Zgryźliwość kojarzy mi się z radością, która źle skończyła.
17. Functional Perspectives on Syntactic Change : The Handbook of Historical Linguistics : Blackwell Reference Online
12/11/2007 03:39 PM
17. Functional Perspectives on Syntactic Change
MARIANNE MITHUN
Subject
Linguistics
»
Historical Linguistics
Key-Topics
syntax
DOI:
10.1111/b.9781405127479.2004.00019.x
Functionalist approaches to linguistics rest on the fundamental assumption, underlying a broad spectrum of
work, that language is shaped by its use. Functionalism represents a point of departure rather than a unified
theory or codified model of language, but it does have important theoretical implications. It implies that the
ultimate goal of linguistics goes beyond description (as in structuralism) and even generalization (as in
typology) to explanation of an inclusive kind.
Of course much modern linguistic theory seeks to be explanatory in some sense. Under some approaches,
explanation has been framed chiefly in terms of theory-internal consistency. A model of language is
constructed and described in terms of abstract, inherent structural principles. Individual constructions are
then explained by their conformity with the principles. Functional explanations have tended to be wider
ranging, encompassing both language-internal and language-external considerations. Linguistic structures
are seen to be shaped by a variety of forces, including the many physiological, cognitive, and contextual
factors involved in their acquisition and use. Pertinent physiological factors include, for example, the motor
abilities that constrain articulation. Cognitive factors include general capabilities rather than specific
linguistic structures, such capacities as memory, pattern recognition, abstraction, generalization, and
routinization of repeated tasks. Contextual factors represent perhaps the largest and most varied set,
including text structure, communicative goals, language contact, and the myriad other features of the
extralinguistic context that can affect the way communication and ultimately language are shaped. These
three kinds of factors, physiological, cognitive, and contextual, are intertwined in most communication.
Because communication is effected by all components of the linguistic system working in concert, value has
been placed increasingly on considering linguistic structures within the context of the grammar as a whole,
and within the context of communication, thought, and interaction. As a result, functionally oriented work
has been based, where possible, on spontaneous speech recorded in its natural setting.
1
Few modern functionalists would maintain that there is a synchronic, one-to-one correspondence between
linguistic form and function. Synchronic systems are understood as the historical products of sequences of
individual diachronic events, each motivated in one way or another at the time it occurs. The diachronic
dimension thus plays a key role in explanation. This focus contrasts with the secondary role accorded
diachrony under some theoretical approaches in which primary attention is paid to those aspects of
language hypothesized to be innate and thus immune to change. Under such approaches, language change
has sometimes been viewed more as a phenomenon to be explained in terms of synchronic constraints, or
as evidence for particular universal structures. As a result, the kinds of phenomena investigated have varied.
Functionalist approaches have tended to focus on those aspects of language that do change, that can be
seen to be shaped by processes of acquisition and use. Arbitrariness is recognized as an integral feature of
grammar, but explanations are sought for the development of arbitrariness as well. Perhaps the most
fundamental source of apparent arbitrariness is the process of grammaticization, the cognitive routinization
of recurring structures. When the individual decisions involved in building complex expressions are
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Page 1 of 18
17. Functional Perspectives on Syntactic Change : The Handbook of Historical Linguistics : Blackwell Reference Online
12/11/2007 03:39 PM
of recurring structures. When the individual decisions involved in building complex expressions are
automated, fine judgments need not be made each time a structure is used. The French subjunctive, for
example, could be seen to have a basic irrealis function, but speakers do not evaluate the degree of reality
of the situation at hand before they utter every subjunctive form. Its use is triggered automatically by certain
grammatical and lexical contexts. Such arbitrariness is itself quite functional: the automation of whole
structures frees the mind for attention to more novel aspects of the message (Mithun 1989). Arbitrariness
can also result from processes of change. As is well known, grammatical changes that simplify one area of
the grammar often complicate others. Furthermore, the ongoing process of syntactic change can also create
arbitrariness when the motivation behind one change is obscured by the next.
