Functional Linguistics

A Functional-Cognitive Approach to the Middle Voice in Ancash Quechua

by Carlos MOLINA-VITAL

This is a work in progress! In this paper I provide examples of the use of the usffixes -ku, -ri, and -ka for Kemmer's... more This is a work in progress! In this paper I provide examples of the use of the usffixes -ku, -ri, and -ka for Kemmer's (1993) typology of middle situations. Actually, this is only the first part of a much larger project on the description and comparison of voice in Ancash and Cuzco Quechua. The idea is to classify at least those three suffixes (inchoative, middle and pasive) in a functionally motivated way.

More tiles on the roof: further thoughts on incremental language production

by Lachlan Mackenzie

Published in K. Boye & E. Engberg-Pedersen (eds), Language usage and language structure. Berlin & New York NY: Mouton de Gruyter, 2010. 263-293.

This article investigates the consequences of the rapprochement between linguistic theory and psycholinguistic work on... more This article investigates the consequences of the rapprochement between linguistic theory and psycholinguistic work on usage as linear incremental processes of language comprehension and production, giving a rather complete overview of recent work in this field. In two papers from 2007 Peter Harder criticized grammatical models such as FDG for too hasty an importation of incrementalism from language processing studies. He insists on the distinction between pattern and process and the specific functional contribution of grammar as a socially recognized procedure for encoding and decoding. In this paper I contrast his view of grammar as a set of instructions with my own view of grammar as a declarative set of constraints that act as a brake on incremental 'first come, first served' production. Harder's view cannot withdraw entirely from the arena of actual time-consuming interaction.

Generic Singular Definite Nominal Phrases in Spanish - A notional Account

by Carlos MOLINA-VITAL

Unpublished paper

Passive voice –kaa in Ancash Quechua and its relation to the middle voice —A cognitive-functional account—

by Carlos MOLINA-VITAL

1st draft for second qualifying paper. Comments are welcome!

A comprehensive study of the passive voice suffix –kaa in Central Quechua is still missing in the Quechuanist... more A comprehensive study of the passive voice suffix –kaa in Central Quechua is still missing in the Quechuanist literature. This work will provide a cognitive-functional analysis of this suffix using Ancash Quechua data (Huaraz-Huaylas dialect) based on its use with transitive and intransitive verbs. Next, it will focus on the so-called lexicalized uses of –ka, in which this suffix is considered to be part of the stem and not contributing really to a derived passive meaning. It is proposed that those cases are similar to those of transitive and intransitive passivized verbs, and they are better accounted for by the abstract passive schema defined as: (i) an affected/experiencing participant is in the subject position, and (ii) volitionality has been suppressed as much as possible for the initiation of the situation depicted by the event. Evidence for this analysis comes from the interaction between the causative suffix –tsi and some cases of lexicalization of –ka. The passive suffix can be used to create an intransitive lexical-middle verb (a naturally occurring middle situation). Those verbs can be found as intransitive verbs taking active meaning when using –tsi —e.g. wanuy, “to die”, becomes wanutsiy “to kill”. Finally, this work argues against the notion that –ka is not really a passive but some kind of middle. AQ has a passive suffix defined by contrast to the middle voice in a continuum of volitionality present in subject affectedness, the extremes being passive –ka (reducing volitionality) and middle –ku (enhancing volitionality).

The Pragmatics of Subjectification: The Emergence and Grammaticalization of Allative Futures

by Eitan Grossman

This is a pre-print version of an article submitted recently.

In this paper, we argue that an expanded conception of the distinction between speaker-oriented and subject-oriented... more In this paper, we argue that an expanded conception of the distinction between speaker-oriented and subject-oriented inferences is crucial for understanding the motivations and mechanisms of semantic change in grammaticalization and subjectification, on the one hand, and for clarifying the links between semantic change and reductive formal changes. Speaker-oriented inferences have significant consequences, leading to the relaxation of selectional restrictions on a construction. In turn, the relaxation of selectional restrictions can create conditions in which the type- and token-frequency of a construction can rise considerably. Furthermore, changes in the selectional restrictions on a construction can themselves catalyze semantic change by coercing listeners into new form-function pairings. This framework is applied to the grammaticalization of allative futures, a typological comparative concept developed in order to compare structurally diverse future tenses. A small typological study allows us to reconsider some problematic pathways of grammaticalization and to suggest some alternative analyses. Following the typological discussion, a detailed diachronic case study of a verbless allative future in Ancient Egyptian is presented.

