Article usage in low-referentiality contexts

Article usage in
low-referentiality
contexts
Östen Dahl
Workshop
Languages
with
and
without
ar3cles
Paris,
28
February
–
1
March,
2013
Low-referentiality uses
●  The ”low-referentiality uses” I will talk about will
primarily be ones where the referent of a (usually
indefinite) noun phrase is identifiable but the identity is
irrelevant to the discourse.
●  Thus, the speaker does not intend to introduce a new
discourse referent.
–  John was wearing a hat.
Potential lexicalization
●  Typically, such noun phrases are part of predicates whose
meaning is potentially expressible by a single lexeme:
–  Mary is wearing glasses
–  Mary is bespectacled
●  If such a NP is a singular count noun, we expect it to
have an indefinite article:
–  John was wearing a hat
Bare nouns in Scandinavian
●  However, in Scandinavian languages, bare nouns are
common in similar contexts:
●  Cf. Swedish:
–  Vi har bil ’We have (a) car’
–  Vi har häst. ’We have (a) horse’
–  Studenten skriver kandidatuppsats. ’The student is
writing (a) B.A. thesis’
–  John bär hatt ’John wears/is wearing a hat’
Examples from the Swedish Academy
Grammar
●  ha ’have’
–  TV/bil ’car’/familj ’family’/sommarstuga ’summer
cottage’/flaggstång ’flag pole’/hund ’dog’/körkort
’driver’s licence’/ingenjörsexamen ’engineer diploma’
●  köpa ’buy’/hyra ’rent’/skaffa ’get’/byta ’change’
–  TV/bil ’car’/familj ’family’/sommarstuga ’summer
cottage’/frack ’tailcoat’
●  åka ’go/ride’
–  bil ’car’/cykel ’bicycle’/båt ’boat’/skridsko(r) ’skate(s)’
●  köra ’drive’
–  bil ’car’/lastbil ’truck’/buss ’bus’
Many restrictions (not always absolute)
●  Lexical – ha ’have’ but rather not äga ’own’:
–  ?Vi äger bil. ’We own (a) car’
●  Expandability – modifiers unusual:
–  ?Vi har röd bil. ’We have (a) red car’
●  Anaphoric reference dispreferred:
–  ?Vi har bil. Den står på gatan. ’We have a car. It’s in
the street’.
●  The object referred to should be ”typical”:
–  ?Vi har sportbil.
Cardinality
●  At least with the verb ha ’have’, the expectation is that
the object is of a kind that you either have one or none
of:
–  ?Min son har leksaksbil ’My son has (a) toy car’
●  Sometimes the cardinality is more or less irrelevant:
–  Jag läser tidning ’I am reading a newspaper (or maybe
several)’
Incorporation?
●  The bare noun constructions have many similarities with
incorporation and what I have called quasi-incorporation
(a.k.a. analytical incorporation, pseudo-incorporation)
”Classical noun incorporation”
●  Classical Nahuatl
Launey,
Michel.
1999.
Compound
Nouns
vs.
Noun
Incorpora3on
in
Classical
Nahuatl.
Sprachtypologie
und
Universalienforschung,
52.347‐364.
Ni-naka-kwa.
1SG-flesh-eat
‘I eat meat.’ (Launey (1999: 352))
●  Southern Ute
kwana-ci
‘uway paqa-pųga
eagle-AN/OBJ
DEF/OBJ
‘He killed the eagle’
kwana-paqa-pųga
kill-REM
Southern
Ute
Tribe.
1980.
Ute
reference
grammar.
Ignacio,
Colo.:
Ute
Press
Southern
Ute
Tribe.
eagle-kill-REM
‘He did some eagle-killing’ or ‘He killed eagles’
Quasi-incorporation: Hungarian
Éva
level-ek-et
ír.
E.
letter-PL-ACC
write.PRS.3SG
‘Éva is writing letters.’
Pisti
level-et
ír.
P.
letter-ACC
write.PRS.3SG
‘Steve is writing letters/a letter
(is engaged in letter-writing).’
Kiefer,
Ferenc.
1990‐91.
Noun
incorpora3on
in
Hungarian.
Acta
Linguis3ca
Hungarica
40.149‐177.
No
number
marking!
Quasi-incorporation: Turkish
Ayşe
balıği tutuyor.
A.
fish.ACC catch.PRS.3SG
‘Ayşe is catching the fish.’
Ayşe
balık
tutuyor.
A.
fish
catch.PRS.3SG
‘Ayşe is catching fish’
Nilsson,
Birgit.
1985.
Case
marking
seman3cs
in
Turkish.
Stockholm:
Dept.
of
Linguis3cs,
Stockholm
University.
No
case
marking!
Characteristics of incorporation and
quasi-incorporation
●  Constraints on productivity
●  Tendency to lexicalization
●  “Unitary concept” constraints
●  Expandability constraints
●  Constraints on prominence management
●  Tight prosody
●  Lacking or otherwise constrained grammatical marking
●  Reduction in form
”Peripheral Swedish”
Extended uses of definite articles in the
peripheral Swedish area
low
referen.ality
uses:
generic
uses:
Guldið
ir
dyrt
‘Gold
is
expensive’
(Älvdalen,
Dalarna)
par..ve
uses:
An
drikk
mjotsję
‘He’s
drinking
milk’
(Älvdalen)
Not
all
contexts
are
found
in
all
areas!
