Things we can learn from an OD construction
Adele E. Goldberg
Predication of a role introduced by a context-evoked frame.
Poset: the initial Np satands in a salient partially-ordered set relation to
som eentity or entities already evoked in the discourse model. (see also Ward
1988; Ward and Prince 1991): IS-A-MEMBER-OF, IS-PART-OF, IS-A-SUBTYPE-OF,
IS_AN_ATTRIBUTE-OF, IS-EQUAL-TO.
Intro
From LM’s manuscript:
Should iterated events (a box repeatedly falling down) be treated the same as
habitual events (brushing one’s teeth every morning)? Langacker makes a
distinction (1996)
GNOMIC sentences (Oil flots on water: can be paraphrased with conditinal
sentence: if something counts as oil, it will float on substance that counts as
water. Krifka et al. 1995: conflate habitual and gnomic sentences under GENERIC)
“You have highway signs saying speed limit, uh, eighty, eighty-five, whatever
would be the appropriate number.”
“You have a bunch of people trying to do ninety”
Ellen F. Prince. 1997. On the Functions of Left-Dislocation I English Discourse.
In Akio Kamio (ed) Directions in Functional Linguistics.117-143.
29a. [Speaker has been married four times before the present husband] “the first
time was in 1968, just to get out of my dad’s house,” she says. “Second guy, I
just met him and didn’t have anything else to do.[LD] Didn’t work out…Third and
fourth times were business partners. We got married for business reasons.”
(Philadelphia Inquirer 4-J 73/88)
29b. I was just raised an old hillbilly and I’ll die one. Radio, it’s sitting up
there, but I can’t hear too good. Don’t have a television. (Terkel 1974: 40).
Fronted NP stands in a poset (partially ordered set) relation. Prince:
“replacing the initial NP with an N’ in actually occurring ‘Simplifying’ LeftDislocations produces infelicity, if not ungrammaticality, as seen in (30)” (pg
135)
30a. It’s supposed to be such a great deal. #Guy, when he came over and asked me
if I wanted a route, he made it sound so great. Seven dollars a week for hardly
any work.
Two problems: unanchored and punctual past:
Anchored but punctual: odd: [It’s supposed to be such a great deal. #Nice kid
like him, when he came over and aske dme if I wanted a route, he made it sound
so great. He made it sound so great. Seven dollars a week for hardly any work.]
Unanchored, non-punctual: odd: [It’s supposed to be such a great deal. # Guy,
he comes over and asks if you want a route. He made it sound so great. Seven
dollars a week for hardly any work.]
Anchored and non-punctual: OK: [It’s supposed to be such a great deal. Nice kid
like him, he comes over and asks if you want a route. He made it sound so
great. Seven dollars a week for hardly any work.]
BUT 29 a is punctual!!
30b. My sister got stabbed. She died. Two of my sisters were living together on
18th Street. They had gone to bed, and this man, their girlfriend’s husband,
came in. He started fussingwith my sister and she started to scream. #Landlady,
she went up, and he laid her out. So sister went to get a wash cloth to put on
her…
[I don’t want to manage an apartment building any more. People in apartments
have been getting stabbed. #Landlady, she intervenes and she gets laid out. So
my sister is going to open a new business with me.]
cites Ward (1988): “topicalization” (Laura: is a focus construction):
Customer W: ‘H recommends the cheesburger’
C: ‘Cheeseburger it is then.
Prince (pg 136): “This suggests that further study of possible relations between
poset inferences and initial N’ might prove fruitful.
*********************
Lexical subjects in Switchboard corpus: 2,858
Argument focus:
I was the only one who did not catch a single fish. My daughter caught fish,
his daughter caught fish, he caught fish.
*Daughter caught fish, son caught fish, I caught fish.
SF:
Doctor came out.
(ok)
Examples of lexical subjects from Switchboard, cited by Francis, Gregory and
Michaelis (ms).
Context: Conversation about drug testing
We, that’s been an, a an issue, uh,in our company even though we don’t have the
random or even regular drug screening. In fact, they’l have these little
parties,and people will just get, I mean I’ve my brother lives where I work, and
I have many a time called him to come get me, you know.
*Brother lives where I work.
Context: conversation about children
“he sent him to kindergarten. As soon as he went there, the teacher took one
look at him and he threw up again.”
As soon as he went there, ?eacher took one look at him and he threw up again.
The, uh, Governor, you know, has been trying to decide whether he’s going to
commute it or not.
??Governor, you know, has been trying to decide whether he’s going to commute it
or not.
And you get up there and the prosecuting attorney presents his evidence.
(definite because of bridging inferece (Clark and Haviland 1977)
And you get up there and prosecuting attorney presents his evidence.
We should and especially, if anything, be cutting taxes right now because of the
recession and at the same time, the budget he sent to Congress has tax and fee
increases, so, uh, I know the politicians, uh, aren’t straightforward.
“As lexical NPs, they denote NEW referents. As subjects, they denote
RECOVERABLE referents” (Francis, Gregory and Michaelis pg 13)
Look at Steedman? 1984 Lng for topic intonation.(Christine Bartels)
In this paper, I will focus on the case of determinerless noun phrases in
initial position in English, an unusual pattern that has received scant
attention, with few exceptions (most notably, Thrasher 1974, Cote 1996).Certain
instances of this pattern are highly conventionalized:
Do sentences typically involve recurrent, generic or stative predications?
