A Multilingual Analysis of the Notion of Instrumentality

Asanee Kawtrakul, Mukda Suktarachan (Kasetsart univ. Bangkok, Thailand), Bali Ranaivo-Malancon, Pek Kuan Ng, (Univ. Sains Malaysia, Penang, Malaysia), Achla Raina (IIT Kanpur, India), Sudeshna Sarkar (IIT Kharagpur, India), Alda Mari (Enst-Cnrs, Paris, France), Sina Zarriess (Universitat¨ Potsdam, Germany), Elixabete Murguia (Univ. Deusto, Bilbao, Spain), Patrick Saint-Dizier (Irit-Cnrs, Toulouse, France)

Abstract notion and also because instruments are generally modifiers, not arguments. Instruments are expressed in language by In this paper, we address instrumentality as con- various means: prepositions, postposi- veyed by prepositions or equivalent means (e.g. tions, affixes including case marks, nonfi- postpositions, affixes). Our aim in this study nite verbs, etc. We consider here 12 lan- is twofold: (1) to identify the conceptual facets guages from five families in order to be of instrumentality so that a conceptual seman- able to identify the different meaning com- tics can be defined in the spirit of (Talmy, 01, ponents that structure instrumentality. 03), (Wierzbicka 92, 96) and (2) to elaborate an 1 Credits accurate enough model for answering questions about instruments within a cooperative question- This work has been made possible partly via the answering system. Instead of focusing on a spe- STIC-Asia cooperation framework. cific language to elaborate all possible forms of instrumentality, we found it more adequate to de- 2 Introduction velop a multilingual approach, considering lan- It is difficult to give a comprehensive definition of guages from various families. what instrumentality is. In WordNet it is defined We consider for Europe: German, Spanish, as ’an artifact, or a set of artifacts, that are instru- French, Italian; for India: Kashmiri, Urdu, Hindi mental (i.e. behave as instruments) in accomplish- and Bengali; for the far-east: Thai and Malay; ing some end’, i.e. reaching a certain goal. In for Northern Africa and the Middle East: Ara- this definition, the triple relation agent-instrument- bic, and Berber dialects (in the group of Amazigh goal (as in: John cuts the bread with a knife, where languages). In this paper, we use the first let- John is agent, knife is instrument that does the cut- ter of each language to identify it: Thai, Malay, ting, and bread cut is the goal), is left vague in Hindi, Urdu, Kashmiri, Bengali, German, Span- what concerns the exact involvement of the agent ish, French, Italian, Arabic, BeRber). We have and the instrument in the action, and the control also more or less adequately transcribed characters the agent has on the instrument and on the action into latin characters. The upper case A is equiva- (Mari and St-Dizier 01). lent to aa. If almost anything can be an instrument, we can nevertheless formulate a few criteria that we will 3 An overview of preposition structures try to elaborate in this paper. First, an instrument 3.1 European languages is basically non volitional. When humans play the role of instruments, they are obviously volitional, German, Spanish, Italian and French, like most but the action is controlled by another agent who European languages have prepositions that in- acts as an ’initiator agent’, taking the initiative of troduce instrumental PPs. The most current the action. Instruments cannot be easily associated prepositions are: with traditional thematic roles, in fact this is not - German: mit, mit Hilfe von, of much interest, because this is too superficial a mittels, durch, anhand, kraft,

