Deutschen. Tübingen: Narr.
von Heusinger, K. 2011. Specificity. Semantics (HSK 33.2), eds. K. von Heusinger, C. Maienborn and P. Portner, 1025-1058.
Berlin: de Gruyter.
von Heusinger, K. 2012. Referentialität, Spezifizität, und Diskursprominenz im Sprachvergleich. Deutsch im Sprachvergleich
- Grammatische Kontraste und Konvergenzen, ed. L. Gunkel, 417-455. Berlin: de Gruyter.
von Kraus, C. 1930. Das sog. demonstrative ein im Mittelhochdeutschen. Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche
Literatur 67, 1–22.
Wright, S. and Givón, T. 1987. The pragmatics of indefinite reference. Studies in Language 11, 1-33.
8