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FROM COGNITION TO
GRAMMAR – EVIDENCE
FROM AFRICAN
LANGUAGES
Bernd Heine, Ulrike Claudi and
Freiderike Hunnemeyer
Lexical Semantics1 12/3
Introduction
•
What is common to all definitions of
grammaticalization:
1. It is conceived as a process.
2. It is treated as a morphological process, as one
which concerns the development of a given word
or morpheme.
3. An intrinsic property of the process is that
grammaticalization is unidirectional, i.e. it leads
from a “less” to a “more grammatical” unit, but
not vice versa.
2
Proposal of the study
• Grammaticalization is the product of a specific
type of conceptual manipulation and can
immediately be accounted for with reference
to this manipulation.
3
An underlying principle: metaphor
• principle of the “exploitation of old means for novel
functions” (Werner and Kaplan 1963).
• Concrete concepts are employed to understand, explain or
describe less concrete phenomena.
• Clearly delineated and/or clearly structured entities are
recruited to conceptualize less clearly delineated or
structured entities.
• Non-physical experiences are understood in terms of
physical experience, time in terms of space, cause in terms
of time, or abstract relations in terms of kinetic processes or
spatial relations, etc.
 main characteristics of metaphor in general
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What is a METAPHOR?
•SOURCE Domain
• TARGET Domain
• Spatial orientation
• Emotional state
UP
DOWN
Happy
Sad
Happiness is UP:
She is feeling up. Cheer up!
Sadness is DOWN:
You look down today. She is downcast.
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Source concepts
• The most elementary human experiences, typically
derived from the physical state, behavior or immediate
environment of man.
• The human body: Parts of the body are recruited as
source concepts for the expression of grammatical
concepts because of their relative location:
•
•
•
•
•
back, or buttock  the space behind
breast, chest, face, eye, head  front
belly, stomach, heart  inside
head  above
anus, foot  below
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Source concepts
• Basic human activities
• Source concepts refer to some of the most basic
human activities, like
• ‘do/make’
• ‘take/hold’
• ‘finish’ or ‘say’
• movements like ‘go’, ‘come’, ‘leave’ or ‘arrive’.
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Source proposition
•
Some more complex structures are used as source
propositions:
1.
2.
3.
4.
•
“X is at Y”
“X moves to/from/along Y”
“X is part of Y”
“X does Y”
(locational proposition)
(motion proposition)
(part-whole proposition)
(action proposition)
Verbal possession (‘to have, own’) may come from
locational concepts or from the action model:
• a metaphorical transfer from “Y takes/seizes X” to
“X owns Y”.
In Ewe: xɔ
le
asi-nye
House be at hand-poss: 1SG  ‘I have a house’
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Linking the source and target structures
• The most urgent problems in the analysis of
grammaticalization concern the relationship between
input and output, i.e. the source and the target within
this process:
1. What source concepts and/or propositions give rise to
which grammatical concepts?
2. Given some grammatical category, is it possible to
unambiguously define its non-grammatical source?
3. To what extent are the source and target structures, as
well as the relationship holding between them,
universally defined.
9
Metaphorical transfer
Traditionally treated as
• 1) “semantic bleaching”, “semantic depletion”
• The source concept carries the “full meaning”
whereas the output of the process is interpreted as
an impoverished form.
• 2) metaphorical abstraction
• It serves to relate “more abstract” contents with
more concrete contents across conceptual domain.
10
Vehicle and topic in metaphorical abstraction
IDEATIONAL
TEXTUAL
VEHICLE
Clearly delineated,
compact ‘class’
Physical (visible,
tangible, etc.) ‘hand’
Thing-like objects
‘length’ ‘sunshine’
Socio-physical
interaction ‘fight’
“real world” ‘it’
Less discourse-based
‘while’
INTERPERSONAL Expressive ‘well’
TOPIC
Fuzzy, diffuse
Non-physical, mental
Qualities
Mental processes
“world of discourse”
discourse/speaker based
Non-expressive 11
Metaphor: transfer across categories
• The process underlying grammaticalization is
metaphorically structured, it can be described in terms
of a few basic categories which can be arranged lineally:
PERSON > OBJECT > PROCESS > SPACE > TIME > QUALITY
• Categorial metaphor
• SPACE is OBJECT
• TIME is SPACE
• The arrangement of categories is unidirectional:
it proceeds from left to right.