Main predication treated as if it is to be expected.
Cannot add parenthetical between subject and Pred.
Wife's always out of town.
#Wife, after each surgery, is out of town.
Check's in the mail.
Sky's the limit.
Receipt's in the bag.
Can have PF interpretation…
These cases might lead one to imagine that the existing cases are all idioms.
The following examples attest to the fact that the pattern is in fact
productive:
Wife's out of town.
Car's in the shop
Copier's on the blink again.
Printer's out of paper.
Ice cream's in the freezer.
Sun set early today.
Old man's out of town.
Foolish child though he was... (Fillmore 19XX) (LD construction)
Elevator's broken.
Boy's a real linguist! (are exclamatives SF?)
Bus was late. (said as an explanation in context)
#Bus ran into a stop sign. (Ok if uttered by Eye-Ore)
Garbage collector came already.
Radio said he was planning to run.
Newspaper boy's at the door .
% \# Husband's out of town. Let's go drink some beer (UIUC students liked this).
TYPES
Time expressions:
``How long you been here, anyhow?' ` Little over five weeks'" I said..
pg 60
I'll be back around ten.
Couple of weeks ago,…
Long time ago..
Little after' pg 103
KID…
MODIFIERS often essential (to anchor N’?)
% Good thing we didnt' run into anyone we know
Last person I expected to meet was John
Wife wants to go to the mountains this year. pg 5
%% (The) Damn dogs are taking over the city.
% (A) Man your age shouldn't be working that hard.
%% (The) Last man to see him alive was John.
% (A) Couple of weeks ago I decided to stop smoking.
% (The) Evening paper says he'll tough it out.
%% (A) Funny thing happened on the way over here.
It is argued below that these cases involve a grammaticalized construction which
I will refer to as the Omitted Determiner (OD) construction. By construction, I
intend the following:
C is a CONSTRUCTION iff C is a pairing of form and function such that some
aspect of the form or some aspect of the function is not strictly predictable
from C's component parts or from other constructions already recognized to
exist.
That these expressions require a special construction is clear from the
fact that singular count nouns in English do not generally appear without
determiners and yet the nouns check, receipt, wife, car, copier, etc. all do
appear in bare form in the examples above. The fact that nouns can appear in
bare form in certain contexts requires that they be licensed by a minor pattern
in the language, a special construction.We will see below that the construction
has both syntactic and discourse constraints, and that in fact the form and
meaning of the construction are closely related. The explanation of the
relationship between form and meaning requires reference to a theory of
paradigmatic opposition (see also Moore and Ackerman 1999,Lambrecht 1994,2000).
Syntactic Constraint
Determiners cannot be ommitted from just any noun in a sentence. For example,
none of the following with determiners ommitted from non-initial position are
acceptable:
*I met wife today.
*I saw a book on copier.1
*According to wife, ...
Examples like these led Thrasher (1974) to propose that only determinres in
sentence initial position are candidates for deletion.
However, initial position is not quite the correct constraint (see also Thrasher
1974:89).A determiner is omitted from each of the following in a non-initial
position:
He always looks great. Hair's perfect, suit is tailored and shoes are
newly waxed.
[List intonation helps here, no?]
Oy vey! Nine days out of ten, printer's out of ink around here!
Last night, evening paper said she'll run for office.
%[what about?:
%\enumsentence{Wife and kids getting used to life in Ann Arbor? pg 83 \\
%*Are wife and kids getting used to life in Ann Arbor
An initial generalization that covers both the facts in \ex{-1 and \ex{-0 is
that determiners can only be ommitted from subject position. Whether or not the
subject is sentence initial is in large part irrelevant. However, the following
examples falsify this generalization, since all involve bare nouns that are not
syntactic subjects.
``Kid like you' he said, peering across at me from
the driver's seat, 'smart, good looking, good personality, you can make
a million bucks here'" pg 54
There is a different minor pattern in English
which involves bare nouns after prepositions to school, in bed, at work.
The semantic constraints involved in these cases are quite distinct so that
a distinct construction is clearly involved.
1
Husband and Wife, they got to work these things out themselves.
You'll see.
```Smart, good-looking kid like you,' he said 'you can do better
than this." pg 61
No poset relation, is there? “Simplifying” function, no?? So why are Prince’s
examples 30 bad? Because events are punctual??
Each of these examples is an instance of the left detachment construction, and
the bare NP appears in the leftward detached phrase. Thus it seems that the OD
construction is licensed in subject or a left-dislocation position. For the time
being, we will leave the statement of the generalization in these disjunctive
terms. In section XX below, we return to refine the syntactic constraint, and
argue that it is in fact highly motivated once the relevant discourse constraint
is fully understood.
Discourse Constraint
It is clear that there is some kind of discourse constraint on this
construction. If we compare the examples in \ex{1, provided by Thrasher (1974),
with the same examples in the contexts in \ex{2, we find a distinct
contrast:\footnote{I use the "\#" symbol here and below to indicate infelititous
in the given context. "*" is reserved for examples which cannot be rescued
by a change in context.
Bill. (Your) Wife's on the phone.
Got to go. (My/The) Kids are waiting in the car.
% Bill's not coming in. (His) Son just called to say he has the flu.
(Thrasher 1974: 83)
Bill, is your family still on their trip?
\\
\# (Your) Wife's on the phone again.
% Bill has three children. \# (His) Son just called to say he has the flu.