The explanation of syntactic change in terms of communicative function is not new. In quite early work one
finds an assumption that when the communicative efficacy of language is impaired in one way, speakers
instigate compensatory changes. Harris and Campbell (1995: 21–3) point to early scholars who explained the
rigidification of word order by the loss of inflectional case, beginning with Ibn Khaldûn in the fourteenth
century on Arabic (Owens 1988: 270) and continuing with Bernard Lamy in 1675 on French (Scaglione 1981:
41). Adam Smith (1761) and Johann Herder (1772) held similar views on the motivation of language change
in general. Cognitive abilities involved in the acquisition and use of language have also long been adduced
as forces shaping language change. In 1816, Franz Bopp explained the development of the Indo-European
infinitive in terms of the reanalysis of an original nominal form as a verb (Disterheft 1980). Hermann Paul's
1880 discussion of analogy and restructuring in grammatical change emphasizes the role of pattern
recognition, reanalysis, and extension by both children and adults (Paul 1880). The importance of the
cognitive routinization of repeated tasks, resulting in the grammaticization of frequently used syntactic and
morphological structures, was appreciated by a number of early comparativists and discussed eloquently by
Meillet in 1912.
2
Aspects of the context in which communication takes place have long been noted in
discussions of change. The role of language contact, for example, was discussed as early as the eleventh
century by Ibn Hazm of Cordova (Harris and Campbell 1995: 33). When Adam Smith (1761) attributed the
rigidification of word order to the loss of case inflection, he located the ultimate cause of the change in
language shift: inflectional categories were lost as adults learned a second language imperfectly. All of these
lines of research have continued to the present day with increasing sophistication and rewards, as more has
been learned about individual languages and as general patterns have been compared. The role of functional
considerations such as these in the understanding of syntactic change will be illustrated in the following
sections.
1 Routinization and Reanalysis: The Yup'ik Subordinative
A long-recognized capacity of the human mind is the ability to automate repeated tasks. This process is one
of the most powerful forces shaping grammar on several levels of structure. Over time, frequently recurring
discourse patterns can become routinized in syntactic constructions. Such a process has been hypothesized
to underlie the development of English complement constructions, for example. They are assumed to have
evolved from series of two clauses, the first containing a demonstrative
that
which points cataphori-cally to
the fact stated in the second (Allen 1980). Independent words that recur frequently in certain constructions
can evolve into grammatical particles, clitics, and affixes. Such a process can be seen in progress in the
evolution of the English word
full
into the adjective-forming suffix
-ful
of
beauti-ful
and
grace-ful
. As pre-
formed templates, the grammatical structures that result from such processes require less attention from
both speaker and hearer during the production and understanding of speech. A second well-known cognitive
capacity is the ability to abstract patterns. Such processes are easily observable as children acquire their first
language, producing along the way forms that reflect overgeneralizations or alternate analyses of existing
patterns. A third familiar ability is the extension of recognized patterns to new contexts, observable as
speakers exploit the tools at hand for new expressive needs.
These abilities can play important roles in the shaping of syntactic structures. They can be seen, for
example, to underlie a syntactic construction in Central Alaskan Yup'ik, an Eskimo-Aleut language spoken in
southwestern Alaska. In Yup'ik, as in all Eskimoan languages, both nouns and verbs consist of an initial root,
any number of post-bases (primarily derivational suffixes), and a final inflectional ending. For nouns, the
ending marks number and case. Possession can be expressed by a transitive pronominal suffix specifying
the possessor and the possessum. For verbs, the ending consists of a mood marker and a pronominal suffix
complex specifying the core arguments of the clause. A sample noun (‘my grandmother’) and verb ('she told
me about it’) can be seen in (1).
3
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17. Functional Perspectives on Syntactic Change : The Handbook of Historical Linguistics : Blackwell Reference Online
12/11/2007 03:39 PM
me about it’) can be seen in (1).