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Categorial transfer
• The distinction of cognitive categories is reflected in
various aspects of language structure:
1. Interrogative pronoun
• All African languages known to us have separate
pronouns for the categories PERSON (who?),
OBJECT (what), PROCESS (what?), SPACE (where?),
TIME (when?), and QUALITY (how?).
• Note that OBJECT and PROCESS tend to have
identical pronominal expressions – a fact that
might be suggestive of a special metaphorical
relationship between these two categories.
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2. There are some correlation between the division of
both word classes, or sub-classes, on the one hand
and constituent type on the other:
Category
PERSON
OBJECT
PROCESS
SPACE
TIME
QUALITY
Word type
Human noun
Non-human noun
Verb
Adverb, adposition
Adverb, adposition
Adjective, adverb
Constituent type
NP
NP
VP
AP
AP
modifier
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3. The various hierarchies have been identified as
determinants of constituent order:
Case function (Case hierarchy)
Agent
Benefactive
Dative
Accusative
Locative
Instrument and others
Category
PERSON
OBJECT
SPACE
QUALITY
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Chaining
• The process is gradual and continuous rather than
discrete.
• e.g. the concept of “BACK” megbé in Ewe
• The development from a body part noun (‘back’) to
a prepositional and/or adverbial entity (‘behind,
back’).
• In Ewe, the lexeme megbé involves essentially the
following categories:
OBJECT > SPACE > TIME > QUALITY
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7. é-pé
megbé
3SG-POSS back
“His back is cold”
fá
be cold
OBJECT
8. é
le xɔ
á megbé
3SG is house DEF behind
“He is at the back of the house”
SPACE
9. é
kú le é-megbé
3SG die be 3SG-behind
“He died after him”
TIME
10. é
tsi
megbé
3SG remain behind
“He is backward/mentally retarded”
QUALITY
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•
Semantic ambiguity
11. megbé keke-áɖé
le é-si
back broad-INDEF be POSS-hand
(a) ‘He has a broad back’
(b) ‘Its backside is broad’
13. é
le megbé ná-m
3SG be behind PREP-1SG
(a) ‘He is behind me (spatially)’
(b) ‘He is late (=he could not keep pace with me)’
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•
The categories OBJECT, SPACE, TIME and QUALITY are
not completely separated from one another. Their
relationship should be rendered graphically as:
OBJECT
SPACE
TIME
QUALITY
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Contextual-induced reinterpretation (CIR)
•
The prepositions from and to have a locative meaning
in (23) but a temporal one in (26):
23. S From Cologne to Vienna it is 600 miles.
24. ? From Cologne to Vienna it is 10 hours by train.
25. ? He was asleep all the way/all the time form Cologne
to Vienna.
26. T To get to Vienna, you travel from morning to evening.
 A case of Metanym: spatial-temporal association
20
Contextual-induced reinterpretation (CIR)
•
What is responsible for the rise of metonyms is a
discourse pragmatic manipulation of concepts
whereby these are subjected to contextual factors in
utterance interpretation.
21
Metaphor and metonym
• It would seem that metaphor and metonym form
different components of one and the same process
•
One the one hand, this process is made up of a scale
of contiguous entities which are in a metonymic
relationship to one another.
•
One the other hand, it contains a smaller number of
more salient and discontinuous categories, such as
SPACE, TIME, or QUALITY.
22
• A  A,B  B
• Traugott and König ( 1991):
The case of since:
 I have done quite a bit of writing since we last met.
 Since Susan left him, John has been very miserable.
 Since you are not coming with me, I will have to go
alone.
•
“since X happen earlier than Y, X must be the cause
of Y”
23
Reanalysis vs. grammaticalization
•
Reanalysis:
(A, B) C  A (B, C)
[a lot] of land vs. [a lot of] land
•
Grammaticalization and Reanalysis should be kept
strictly apart:
• Whereas grammaticalization is essentially a
unidirectional process, reanalysis is not.