Path Salience in Jaminjung

by Dorothea Hoffmann

Functional Discourse Pragmatics: Cybersemiotics of human language

by Ole Nedergaard Thomsen

Draft only. Comments are welcome.

In the present paper we shall offer some functional pragmatic revisions to the current version of Cybersemiotics... more In the present paper we shall offer some functional pragmatic revisions to the current version of Cybersemiotics (Brier 2008 ff) in the sphere of human language. Our main focus will be, firstly, on the physiological level of the vocal production and auditive perception of speech and, secondly, on ‘total’, integrative evolutionary communication, i.e. on verbal language games with integrated, e.g. gestural, multimodal and even multimedial co-speech, the latter comprising artefactual, e.g. pictorial, representations. In fact, an understanding of the multimodality of the language game level is crucial to be able to characterize the biosemiotics of human language and its evolution: the evolution of the language game level is not the narrow evolution of the vocal part of it only, but rather of the total, integrated manifestation (also, i.a., facial expression and posture). The Cybersemiotic concept of individual vs. cultural ‘signification sphere’, i.e. the world of semiotic objects “we live by” is touched upon.

Linguistic Stratification and the tri-unity Matter—Substance—Form: A Functional Discourse Pragmatics perspective (in memory of Eli Fischer-Jørgensen (1911-2010))

by Ole Nedergaard Thomsen

Updated version 11.01.2012. Work in progress. Comments are utterly welcome!

Parallels with Peircean Semiotics, von Uexküllian cognitive-semiotic/bio-cybernetic biology (behaviorism/ethology), and Brier's (2008) Cybersemiotics.

An orig. English version 2010 of a 'functional footnote' from 1998: "Stratifikation og "treenigheden" Materie--Substans--Form. Et Funktionelt Pragmatisk perspektiv". Published in 'DFG -- Funktionelle Fodnoter: Sprogligt indhold: substans og struktur. Funktionelle Fodnoter' 1998. 56-58.

This paper will investigate linguistic stratification – the crucial conception that language and speech, rather than... more This paper will investigate linguistic stratification – the crucial conception that language and speech, rather than being monolithic, are organized on different ‘representational levels’.