A: How are baby Greta and Ollie ? \\
B: They're fine. \# (The) Kids are actually waiting in the car.
How are the children?
Oh, kids are fine.
Before trying to characterize the relevant discourse constraint, it is worth
reviewing some general facts about information structure.
\subsection{Background on Information Structure
%
%
%In this section, I would like to propose a further constraint on this
%construction, having to do with the information structure of the
%utterance conveyed.
I adopt the following definition of information structure from Lambrecht
(1994:5):
\begin{quote
Information structure: that component of sentence grammar in which propositions
as
conceptual representations of states of affairs are paired with lexicogrammatical
structures in accordance with the mental states of interlocutors who use and
interpret
these structures as units of informaiton in a given discourse.
\end{quote
Information structure as used here is equivalent to Prince's ``informationpackaging"
(Prince 1981, see also Vallduv\'i 1992).
\subsection{Sentence Focus
The contexts in the unacceptable examples in \ex{0 set up the
subject referents as the topics of the
discourse. The relevant subject in example \ex{0a, wife is already
mentioned in the previous context; son in \ex{0b is likewise
evoked by the previous mention of children. Finally
kids in \ex{0c refers to Greta and Ollie just mentioned.
In the original examples in \ex{-1 in contrast,
each of the contexts encourages a particular
interpretation in which the subject referent is not topical. Instead,
the whole sentence expresses new information. Lambrecht (1994) dubs this
type of expression, ``sentence focus" in contrast to
topic/comment structure (or ``predicate focus").
The difference between predicate focus and sentence focus
can be observed in the stress pattern in two syntactically
identical sentential patterns in English.
What happened to Bill?
Bill was CONVICTED. (predicate focus)
What happened?
BILL was convicted. (sentence focus)
An example of a predicate focus construction appears in \ex{-1. Bill
is already evoked as the discourse topic, and the only new information
is contained in the predicate phrase. As Lambrecht (1994) notes, predicate
focus, or topic/comment structure is the most frequent, and unmarked way of
packaging information.
In \ex{0b, on the other hand, the entire sentence conveys new information
(hence the term, ``sentence focus"). Bill has not been evoked by the
question. The pragmatic distinction is marked formally in English by
placing the a sentence accent on the subject NP instead of at the end of
the predicate, the unmarked accent position (see Lambrecht and Polinsky 1997 for
discussion).
%The primary difference between
%SF and PF are distinguished by TOPICALITY PRESUPPOSITION:
%assumed status of a referent as a topic of current interest in the discourse.
%One way to indicate SF information structure in English is by the stress
pattern.
%For example, in answer to the question, ``Why didn't she come to work today?"
%one might respond with either of the examples in \ex{1:
%
%% Her SON is responsible (AF)
% Her son had an ACCIDENT (PF)
% Her SON is sick (SF)
%In \ex{0a, we have an expression with predicate focus.
To be more precise, Lambrecht (1994) offers the following definition:
\begin{quote
SENTENCE FOCUS CONSTRUCTION: the Sentence Focus construction is formally marked
as expressing a pragmatically structured proposition in which
both the subj and predicate are in focus. The focus domain is
the sentence minus any topical non-subject arguments.
\end{quote
This type of information structure has alternatively been referred to as
"news sentence" "neutral desctription" "all new utterance"
"thetic sentence" "event-reporting sentence."
If we look at the examples of determiner omission cited initially, we find
that they each require a sentence-focus interpretation.
For example, \ex{-5?a, repeated below,
might be uttered, for example, as an explanation of why someone was eating
alone at a restaurant.
The fact that the man's wife was out of town serves to set the scene
or explain the current situation.
\enumsentence{Wife's out of town.
The same sentence cannot be used if the wife was just mentioned
in the discourse (cf. example \ex{-6>??.
Similarly, example \ex{0c is intended to draw the listener's attention to the
wife's specific actions and thus would normally be used when the wife was
topical in the discourse; we see that the possessive determiner
cannot be ommitted in this context (\ex{0b).
\# Wife stood up suddenly.
(His wife stood up suddenly.)
As the contrasts in \ex{-6 and \ex{-5 show,
while certain types of content lend themselves more or less easily to
sentence focus interpretations, it is ultimately the contexts, not
the contents which determine the interpretation and hence the acceptability
of these sentences.
%Compare \ex{1a with \ex{1b;
% A: Why are you walking to work? \\
%B: Car's in the shop.
% Where is your Honda? \\
%\# Car's in the shop.
(with “Oh” this is ok!)
The role of discourse context becomes even more clear when we consider more
carefully which types of sentence focus expressions license the OD construction.
That is, the term sentence-focus serves as a cover term
to distinguish expressions from predicate focus. In fact it
covers two distinct cases (Sasse 1987; Lambrecht 1994).
The communicative function of sentence-focus constructions is either 1) to
introduce
a new discourse referent (``entity central" or ``presentational") or
2) to announce a new event involving a non-topical
referent (``event central"). This is diagrammed below:
\medskip
\begin{tabular{ccc
& sentence-focus & \\
&\hspace{.1in& \\
entity central & & event central
\end{tabular
\medskip
\subsubsection{Presentational/Entity central
% *Man appeared.
% *Baby was born.