Proceedings of the Third ACL-SIGSEM Workshop on Prepositions, pages 51–56, Trento, Italy, April 2006. c 2006 Association for Computational Linguistics 51 dank, per. action verb and the instrumental noun. ge is only - French: avec, par, au moyen de, used in spatial contexts involving means of trans- graceˆ a,` a` l’aide de, a` travers. portation (travelling by plane), kh is used only in - Spanish: con, en, por, a traves´ de, spatial contexts involving paths. mediante, por medio de, a base de, con la ayuda de, gracias a. 3.3 The Indic language family - Italian: con, per mezzo di, tramite, The four languages considered, Kashmiri (Raina, per, grazie a, con l’aiuto di. 02), Urdu, Hindi and Bengali, share some simil- itudes due to their common origins but also contrasts that result from independent evolutions 3.2 Arabic and Berber which are useful to our analysis. They all have suf- fixes and postpositions. Case suffixes (vibakhti) Arabic essentially has the preposition bi, used as are added to nouns or pronouns, but case suf- a prefix of the noun it heads: fixes do not correspond strictly to thematic roles Aktoub bi al kalami (I write with a pen). (kAraka). Postpositions may also be used instead bi can also be associated with a specific noun of vibhaktis or in conjunction with them, as a kind or deverbal form (e.g. ’by applying’) to char- or re-inforcement. Basically, but with some nu- acterize in more depth the instrumental relation. ances, Hindi, Urdu, Bengali and Kashmiri lan- This entails generic forms such as bi-tarika, guages have the following kernels: bi-istemali (by means of, the first form rein- forces the importance of the instrument, while the direct instrument: se (H/U), sity (K), -e/-te, • latter is more formal) and bi-fadli (thanks to). diye after null, dwArA after -r (B). Example: For example, we have a kind of nominal form is- H: raam ne chaabi se taala khola (ram - erg. tikhdam (= using or with the use of, constructed key with lock open-past= Ram openened the from the root ’use’) in: lock with a key). Fasser el massala bi istikhdam mithel (explain a problem ’with the use of’ example). Arabic makes means instrument: me (H/U), ke zariye (U), • explicit the metonymy we have in European lan- manz (K), -e/-te (B). Example: U: raam guages. gaadi ke zariye daftar gayaa (ram car by There are a few other prepositions such as min means of office go-past = Ram went to work khilal (through) and min a to express the du- by car). ality source + instrument of the argument (as in causal instrument: ke kaaran (H), ki vajah se drink with a bottle, litterally). In the spatial con- • text, au can be used (to reach the top by this trail), (U), kiny (K), kArANe, kripAya (B). Exam- sayaahat kiny and ala is used to express a channel of commu- ple: K: dil chi amir (Delhi be- nication. present tourism with rich = Delhi is rich with tourism), Berber is composed of a large number of di- B: dillI paryatan-er khAtire samriddha or dillI alects, some just spoken in small ’tribes’, others paryatan-er kripAya samriddha (Delhi be- in larger communities. It is basically dialectal, but rich-er thanks to tourism) a number of common elements can be identified. We consider here Berber from the Moroccan Rif, agentive instrument: ke dwaraa (H) ke zariye • and the Algerian Kabyle. The main instrumental (U) zariy, desi (K), diye (B) after -ke when preposition is eg` , but prefixes are also used s-, the nominal form is animate and specific, ge-, th-, kh- which affect the morphology diye after null when the nominal form is an- of the noun they are attached to. The prefix s- imate and general (B). Example: H: raam ne is widely used, with some variants (si, sei, shyaam dwara apna kaam karvaaya (ram erg. so in Kabyle), eg` (also realized as g’ or ge in shyam by self’s work do-cause-past = Ram some places), is appropriate only when the action got his work done by Shyam) is under full control of the agent. It is not em- ployed when the instrument is abstract. In the Rif action instrumentalised: kar (H/U), kerith • area, s- focusses on the instrument contributing to (K). Example: U: raam kuud kar ghar ke an- the action, it makes a kind of fusion between the dar daakhil huaa (ram jump participle house

52 into enter-past = Ram entered the house by built from stems which are instrumental nouns, jumping in it) this allows for the construction of the equivalent of PPs, based on the prototypical use of the instru- There are less important cases that capture no- mental noun. The most common being: prefixes: tions like containment, which will be detailed in beR- (from kuda, horse, berkuda, on horseback), section 5. Postpositions may vary also depending meN- (from kunci, key, mengunci, lock with key), on the semantic type of the NP they head. prefix + suffix: meN- + -kan (from paku, nail, In Bengali, case is indicated in several ways. memakukan, to fasten with nails), and with suffix Vibhaktis are suffixes that are added to the stems -i (from ubat, medicine, mengubati, by means of to form surface forms of words. In Bengali the medicine). Prepositions occur as the head of PPs, nominal stems take one of the following suffixes: and in verb particle constructions. PPs may also null or shunya vibhakti, -e, -te, -r, etc. Case is also be subject complements, avoiding the use of verbs indicated in Bengali by the use of postpositions. (dia di rumah, she at home). Besides affixes, We have, for example: Cut bread with a knife, re- Malay has 6 prepositions that denote instrumen- alized as either: tality: dengan, melalui, mengikut, 1. chhuri diye ruti kATa (knife diye bread cut), or: menerusi, dengan menggunakan, 2. chhuri-te ruti kAta (knife-te bread cut) secara. Postpositions in Bengali are derived from certain A simple example is: inflected forms of nouns, and also certain verbs berhubung - melalui - telefon (communicate - by - in participle form. When these words are used telephone). as postpositions they are often not considered in their original sense but define a specific type of re- lationship of the noun phrase with the finite verb 4 The meaning components of phrase in the sentence. These words are appear instrumentality in a fixed form (indeclinables) as postpositions. When a postposition is used to denote the case, Let us now consider the different meaning compo- the nominal word preceding the postposition takes nents that emerge from our multilingual analysis. on a vibhakti that is determined by the particu- The results presented below are still exploratory lar postposition. ’diye’ is used after null vibhakti, due to the complexity of the notion. The distinc- ’dwArA’ after -r vibhakti, etc. tions made (e.g. between concrete and abstract in- struments) may seem arbitrary: they are just meant 3.4 Thai and Malay to structure the presentation.