3
(1)
Among the Yup'ik mood suffixes are some that express common modal distinctions, such as the indicative,
the interrogative, and the optative (for polite commands), and others that function primarily to link clauses
in various ways, namely the subordinative, the participial, and a set of connective moods: several
contemporatives (‘while,’ ‘as,’ ‘when in the past’), the precessive (‘before’), the concessive (‘although, even
if’), the contingent (‘whenever’), the consequential (‘because’), and the conditional (‘if, when in the future’).
Of special interest here is the mood referred to as the subordinative.
Subordinative clauses are frequent in spontaneous Yup'ik speech, often corresponding to what would be
packaged as independent clauses in English. In the passage in (2) the speaker, Mrs Charles, described the
transport of a butchered moose across a portage. The pieces of meat were to be shared by two families:
(2)
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Page 3 of 18
17. Functional Perspectives on Syntactic Change : The Handbook of Historical Linguistics : Blackwell Reference Online
12/11/2007 03:39 PM
The subordinative mood
-lu
- serves to link actions or states that are portrayed as related elements of a
larger event or episode.
The subordinative construction includes a grammatical requirement that the subjects of all subordinative
verbs must be coreferent with the subject of a main clause (though the specification of the higher subject is
not always explicit). The abbreviation R in the glosses of the pronominal suffixes in (2) indicates that the
argument is coreferent with the overarching subject, the two people loading the boat. Sentences like that in
(3) are unambiguous. Gender is not distinguished in Yup'ik, but the subject of the verb ‘leave’ must be
coreferent with that of ‘watch’:
(3)
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Page 4 of 18
17. Functional Perspectives on Syntactic Change : The Handbook of Historical Linguistics : Blackwell Reference Online
12/11/2007 03:39 PM
The Yup'ik subordinative could be approached in several ways. Most historical linguists would begin by
seeking the source of the subordinative marker. Because the construction exists essentially as such in all of
the modern Eskimo-Aleut languages, its origins cannot be reconstructed from comparative evidence. There
is no attestation of an earlier stage of development in historical documents. The modern languages do
provide a clue, however. Fortescue et al. (1994: 410) propose a connection between the subordinative suffix
-lu
and the enclitic
=llu
‘and, and also, too’ that persists in all of the languages. In the standard Yup'ik
orthography, used here, the digraph
ll
stands for a voiceless lateral ł. The voiced
l
of the subordinative suffix
-lu
is automatically devoiced following a voiceless segment, so it actually has two variants:
-lu
and
-llu
. One
approach to the reconstruction of the subordinative construction would be to stop at this point, having
determined that the subordinative suffix may be descended from a conjunction meaning ‘and’ and citing the
requirement of subject coreference as unsurprising evidence of the universality of the subject category.
The construction holds further interest for a functional approach to diachronic syntax, however. It
exemplifies the kind of syntactic construction that results from the routinization of a recurring discourse
pattern. In Yup'ik, as in the other Eskimoan languages, the general pragmatic relation of a sentence to the
preceding discourse may be indicated by the enclitic
=llu
. Such a link can be seen in (2d): “[They took the
pieces one by one and placed them behind the boat.] And when they were finished.” It appears that
sequences of clauses that were especially closely related pragmatically, sharing the same subject, came to
represent a recognizable complex construction in themselves. Repeated use resulted in the routinization or
grammaticization of the discourse pattern. As the complex construction became routinized, a kind of
reanalysis occurred. The conjunction
llu
became increasingly fused with the preceding constituent, first to an
enclitic as
=llu
‘and,’ and then, in one construction, to a verbal suffix
-lu
. The suffix was then reanalyzed as
a member of the inflectional mood paradigm, complementary in function to other moods marked by verbal
suffixes, such as the indicative.