• There exist cases of both grammaticalization
without reanalysis and reanalysis without
grammaticalization.
24
Reanalysis vs. grammaticalization
•
Grammaticalization without Reanalysis
• When a demonstrative turns into a definite article
(that man > the man)
• Reanalysis without Grammaticalization
She went to bed; she was tired.
• The second clause is reanalyzed as a subordinate
clause, a causal complement of the first clause.
 She went to bed as she was tired.
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Grammaticalization chains
•
Both transfer and context-induced reinterpretation
are responsible for what turn up in language
structure as grammaticalization chain.
•
Within a diachronic perspective one might
characterize grammaticalization as a process turning
an item, in most cases a lexical item, from a less
grammatical to a more grammatical status.
26
The morpho-syntax of megbé
Category
Gloss
OBJECT/
PERSON
‘back of body’ N
NP
P
OBJECT
‘back part’
NP
p/-
OBIECT/
SPACE
‘place behind’ N
NP/AP
p/-
OBJECT/
TIME
‘time after’
N
NP/AP
p/-
SPACE
‘behind’
N/A/P
AP
-
TIME
‘after’
N/A/P
AP
-
QUALITY
‘retarded’
A
AP
-
OBJECT
PERSON
Word class
N
SPACE
Constituent Morphology
type
(p= possessive )
TIME
QUALITY
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Grammaticalization and discourse role
•
Chains display a predictable correlation with the
discourse pragmatic parameter of
referentiality/manipulability.
•
The lexeme megbé is maximally referential when
used as an OBJECT-like entity and minimally
referential when associated with the QUALITY
category.
28
•
Another example: ŋútsu ‘man, adult male’
31. me le
ŋútsu nyúíé áɖé di-ḿ
1SG COP man nice INDEF want-PROG
‘I am looking for a nice man.’
a concrete N
32. é
de ŋútsu la
me
ná-m
3SG put man body POSTP PREP-1SG
‘He has given me courage.’
a man’s body
= courage
33. é
wɔ ŋútsu ŋútɔ
3SG do man very
‘He behaved very bravely.’
他很man
29
•
Hopper and Thompson (1984) analyze variations in
the use of nouns and verbs in terms of their
respective discourse roles.
•
The present approach:
• focusses on the conceptual manipulation of
linguistic units.
• concrete, visible/tangible objects are employed to
conceptualize less concrete entities.
30
Problems
• ‘Back’ in So
34. a. nέkέ íca sú-o
sóg
be 3SG back-ABL mountain  ‘He is behind
the mountain’
b. nέkέ íca sú-o sóg-o
c. nέkέ íca sú sóg-o
35. nέkέ cú sú-o
ím
be fly back-ABL girl
 ‘There is a fly on the
back of the girl.’
 ‘There is a fly behind
the girl’
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• Questions:
a. Why are there three optional variants in (34)
expressing much the same meaning?
b. Why can case in (34) be marked either on the head
or on the modifier or on both? Are there any clues to
explain this situation?
c. Why is (35) semantically ambiguous?
•
What we are dealing with here are structures which
are the immediate result of conceptual manipulation
leading from a lexical to a grammatical entity, and
sentences (34) and (35) represent differing stages of
this process.
32
Some conclusions
a. Grammaticalization can be conceived as a process
mapped onto language structure. It is hard to
understand the structure without understanding the
process that has given rise to it.
b. The dynamic of this process are reflected, e.g. in the
form of grammaticalization chains figuring in
synchronic language structure.
c. A not insignificant part what turns up is grammar as
polysemy or homophony represents different
members of one and the same grammaticalization
chain.
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d. In additional to their discrete characteristics,
grammaticalization chains behave like continua
without clear-cut boundaries.
e. Overlapping is an intrinsic property of
grammaticalization chains.
f. Since conceptual shift precedes morphosyntactic and
morphological shift, the result is asymmetry between
meaning and form.
34
Summary
•
The rise of grammatical categories is the result of
what we call conceptual manipulation as a problemsolving strategy.
•
This process is metaphorical in nature, by means of
categorical metaphors on the one hand and contextinduced reinterpretation on the other.
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