quasi‐generic
uses:
Han
ä
ill
kommen
ta
jekta
‘He
suffers
badly
from
gout’
(Östmark,
Värmland)
a:er
quan.fiers:
predica.ve
uses:
han
ha
tre
brödren
’he
has
three
brothers’
(Sorsele,
Västerbocen)
He
er
duvinvere
idä
‘It’s
muggy
weather
today’
(Luleå,
Norrbocen)
Am
estn
‘We
have
a
horse=we
are
horse‐
owners’
(Älvdalen)
’word
list’
uses
on
adjec.ves
in
headless
NPs:
öyngst'n
’the
youngest
one’
(Kalix,
Norrbocen)
in
possessive
construc.ons:
aikens
airana
‘the
horse’s
ear
(Estonia)
14
Definite marking in low-referentiality contexts
in peripheral Swedish
●  Älvdalen
Am estn
have.PRS.1PL
horse.DEF
’we have a horse’
●  Sideby (Ostrobothnia, Finland)
Å
dåm
hav
öitjon.
and
they
have.PRS.PL
dinghy.DEF
‘And they have a dinghy.’
A parallel in French?
●  We have a telephone.
●  Nous avons le téléphone.
–  But this is clearly a more restricted pattern:
●  ?On a l’ordinateur. ’We have a computer’
–  Traditional grammars speak of a generic use here
Lexicalized patterns
●  English: play the piano/the flute etc.
●  French: jouer du piano
●  German: Klavier spielen
●  Swedish: spela piano
Himmelmann on Adpositional phrases
●  “Articles are generally used less frequently, and with
regard to semantic and pragmatic generalisations, less
consistently in adpositional phrases than in other
syntactic environments (such as subject or object
position).”
–  She came by bus
–  *She took bus
Patterns are language dependent
●  German: Sie ist mit dem Bus gekommen
●  Swedish: Hon kom med bussen
●  French: Elle est venu par le train
Patterns are lexically dependent
●  Elle est venu par le train
●  Elle est venu en autobus
Himmelmann’s explanation
● 
The implications of this view for explaining why the development of articles does
not proceed along the same lines within adpositional phrases and in other
syntactic environments should be obvious. If it can be shown that constructions
consisting of a primary adposition and a nominal expression are
entrenched to a higher degree than other constructions involving nominal
expressions (such as secondary adpositions and their complements or verbs and
their core arguments), then it could be assumed that this difference in
entrenchment provides a major reason as to why changes like those
affecting the structure of nominal expressions in less entrenched
syntactic environments do not occur, or occur only with some delay, in
adpositional expressions involving primary adpositions.
Unexpected definite markings
in adpositional phrases in peripheral Swedish
● 
An
Älvdalen
jät
suppų
he
eat.PRS
soup.DEF.ACC
‘he eats soup with a spoon’
● 
min
with
spoon.DEF.DAT
Närpes (Southern Ostrobothnia, Finland)
Vi
skār
a
me
štjeron.
we
cut.PST
it
with
sickle.DEF
● 
stjiedn.
Överkalix (Norrbotten, Sweden)
…fistsen
fish.DEF
fik
get.PST
di
they
takkɷ
almost
åys
scoop
ɷpp
up
ve
slaiven
bårti
anɷ…
with
ladle.DEF from
river.DEF.DAT
’…as for the fish, they had almost to scoop it up with a ladle from the river…’
Unexpected definite markings
in adpositional phrases in French
●  mange la soupe avec une cuillère
●  mange la soupe à la cuillère
●  ?mange la soupe à une cuillère
●  coupe le pain avec un couteau
●  coupe le pain au couteau
●  ?coupe le pain à un couteau
”Young girl with a cat”
Jeune
Fille
au
Chapeau
Jeune
fille
avec
chat
Jeune
fille
avec
le
chat
Jeune
Fille
au
Chat
●  In French, the pattern ”à + DEF” seems to have been
”entrenched” in the meaning ’with’
German ”mit dem”
„Kinder
lernen
das
Essen
mit
dem
Löffel
am
besten
durch
Nachahmung“
Incorporated instrumentals
● 
A:
B:
Huautla Nahuatl
Kanke eltok kočillo? Na’
ni-’-neki
amanci.
where is
I-it-want
now
knife
I
Ya’
ki-kočillo-tete’ki
panci
he
(he)it-knife-cut
bread
‘Where is the knife? I want it now – He cut the bread with it
(the knife).’
(Merlan (1976))
Merlan,
Francesca.
1976.
Noun
incorpora3on
and
discourse
reference
in
Modern
Nahuatl.
Interna3onal
Journal
of
American
Linguis3cs,
42.177‐191.
Why definite marking with low-referentiality
NPs?
●  An explanation in terms of delayed or absent
grammaticalization does not work here…
●  But entrenchment in the form of lexicalization certainly
plays a role
●  Also, low-referentiality contexts are often hard to
separate from other contexts where definite marking is to
be expected:
–  generic NPs
–  ”situationally definite”: a unique referent in any
relevant situation
Low-referentiality contexts: at least three
possibilities
●  English – indefinite article: We have a horse
●  Swedish – no marking: Vi har häst
●  Peripheral Swedish – definite article: Am estn
If you want to read more
● 
Dahl, Östen. 2003. Competing definite articles in Scandinavian. In
Dialectology meets Typology, ed. by Bernd Kortmann, 147-180. Berlin:
Mouton de Gruyter.
● 
Dahl, Östen. 2004. The growth and maintenance of linguistic
complexity. Studies in Language Companion Series. Amsterdam/
Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
● 
Dahl, Östen. 2010.
Grammaticalization in the North : Noun Phrase Morphosyntax in
Scandinavian Vernaculars. RAPPLING 1. Stockholm: Department of
Linguistics, Stockholm University.