Presentational expressions can generally appear in the existential there
construction or the inversion construction.\footnote{While presentational
sentences
can generally appear in these constructions, it is not the case that these
constructions require the presentational conversational import. As Birner
(1994)
observes, for example, the inversion construction has the weaker requirement
that
the preposed phrase conveys more familiar information than the postposed logical
subject. If the logical subject is newly presented in the discourse it can
be assumed to be the least familiar information in the sentence and thus
inversion
is generally allowed.
Consider the following examples:
There (suddenly) appeared a wheel.
In came his wife.
At the door stood the garbage collector.
Notice that the canonical paraphrases
of these sentences cannot appear
with omitted determiner:
*Wheel (suddenly) appeared.
*Wife came in.
*Garbage collector stood at the door.
Thus it seems that the ommitted determiner construction is incompatable with
presentational information structure.
At first it looks like the following are exceptions to this generalization since
they involve the ommission of an indefinite determiner and thus superficially at
least
seem to introduce a new participant onto the scene.
Crazy situation came up.
Funny thing happened on the way over here. (Thrasher 1974)
However, upon closer inspection it is clear from the content of these examples
that they
are actually introducing a new event. The ``crazy situation" or ``funny thing"
both refer to
events that will be described subsequently, despite the fact taht the events
are encoded by NPs Notice the corresponding inversions and
existential constructions are also unacceptable:
*Up came a crazy situation.
*There came up a crazy situation.
*On the way over here happened a funny thing.
*There happened a funny thing on the way over here.
Thus it seems that the examples in \ex{-1 are not in fact entity central
expressions, but rather are event central sentences.
That is, the distinction is ultimately a semantic one whether an entity or an
event is introduced into the discourse.
Only ``event central" sentence-focus contexts license the
OD construction.
\section{Inferrables
We have seen that the ommitted determiner construction requires the
event central sentence-focus information structure. This generalization
implies that the subject cannot be topical in the discourse, since when
the subject is the topic, we have an instance of the predicate focus
pattern.
%For exmaple, wheel in the following example is
%topical, since A introduces a question about it:
%\enumsentence{A: Why did you put that wheel away? \\
%B: \# Wheel's smashed up. \\
%(B: The wheel's smashed up.)
At the same time, we have seen that the subject cannot
be newly presented on the scene.
%\enumsentence{ \# (A) Wheel rolled down the street.
%What role in the discourse can the subject argument play in
%the ommitted determiner construction?
%We can get a clue by considering a context in which B's response in \ex{-1 is
%made acceptable:
%\enumsentence{A: Why did you put that bike away? \\
%B: Wheel's smashed up.
%In \ex{0, wheel is {\small INFERRABLE.
The OD construction requires that the subject referent be
distinct from both topic and new information: it must be
inferrable; that is, the speaker assumes that the
hearer can infer its existence from context, general world knowledge or
semantic frames previously evoked (Prince 1981, Fillmore 1982, Lambrecht
1994, Byrne 1997).\footnote{
In fact it seems that all event central sentences require inferrable
subjects.
%The constraint that the subject must be inferrable appears to be a
%general constraint on SF expressions.
%This explains the unacceptability of the following:
%\enumsentence{A: What happened? \\
%B: *MAN died.
%Although the stress pattern and context favor a sentence focus interpretation,
%man is not inferrable.
Chafe (1987) defines an accessible discourse entity as one which is
semi-active.
A discourse referent may be
accessible because it has been partially deactivated from an earlier state due
to
intervening discourse,
because it is inferrable from some semantic frame or schema that has been
evoked,
(Chafe 1987), or because it is present in the text-external context (Lambrecht
1994: 99).
%\subsubsection{Inferrables
%Various types of inferences Clark (1977), Prince (1981a).
%Prince: set to subset, set to number, number to set).
% Check's in the mail. INFERRABLE
% Sky's the limit. INFERRABLE
% Receipt's in the bag. INFERRABLE
%These cases might lead one to imagine that the existing cases are
%all idioms.
%However the following further examples attest to the fact that the
%pattern is in fact productive:
% Wife's out of town. INFERRABLE
% Car's in the shop INFERRABLE
% Copier's on the blink again.
% Printer's out of paper.
% Ice cream's in the freezer.
% Sun set early today.
% Old man's out of town.
% Foolish child though he was... (Fillmore 19XX)
% Elevator's broken.
% Boy's a real linguist! (are exclamatives SF?)
% Bus was late. (said as an explanation in context)
% Garbage collector came already.
% Radio said he was planning to run.
% Newspaper boy's at the door .
% \# Husband's out of town. Let's go drink some beer (UIUC students liked this).
%
%
%x, {x e X
%X, x e X
%But not active (easily accessible, in the forefront of the hearer's
consciousness) (and not topical) in all of the above.
%
Left detachment. or ``marked topic construction" Lambrecht (1994):
Accented topic: ``[the leftward NP bears ] the primary function of
announcing a new topic or of marking a shift from one topic to another"
(1994:202).
Gregory and Michaelis (1999) operationalize this definition and confirm it using
corpus data.
In general, left detached NPs are typically not brand new, but are instead
accessible (Lambrecht 1994: 183).
The detachment or marked topic construction can ...be defined pragmatically as a
grammatical device used to promote a referent from...accessible to active
status, from which point on it can be coded as a ...
an unaccented pronominal." (Lambrecht 1994: 183)
``Kid like you' he said, peering across at me from
the driver's seat, 'smart, good looking, good personality, you can make
a million bucks here'" pg 54
Husband and Wife, they got to work these things out themselves.
You'll see.
