Abstract
The point of departure of this paper is the hypothesis that there is a general format common to all representations in the human cognitive system. There is evidence from cognitive psychology that this might be frames in the sense of Barsalou’s. The aim of the paper is an exploration of the consequences of this assumption for natural language. Does natural language provide evidence in favor of Barsalou frames being the general format of representations in human cognition? The paper discusses two levels of representation of linguistic gestures: syntactic structure and meaning. The first part deals with syntactic structure and compositional meaning. It is argued that specific universal uniqueness constraints on the syntactic and semantic structure of complex linguistic gestures provide positive evidence for the assumption. The second part investigates lexical semantics, in particular the emergence of abstract attribute vocabulary. Observations in this field, too, corroborate the hypothesis.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
- 3.
The argument of an attribute will be referred to as its ‘possessor’.
- 4.
Attribute terms will be written in small capitals.
- 5.
Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar, initiated by Pollard and Sag (1994).
- 6.
The graph representation used here implements the principal distinction between attributes and their arguments and values. This distinction is essential; see Petersen (2007) and Löbner (2012: Sect. 4.1) for discussion of this aspect of frame theory and for a comparison of Barsalou’s graphs and those used here.
- 7.
Notwithstanding underspecification. Underspecification leaves room for alternative specifications. For example, the value of the attribute color may be specified not only as, say, ‘green’, but also as ‘warm’, ‘pleasant’, ‘sickening’, ‘stylish’, etc. This does not contradict the condition that the attribute takes one particular color as value; rather, these alternative descriptions represent different underspecific predications about the value of the attribute. The values may be complex: for example, a vector of coordinates (see Sect. 2.3.4 on multidimensional spatial case).
- 8.
As this article is not exclusively aimed at linguists, the discussion of syntax and semantics will include the explanation of basic notions in linguistic theory. The discussion is essentially based on Van Valin (2001).
- 9.
See Pensalfini (2004, p. 362ff) for an overview.
- 10.
The information that the referent is of type “S” is dropped. This is of no detriment since the category label S within the phrase structure is arbitrary and redundant. The fact that the whole complex is a sentence merely follows from its constituent structure.
- 11.
Stassen (2000) observes that there are two universal types of languages, which he calls AND-languages and WITH-languages. They differ in the way in which they construct those cases where English would use a conjunction of two NPs. AND-languages combine two NPs in a paratactic coordinating structure, e.g., Ken and Jo, while WITH-languages use asymmetric, hypotactic constructions such as Ken with Jo. Obviously it is only the AND-languages which provide a potential problem with respect to UAC.
- 12.
The general constituent structure is quoted from Zhang; the bottom row is added for illustration. Triangles are used in constituent trees as abbreviations for subtrees of unanalyzed phrasal constituents.
- 13.
- 14.
Some scholars, including Van Valin (2001), use the term ‘grammatical relations’ rather than ‘grammatical functions’. I prefer to talk of grammatical functions because notions such as ‘subject’ are functional concepts.
- 15.
“Even though there do not seem to be universally valid properties which subjects and direct objects each possess exclusively,” Van Valin (2001, p. 69) summarizes, “there are enough constructions to provide tests which should enable a linguist to identify these grammatical relations in many languages. Relations which appear to be rather straightforward in familiar Indo-European languages turn out to be much more varied and problematic when a wider range of languages is examined.”
- 16.
The notion of ‘ergative’ corresponds to the notion of subject, but only for sentences with transitive verbs; subjects of intransitive verbs are subsumed with objects of transitive verbs under the notion ‘absolutive’. Van Valin (2001: 77f) discusses the Australian language Mparntwe Arrernte as an example for syntactic ergativity.
- 17.
The distinction between arguments and adjuncts does not matter much in this paper. Usually, arguments of a verb are those participants which are necessary components of the verb concept. Adjuncts are optional components such as instruments, location of the action, aims, etc. See Van Valin (2001, pp. 92–95) for criteria and problems of the distinction.
- 18.
