The Grammar of Discourse Topics in Language and Linguistics
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THE GRAMMAR OF DISCOURSE TOPICS IN LANGUAGE AND LINGUISTICS Series Editors Thomas A. Sebeok and Albert Valdman Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana ISSUES IN INTERNATIONAL BILINGUAL EDUCATION The Role of the Vernacular Edited by Beverly Hartford, Albert Valdman, and Charles R. Foster LINGUISTICS AND LITERACY Edited by William Frawley THE GRAMMAR OF DISCOURSE Robert E. Longacre THE GRAMMAR OF DISCOURSE Robert E. Longacre Summer Institute of Linguistics University of Texas at Arlington Arlington, Texas Plenum Press • New York and London Ubrary of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Longacre, Robert E. The grammar of discourse. (Topics in language and linguistics) "Based on an earlier work, An anatomy of speech notions, 1976"-Pref. bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Discourse analysis. I. Longacre, Robert E. Anatomy of speech notions. II. Ti· tIe. III. Series. P302.L59 1983 401'.41 83·3993 ISBN 978-1-4615-8020-1 ISBN 978·1-4615-8018-8 (eBook) 00110.1007/978-1-4615-8018-8 © 1983 Plenum Press, New York Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1 st edition 1983 A Division of Plenum Publishing Corporation 233 Spring Street, New York, N.Y. 10013 All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher To JAMES LaRIaT pioneer in the study of discourse PREFACE While this volume is based on an earlier work, An Anatomy of Speech Notions (1976), the overall orientation of the present volume is distinctive enough to make it a new work. The former volume was essentially a half-way house to discourse. While including a chapter on discourse struc ture, it was not as a whole explicitly oriented towards con siderations of context. The present volume, however, strives to achieve a more consistently contextual approach to lan guage. A great deal of research and theorizing concerning discourse grammar or textlinguistics has characterized the past decade of linguistic studies. This recent work has, of course, influenced the present volume. In addition, my personal research in several areas has led to increased insistence on the indispensability of discourse studies. Crucial here was my direction of field workshops involving personnel of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, first in relation to languages of Colombia, Panama, and Ecuador (1974- 1975), and later in relation to languages of Mexico (1978). Of further relevance have been my own studies of narrative structure in Biblical Hebrew. Last but not least, is the stimulus and feedback which I have received from my graduate students (whose research is embodied in several theses and dissertations), especially Keith Beavon, Shin Ja Joo Huang, Larry Jones, Mildred Larson, Linda Lloyd, and Mike Walrod. Stephen Eckerd's work has been decisive in the revision of the system of cases and case frames which are found in Chap ters 4 and 5. I am heavily indebted to him in these chapters. I gratefully acknowledge here the dedicated secretarial assistance rendered by Carolyn Skinner, Eula Stephens and Anne Short, as well as the criticisms and suggestions of Harwood Hess. I also gratefully acknowledge the assistance viii PREFACE of Kathy Niver in the