```Smart, good-looking kid like you,' he said 'you can do better
than this." pg 61
\section{Relating form and discourse function
In this section we will address the question of the relation
between the syntactic form and discourse constraint..
that the relationship between the formal characteristic
of the missing determiner and the discourse function of non-topicality
is strongly motivated.
Lambrecht (1994) and Lambrecht and Polinsky (1996) observe that
sentences with the marked pragmatics of sentence focus tend to be formally
marked as distinct from canonical predicate focus in motivated ways.
\section{Misc
>From Gregory Ward, Personal communication 5/11/98:
Evaluative N's are ok:
good idea!
idea!
\# square window!
wonderful plan!
?a wonderful plan!
happy day!
?a happy da
Also
%\subsection{Bare NPs
%
%Cross-linguistically,
%determinerless nouns are often associated with noun incorporation when they
%are in object position.
Common kind of noun incorporation in Micronesian and Mayan languages.
Noun forms a syntactic unit with V, and noun is not specific, does not
refer and is not marked for definiteness or number (Mithun 1984).
\subsubsection{Lambrecht and Polinsky
Building on work by Lambrecht (1994) and Lambrecht and Polinsky (1996),
this paper focuses on the relationship between form and meaning and
the notion of paradigmatic contrast. It is argued that the distinction
between ``predicate focus" or topic/comment information structure
and other types of information structures is represented.
Even within English
there are various types of SF constructions, each varying in form.
While this fact could lead one to the view that the particular form of
a construction is unmotivated (cf. Prince 1996), this paper argues
on the contrary that more fined grained distinctions
motivate the differences in form.
Prince suggests that each of these constructions serves to relocate a
discourse-new entity from a syntactic position disfavored for
discourse-new entities (namely, subject position)
and create a separate processing unit for them.
This rational
in fact
presupposes that the relationship between form and meaning is not an
arbitrary one in the sense of being unmotivated or senseless.
The form of the constructions is strongly motivated by its pragmatic
function.
$<$ My sister got stabbed in her bed$>$ \\
The landlady, she went up... (Left dislocation)
There are a lot of Americans, they can't read. ("Run-on")
There are a lot of Americans, who they can't read (resumptive pronoun RC)
\section{Attested examples
``How long you been here, anyhow?' ` Little over five weeks'" I said..
pg 60
I'll be back around ten.
Little after' pg 103
"'
Truth is, I don't really care.'" pg 110
[means "frankly" notice tag would be "now do I?"
`You told them about me?' 'Sure. Long time ago." pg 165
```So I can help Earl crack that wood loose and load it. Stuff's frozen
into the ground, most of it." pg 187. (SEPARATE MASS Ns from COUNT???
>From Switchboard corpus:
Jury was unorganized.
Population is a lot lighter up there.
Peer group is the other way now instead of...
Third question was how [mumble]
Car is going fifty five.
Phone's always ringing.
Poor kid was in school all day.
And once they found you guilty, you know, judge said, he's guilty, kill him.
Woman goes in,..
And fact is, we're going to take a vacation this year.
Well, thing is, it's a global market place these days.
Smith and Wesson revolver isn't goin to do you much good.
Uh, well, climate would be, you know...
Place is forested with those concrete trees.
\section{In a larger context
\subsection{Initial Deletion
Determiner ommision can be seen as part of a larger phenomena involving
the dropping of initial elements (see also Thrasher 1974).
That is,
Thrasher (1974) suggests relating these cases to the more general
phenomena of omitted entitites in sentence initial position.
%Bolinger The Imperative in English (no date given):
% like it?
%% care to come along?
% tell the differnce?
Gotta go now
See you next Tues
Too bad about old charlie
No need to get upset about it
Been in Ann arbor long?
Ever et a chance to use your Dogrib?
Ever get to Japan, look me up. pg 5
Subjects (I, you, there, it and aux's, if, articles are dropped.
\begin{enumerate
% ommission from initial position
As with other ommissions,
only ``redundant" elements can delete (meaning must be recoverable)
Contrastive determiners cannot be ommited. For example,
\enumsentence{Hey Mike. *(YOUR) Turn now. (Thrasher 1974)
grammatical, not lexical, information is deleted
Dummy but not anaphoric it and there delete
TOo bad you lost
More than one way to skin a cat.
% must occur in face to face encounter (or as if face to face)
Hierarchy:
\enumsentence{ aux $>$ dummy subj $>$ if $>$ subj pronouns $>$ articles $>$
possessive pronouns
For some speakers, all of the possessive determiner deletion is implossible.
``the variation gives support to Ross' squishiness principle. In fact, there
seems to
be a complete heirarchy starting with auxilary verbs adn running to possessive
pronouns." pg 88
used only in informal contexts
``Rapport deletion" (pg 99):
\enumsentence{Got a match?
is abrupt, even rude. But ``it is the custom of some people to use such
language with strangers..
part of a behavior pattern that superficially treats the whole world as a
special friend." pg 99
\end{enumerate
\subsection{Discourse Deletion
The present cases must be distinguished from ``discourse fragments": certain
sentence
fragments that require linguistic context to be acceptable (Morgan 1972).
Morgan (1972) discourse fragments in 5 minutes: require previous discourse
context.
Present cases are distinguished from the following in NOT requiring special
context:
Must be broken
Probably hasn't gotten home from work yet
Long discussion in chapter 1.
Hints at relation of htis type of deletion with that found in newspapers,
telegrams, signs. pg 21-23.