For one recent theory of morphosyntactic rules of feature markings, see the framework of Distributed Morphology (Halle and Marantz 1993).
- 19.
- 20.
Interestingly, Corbett (2000, p. 36) does mention a case of stacked number marking of the kind ruled out here: a double plural marking on Breton ‘child’ indicating a reference to a group of groups of children: bugal-e-où = child-pl-pl; “The first formation,” he remarks, “is highly irregular, and the second is a common one. The possibility of composing plural on plural is not freely available.”
- 21.
Cases of functional plural-of-plural and similar stacking must be distinguished from double morphological feature marking with the functional effect of simple plural. For instance the irregular Dutch plural form kinderen of kind (‘child’) is based on a former plural kind-er (the same form as in the German cognate Kind, plural Kind-er) to which the general regular Dutch plural suffix -en is added. Semantically, the form just functions as a simple plural.
- 22.
Comrie and Polinsky (1998) discuss the complex case systems of the Daghestanian languages Tabasaran and Tsez.
- 23.
Spatial case may exhibit up to four dimensions; see Creissels (2011) for a survey of multidimensional spatial case systems.
- 24.
Lexical-Functional Grammar, see Bresnan (2000).
- 25.
- 26.
Chomky’s ‘theta criterion’ explicitly states UA for case frames; using the term ‘θ-role’ for Fillmorean case: “Each argument bears one and only one θ-role, and each θ-role is assigned to one and only one argument.” (Chomsky 1981, p. 36) Arguments are values of case attributes; an argument is assigned a θ-role if it is the value of the corresponding θ-attribute. The first conjunct of the θ-criterion states a different condition. In terms of the frame approach it means that different attributes of the same verb cannot share their value. This would constitute a fourth uniqueness condition: if x is the value of some attribute of a possessor p, then there is exactly one attribute of p such that x is the value of that attribute. The condition seems plausible for constituents and dependents – one and the same expression apparently cannot be two constituents or dependents of the same mother or head. Whether it holds for frames in general, is a question far beyond the scope of this paper. Note that UR the uniqueness conditions do not rule out that a node in a frame may be the value of more than one attribute. This is perfectly admissible if we are talking about attributes of different nodes. For example, attributes can be composed: hair is an attribute of people, color is an attribute of the hair of people, whence hair color is an attribute of people. The color of the hair of a person is thus, even necessarily, at the same time the value of the attribute color of the hair of the person and the value of the attribute hair color of the person.
- 27.
See Van Valin (2005) for a linking theory in the framework of Role and Reference Grammar.
- 28.
There are very few exceptions: ni may mark dative case as well as a location; the accusative marker o can also be used to mark the path argument of a verb of locomotion.
- 29.
Chomsky’s (1981) claim has been successfully challenged by various authors (cf. references in Farmer 1989, p. 249); Japanese is now considered a configurational language with comparatively free word order resulting from the possibility of so-called scrambling (Pensalfini 2004, p. 362). Independently of the discussion within the generativist camp, the cases of Japanese, and Tagalog (see below), are discussed here in order to deal with a possible argument against the assumption of UA in syntax.
- 30.
‘Actor’ and ‘undergoer’ are more general semantic ‘macroroles’ comprising ‘agent’ and ‘patient’, respectively (see Van Valin 2001, pp. 22–33).
- 31.
Note that due to the isomorphic structure of dependencies and meanings in the clause, the relation in the case of dependency structure is more straightforward. See Debusmann and Kuhlmann (2009) on this and other general aspects of dependency grammars.
- 32.
See Löbner (2013, Sects. 7.6 and 13.5) for discussion.
- 33.
In this section, ‘argument term’ is to be understood as also including adjunct terms.
- 34.
- 35.
See Löbner (2011, Sect. 2.3) for a discussion of the meaning of proper names.
- 36.
- 37.
Therefore, lexical meaning is based on a generalized theory of mind (see Carruthers and Smith 1996) about the mental lexicons of the other members of the speech community.
- 38.