Thai and Malay, although spoken in neighbour 4.1 Concrete instruments countries, are substantially different. Thai, from the Thai-Kadai family, has 6 prepo- All languages studied have at least one basic in- sitions (Silapasarn, 98) to denote instruments, the strumental mark operating over concrete objects most common being doi and duai which are (T: duai, M: dengan, H: se, U: se, K: sity, B: diye, used for concrete instruments, means of trans- -e, -te, G: mit, S: con, F: avec, A: bi, BR:eg). ` Sev- portation, instruments close to manners, etc. kap eral refinements are identified, for specific types of is used when the instrument is a part of the body, NPs, or to denote a specific intention: while thang is used for means of transportation the instrument is a recipient (S: en) or, more only. tam characterizes control of the agent, and • generally, conveys an idea of container (e.g. chak is restricted to the instruments that convey spoon) (B: -e kare), the idea behing is that an idea of source. Examples: the container is used to carry the object along khian - duai - din so (Write - with - pencil) a certain trajectory, pai - pa ris - doi - khrueang bin (Go - Paris - by - plane) the instrument is a part of the body (e.g. • These semantic distinctions are, however, often vi- hand): T: kap. In this case, the instrument olated in colloquial Thai. is not strictly artifactual. Malay, from the Malayo-polynesian family, has three ways to introduce instruments: preposition + the goal is difficult to reach, it requires some • NP, affixes and compounding. Affixed words are efforts from the agent (S: a base de),

53 the focus can be emphasized by using ded- There are additional marks dedicated to partic- • icated marks (G: mit Hilfe (von), Mittels ular fields: B: sahajoge, and A: min khilal (more fomal: Das Gericht hat mittels einst- when instruments are of type ’example’ (explain weiliger Verfugung¨ den Drogenhandel unter- with an example). U: -ke zariye,S:por sagt (the court has with provisional ordinance medio de and G: Anhand, Kraft are more the drug traffic prohibited))). formal, stronger for Kraft and apply particularly to areas like juridical or psychological domains. The second major difficulty is prototypicality People and organizations can be seen as appro- (Rosch, 78). When the instrument used is not very priate intermediaries for reaching a goal. They prototypical of the action, several languages re- may be conceived as metaphorical instruments. inforce the instrumental prepositions to, sort of, Investigations show that people can get controlled coerce the type of the noun so that it can become much in the same way as concrete objects: an acceptable instrument. We have examples in S: F: Elle a informe´ Paul de son depart´ par Pauline por medio de,B:sAhAjye, sahojoge, (She informed Paul of her leaving ’by’ Pauline). per mezzo di au moyen de, par I: ,F: If we now consider: S: Juan env´ıo este paquete le biais de (biais= bias which directly ex- por correo (John sent this parcel ’by’ post) presses this idea), as in: Since post is the by-default medium to send pack- F: Il a ouvert la porte au moyen d’un cric (he ages, por is the only choice. Using more precise opened the door by means of a jack). services, like FedEx, is considered to be an alter- At a conceptual level, it is quite difficult to native way, in that case F: par, avec S: por, characterize what is a prototypical instrument con are both acceptable. for a given action (characterized by subject-verb- object: John opens the door). Each event has its 4.3 Metaphorical instruments own prototypical instrument, making corpus stud- ies extremely large, probably unfeasable. When Both concrete and abstract objects can be used searching on the web, we find an incredible variety metaphorically as instruments. Examples abound of instruments to open a door, almost impossible in the literature and on the Web. In 5.6 we ex- to classify. Next, prototypicality is not a boolean amine the path metaphor which is very produc- notion: instruments are more or less prototypical. tive. Besides this case, we have a number of Since the instrument is very much dependent on metaphors, such as: write with your heart, fight the verb and on the object, we cannot foresee any with your head, etc. These are not essentially dif- form of incorporation in the verb that would give ferent from metaphors observed in other situations us indications. A direction could be to assume (Lakoff and Johnson 99). Qualia structures (Pustejovsky 91) associated with each potential instrument that describes the func- 4.4 The overlap instrument-manner tion of the object in the telic role. For example, In a number of cases, it is not very easy to make key(X) would have open(X, door), with door be- a distinction between instrument and manner. It ing quite generic. This approach could work via a seems there is a continuum between these two no- large lexical development for concrete nouns, it is tions or even some form of overlap, where the ob- much more risky when terms are abstract. ject is both an instrument and a manner at various degrees, which may depend on context. A vari- 4.2 Abstract instruments ety of marks contribute to characterize this over- Abstract instruments (theorems, regulations, ex- lap, manners at stake being quite diverse, but we amples, etc.) are realized identically to concrete will not go into the study of manners. Specific instruments, but with some typical marks such marks dealing with the manner/instrument am- as: T: tam, H: dwAra, K: zariyi, B: dwArA, biguity are: T: doi,G:durch (which is also M. mengikut. At this stage, it is difficult to ex- used for metaphorical spatial uses), M: dengan plain why marks are different from concrete in- menggunakan,S:en, con, a as in S: es- struments. An hypothesis could be that abstract in- cribir en/con rojo (write in red), struments are closer to causes (see 5.5), or to more T: khian - duai - muek - daeng (write - with - red - formal situations for which specific terms were de- ink) veloped (e.g. for G: kraft). BR: tete` s-ef´ essen` (She-eats with-hands).