The fact that the subordinative construction requires subject coreference is also of interest. In general, the
grammar of Yup'ik shows strong ergative/ absolutive patterning. Both the case suffixes on nouns and the
pronominal suffixes on indicative verbs represent ergative and absolutive categories. If, as in some current
theories, the category of subject is considered a purely structural phenomenon, its unique role in the
subordinative construction makes little sense. Once its function is taken into account, however, its
prominence in just this area of the grammar is easily understood. We know that speakers’ choices of
subjects are not random. Given an array of participants in an event, certain preferences emerge. Semantic
agents tend to be preferred over semantic patients. First persons are preferred over second, and second
over third. Humans are preferred over animals, and animals over inanimate objects. Identifiable (definite)
arguments are preferred over unidentifiable (indefinite) ones (Silverstein 1976; Chafe 1994: chs 7–8; and
others). Thus in spontaneous English speech we find sentences like
Sam grabbed the ball
more often than
sentences like
The ball was grabbed by Sam;
sentences like
I saw your mother yesterday
more often than
Your mother saw me yesterday;
sentences like
He was hit by a car
more often than sentences like
A car
hit him;
sentences like
She ate the last cookie
more often than
The last cookie was eaten by her;
and
sentences like
Sally met a man in the produce section
more often than
A man met Sally in the produce
section
(Chafe 1994). None of these preferences determines subject choice on its own. The observed
preferences reflect the general function of subjects: they serve as a point of departure for the clause.
Semantic agents tend to initiate actions. Speakers tend to present information from their own point of view
(thus the person and animacy hierarchies). Speakers typically take common knowledge as a point of
departure then move on to what is new. Of importance here is the fact that closely associated clauses tend
to share a common point of departure. For this reason, clause-combining constructions like the Yup'ik
subordinative that link clauses portrayed as elements of a larger event frequently show subject continuity.
The shaping of the Yup'ik subordinative illustrates the inseparability of cognitive and contextual factors in
the development of syntactic constructions. The cognitive routinization of the construction took place
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Page 5 of 18
zanotowane.pl doc.pisz.pl pdf.pisz.pl hannaeva.xlx.pl
12/11/2007 03:39 PM
17. Functional Perspectives on Syntactic Change
MARIANNE MITHUN
Subject
Linguistics
»
Historical Linguistics
Key-Topics
syntax
DOI:
10.1111/b.9781405127479.2004.00019.x
Functionalist approaches to linguistics rest on the fundamental assumption, underlying a broad spectrum of
work, that language is shaped by its use. Functionalism represents a point of departure rather than a unified
theory or codified model of language, but it does have important theoretical implications. It implies that the
ultimate goal of linguistics goes beyond description (as in structuralism) and even generalization (as in
typology) to explanation of an inclusive kind.
Of course much modern linguistic theory seeks to be explanatory in some sense. Under some approaches,
explanation has been framed chiefly in terms of theory-internal consistency. A model of language is
constructed and described in terms of abstract, inherent structural principles. Individual constructions are
then explained by their conformity with the principles. Functional explanations have tended to be wider
ranging, encompassing both language-internal and language-external considerations. Linguistic structures
are seen to be shaped by a variety of forces, including the many physiological, cognitive, and contextual
factors involved in their acquisition and use. Pertinent physiological factors include, for example, the motor
abilities that constrain articulation. Cognitive factors include general capabilities rather than specific
linguistic structures, such capacities as memory, pattern recognition, abstraction, generalization, and
routinization of repeated tasks. Contextual factors represent perhaps the largest and most varied set,
including text structure, communicative goals, language contact, and the myriad other features of the
extralinguistic context that can affect the way communication and ultimately language are shaped. These
three kinds of factors, physiological, cognitive, and contextual, are intertwined in most communication.
Because communication is effected by all components of the linguistic system working in concert, value has
been placed increasingly on considering linguistic structures within the context of the grammar as a whole,
and within the context of communication, thought, and interaction. As a result, functionally oriented work
has been based, where possible, on spontaneous speech recorded in its natural setting.
