Презентация на тему: Agreement in cognition, discourse, and syntax

Agreement in cognition, discourse, and syntaxAndrej A. Kibrik (Institute of Linguistics RAN and Lomonosov Moscow State University)[email protected]

Strangeness of agreement Does this resemble the common linguistic understanding of the term “agreement”?

Agreement as formal control “There is <…> a strong intuition, captured in the controller-target terminology, that agreement is asymmetric” (Corbett 2006: 115)Psycholinguistics: inflectional or control theory of agreement

Origin of the dominant linguistic usage Hermann Paul, 1880 Prinzipien der Sprachgeschichte, chapter “On concord”“die Tendenz Wörter, die in einer Beziehung zueinander stehen <…> in formelle Übereinstimmung miteinander zu setzen. Hierher gehört die Kongruenz in Genus, Numerus, Kasus, Person, wie sie zwischen einem Subst. und einem dazu gehörigen Präd. oder Attribut oder einem dasselbe vertretenden Pron. oder Adj. besteht <…> ” Principles of the history of language, edition 1891“There exists a tendency to place words related in a way <…> in formal correspondence with each other. Thus is explained the concord in gender, number, case, and person, which subsists between a substantive and its predicate or attribute, or a pronoun or adjective representing the latter <…>”

Formal control agreement is derivative from parallel agreement  ”Den Ausgangspunkt für die Entstehung der Kongruenz haben solche Fälle gebildet, in denen die formelle Übereinstimmung eines Wortes mit einem andern nicht durch Rücksichtnahme auf dasselbe herbeigeführt, sondern nur durch die Gleichheit der Beziehung bedingt ist.” “The starting-point for the origin of concord was afforded by cases in which the formal correspondence of a word with another was produced not by any regard for the latter, but merely by the identity of their relation.”

Formal control agreement terminology in Paul 1880  ”Namentlich entsteht eine Verlegenheit des Sprechenden da, wo eine grammatische Kongruenz zwischen zwei Satzteilen dem Sinne nach nicht möglich ist und dazu ein dritter Satzteil tritt, von dem man gewohnt ist, dass er mit beiden kongruiert. Man muss sich für einen von den beiden entscheiden <…>” “The speaker is especially apt to feel perplexity in cases where a grammatical concord is from the sense impossible, and a third clause comes in which custom has led us to expect to agree with both. We have to decide in favor of one or the other <…>”

Formal control-style understanding of agreement Formal control-style understanding dominates in modern linguistics and psycholinguisticsThis has a consequence: desire to narrow down the notion of agreementKibrik 2011 – narrow, syntactic understanding of agreementIn the domain of argument-predicate agreement, primarily the Germanic pattern, most remote from discourse referenceHowever, in the context of this workshop I allow a broader, discourse-oriented understanding of the term “agreement”In order to do that we will need to lift the formal-control requirement towards agreement

Agreement and reference Agreement has much in common with reduced referencePerson agreement on the verb goes back to reduced reference (pronouns) (Paul 1880/1891: 348-349; Siewierska 2004)The same often applies to attributive agreementRussianbel-yj < běl-ъ=jь lit. ‘white he’ white-M.Sg.Nomwhite-M.Sg.Nom=3M.Sg.Nombel-aja < běl-a=ja lit. ‘white she’ white-F.Sg.Nomwhite-F.Sg.Nom=3F.Sg.NomClassic agreement features are all referential: person, number, gender

Terminology (person agreement)

Terminology (person agreement)

Reduced reference and agreement In the broadest understanding of both, the extent of the included phenomena may almost coincideThere are some unusual agreement features (see Corbett 2006 on tense agreement, also cf. Paul 1880), but let us focus on major featuresBut the notions still remain distinctReduced reference is a functional notion: the process of rendering activated referents in discourseAgreement is a linguist’s observation about the covariance of discourse constituents

Reference: the process of mentioning mental entities (referents) in discourse by means of referential expressions The Victorian house that Ms. Johnson is inspecting has been deemed unsafe by town officials. But she asks a workman toting the bricks from the lawn to give her a boost through an open first-floor window. Once inside, she spends nearly four hours Ø measuring and diagramming each room in the 80-year-old house, Ø gathering enough information to Ø estimate what it would cost to rebuild it. She snaps photos of the buckled floors and the plaster that has fallen away from the walls.

Referential choice Activation in working memory => reduced referential device. Else use a full deviceE.g. if the referent ‘Ms. Johnson’ is highly activated, use a pronounHow are different referential expressions, such as the eight mentions of ‘Ms. Johnson’, related to each other?Clearly no formal control (different syntactic domains)One can speak about agreement between them (in person, number, gender), butsuch agreement is clearly an epiphenomenon of the individual mappings “referent referential expression”referential expressions just happen to be in agreement or concord with each other

Syntactic anaphora? Reference and referential choice are fundamentally discourse-based, cognitively-driven processesIs there something like syntactic anaphora?A mother and her childNPI gave John his ticketClauseI promised John to give him his ticketClosely connected clausesTo account for such syntactic usages, one can still employ a full-scale cognitively based explanationBut it may be sometimes more economical to account for syntactic usages with the help of simple and automatic rulesIncluding in terms of formal control from the antecedentAntecedent functions as a placeholder, formal representative of the usual cognitive controllerSyntactic anaphora is grammaticalization or routinization of the more general process of discourse-based reduced reference