Linguistic Stratification is originally a European structuralist notion, proposed (i.a.) by the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1916) to deal with the fact that a language and its performance in speech occur on two different hierarchical levels of representation, viz. one of arbitrary ‘form’ and one of manifestational ‘substance’ (alias ‘matter’), both on the plane of Content (meaning) and on the plane of Expression (confusingly, “form” in the American tradition, however presumably going back to the Gr. morphé, not eidos). The claim is that language is (primarily) ‘form’ (structure, system), irrespective of its material manifestation. Form and substance, of course, originate in Aristotelian philosophy, where, however, the distinction was triadic rather than dyadic – the tri-unity ‘form’, ‘substance’, and ‘matter’ – and did not pertain to language-internal distinctions in the first place but to ontology in general – and thus did not mean levels of linguistic representation, but rather levels of reality. The Danish hard core, pseudo-algebraic linguist Louis Hjelmslev (1943, 1975), confusingly, wavers between the dyadic and the triadic conceptions (strangely calling ‘matter’ purport, Dan. mening ‘meaning’), but most often, it seems, he uses the dichotomy ‘form’ vs. ‘substance’ (Dahl 1998), however, in a rather Platonic conception, where linguistic ‘form’ exists in a “third” world, in casu of ideal Language, relegating phenomenal language to a subsidiary “shadowy” world of the “real” speaker-listeners and their speech communities. That is, in former formal European structuralism (like Hjelmslevian Glossematics) the essence of language was seen as ‘form’ (viz. “pure” ‘form’) presupposed by, but not presupposing a manifesting ‘substance’ (of sensibilia and intelligibilia). In functional European structuralism (e.g., esp. Jakobson and the Prague school), in Coseriu’s Integral Linguistics (a post-structuralist functionalism), as well as in present-day Danish Functional Linguistics, including Functional Discourse Pragmatics (developed by the present author), ‘form’ is “substantial”. This means that the distinction between vocal and sign language are different (medial-modal) ‘forms’, ruling out the possibility of postulating an underlying “pure” form uniting e.g. Danish vocal and sign languages – they are simply two different (historical) functional languages (competences). Likewise, the distinction between spoken and written language is a distinction in terms of (medial-modal) “substantial” ‘forms’: spoken and written Danish, e.g., are two different historical (medial-modal) forms, not united by any common underlying “pure” (‘empty’) form – the written language is a partial “translation” of the spoken language, the degree to which being determined by the kind of writing system developed (alphabetical, in the case of Danish, to be sure, so roughly it is only the sound shape of the language that is being translated). The concept of stratification is continued in different schools and trends of non-generative (functionalist) linguistics, like i.a. Lamb’s Stratificational Linguistics (cf. Lamb 1999), Pike's Tagmemics, Halliday’s Systemic-Functional Linguistics (Halliday 1961; Halliday and Matthiessen 1999), and Henning Andersen’s comprehensive structural-functional (semiotics-based) linguistics (1974, 1984), but also in Chomskyan generative (formal) linguistics, with its distinction, within the language faculty, between the conceptual-intentional (pragmatics) and articulatory-auditory (phonetics) peripheral input-output systems (performance systems) and the central logical-form (semantics) and phonetic-form (phonology) systems (plus, maybe, a lexico-grammatical-syntactic form) (computational competence system).
This paper will argue for the triadic conception within a Functional Discourse Pragmatics theory of language and speech (i.a., Nedergaard Thomsen 2006, 2009) – (proposed as) the linguistic part of Cybersemiotics (i.a., Brier 2008). In effect, the triadic stratification of language is integrated into the triadic ontological stratification. Seeing language and speech, in their foundation, as mental phenomena of individual speaker-listeners, these semiotic phenomena of signs (Expression) and their interpretations (Content) belong to the ontological Form level. The signs (Expression) are manifested at the level of ontological Substance, as output of articulation and as input to perception (Sinsigns), and in themselves they may be part of our sound surroundings without being perceived as functioning signs (Matter, Qualisigns). The interpretations (Content) – via the signs (Expression) – are “referenced” in the immediate referential sphere (Substance), our Umwelt, but the “same” objective world may exist objectively outside the grasp (domain) of our language and speech (Matter). This picture is complicated by the fact that language and speech, i.e. ontological Form, is internally stratified: here the level of internal Form consists of systematic invariants, manifested as norm-sanctioned variants (internal Substance) and projected as stylistic-situational usage variants (internal Matter). The Content side of the language (interpretations) form a linguistic ‘mentality’, whereby we (the speaker-listeners of different languages) come to live our (linguistic) lives in different “language worlds” (language-based Umwelts, or Cultural Signification Spheres, Brier 2008) – just as we as a biological species live in our species-specific Umwelt (von Uexküll) – e.g. we don’t hear the same sounds or smell the same scents as our dogs. The degree to which the linguistic interpretations (Content) influence the sensations and interpretations in perception – i.e., the degree to which linguistic semantics “construes” our experience (Halliday and Matthiessen 1999), we may speak of linguistic (“Whorfian”) relativity. On a higher level of socio-cultural behavior, cultural relativity is operative (language mirroring culture). The degree to which thinking (due to sensations and interpretations) is uninfluenced by (a historical) language (or other communication system, like e.g. music) and culture, i.e. is universal, we may speak of a ‘mentalese’ (Language of Thought). With respect to the processual mode of being of language as speech, or “languaging”, Slobin (1987) discovered that the obligatory, grammatical categories, influence our ‘thinking’ operative for/in (while) speaking, and communicating in general.