Main difference: place of deletion is more restricted in present case.
T argues for actual deletion because reflexives can occur in fragment.
``the choice has been narrowed to deciding between generating subjectless
fragments
as part of the grammar of Enlgih or having them generated by a special fragment
component
tacked on to the end of it." pg 33
%Reasons for creating them as part of grammar: 1) they refer to grammatical
elements
Not all dummy subjects delete.
deletion.
Hedges, quantification are suggested to help
``it is also obvious that the totally unexplored are of conversational
expectation is
involved. ...if your guest commented that he was thirsty or really hot..":
(there's) beer in the refridgerator.
Avoidance of ambiguity:
Deletion is blocked if remaining fragment looks more like a simple NP or an
imperative
than an S. pg 41:
\enumsentence{*(I'll) try to leave as soon as possible
Discussion of use of this deletion in actual texts here pg 99--.
not
clear how controlled it is).
(Interesting,
%\enumsentence{Use your phone? (from Dragnet from Jerry Morgan)
%Jerry morgan: can't answer with ''no you can't"
%These cases of the omission of initial elements is termed ``rapport deletion"
%because of the informal register it conveys.
%Thrasher notes several ways in which the phenomena are alike:
%\begin{enumerate
%
%Initial deletion (``rapport deletion") is used
%to indicate an informal register, i.e., less
%social distance between speaker and adressee.
%
%\end{enumerate
Thrasher futher includes the following examples:
\enumsentence{ (A) Couple of weeks ago I decided to stop smoking
However, this example involves a temporal adverb...
These are sentence focus cases: subject argument looks less definite
because it is not topical!!
For some speakers, N needs only specific reference, not definite:
Dog kept me up last night (hearer does not need to identify)
\section{Lambrecht, Knud and Maria Polinsky. 1997. Typological
Variation and Sentence-Focus Constructions. CLS 33.
\begin{tabular{lcc
Sentence Type & Arg in Focus & Predicate in Focus \\
Argument Focus & + & - \\
Predicate Focus & - & + \\
Sentence Focus + & + \\
\end{tabular
SF(thetic) and PF(categorical) are distinguished by TOPICALITY PRESUPPOSITION:
assumed status of a referent as a topic of current interest in the discourse.
in AF: subj or some other constituent is in focus
Why didn't she come to work today?
Her SON is responsible (AF)
Her son had an ACCIDENT (PF)
Her SON is sick (SF)
SENTENCE FOCUS CONSTRUCTION: Sentence construction formally marked
as expressing a pragmatically structured proposition in which
both the subj and predicate are in focus. The focus domain is
the sentence minus any topical non-subject arguments.
has been called "news sentence" "neutral desctription" "all new utterance"
"thetic sentence" "event-reporting sentence"
Given an SF construction, three questions arise: questions of FORM,
questions of FUNCTION, *the question of the relationship between the two*
(what this paper is about).
Lambrecht and Polinsky suggest the following principle
\begin{quote The
Principle of Paradigmatic Contrast:
SF constructions have the form
they do because they are to be minimally distinct from corresponding
PF constructions within a given language.
\end{quote
SF marking crucially involves DETOPICALIZATION of the nominal constituent
involved.
How can the subj argument be coded in such a way that it will not be interpreted
as a topic?
1) cancel formal properties conventinoally associated with topics
2) code the SF subject with features conventinoally associated with FOCUS
arguments (prosodic prominence, specific linear position, non-nominative case
marking, lack of grammatical agreement).
SF constructions tend to lack a formal opposition betwen subj and obj
(tend not to have NP VP structure).
They ignore distinction between SF and AF.
PF: Sonny Bono DIED. SONNY BONO DIED. (requires iconic focus accent on
predicate;
allows co-occuring topic activation accent on subj)
SF: SONNY BONO died. *TRUMAN DIED (can't have SF interpretation: lack of accent
can be explained via reference to contrast with PF)
Note examples resist separation of parts:
*Black-as-sootbird
*JOHNSON, after a short illness, died.
[
Ways to neutralize Subj=Obj distinction crosslinguistically:
English: prosodic inversion
Italian: syntactic inversion:
si \`e rotta la MACCHINA \\
``The CAR broke down" (SF)
Ho rotto la MACCHINA \\
``I broke the car" (PF)
Subject in SF in a has position and accent of focal obj in b.
Russian allows both syntactic inversion and prosodic inversion:
pticy POJUT (PF) \\
birds. NOM.PL sing.PRES.PL \\
``The birds are SINGING
pojut PTICY (SF) \\
sing.PRES.PL birds,NOM.PL \\
``There are BIRDS singing
PTICY pojut (SF) \\
PTICY pojut \\
``The BIRDS are singing"
Detopicalizatoin in SOV lngs: the SF subj may be placed in imediately
preverbal (focus) position as in Jap and Kor; or the SF subj may be placed
postverbally (Lat, Armenian, Chukchi).
VSO: most verb initial languages use preverbal position for topic, so
SVO order would have a PF interpretation. But if this is not possible
as in Irish, SVO order can serve to mark SF as predicted.
If SVO is used for topic comment, then the focus position available
for objects is used (e.g. in Malagasy).
In some languges, SF subj is morphologically incorporated into the verb
(demonstrating the cohesion between subj and v) (Sasse on Boni):
\enumsentence{a\'ddige\'ee~juudi \\father-may~died \\
"my father died"
Since objects only are usually incorporated, the incorporation of the
subject obeys their generalization.