final preparation and editing of the manuscript. Robert E. Longacre University of Texas at Arlington ACKNOWLEDGMENT I wish to thank the following authors, editors, and publishers for granting permission to quote from their mate rials in this book: R.l1.W. Dixon from his 1977 article "Where Have All the Adjectives Gone?"; K.L. Pike and E. Pike for the right to reproduce their four-box diagram from Pike and Pike, 1979; to E.A. Nida and the University of l1ichigan Press for the right to reproduce a passage from Morphology 1949; to Austin Hale for the right to reproduce a chart from his article "Towards a Systematization of Dis play Grammar" in the volume Clause, Sentence, and Discourse Patterns in Selected Languages of Nepal, which he edited, and to the publisher, the Summer Institute of Linguistics; to Harcourt, Brace, and Jovanovich for the quotation from Carl Sandburg's Abraham Lincoln: the War Years, Volume 1 (1939); to Father Walter Cook and the Georgetown University Press for the right to reproduce a chart from "A Case Gram mar Matrix," Georgetown University Languages and Linguistics Working Papers No.6 (p. 26, fig. 3); to the University of California Press for the quotation from Stephen Pepper's World Hypotheses (originally published by the University of California Press, 1942; reprinted 1970 by permission of the Regents of the University of California); to Philip Larkin for the quotation from his poem "Mr. Bleaney" from The Whit sun Weddings, and to the publishers, Faber and Faber; to The Great Ideas Today and the Encyclopedia Britannica for the quotation from Sidney Hook ("The Hero as World Figure") and Joy Bayum ("Heroes in Black and White") in the volume The Great Ideas Today, 1973; and to Charles Scribner's Sons for the quotation from Hemingway's "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" in the third edition of Studies in the Short Story (1968), edited by Adrian H. Jaffe and Virgil Scott; and to the Airmont Publishing Co. for the right to quote the passage from Hark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. ix CONTENTS Introduction xv 1 MONOLOGUE DISCOURSE 1 1.1 DISCOURSE TYPOLOGY IN NOTIONAL AND SURFACE STRUCTURES . 2 1.1. 1 Notional Types •••. 3 1.1.2 Surface Structure Types 6 1.1.3 Skewing of Notional and Surface Structure • • • • • • • . • • • 10 1.1.4 Embedding Relations of the Five Sur- face Structure Types 13 1.2 MAIN LINE VS SUPPORTIVE MATERIAL 14 1. 3 THE COMPOSER . • . • • . • . 17 1.4 PLOT AND SIMILAR STRUCTURES 20 1.4.1 Plot as Notional Structure 20 1.4.2 Correlation of Notional and Surface Features •••••• 21 1.4.3 Marking of the Surface Structure Peak • . 25 1.4.4 Similar Structures 38 2 REPARTEE •.•.• 43 2.1 SIMPLE REPARTEE 48 2.2 COMPLEX REPARTEE 51 2.3 ABEYANCE REPARTEE 53 2.4 COMPOUND REPARTEE •.•• 55 2.5 NON-VERBAL RESOLUTION AND FURTHER PARAGRAPH TYPES • • • • • • • . • • • • • • • • • • 57 2.6 THE NUMBER OF SPEAKERS IN A DIALOGUE ••• 60 2.7 OUT OF PHASE RELATIONS BETWEEN NOTIONAL AND SURFACE STRUCTURES 62 xi xii CONTENTS 2.8 REPARTEE AS A GAME • 73 2.9 SUMMARY •••••• 74 3 COMBINATION OF PREDICATIONS 77 3.1 CONJOINING . 