1
Few modern functionalists would maintain that there is a synchronic, one-to-one correspondence between
linguistic form and function. Synchronic systems are understood as the historical products of sequences of
individual diachronic events, each motivated in one way or another at the time it occurs. The diachronic
dimension thus plays a key role in explanation. This focus contrasts with the secondary role accorded
diachrony under some theoretical approaches in which primary attention is paid to those aspects of
language hypothesized to be innate and thus immune to change. Under such approaches, language change
has sometimes been viewed more as a phenomenon to be explained in terms of synchronic constraints, or
as evidence for particular universal structures. As a result, the kinds of phenomena investigated have varied.
Functionalist approaches have tended to focus on those aspects of language that do change, that can be
seen to be shaped by processes of acquisition and use. Arbitrariness is recognized as an integral feature of
grammar, but explanations are sought for the development of arbitrariness as well. Perhaps the most
fundamental source of apparent arbitrariness is the process of grammaticization, the cognitive routinization
of recurring structures. When the individual decisions involved in building complex expressions are
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Page 1 of 18
17. Functional Perspectives on Syntactic Change : The Handbook of Historical Linguistics : Blackwell Reference Online
12/11/2007 03:39 PM
of recurring structures. When the individual decisions involved in building complex expressions are
automated, fine judgments need not be made each time a structure is used. The French subjunctive, for
example, could be seen to have a basic irrealis function, but speakers do not evaluate the degree of reality
of the situation at hand before they utter every subjunctive form. Its use is triggered automatically by certain
grammatical and lexical contexts. Such arbitrariness is itself quite functional: the automation of whole
structures frees the mind for attention to more novel aspects of the message (Mithun 1989). Arbitrariness
can also result from processes of change. As is well known, grammatical changes that simplify one area of
the grammar often complicate others. Furthermore, the ongoing process of syntactic change can also create
arbitrariness when the motivation behind one change is obscured by the next.
The explanation of syntactic change in terms of communicative function is not new. In quite early work one
finds an assumption that when the communicative efficacy of language is impaired in one way, speakers
instigate compensatory changes. Harris and Campbell (1995: 21–3) point to early scholars who explained the
rigidification of word order by the loss of inflectional case, beginning with Ibn Khaldûn in the fourteenth
century on Arabic (Owens 1988: 270) and continuing with Bernard Lamy in 1675 on French (Scaglione 1981:
41). Adam Smith (1761) and Johann Herder (1772) held similar views on the motivation of language change
in general. Cognitive abilities involved in the acquisition and use of language have also long been adduced
as forces shaping language change. In 1816, Franz Bopp explained the development of the Indo-European
infinitive in terms of the reanalysis of an original nominal form as a verb (Disterheft 1980). Hermann Paul's
1880 discussion of analogy and restructuring in grammatical change emphasizes the role of pattern
recognition, reanalysis, and extension by both children and adults (Paul 1880). The importance of the
cognitive routinization of repeated tasks, resulting in the grammaticization of frequently used syntactic and
morphological structures, was appreciated by a number of early comparativists and discussed eloquently by
Meillet in 1912.
2
Aspects of the context in which communication takes place have long been noted in
discussions of change. The role of language contact, for example, was discussed as early as the eleventh
century by Ibn Hazm of Cordova (Harris and Campbell 1995: 33). When Adam Smith (1761) attributed the
rigidification of word order to the loss of case inflection, he located the ultimate cause of the change in
language shift: inflectional categories were lost as adults learned a second language imperfectly. All of these
lines of research have continued to the present day with increasing sophistication and rewards, as more has
been learned about individual languages and as general patterns have been compared. The role of functional
considerations such as these in the understanding of syntactic change will be illustrated in the following
sections.