I dedicate this paper to the memory of the great Danish phonetician, Eli Fischer-Jørgensen (1911-2010), who, besides being a brilliant scientist, was a brave freedom fighter (during WWII), and a fine artist – and, relevant to this paper, a astute critique of Hjelmslev’s concept of ‘form’ and ‘substance’.

TOWARDS AN INTEGRATED FUNCTIONAL-PRAGMATIC THEORY OF LANGUAGE AND LANGUAGE CHANGE

by Ole Nedergaard Thomsen

Following the vein of Coseriu, language is foremost ‘Process’ (energeia), in that it is constantly being renewed,... more Following the vein of Coseriu, language is foremost ‘Process’ (energeia), in that it is constantly being renewed, renovated, up-dated by the co-work of the particular, historical language users in historical communicative situations, in concrete circumstances, and in particular dialogues. Language change belongs to the social (socio-psychological) normative order of things and is of a similar kind as legislation, decision, and execution in a legal system. Linguistic change and language acquisition occur in meta-communication. It is on or through this
level that a historical, functional language is constantly being transmitted and acquired, formed and re-formed.

The chapter may is a contribution to the ongoing endeavor of constructing a functionally adequate theory of the Natural Language User (cf. Dik 1997, TFG1&2; Bussuyt 1983, Weigand 1990, Bakker 1998, Hengeveld 2004a,b, Hengeveld & McKenzie,
forthcoming; Nedergaard Thomsen, forthcoming), a theory that should be capable of accounting for the fact that language and speech are the outcome of the co-work of single historical natural language users (operating in collectives) of a given historical speech community both individually and as a collective, on the basis of individual and collective intentionality.

A Functional Discourse Pragmatics contribution to the Cybersemiotic star

by Ole Nedergaard Thomsen

Published in: From First to Third via Cybersemiotics.A Festschrift honoring professor Søren Brier on the occasion of his 60th birthday. Eds. Torkild Thellefsen, Bent Sørensen, and Paul Cobley. Frederiksberg, DK: SL. Pp. 27-75.

In the present paper I offer some functional pragmatic revisions to the current version of Cybersemiotics (Brier 2008... more In the present paper I offer some functional pragmatic revisions to the current version of Cybersemiotics (Brier 2008 ff) as a sign of gratitude to the impressive contributions to the arts and sciences that Søren has made for the scientific world. I mainly focus on the low level phenomenon of the physiology of speech and the lofty levels of ‘total’ integrative evolutionary communication that is multimodal and multimedial. An understanding of the multimodality of the language game level is crucial to be able to characterize the biosemiotics of human language and its evolution. As a side effect, I give a Peircean semiotic revision of the Cybersemiotic concept of individual vs. cultural ‘signification sphere’, i.e. the world of semiotic objects “we live by”.

TAM: Evidentialitet (mediativitet) i Funktionel Diskurs Grammatik og i Mapudungun, et indfødt sprog fra Chile og Argentina

by Ole Nedergaard Thomsen

Talk (in Danish) given at the Linguistic Circle of Copenhagen (Lingvistkredsen i København) December 2006, for Michael Fortescue, 60 years

The possibility of dialogic semantics

by Sergeiy Sandler

draft only, for now

This paper outlines and demonstrates the viability of a consistent dialogic approach to the semantics of utterances in... more This paper outlines and demonstrates the viability of a consistent dialogic approach to the semantics of utterances in natural language. Based on the philosophical picture of language as dialogue, adumbrated by Mikhail Bakhtin and incorporating work in conversation analysis and cognitive-functional linguistics, I develop a method for analyzing both the function and the content of human utterances within a unified philosophical framework. I demonstrate the viability of this method of analysis by applying it to a brief conversational exchange (in Hebrew), (...) which is analyzed here in full detail.