Discourse use of broader agreement (bound pronouns) Latin (Horace, Satires 1.5: 65 ff.)Cicirrus, Sarmentusrogaba-tdeniquecurumquamfugisse-t,ask.Impf-3Sgfinallywhysometimeflee.Plpf.Conj-3Sgcui satisunafarr-islibrafore-t,who.Datenoughoneflour-Gen.Sgpoundbe.Impf.Conj-3Sg‘Finally he [=Cicirrus] asked why he [= Sarmentus] had ever fled, to whom one pound of flour would have been enough’

Polypersonal broader agreement (Navajo) wónáásóó shįį bimáhadah ha-b-í-ˀ-ch’-íí-yilfinally Ptclhis.motherdown up.out-3.Obl-against-Pref-4.Nom-Pfv-push‘Finally, it appears, his mother pushed him out (of the nest)’ts’ídá shįį naˀahóóhai b-a-ˀ-í-ltsoodjust Ptcl chicken 3.Obl-to-Indef.Acc-Pfv-were.fed‘Probably at that time the chickens were fed’ (lit. ‘ something was fed to the chickens’)The more a language has of broad agreement, the less that looks like narrow agreement

Broader agreement Clearly the same principles of operation as in more familiar reduced reference by free pronounsControl from the cognitive systemFormal control treatment is ruled out (distinct syntactic domains)Parallel referential mapping leads to parallel agreement Related approachesAgreement and anaphora – Bosch 1983, Barlow 1992Semantic agreement – Dowty and Jacobson 1989Constraint approach – Pollard and Sag 1994, Vigliocco et al. 1996, Vigliocco and Hartsuiker 2005Important terms: unification, reconciliation of features, maximalism, notional agreement

Cooccurrence does not mean cause-effect or control relationship Controller-target relationship?

Narrow agreement Such as Germanic verbal person agreementClearly related to broad agreementCf. German 3Sg present –t still identical to Latin (cognate)Can be viewed as grammaticalization of the discourse pattern (both diachronic and synchronic)The narrower the domain, the more appropriate is the formal control approachAgreement Hierarchy (Corbett 1979, 2006; cf. Eberhard et al. 2006)attributive > predicate > relative pronoun > personal pronounincreasing contribution of semantic factors

Formal control view of agreement person number gender ……… CONTROLLERTARGETart nouveausiekommen?? ???rogabat

Discourse-based, parallel agreement art nouveausiekommenquaerebatrogabat

Grammaticalization of discourse-based agreement person number gender ……… CONTROLLERTARGETart nouveausiekommenrogabat

Disagreement But even in the narrow agreement there are multiple difficulties and mismatchesBecause of parallel, independent mapping from the cognitive structure?Errors (?)In a conversational corpus I says occurs up to 50% of the time (Biber et al. 1999: 191)Attraction or proximity effectthe key to the cabinets were missing (Bock and Middleton 2011)“Committee contexts”

Inconsistency Turkic person agreementTuvan[men]keldimIcomePast1Sg‘I came’[men]kelgen=menIcomePf=1Sg‘I have come’

Absence of explicit controller RussianJavoz’m-ukrasn-ujuI.Nomtake.Pfv-Nonpast.1Sgred-F.Acc.Sg‘I will take the red one’

Pulaar-Fulfulde Detailed gender system allows easy substantivization of adjectives and participles into nouns (Koval 2006)

First and second person problem Even hard-core syntacticians usually do not consider 1, 2 person reference a case of anaphora (formal control from the antecedent)John lost his walletANAPHORAI lost my walletDEIXISJohn lost my walletDEIXISAre we more inclined to see agreement in Germanic 1, 2 person verbal inflection?Ich sprech-eAGREEMENT OR DEIXIS?Could this be an intuitive borderline between “reference as such” and “agreement as such”? Each pronominal element is produced independently

Multiple agreement marking Persistent indication of an activated referent in a clauseParticularly gender, sometimes in unexpected lociTariana (Aikhenvald 2000: 204 )ha-dapana pa-dapana na-tape-dapana na-ya-dapanaDem.Inan-Cl_house one-Cl_house 3Pl-medicine-Cl_house 3Pl-Poss-Cl_househanu-dapanahekuna-ni-ni-dapana-mahkabig-Cl_housewood3Pl-make-Topadv-Cl_house-Recpast.Nvis‘This one big hospital of theirs has been made of wood’Possibly, the overprotective strategy of reference (Kibrik 2011) entrenched in grammarOr “spreading activation”

Conclusions In terms of the extent of relevant evidence, broadly understood agreement is close to broadly understood reduced referenceThe broad understanding of agreement makes us lift the formal control viewManifestation of referential features in discourse is controlled by the cognitive structure: mappingObserved identity of features on constituents is a result of this cognitive mapping: parallel agreement

Conclusions Syntactic (narrow) agreement, compatible with the formal control view, is grammaticalization of the more general discourse-cognitive processThe tighter the constituent, the more likely is such grammaticalization, and this explains the Agreement Hierarchy Frequent mismatches can be explained by independent mapping onto different constituentsThese mismatches and difficulties betray the derivative character of agreementAgreement phenomena are a periphery of the underlying process of discourse reference

Acknowledgements Mira BergelsonOlga FedorovaDiana ForkerGeoffrey HaigAntonina KovalHermann Paul

Thank you for your attention

References Barlow 1992Biber et al. 1999Bock and Middleton 2011Bosch 1983Corbett 1979Corbett 2006Dowty and Jacobson 1989Eberhard et al. 2006Kibrik 2011Koval 2006Paul 1880/1891Pollard and Sag 1994Siewierska 2004Vigliocco et al. 1996Vigliocco and Hartsuiker 2005