1 Routinization and Reanalysis: The Yup'ik Subordinative
A long-recognized capacity of the human mind is the ability to automate repeated tasks. This process is one
of the most powerful forces shaping grammar on several levels of structure. Over time, frequently recurring
discourse patterns can become routinized in syntactic constructions. Such a process has been hypothesized
to underlie the development of English complement constructions, for example. They are assumed to have
evolved from series of two clauses, the first containing a demonstrative
that
which points cataphori-cally to
the fact stated in the second (Allen 1980). Independent words that recur frequently in certain constructions
can evolve into grammatical particles, clitics, and affixes. Such a process can be seen in progress in the
evolution of the English word
full
into the adjective-forming suffix
-ful
of
beauti-ful
and
grace-ful
. As pre-
formed templates, the grammatical structures that result from such processes require less attention from
both speaker and hearer during the production and understanding of speech. A second well-known cognitive
capacity is the ability to abstract patterns. Such processes are easily observable as children acquire their first
language, producing along the way forms that reflect overgeneralizations or alternate analyses of existing
patterns. A third familiar ability is the extension of recognized patterns to new contexts, observable as
speakers exploit the tools at hand for new expressive needs.
These abilities can play important roles in the shaping of syntactic structures. They can be seen, for
example, to underlie a syntactic construction in Central Alaskan Yup'ik, an Eskimo-Aleut language spoken in
southwestern Alaska. In Yup'ik, as in all Eskimoan languages, both nouns and verbs consist of an initial root,
any number of post-bases (primarily derivational suffixes), and a final inflectional ending. For nouns, the
ending marks number and case. Possession can be expressed by a transitive pronominal suffix specifying
the possessor and the possessum. For verbs, the ending consists of a mood marker and a pronominal suffix
complex specifying the core arguments of the clause. A sample noun (‘my grandmother’) and verb ('she told
me about it’) can be seen in (1).
3
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Page 2 of 18
17. Functional Perspectives on Syntactic Change : The Handbook of Historical Linguistics : Blackwell Reference Online
12/11/2007 03:39 PM
me about it’) can be seen in (1).
3
(1)
Among the Yup'ik mood suffixes are some that express common modal distinctions, such as the indicative,
the interrogative, and the optative (for polite commands), and others that function primarily to link clauses
in various ways, namely the subordinative, the participial, and a set of connective moods: several
contemporatives (‘while,’ ‘as,’ ‘when in the past’), the precessive (‘before’), the concessive (‘although, even
if’), the contingent (‘whenever’), the consequential (‘because’), and the conditional (‘if, when in the future’).
Of special interest here is the mood referred to as the subordinative.
Subordinative clauses are frequent in spontaneous Yup'ik speech, often corresponding to what would be
packaged as independent clauses in English. In the passage in (2) the speaker, Mrs Charles, described the
transport of a butchered moose across a portage. The pieces of meat were to be shared by two families:
(2)
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Page 3 of 18
17. Functional Perspectives on Syntactic Change : The Handbook of Historical Linguistics : Blackwell Reference Online
12/11/2007 03:39 PM
The subordinative mood
-lu
- serves to link actions or states that are portrayed as related elements of a
larger event or episode.