54 4.5 Causality Berber allows eg` only when the agent controls the It is clear that, a priori, instruments can be viewed instrument. The other cases are expressed by non at various degrees as causes of an event. There is prepositional forms. a kind of overlap between these two notions. In- 4.6 Instruments and paths struments are not volitional, so they are under the partial or full control of an agent (humans playing Another productive situation is the use of spatial the role of instruments are also controlled by an metaphors to express instrumentality. The use of agent). Typically I: a causa di,F:a cause F: par and other marks (e.g. in B., U.), show de,S:a causa de signal that the instrument that there is a close link between instrumentality has brought about an event: and path descriptions (spatial as well as temporal I:Il castello e distrutto a causa di un violento in- paths). This is a kind of metaphorical use of paths cendio. (The castle has been destroyed ’because viewed as instruments (as can be seen in (Lakoff of’ a violent fire.) et al. 99): ’action is motion, goals are paths, actors Causality (e.g. Talmy, 01) being a complex no- are travellers’). Using an instrument parallels the tion, it is not surprising that instruments, viewed use of paths in the domain of space. as intermediaries at various degrees, share some Marks denoting paths or sources are of much features with causes. For example in cut the bread interest. Some have really restricted uses, whereas with a knife, the cause of the bread being cut is others are more flexible. We observe the following the action of the agent, but also the use of a pro- main components: totypical property of the knife: the knife does the paths: T: tam, A: min khilal, S: por, a trav«es • cutting. In (Talmy 01), the instrument is embed- de(por correo, by post), de, G: durch, F: ded into the causing event: a` travers, note the distinctions, e.g. in M: (caused event) RESULTS FROM (causing event) melalui (metaphorical paths: M : berhubung where the causing event has the structure: melalui telefon (communicate by telephone)), Instrument ACT ON object, where object is bound menerusi (channel of transmission), H, U: or related in some way to the object in the caused me, se, T: thang. In B, -e and -te denote event. paths where the agent that does the action has As analyzed in (Mari and Saint-Dizier, 01), in- no control, whereas diye and dhare involve at strumentality is the convergence of several factors: least a partial control from the agent. In M, the degree of involvement of the instrument metaphorical passages require melalui. • in the action, therefore, the fact that the in- sources: F:a, ` A: min a, T: chak (for con- • strument causes the action or is just a means crete and abstract sources). Example: A: managed by the agent who is the main cause, Achroubou mina Karoura (I am drinking with the type of control the agent has on the instru- bottle), which is also a kind of manner. • ment for the action at stake, from full control The duality path/instrument is particularly visi- to lack of control, ble in, e.g.: the control the agent has over the action as a K: raam vot tshochi vati kiny gari (ram reach-past • whole. short route via home = Ram reached home by the short route). Indic languages and Thai are particular explicit on Another interesting phenomenon occurs when these matters. They have specific marks for two an argument is both an instrument and a path, major cases: as in look at the moon in a telescope. Tele- 1. agentive instrument, action not controlled by scope is indeed the instrument used and also the agent: H: ke dwAra,U:ke zariye the path through which one looks, or which the K: zariy, desi,T:doi, light traverses. This double facet of the argu- ment is visible in surface realizations, where the 2. causal instrument that does most of the ac- preposition used is ambiguous between instrument tion, under the control of the agent: H ke (first preposition) and path (second one) readings: kAran,U:ki vajah se,K.kiny,T: G: mit, durch,S:con, por,M:dengan, duai, melalui,F:avec, dans. When one wants