Suspended subj-verb agreement: Jespersen ``In Danish the verb
was here put in the singular before a plural word...in Eng, there is hte
same tendency to use
there's before plurals..in Italian, too, one finds v'e\` instead
of vi sono..."
See chart on page 15 for cross-linguistic differences.
Multiple Motivations: why determinor omission to mark SF in this case?
Deleting the determiner makes the argument look less independent
and therefore less topical.
\section{Schmerling, Susan. 1973. Subjectless Sentences and the Notion of
Surface structure. CLS 9 577-586
Seems like the class always wakes up five minutes
before the bell rings.
Guess I should have been more careful
Going to lunch?
differ from fragments in that they require no preceeding discourse.
Perception verbs:
Looks like an accident
Sounds like another ghost
Smells like hot metal
Tastes like almonds
Feels like real silk.
Modals:
\enumsentence{Must/might/could/may be an accident up ahead
`` Wastebasket class":
Happens that way all the time
*Happens that way close at ten
Turns out you can't do that in Texas
Seems you can't do that in Texas.
(Almost no analysis here)
``there is some elusive element of spontaneity and implusiveness involved
in uttering them." pg 583
Guess I should be going
*Guesses he should be going
*think I should be going
Think I'l have anohter cup of coffee
Wish I hadn't done that
Gotta be going
*Hafta be going.
??Got a lot of nerve.
Got a lot of nerve, doesn't he?/I'd say/eh?
\section{References
Birner, Betty J. 1994. Information Status and word order: An analysis of
English
Inversion. Language 70 2 . 233-259.
Byrne, Bill. 1998.
University of California, Dissertation.
Gregory, Michelle L. and Laura A. Mich aiUse s. 1999. Topicalization and LeftDislocation:
Using Computational Methods to Analyze an Opposition. LSA presentation and
handout.
Gregory, Michelle L. and Laura A Michaelis. 1999.
Topicalization and LeftDislocation:
Lambrecht
Lambrecht, Knud and Maria Polinsky. 1997. Typological
Variation and Sentence-Focus Constructions. CLS 33.
Schmerling, Susan.
Surface structure.
1973. Subjectless Sentences and the Notion of
CLS 9 577-586.
Thrasher, Randolph Hallett Jr. 1974. Shouldn't Ignore These
Strings: A Study of Conversational Deletion. University of Michigan
dissertation.
\section{MISC
Recognizing the discourse dimension to this construction allows us to explain
another
seemingly quirky fact about the construction first observed by Thrasher:
CHECK JUDGMENTS:
*? Boy is at the door.
(A) Boy who says he's a student of yours is at the door.
(The) Boy who called earlier is at the door. pg 37
[In these cases the modification makes it clear that speaker is INTRODUCING the
boy]
Modification of N sometimes encourages deletion:
Notice further that
Who are you rooming with? \\
Boy I went to high school with [ok?
Why do you have to go home?
Son's sick.
seems topical...]
Permission statements or reports of permission allow my,your to delete:
\enumsentence{(my your *his) wife can go home tomorrow
\end{document
>From green Mon Sep 8 17:16:41 1997
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From: Georgia Green <green>
Message-Id: <199709082216.AA05855@lees.cogsci.uiuc.edu>
Subject: Re: car's in the shop
To: adele@cogsci.uiuc.edu (Adele Goldberg)
Date: Mon, 8 Sep 1997 17:14:56 -0500 (CDT)
Cc: green (Georgia Green), morgan (Jerry Morgan)
In-Reply-To: <199709082035.AA05285@lees.cogsci.uiuc.edu> from "Adele Goldberg"
at Sep 8, 97 03:35:52 pm
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Status: RO
This is a little vague, but it'll give you an idea of where to look.
Susan Schmerling presented a paper on English sentences with finite verb
but no subject NP (somebody named Cole from Penn now has a whole diss.
on the pragmatics of this) at a CLS around 1971. John Lawler drew
attention to the determiner cases, if she didn't cover them also, and
may have had a CLS paper himself the following year on that topic.
In any case his student Randy Thrasher wrote a dissertation at the University
of Michigan (1973) which takes up the issues in detail.
As I recall the constraint, determiners, NPs, and auxiliaries can be left
off as if serially from the left end of the sentence, subject to the condition
that stuff relating to the NP has to refer to the speaker in a declarative
sentence and to the addressee in an interrogative sentence.
Georgia
>From adele Fri Mar 27 12:26:09 1998
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Date: Fri, 27 Mar 1998 12:26:07 -0600
From: Adele Goldberg <adele>
Message-Id: <199803271826.AA26993@lees.cogsci.uiuc.edu>
To: adele@cogsci.uiuc.edu, michaeli@spot.colorado.edu
Subject: Re: LD
Status: RO
Oh, thanks, yes hte LD file would be great. Your paper with Michelle sounds
good.
Isn't LD used to establish a topic. I remember Knud calling it the marked topic
construction or something like that. *that, I don't know about it, is a great
example!
I don't think you can get ommitted determiners is topicalization, insofar as it
involves
a real topic. If you happen to come across a case, though, please let me know!
Prince said something silly like several different constructions have the "same"
discourse
constraint (to avoid new things in subject position), therefore the mapping of
form and meaning is arbitrary. A complete non sequitor, but it was interesting
that
the three constructions (and this one also) have similar but NOT the SAME
discourse
constraints.
