Accounting for Subjectivity (Point of View)

Smith, Carlota S.

doi:10.1007/978-90-481-2617-0_15

Carlota S. Smith⁴

Part of the book series: Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy ((SLAP,volume 87))

875 Accesses
2 Citations

Abstract

I discuss in this article some of the forms and interpretations usually covered by the phrase ‘point of view’. The term is used by linguists for expression of speech and thought, perspective, evidentiality, and other indications of an authorial voice. ‘Point of view’ is often used almost interchangeably with ‘viewpoint,’ ‘perspective,’ and ‘subjectivity’. This has led to considerable confusion. In what follows I will be concerned mainly with the notion as discussed by linguists, while recognizing that there is a strong literary tradition. I take it that all expressions of point of view are subjective, since they involve mind; I will use ‘subjective,’ and ‘subjectivity’ as general terms rather than ‘point of view.’

Subjectivity is expressed by grammatical forms at the sentence level (verbs and their complements, tense, aspectual viewpoint, anaphors, etc.), yet subjectivity arises primarily in discourse contexts. Anaphors and many other forms can only be interpreted with information from outside the sentence. More generally, discourse sets up expectations for structure and interpretation. These expectations depend largely on genre (e.g., narrative, newspaper editorials). The dynamic established by relations between several sentences can set up a pattern that guides interpretation.

One of my goals is to sort out the main types of linguistically conveyed subjectivity as a basis for the systematic interpretation of sentences and discourse. I will distinguish two general classes: sentences that express point of view, and perspectival sentences that present a situation from a particular standpoint. Both involve the mind and are therefore subjective, but in clearly different ways. The discussion is mainly about English, though I also comment on other languages.

I also consider the question of how grammatical forms give rise to interpretations of subjectivity when they occur in sentences. I suggest a ‘composite’ account: subjectivity is conveyed by composites of syntactic and semantic factors and interpreted by rules which look at several grammatical forms together. Typically the forms convey more than one kind of information. The composite approach is well-suited to point of view because it deals naturally with such variety. I will suggest principles for interpreting subjectivity in the framework of Discourse Representation Theory.

Section 1 sets the stage with introductory examples and commentary; Section 2 organizes the phenomena and discusses the basic distinctions; Section 3 sketches the composite analysis; Section 4 concludes.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution

Chapter: USD 29.95; Price excludes VAT (USA)

eBook: USD 259.00; Price excludes VAT (USA)

Softcover Book: USD 329.99; Price excludes VAT (USA)

Hardcover Book: USD 329.99; Price excludes VAT (USA)