55 to strongly stress the path interpretation, then a to be confused with manners, e.g. ’by swim- more path-oriented preposition is used, e.g. S: a ming’), so that the verb that lexicalizes the action traves` de. is present. For example, in M, ’by the trail’ in to reach the 4.7 Means of transportation as instruments top of a mountain by the trail requires to make ex- Means of transportation (trains, spoons, boxes, en- plicit how the trail is used: dengan mengikuti de- velopes, etc.), sometimes viewed as containers, nai itu (litt.: with follow trail DET (same cases and mediums of transportation (by air) receive a in Arabic and German)). Another case is: G: special treatment in a number of languages: T: Mit Flugzeugen lasst¨ sich Geld verdienen, (With doi, thang, M: menerusi, melalui (for metaphorical planes you can money earn), where a concrete ob- mediums and passages), H: me, U: ke zariye, K: ject replaces the whole procedure. manz, zariy, B: kare, -e kare, -ya kare, A: ala, BR: The metonymy could be reconstructed, for sim- ge-, kh-, G: per, S: por, en, F: par. We have, for ex- ple cases, by the Generative Lexicon (Pustejovsky ample: U: raam gaadi ke zariye daftar gayaa (ram 86), whose role is precisely to make explicit pro- car by means of office go-past = ram went to post totypical functions of objects via their telic role, as office by car) advocated above. T: pai - pa ris - doi - khrueang bin (Go to - Paris - by - plane) B: Nouko-ya kare phuketa jAo or Nouko-ya References phuketa jAo (boat-e kare phuket go or boat-e Dowty, D., 1989, On the Semantic Content of the No- phuket go = go by boat to Phuket) tion of Thematic Role, in G. Cherchia, B. Partee, R. Turner (eds), Properties, Types and meaning, A distinction is made between the medium and Kluwer Academic. the means as for: M: secara, which is used for means of communication such as email or letters. Dowty, D., 1991, Thematic Proto-roles and Argument Selection, Language, vol. 67-3. If the agent has effective control over the means, then, for example, S uses con. Lakoff G., Johnson M., 1999. Philosophy in the Flesh. Basic books, NY, USA. 4.8 Language levels Mari, A., Saint-Dizier, P., 2001, A Conceptual Se- Some marks are proper to formal discourse: G: mantics for Prepositions Denoting Instrumentality, Mittels, Kraft, Anhand, H: dwAra. in proc. 1st workshop on prepositions, Toulouse, and in Syntax and semantics of prepositions, P. Saint- 4.9 Positive or negative orientation Dizier (ed), Kluwer academic, 2006. The languages we studied also abound in positive- Pustejovsky, J., 1991, The Generative Lexicon, Com- putational Linguistics, vol. 17, MIT Press. oriented marks that express in a certain way the idea of ’thanks to’: T: khop khun (+kah for fem- Raina, Achla M., 2002. The Verb Second Phe- inime and krup for masculine), H: ke kAran, U: nomenon, O.N. Koul and K Wali (eds.), Topics in Kashmiri Linguistics. Creative Books, New Delhi, ki vajah, K: kiny, B: -er khAtire, (-er) kripAya, G: India. dank, S: gracias a, F: grˆacea. ` There are also several negative-oriented marks Rosch, E., 1978. Principles of Categorization. In E. Rosch and B.B. Lloyd (eds.), Cognition and Catego- such as the following prepositional compounds: rization. Hillsdale : Lawrence Erlbaum Associates F: de la faute de,I:per colpa di,S: Publishers. por colpa de (by the fault of), where the term Sinlapasarn, Upakitt. 1998. Thai Grammar. Thai ’fault’ conveys a negative orientation. Watthana Panich, Bangkok, Thailand. 4.10 Metonymies Talmy L., 2001, 2003. Towards a Cognitive Seman- tics, vol. 1 and 2. MIT Press. In most languages, the prototypical action denoted by the instrument is implicit, it is analyzed as a Wiezbicka, A.,1996. Semantics primes and universals. metonymy: object for action. Action is inferred Oxford: Oxford University Press. from the instrument and the verb in the given con- Wierzbicka, A., 1992, Semantic Primitives and Se- text. In a number of situations, A and M need mantic Fields, in A. Lehrer and E.F. Kittay (eds.), to make explicit the action. For particular cases, Frames, Fields and Contrasts. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, pp. 208-227. gerundive forms may be prefered to PPs (but not

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