I'm hoping to motivate the form of this along the lines that Knud and Knud and
Masha
suggested: a difference from PF is indicated by a minimal (and also motivated)
difference from standard PF form. Bare NPs are generally used when Ns are
associated
with the predicate (as in N incorporation), and do not stand as independently
referential.
It's still kind of vague in my mind, but that's the basic intuition.
Hopefully M will be able to procreate with just a little technological help!
But are
you spending time thinking of possible donors? That is a kind of interesting
topic...
LOve,
Adele
>From michaeli@spot.colorado.edu Mon Apr 27 15:23:59 1998
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Date: Mon, 27 Apr 1998 14:19:22 -0600 (MDT)
From: "Laura A. Michaelis" <michaeli@spot.colorado.edu>
To: Adele Goldberg <adele@cogsci.uiuc.edu>
Subject: hey!
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Status: RO
Sorry I wasn't able to call you back this weekend, by coincidence I had
been planning to call you, actually. But on Sunday I was hit with a cold
and 'female trouble', which is somewhat better today.
Did I tell you the good news on on procreation attempts? No, no result yet
but M recently was able to have the doctor analyze a sample of his output
and the report was very encouraging--he's got something like half the
adult population of the US in there. So, the doctor says that he doesn't
think that there will be any problem with fertility. We might have to do
AI (the other kind), but at least we can use M's chromosomes!
On other topics. Things are going well here. There have been many events
and parties celebrating my big news, and this Saturday Lise is having a
party to honor me and Dan--Dan because he will also stay; Berkeley didn't
want him after all! I am pretty optimistic that I will get all my needs
met in negotiations, e.g., to come up for tenure in 3 years and even to
get money to hire an RA for 2 years.
On another front entirely, there is a short discussion in an article by EP
on the functions of left dislocation in which she discusses 'initial N''
LDs, like
I was raised an old hillbilly and I'll die one. RADIO, it's sitting up
there, but I can't hear too good. Don't have a television. (from Terkel)
She uses the determinerless leftward N's to argue that 'posset' denoting
LD (basically, contrastive LD) differs from other functions of LD
syntactically, in that not all functions of LD support this determinerless
NP in leftward position. E.g., 'simplifying LD', whose function is to get
a discourse-new referent out of a position disfavored for such referents
doesn't allow a determinerless Leftward NP:
GOOD: Some guy, he objected, so we shut up.
BAD: *Guy, he objected, so we shut up.
She also cites Ward as discussing determinerless instances with
Topicalization, where the example given is 'Cheeseburger it is, then' in
answer to a waiter's suggestion, but this example is pretty clearly focus
fronting and not topicalization at all!
I wish I could give you a fuller reference to this paper, but all I know
right now is that it is in a volume edited by Akio Kamio, and that its
title is "On the Functions of Left Dislocation in English Discourse'.
Did I tell you that my student Michelle and I will give an anti-Prince
paper at this discourse conference in Madison in July? We basically argue
that the functions Prince gives for LD don't allow us to predict anything
about the accessibility status of the leftward NP denotatum, which is
strongly upperbounded at the givenness status generally associated with
definites. Topicalization, which Prince says is more marked than LD, is
actually less marked with regard to constraints on the fronted NP. I think
we can present our findings as being compatible with hers, though. The
main thing we feel we have to show is that in discourse pragmatics one
needs to use a lot of conversational data, and not just pull 20 examples
out of one's own conversations with friends.
The students are really getting me interested in a lot of stuff that I
wouldn't ordinarily take on. The other somewhat brave thing for me is a
paper on Basque with my student Phyllis (whom Alan King knew). It's going
to be a bit controversial, but the title is already planned: Basque as a
Verb-Initial Lg. Sounds like McCawley's whacky paper on English. The main
point I want to make is that arguments, in the form of heavily inflected
auxs, follow the verb in this language, and anything preverbal is actually
a detached, i.e., fronted, topic or focus. I was really influenced by
Aissen's paper on topic and focus in Mayan, which has this very behavior.
And on yet another front. Bob and Giulia may be coming your way. Bob has a
postdoc offer in Psych from Murphy, whose first name I don't know, and
Giulia was thinking of possibly transfering there. Would it be OK if she
called you to discuss this? If you'd prefer to be called at work, could I
give her your work number? Her going there would certainly be our loss and
your gain. She is extremely smart, is typologically knowledgeable, knows
stats very well, is very big on construction grammar, and is in fact right
now running an experiment designed to elicit reading facilitation effects
of syntactic priming, to show that we really do have evidence of
syntactic priming at the comprehension level. She could work with you or
Kay Bock, depending I guess on which department she applies to. Anyway,
let me know what you think. (She's also a great Italian consultant.)
And on the penultimate front, my mom moved on Saturday, assisted by the
very preg Voz and my brother, who flew out. Apparently, her new place is
pretty smashing. She seems happy, which is great, although Voz says that
the old place will need a lot of work prior to selling. Speaking of which,
when will you move into your new house?
How is everyone, including a? How's her vocab? Any 3-place predicates yet?
Looks like Bowerman's kids had some at around a's age. When will you come
to visit? Is Ali still planning the talk at NIST at some point? Hope so,
cause I don't know when else I will see you. What are your summer plans?
We will be in Germany and Italy (visiting Giulia's parents--the BMW
crashers) from mid June to mid July, but otherwise here.
Love,
L