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

1.
As a literary term ‘point of view’ refers to presentation of the speech and thought of a fictional character or, more generally, as “the perceptual or conceptual position in terms of which narrated situations and events are presented” (Prince 1987: 73).
2.
Text sources are listed at the beginning of the references, below.
3.
Following Harris, one might account for this inclusion by the presence of zero allomorphs of stared etc. in each sentence.
4.
In narrative fiction, it is customary to distinguish sentences that contain a ‘self’ at a moment corresponding to an act of consciousness (Banfield 1982:158). Sentences without a ‘self’ report events “objectively, independent of an explicitly-perceived, narrating self” (Fleischman 1991:31).
5.
Hagège (1974) coined the term ‘logophoricity’ in connection with the African languages Mundang, Tuburi, and Ewe; he defined it as “to designate a category of anaphoric pronouns, personal and possessive, which refer to the author of a discourse or to a participant whose thoughts are reported” (Stirling’s translation 1993: 253).
The term logophoric is now widely used, often in reference to discourse-oriented anaphors, or anaphors that appear in point of view contexts (Reinhart & Reuland 1993: 671). The term is also used for all kinds of indications of the mind or perspective of a participant; see the references cited in the text.
6.
In the quantificational test, one constructs a sentence with predicates referring to abstract objects (facts, propositions, projective propositions). If there is no quantifier that can appear in such sentences with a truth value, then the predicates take arguments of distinct, incompatible types. This test distinguishes Propositions from Projective Propositions: # indicates lack of truth value.
1. (i) a.
  #John desires everything that Mary believes.
2. b.
  # Everything that Mary asks for is true.
3. c.
  John asks for something that Mary wants.
4. d.
  Everything that John believes is true.
In (ia) and (ib) the clauses refer to different types of entities: in the first clause, the complements refer to projective propositions while the complements of the second clauses refer to propositions. They are semantically anomalous. In contrast, (ic) and (id) both have complements referring to propositions and the sentences are semantically well-formed (Asher 1993: 33–34).
7.
Aspectual viewpoints focus all or part of a situation. Imperfectives focus part of a situation, excluding endpoints; perfective viewpoints focus a situation in its entirety, including endpoints or implicit bounds for events. In Russian there is a pragmatic convention in which the focus of the perfective is taken to be on the completion of an event; this convention is overridden under certain circumstances (Smith 1997). The imperfective viewpoint in English is also known as the ‘progressive’; it is conveyed by the auxiliary be+ing.
The unbounded interpretation arises for different reasons in imperfective and stative sentences. In the former, the viewpoint does not include endpoints; in the latter, the temporal schema of a state has no endpoints (Smith 1991). In Caenepeel’s work the two are grouped together into a supercategory of ‘stative’; see also Herweg (1991). I argue against the supercategory approach in Smith (1996, 1999).
8.
The French system is more strongly codified than the English. The French imparfait is a past imperfective tense which is commonly used to express perspective.
The English stative and imperfective together correspond grammatically to the French imparfait. The imparfait can be used for statives and non-statives, wheres the English progressive is possible neutrally only with non-statives. English stative sentences have the simple, perfective verb form.
9.
Caenepeel claims that when a sentence presents a bounded situation the perspectival interpretation is unlikely at best. She says that bounded events—events presented perfectively—are impossible or awkward as perceptual reports unless there is a contingency relation between the event and the focalizing sentence.
10.
This is essentially the same as Kamp’s account of why present perfective sentences cannot be used to express a bounded event. We conceive of communication as instantaneous; communication of a bounded event, even if instantaneous, requires at least one instant after the completion of the event.
11.
This is one of a set of examples which led Ross (1970) to suggest that all sentences have a higher clause in underlying structure with a first-person pronoun and a verb of communication in the present tense. The overt reflexive pronoun would be coindexed with the covert first-person pronoun. Harris reached the same conclusion on a much broader basis (1982), as Bruce Nevin has pointed out to me.
12.
The Binding Theory as stated in Chomsky 1981 has been the subject of much critical comment. Reinhart and Reuland 1993 offer an extensive revision in the same general framework; a different approach is taken in Pollard and Sag 1992.
13.
Cantrall was perhaps the first to note the perspectival use of the reflexive. Cantrall presents many examples, among them the following sentences. Cantrall asks us to imagine that they describe a photograph which portrays a group of standing women who have their backs to the camera:
1. a.
  The women_i were standing in the background, with the children behind them_i.
2. b.
  The women_i were standing in the background, with the children behind themselves_i.
In (a) the children are located from the perspective of the speaker; in (b) they are located from the perspective of the women. As Zribi-Hertz notes, the sentences provide empirical evidence that the reflexive is correlated with an ‘internal’ point of view—that of a discourse protagonist as opposed to the speaker (1989: 704).
14.
Alternatively, one might follow Harris in analyzing reflexives (1982) as reductions of metalanguage assertions of sameness.
15.
Hirose gives example of the two uses of zibun. The logophoric involves access to consciousness, the perspectival does not; his term for the latter is ‘point of view.’ Hirose says that in the logophoric example (a) Kazuo is obviously aware that he is shy, because he says so. On other other hand in example (b), Kazuo does not have to be aware that the book he lost is the one he borrowed from his friend. This is shown [by the fact that] (c) is not contradictory (2000: 1646).
1. (i) a.
  Kazuo wa zibun wa tereya da to itteiru
  - K. top self top shy-person cop quot say-STAT
  - Kazuo_i says that he_i is shy.
2. b.
  Kazuo wa zibun ga tomodati karita hon o nakusit
  - K. top self nom friend from borrowed book acc lost
  - Kazuo_i lost a book that he_i borrowed from a friend.
3. c.
  Kazuo wa zibun ga tomodati karita hon o nakusita ga, sono
  - K. top self nom friend from borrowed book acc lost but that
  - hon ga tomodati kara karita mono da to wa kizuite-it-nai,
  - book nom friend from borrowed thing cop quot top realize-STAT-NBG
  - Kazuo_i lost a book that he_i borrowed from a friend but he has not realized that the book
  - is the one he borrowed from a friend.
According to Hirose, zibun in examples like (b) and (c) conveys ‘point of view’, whereas in (a) zibun is logophoric.
16.
Kuno, among others, regards possessive pronouns as ambiguous between a [+reflexive] and [–reflexive] feature (1987: 81).
17.
Sells (1987) proposes that three roles be recognized: source, the one who makes the report; self, the one whose mind is reported; pivot, the one from whose physical point of view a report is made. For arguments against this view, see Stirling 1993.