The subordinative construction includes a grammatical requirement that the subjects of all subordinative
verbs must be coreferent with the subject of a main clause (though the specification of the higher subject is
not always explicit). The abbreviation R in the glosses of the pronominal suffixes in (2) indicates that the
argument is coreferent with the overarching subject, the two people loading the boat. Sentences like that in
(3) are unambiguous. Gender is not distinguished in Yup'ik, but the subject of the verb ‘leave’ must be
coreferent with that of ‘watch’:
(3)
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Page 4 of 18
17. Functional Perspectives on Syntactic Change : The Handbook of Historical Linguistics : Blackwell Reference Online
12/11/2007 03:39 PM
The Yup'ik subordinative could be approached in several ways. Most historical linguists would begin by
seeking the source of the subordinative marker. Because the construction exists essentially as such in all of
the modern Eskimo-Aleut languages, its origins cannot be reconstructed from comparative evidence. There
is no attestation of an earlier stage of development in historical documents. The modern languages do
provide a clue, however. Fortescue et al. (1994: 410) propose a connection between the subordinative suffix
-lu
and the enclitic
=llu
‘and, and also, too’ that persists in all of the languages. In the standard Yup'ik
orthography, used here, the digraph
ll
stands for a voiceless lateral ł. The voiced
l
of the subordinative suffix
-lu
is automatically devoiced following a voiceless segment, so it actually has two variants:
-lu
and
-llu
. One
approach to the reconstruction of the subordinative construction would be to stop at this point, having
determined that the subordinative suffix may be descended from a conjunction meaning ‘and’ and citing the
requirement of subject coreference as unsurprising evidence of the universality of the subject category.
The construction holds further interest for a functional approach to diachronic syntax, however. It
exemplifies the kind of syntactic construction that results from the routinization of a recurring discourse
pattern. In Yup'ik, as in the other Eskimoan languages, the general pragmatic relation of a sentence to the
preceding discourse may be indicated by the enclitic
=llu
. Such a link can be seen in (2d): “[They took the
pieces one by one and placed them behind the boat.] And when they were finished.” It appears that
sequences of clauses that were especially closely related pragmatically, sharing the same subject, came to
represent a recognizable complex construction in themselves. Repeated use resulted in the routinization or
grammaticization of the discourse pattern. As the complex construction became routinized, a kind of
reanalysis occurred. The conjunction
llu
became increasingly fused with the preceding constituent, first to an
enclitic as
=llu
‘and,’ and then, in one construction, to a verbal suffix
-lu
. The suffix was then reanalyzed as
a member of the inflectional mood paradigm, complementary in function to other moods marked by verbal
suffixes, such as the indicative.
The fact that the subordinative construction requires subject coreference is also of interest. In general, the
grammar of Yup'ik shows strong ergative/ absolutive patterning. Both the case suffixes on nouns and the
pronominal suffixes on indicative verbs represent ergative and absolutive categories. If, as in some current
theories, the category of subject is considered a purely structural phenomenon, its unique role in the
subordinative construction makes little sense. Once its function is taken into account, however, its
prominence in just this area of the grammar is easily understood. We know that speakers’ choices of
subjects are not random. Given an array of participants in an event, certain preferences emerge. Semantic
agents tend to be preferred over semantic patients. First persons are preferred over second, and second
over third. Humans are preferred over animals, and animals over inanimate objects. Identifiable (definite)
arguments are preferred over unidentifiable (indefinite) ones (Silverstein 1976; Chafe 1994: chs 7–8; and
others). Thus in spontaneous English speech we find sentences like
Sam grabbed the ball
more often than
sentences like
The ball was grabbed by Sam;
sentences like
I saw your mother yesterday
more often than
Your mother saw me yesterday;
sentences like
He was hit by a car
more often than sentences like
A car
hit him;
sentences like
She ate the last cookie
more often than
The last cookie was eaten by her;
and
sentences like
Sally met a man in the produce section
more often than
A man met Sally in the produce
section
(Chafe 1994). None of these preferences determines subject choice on its own. The observed
preferences reflect the general function of subjects: they serve as a point of departure for the clause.
Semantic agents tend to initiate actions. Speakers tend to present information from their own point of view
(thus the person and animacy hierarchies). Speakers typically take common knowledge as a point of
departure then move on to what is new. Of importance here is the fact that closely associated clauses tend
to share a common point of departure. For this reason, clause-combining constructions like the Yup'ik
subordinative that link clauses portrayed as elements of a larger event frequently show subject continuity.
The shaping of the Yup'ik subordinative illustrates the inseparability of cognitive and contextual factors in
the development of syntactic constructions. The cognitive routinization of the construction took place
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Page 5 of 18