Two questions will not be discussed in this connection. The first concerns the relation between world knowledge frames and lexical meaning frames. I have argued elsewhere (Löbner 2013: Sect. 11.6) that lexical meaning frames are necessarily leaner than world knowledge frames; for a recent review see Kelter & Kaup (2012), in particular Sect. 6. The second question concerns the relationship of prototypes to world knowledge frames on the one hand and lexical meaning frames on the other; see Barsalou (1992b, pp. 47–50) on world knowledge frames and prototypes, and Löbner (2013: Sect. 11.5) on lexical meanings and prototypes.
- 39.
- 40.
For example, Middle High German of about 1,200 seems to widely lack abstract functional concepts with inanimate possessors, such as ‘value’, ‘size’, or ‘quality’. The 100,000 word poem ‘Tristan’ by Gottfried von Strassburg from around 1200 does not contain a single such noun (personal reading).
- 41.
Cf. Werning’s notion, and discussion, of what he terms the “complex first paradox” (Werning 2010).
- 42.
For basic ontological distinctions of types of attributes, see Guarino (1992).
- 43.
Dixon (1977, p. 36). The types AGE and COLOUR are obviously related to the respective D-attributes. The type DIMENSION is defined as comprising, for English, the adjectives “big, large; little, small; long, short; wide, narrow; thick, fat, thin, and just a few more items” (p. 31). These, too, directly relate to specific D-attributes. VALUE adjectives correspond to the D-attributes worth, value, quality and include “good, bad and a few more items […]” (p. 31).
- 44.
See the discussion in Levinson (2001).
- 45.
According to Dixon, even very small adjective repertories contain pairs of antonyms. For example, the eight adjectives in Igbo mean ‘large’, ‘small’, ‘new’, ‘old’, ‘black/dark’, ‘white/light’, ‘good’, and ‘bad’ (Dixon 177: 20f).
- 46.
The discussion will focus on scalar dimensions from now on. Similar considerations apply to terms for values of nonscalar dimensions. For example, the research into color terms (cf. Berlin and Kay 1969 and subsequent work) shows that most languages do not just have isolated color terms, but always systems of color terms that more or less cover the whole space of visible colors.
- 47.
Bierwisch (1987: 150ff/1989: 123ff), following Sapir (1944: 93f), argues that even the positive use of dimensional adjectives is essentially a comparative. I do not endorse this analysis (Löbner 1990: Ch. 8), but argue similarly that predication with dimensional adjectives involves the comparison of higher with lower degrees on a scale.
- 48.
Comparative constructions may be grammaticalized to varying degrees. For example, a language might express ‘x is bigger than y’ by two sentences ‘x is big, y is small’ or ‘y is not big, x is big’ (Stassen 1985: 44f). The latter variant shows that all it takes to cognitively span the underlying scale is negation of a scalar adjective.
- 49.
The pattern displayed in hoeveelheid is not productive in Dutch. There is only one parallel: hoedanigheid (‘quality’, lit. ‘how-done-ness’). Probably both are loan translations of Latin quantitas and qualitas, respectively. Quantitas is a noun derived from an interrogative adjective quantus ‘how much’; qualitas is the same type of derivation from the interrogative adjective qualis ‘of what kind’.
- 50.
- 51.
See also the antonym pairs for six languages in Dixon (1977, pp. 21–23); there is not a single pair of antonyms which are morphologically related.
- 52.
The notion goes back to the seminal article Jacob (1977).
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Acknowledgments
I am very grateful to Robert D. Van Valin Jr., Albert Ortmann, Katina Bontcheva, Anja Latrouite, and Thomas Gamerschlag, for discussion, comments, and hints. I would also like to thank the two reviewers of the paper as well as the audience of the talk which I held at the 2009 International Conference on Concept Types and Frames at Düsseldorf. The research for this article was supported by the DFG (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) grant Research Unit RU 600 “Functional Concepts and Frames”.
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Löbner, S. (2014). Evidence for Frames from Human Language. In: Gamerschlag, T., Gerland, D., Osswald, R., Petersen, W. (eds) Frames and Concept Types. Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy, vol 94. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-01541-5_2
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