References

Sources for non-constructed examples are as follows, identified by example numbers:
Google Scholar
(1a) Dick Francis. Banker. New York: Fawcett. 1984, p. 3.
Google Scholar
(1b) Raymond Chandler. The Long Goodbye. Penguin Books. 1953, p. 64.
Google Scholar
(1c) Alan Ehrenhalt, “Hijacking the Rulebook”. The New York Times, Section 4, p.13, Dec 20, 1998.
Google Scholar
(2) John D. Scott and Tony Pawson. “Cell Communication”. Scientific American 72–79 June 2000.
Google Scholar
(3) Peter Robinson. A Necessary End. New York: Avon Books, 1989, p. 182.
Google Scholar
(9) Virginia Woolf. Mrs. Dalloway. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1925 (1981), p. 3.
Google Scholar
(18b) James Joyce. “The Dead”. In Dubliners. Penguin Books. (pub 1916) 1958, p. 177.
Google Scholar
(24) Jane Austen. Sense and Sensibility. Oxford University Press. p. 173.
Google Scholar
Abusch, Dorit. 1997. “Sequence of tense and temporal de re.” Linguistics and Philosophy 20:1–50.
Article Google Scholar
Asher, Nicholas. 1993. Reference to Abstract Objects in Discourse. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Book Google Scholar
Baker, C.L. 1995. “Contrast, discourse prominence, and intensification, with special reference to locally free reflexives in British English.” Language 71:63–101.
Article Google Scholar
Banfield, Ann. 1982. Unspeakable Sentences: Narrative and Representation in the Language of Fiction. Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Google Scholar
Caenepeel, Mimo. 1989. Aspect, Temporal Ordering, and Perspective in Narrative Fiction. Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Edinburgh.
Google Scholar
Cantrall, William. 1974. Viewpoint, Reflexives, and the Nature of Nounphrases. The Hague: Mouton.
Google Scholar
Chatman, Seymour. 1978. Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 1981. Lectures on Government and Binding. Dordrecht: Foris.
Google Scholar
Cinque, Guglielmo. 1999. Adverbs and Functional Heads: A Cross-Linguistic Perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Google Scholar
Cohn, Dorritt. 1978. Transparent Minds: Narrative Modes for Presenting Consciousness in Fiction. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Google Scholar
Comrie, Bernard. 1986. Tense. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Google Scholar
Dowty, David. 1986. “The effects of aspectual class on the temporal structure of discourse: Semantics or pragmatics?” Linguistics and Philosophy 5:23–33.
Article Google Scholar
Fleischman, Suzanne. 1991. “Verb tense and point of view in narrative.” Discourse-Pragmatics and the Verb, ed. by S. Fleischman and L. Waugh, Routledge: London.
Google Scholar
Frazyngier, Z. 1985. “Logophoric systems in Chadic.” Journal of African Languages and Linguistics 7:23–27.
Google Scholar
Genette, Gérard. 1980. Narrative discourse: An Essay in Method. Translated by Jane E. Lewin. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Google Scholar
Giorgi, Alessandra 1984. “Toward a theory of long distance anaphors: a GB approach.” The Linguistic Review 3:307–361.
Article Google Scholar
Giorgi, Alessandra and Fabio Pianesi. 2000. “Sequence of tense phenomena in Italian.” Probus 12:1–32.
Article Google Scholar
Hagège, Claude. 1974. “Les pronoms logophoriques.” Bulletin de la Societé de Linguistique de Paris 69:287–310.
Google Scholar
Harris, Zellig S. 1982. A Grammar of English on Mathematical Principles. New York: John Wiley & Sons.
Google Scholar
Herweg, M. 1991. “Perfective and imperfective aspect and the theory of events and states.” Linguistics 29:969–1010.
Article Google Scholar
Hirose, Yukio. 2000. “Public and private self as two aspects of the speaker: A contrastive study of Japanese and English.” Journal of Pragmatics 32:1623–1656.
Article Google Scholar
Hyman, Larry and Bernard Comrie. 1981. “Logophoric reference in Gokana.” Journal of African Languages and Linguistics 4:19–37.
Google Scholar
Jespersen, Otto. 1924. The Philosophy of Grammar. London: Allen & Unwin.
Google Scholar
Kamp, Hans. 1981. “A theory of truth and semantic interpretation.” Formal Methods in the Study of Language, ed. by J. Groenendijk, T.M.V. Jannssen and M. Stokhof, Mathematical Centre Tract 135, Amsterdam.
Google Scholar
Kamp, Hans and Christian Rohrer. 1983. “Tense in Texts.” Meaning, Use and Interpretation of Language. ed. by Bauerle, R., C. Schwarze, and A. von Stechow. Berlin: de Gruyter.
Google Scholar
Kamp, Hans & Uwe Reyle. 1993. From Discourse to Logic. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Google Scholar
Kuno, Susumo. 1972. “Pronominalization, reflexivization, and direct discourse.” Linguistic Inquiry 3:161–195.
Google Scholar