INTEGRATIVE EVOLUTIONARY COMMUNICATION – TOWARDS A CYBERSEMIOTIC FOUNDATION OF FUNCTIONAL DISCOURSE GRAMMAR AND PRAGMATICS

by Ole Nedergaard Thomsen

Co-authored with Søren Brier, CBS, IKK
Draft only. Submitted for publication in Theoria et Historia Scientiarum (THS)

In this paper we shall outline a Cybersemiotic foundation for pragmatics-based linguistics, more precisely Functional... more In this paper we shall outline a Cybersemiotic foundation for pragmatics-based linguistics, more precisely Functional Discourse Grammar and Pragmatics. Language is viewed as communication, and communication is viewed as ‘total communication’, that is, integrative evolutionary communication, being an integration of three stages: 1. biological reflexive languaging (social coordination), 2. instinctual-motivational-emotional sign games (plays; ethology), and 3. premeditated, intentional language games (human unitary thinking-speaking-gesturing). Language games subsume the other stages, and thus human evolutionary communication is primarily a symbolic praxis. It is intertwined with the sympraxis of different life forms of social behavior, performing the function of social coordination. Together communication and (other) social behavior form a functionally coherent socio-semiotic-behavioral process.

Student composition of digital animated multimodal narratives: the multimodal grammatical knowledge of students and teachers.

by Paul Chandler

Chandler, P., Unsworth, L., O'Brien, A. & Thomas, A.
Paper presented at the Fifth International Conference on Multimodality (5ICOM), Sydney, Australia, December 2010.

The world which students inhabit is increasingly digital, multimedia and online. In order to prepare students to be... more The world which students inhabit is increasingly digital, multimedia and online. In order to prepare students to be effective authors in this environment, it is important to enquire as to what students and teachers know about how meaning is constructed in multimodal texts. In the context of a project to introduce middle years teacher and their classes to the composition of multimodal texts, this paper concerns questionnaires designed to gather data related to the knowledge of multimodal grammatical ideas such as genre, setting/location, characterisation, affordances of camera work and point-of-view. In the context of the project, these instruments are be used as both pre-test and post-test. This paper describes the development of the questionnaire, and the results to date (which is the multimodal grammatical knowledge claimed by participants prior to instruction), and the implications for literacy and multimedia education.

Thetic-categorical distinction

by Hartmut Haberland

in: Keith Brown, ed. Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 2nd edition. Vol. 12 Oxford: Elsevier. s. 676-677

Antitopic and Word Order in Conversational French

by Angus Grieve-Smith

Presented at the Southeastern Conference on Linguistics (SECOL) 2000.

Students as effective 3D multimodal authors: an update on a research project

by Paul Chandler

Presentation at the ICT in Education Victoria (ICTEV) Conference, May 21, 2011.

The worlds which students inhabit is increasingly digital, multimedia and online. A pedagogy is urgently needed to... more The worlds which students inhabit is increasingly digital, multimedia and online. A pedagogy is urgently needed to prepare students to be effective authors and participants in such a world. Over the last three years, 40 upper primary classes and their teachers have been participating in a project to develop students as effective authors of 3D multimodal narrative, and endeavor that embraces both English and ICT. This presentation provides an overview of the curriculum strategies and resources that have been developed.

Person-sensitive TAME marking in Galo: Historical origins and functional motivation

by Mark W. Post

(in press). In Thornes, T., E. Andvik, G. Hyslop and J. Jansen, Eds., Functional and Historical Approaches to Explanation: A Festscrhrift for Scott DeLancey [Typological Studies in Language Series]. Amsterdam, John Benjamins.

Assamese verb serialization in functional, areal-typological and diachronic perspective.

by Mark W. Post

-- (2005). M. Ettlinger, N. Fleischer and M. Park-Doob, Eds., Proceedings of the 30th Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, February 13-16, 2004. Berkeley, Berkeley Linguistics Society: 377-390.

Adjectives in Thai: Implications for a functionalist typology of word classes.

by Mark W. Post

-- (2008). Linguistic Typology 13(1): 339-381.