80 3.1.1 Coupling· · · · · · 81 3.1.2 Contrast 83 3.1.3 Comparison 89 3.2 AL TERNATION 91 3.2.1 Alternation with· · ·Only · Two Possible Alternatives 91 3.2.2 Alternation w·ith· ·More · · than Two Alternatives 93 3.3 TEMPORAL 94 3.3.1 Overlap· · · · 95 3.3.2 Succession· · 98 3.4 IMPLICATION · · · · 101 3.4.1 Conditionality· · · · 101 3.4.2 Causation 106 3,4.3 Contrafactuality· · · 110 3.4.4 Warning 112 3.5 PARAPHRASE · · · · · · · 114 3.5:1 Equivalence· · · · Paraphrase· · · · 115 3.5.2 Negated Antonym Paraphrase and Similar Structures 116 3.5.3 Generic-specific Paraphrase· · · · 119 3.5.4 Amplification Paraphrase · 119 3.5.5 Specific-generic Paraphrase 120 3.5.6 Contraction Paraphrase 121 3.5.7 Summary Paraphrase 121 3.6 ILLUSTRATION · · · · 124 3.6.1 Simile · · · · · 124 3.6.2 Exemplification· · · · · 10 126 3.7 DEIXIS . · 126 3.7.1 Introduction· · · · · · · · · 127 3.7.2 Identification 127 3.7.3 Some Further Varieties of Deixis. 128 3.8 ATTRIBUTION 129 3.8.1 Speech ·Attribution · · · · · · · 129 3.8.2 Awareness Attribution · · · · 133 3.9 FRUSTRATION · · · · · 134 3.9.1 Frustrated· · ·Coupling · · · · · · 135 3.9.2 Frustrated Succession· 135 3.9.3 Frustrated Overlap 137 3.9.4 Frustrated Hypothesis· · · · 138 3.9.5 Frustrated Contingency · 138 CONTENTS xiii 3.9.6 Frustrated Efficient Cause 139 3.9.7 Frustrated Final Cause 139 3.9.8 Frustrated Attribution 140 3.9.9 Frustrated Modality. 140 3.9.10 Some Restrictions 143 3.10 DEFINITION OF SYMBOLS 143 4 CASES OR ROLES 151 4.1 EXPERIENCER 155 4.2 PATIENT 155 4.3 AGENT 156 4.4 RANGE 157 4.5 MEASURE 159 4.6 INSTRUMENT 159 4.7 LOCATIVE. 161 4.8 SOURCE. 161 4.9 GOAL .• 163 4.10 PATH • 164 4.11 PERIPHERAL CASES 165 4.12 CASES POSITED BY HALE AND THE PIKES 166 5 CASE FRAMES . • • • . • . • • • 169 5.1 A SCHEME OF CASE FRAMES 173 5.1.1 Ambient Case Frames. 176 5.1.2 Ambient-Experiential Case Frames 179 5.1.3 Experiential Case Frames .•.• 180 5.1.4 Factual Knowledge Case Frames .• 185 5.1.5 Case Frames of Desire/Cognition 188 5.1.6 Case Frames of Sensation, etc. 191 5.1.7 Physical Case Frames 194 5.1.8 Case Frames of Measure ••.• 200 5.1.9 Locative Case Frames 203 5.1.10 Case Frames of Motion, Propulsion, Locomotion • • • • • • • . • • • 207 5.1.11 Case Frames Referring to Property 213 5.2 FURTHER SYSTEMATIC CONCERNS 221 5.2.1 Reflexives 221 5.2.2 Causatives • • • • • . • • • 224 5.2.3 Surface Structure Passives 229 5.2.4 Existentials and Equatives 235 5.3 RELEVANCE OF CASE FRAMES TO DISCOURSE 236 5.3.1 Generatively •• 237 5.3.2 Analytically • • • • • • 239 6 SOME FURTHER LEVELS OF NOTIONAL STRUCTURE 243 6.1 DERIVATION •.••••••••••• 244 xiv CONTENTS 6.2 INFLECTION •••••• 249 6.2.1 Verb Inflection 249 6.2.2 Noun Inflection 253 6.3 CONCRETION •••••• 257 6.3.1 Nominal Concretions. 258 6.3.2 Verb Concretions 260 6.4 PERFORMATIVES •••••• 261 6.4.1 Repartee Performatives 262 6.4.2 Type-Specific Performatives • 264 7 A FRAMEWORK FOR DISCOURSE ANALYSIS 269 7.1 HIERARCHY • • • • • • • • • 273 7.2 TAGMEME AND SYNTAGMEME ••• 275 7.3 THE LAW OF PRIMARY EXPONENCE 278 7.4 GENERAL THEORY OF EXPONENCE 279 7.5 CHARACTERISTICS OF THE VARIOUS LEVELS 289 7.6 VARIETY IN NATURE • • • • • 295 7.7 SIMILARITIES BETWEEN LEVELS 298 7.8 SOME DEVIANT SCHEMATIZATIONS • 302 7.9 NOTIONAL AND SURFACE STRUCTURE IN A HIERARCHICAL FRAMEWORK •• 305 7.10 SURFACE STRUCTURE MEANING 314 7.11 NOTIONAL STRUCTURE FORM 321 7.12 MAPPING OF NOTIONAL LEVELS ONTO SURFACE LEVELS 322 7.13 TAGMEME AND SYNTAGMEME IN THIS SETTING 327 7.14 MULTIPLE PERSPECTIVE.