Kuno, Susumo. 1987. Functional Syntax. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Google Scholar
Kuroda, Yuki. 1973. “Where epistemology, grammar and style meet: A case study from Japanese.” A Festchrift for Morris Halle, ed. by Anderson, S. and P. Kiparsky. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
Google Scholar
Mitchell, Jonathan E. 1986. The Formal Semantics of Point of View. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
Google Scholar
Ogihara, Toshi. 1996. Tense, Attitude, and Scope. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Book Google Scholar
Partee, Barbara. 1973. “The syntax and semantics of quotation.” A Festchrift for Morris Halle, ed by Anderson, S. and P. Kiparsky. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
Google Scholar
Peterson, Philip. 1997. Fact, Proposition, Event. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Book Google Scholar
Pollard, Carl and Ivan Sag. 1992. “Anaphors in English and the scope of the binding theory.” Linguistic Inquiry 12:2651–2305.
Google Scholar
Prince, Gerald. 1987. Dictionary of Narratology. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press.
Google Scholar
Reinhart, Tanya. 1975. “Whose main clause? Point of view in sentences with parentheticals”. In S. Kuno (ed.), Harvard Studies in Syntax and Semantics, No. 1.
Google Scholar
Reinhart, Tanya and Eric Reuland. 1993. “Reflexivity.” Linguistic Inquiry 24:657–720.
Google Scholar
Ross, John Robert. 1970. “On declarative sentences.” Readings in English Transformational Grammar, ed. by Jacobs, R. and P. Rosenbaum. Waltham, Mass: Ginn & Company.
Google Scholar
Schlenker, Phillip. 1999. Propositional attitude and indexicality: A cross categorial approach. Ph.D. dissertation, MIT.
Google Scholar
Sells, Peter. 1987. “Aspects of logophoricity.” Linguistic Inquiry 18:445–479.
Google Scholar
Smith, Carlota S. 1991. The Parameter of Aspect. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Book Google Scholar
Smith, Carlota S. 1996. The Relation between Aspectual Viewpoint and Situation Type. Linguistic Society of America address. Published electronically, Eric database.
Google Scholar
Smith, Carlota S. 1999. “Activities: States or Events?” Linguistics and Philosophy 22:479–508.
Article Google Scholar
Smith, Carlotta S. 2003. Discourse Modes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Book Google Scholar
Speas, Margaret A. 1999. “Person and point of view in Navajo.” Proceedings of the West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics. CSLI Publications 18, Stanford, California.
Google Scholar
Stirling, Lesley. 1993. Switch-Reference and Discourse Representation. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Book Google Scholar
Thráinsson, H. 1976. “Reflexives and subjunctive in Icelandic.” Proceedings of the New England Linguistics Society 6:25–39.
Google Scholar
Vendler, Zeno. 1972. Res Cogitans: An Essay in Rational Psychology. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Google Scholar
Zribi-Hertz, Anne. 1989. “Anaphor binding and narrative point of view: English reflexive pronouns in sentence and discourse.” Language 65:695–727.
Article Google Scholar

Download references

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank the audience at the Conference on Information Structure in Oslo, Norway (December 2000) for discussion of an early version of this material; some of it appears in different form in the Working Papers for the conference.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Formerly of Department of Linguistics, University of Texas, Austin, TX, USA
Carlota S. Smith

Authors

Carlota S. Smith
View author publications
You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

College of Liberal Arts, University of Texas, Austin, University Station 1, Austin, 78712-1196, U.S.A.
Richard P. Meier
Inst. Language Information & Technology, EasternMichigan University, Huron River Dr., Ypsilanti, 48197, U.S.A.
Helen Aristar-Dry
College of Liberal Arts, University of Texas, Austin, University Station 1, Austin, 78712-1196, U.S.A.
Emilie Destruel

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Smith, C.S. (2009). Accounting for Subjectivity (Point of View). In: Meier, R., Aristar-Dry, H., Destruel, E. (eds) Text, Time, and Context. Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy, vol 87. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2617-0_15

Download citation

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2617-0_15
Published: 28 August 2009
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-90-481-2616-3
Online ISBN: 978-90-481-2617-0
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawSocial Sciences (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics