Saturday, October 22, 2016

Review About Typology and Discourse Analysis

Typology and Discourse Analysis

By John Myhill


0 Introduction

The relationship between the typology and the analysis of discourse has been characterized by, on the one hand, the compatibility of a common ideology and, on the other hand, the practical difficulties inherent in combining the interests of both sub-disciplines. Compatibility common ideology is the result of sub-disciplines various views that the study of language should be based on empirical data analysis rather than a thought experiment. In syntax, semantics, and even pragmatics, intuitions have played a central role in gathering data, and interaction with discourse analysis has tended to be controversial from the outset because of the emphasis in discourse analysis upon the empirical analysis of linguistic data. A discourse analyst interested in the subdiscipline’s relationship with, for example, syntax must immediately discuss performance data and phenomena that mainstream syntacticians simply reject as irrelevant; thus any syntax combined with discourse analysis can only be nonmainstream syntax. No such ideological problem arises in the case of typology: intuitions play essentially no role in the data analyzed by typologists, and typologists are only too happy, in principle, to consider the possible relevance of discourse phenomena to the problems they investigate. There has, therefore, been relatively little research which can be said to have been the product of the interaction between these subdisciplines. Before proceeding, it will be necessary to describe what I am taking to be “typology.”


The prototypical typologies studies have data from a variety of genetically unrelated languages, analyzed in a general descriptive paradigm that allows for direct, systematic, and (relatively) just comparing data from various languages ​​and propose hypotheses about human language in general. This type of study was pioneered by Joseph Greenberg (1966a, 1966b), who categorized a large number of languages according to, e.g., most common order of subject, verb, and direct object, order of adposition and noun, etc., and, on the basis of this categorization, determined correlations which could be hypothesized as characteristic of human language in general (e.g. verb-object languages are very likely to have prepositions rather than postpositions). It is the use of a systematic common descriptive paradigm, allowing for direct comparison between a wide variety of languages, which distinguishes the methodology of typology from that of other approaches. Within the field of discourse analysis, there have been many studies which have compared different languages but which would not, on this understanding, be considered to be specifically typological, because they are not focused upon developing a system for direct, systematic, and universal comparison of a wide variety of languages as Greenberg’s studies were (e.g. Tannen 1981; Brown and Levinson 1987; Blum-Kulka 1991). Such works are discursive in nature, typically comparing English with one (or very rarely two) other language(s) and selecting examples which show how the languages differ in certain respects, or, alternatively, how they can fulfill similar discourse functions using constructions which may superficially appear to be different.

Thus, although such studies are comparative, they are not really directed toward establishing a systematic universal framework for categorizing discourse phenomena in the way that Greenberg’s studies established systematic universal framework for categorizing syntactic phenomena. Because I am discussing the relationship of typology and discourse analysis, then, I will in the present chapter discuss those approaches which have been more similar to Greenberg’s in this respect. Section 1 of this chapter will describe general problems associated with methodology combining typology and discourse analysis. Sections 2 and 3 then discuss two approaches to these problems, the use of universal conceptual systems of classification and the use of translation data.

1 Problems of Typological Discourse Analysis

The study of the phenomenon of discourse within the framework of the typology presents some inherent difficulties which can not be found in other areas typology. Traditional typological studies (Greenberg 1966a; Bybee 1985; Croft 1990) use as their main source of data reference grammars from a wide variety of languages, and the linguistic phenomena they consider are those which are likely to be found in a reference grammar, e.g typical word order (of subject/object/verb, adposition/noun, etc.), structural characteristics of voice alternations, phonological inventory, etc. Unfortunately, this is not possible with the sort of phenomena typically of interest to discourse analysts. For example, if I were to attempt to do a typological study of the functions of contrastive connectives similar to English but, I could probably gather a list of words in a wide variety of languages with some type of generally similar function, but it would be impossible on the basis of the descriptions of these particles
in reference grammars to understand and then compare the functions of these different words.

Another problem for typological discourse analysis as compared with more traditional discourse analysis is the degree of familiarity of the researcher with the languages to be analyzed; in a typological study the linguist is not going to know all the languages under investigation very well, while in a traditional discourse stud the investigator is likely to be a native speaker of or very proficient in the language(s) under investigation. While there are recorded cases of individuals knowing a large number of languages, these are typically closely related or at least related languages; in typological studies, on the other hand, it is typical to have data from languages from 15–20 different language families. Even in this case there has to be much more dependence upon observations of textual patterns (so that longer texts must be used) and much less upon introspective judgments than would be the case for linguists working in their native languages. In such a situation, we cannot expect the relatively quick and impressive types of language-universal generalizations which individual typological studies of, e.g., word order patterns have been able to produce; in fact, it is unlikely that any single researcher will be able to conduct studies of a genetically diverse enough group of languages to allow for the degree of confidence in universality which typologists are accustomed to. Rather, in order to achieve an extensive genetic spread, it is necessary for a variety of discourse analysts, each working in a number of languages, to develop a uniform means of systematically comparing their results from these different languages.
  
1.1  Cross-linguistic comparison of discourse function and categories

A side of the question of where the data to analyze, it is also necessary to typology discourse analysts consider the nature of the discourse categories that will be used. this very common for experts describe the category of discourse in different languages ​​to using the same words to describe something in a language they are investigating, for example, "Topics," "focus," "On the contrary," etc., but this does not mean that they are referring to the phenomenon of the same discourse. For example, although the term “topic” has been used to refer to a supposedly discourse-based category in a wide variety of languages, there is no cross-linguistic agreement about what a “topic” is. In each language, “topic” actually refers to whatever discourse properties result in a certain language-specific structure being used, so that the definition is a result of the language-specific pattern, and these structures in different languages actually serve clearly distinct functions.

In order to deal with this problem of cross-linguistic comparison of function, linguists working in typological discourse analysis have focused upon developing a set of criteria which make it possible to give an objective, cross-linguistic definition of the discourse function of a particular form or construction. Using these criteria, a linguist can go through a text in a given language, note all the occurrences of a given form or construction in that language, determine numerical scores for that form or construction according to various parameters (e.g. for an NP, how recently its referent has been mentioned, whether it refers to a human being, etc.), and then compare these scores with those of other constructions in other languages. The question, of course, is exactly which scores should be used in which cases, and this is a matter of ongoing research. A second approach to the problem of comparison is to use translation data; we can get some idea of the functional similarity of and difference between constructions in different languages by seeing how often and in what circumstances they translate as each other. In section 2, I will discuss parameters used in classification of discourse function; in section 3, I will discuss the use of translation data.

2 Universal Systems of Classification of Discourse Function

I will describe here various text-count methods which have been developed to give an objective, cross-linguistically applicable description of the discourse function of a given construction. The use of such text counts does not suggest that speakers themselves go through any calculations similar to those of the linguist, nor does it imply that a given text-count score will predict with 100 percent accuracy which construction will be used on each occasion. Rather, such counts are purely descriptive tools to allow for cross-linguistic comparison.

2.1 Referential distance and topic persistence

The most widely used text-counts, associated particularly with Talmy Givón and students of his, are called Referential Distance (RD) and Topic Persistence (TP). We can say that an NP is generally more topical if its RD is low and its TP is high, but of course we are really measuring two types of topicality here, anaphoric (RD) and cataphoric (TP). RD and TP counts make it possible to give a functional profile of a given construction or NP type. For example, suppose that we are trying to give a general characterization of the function of the active–passive alternation in English, e.g. Bill wrote that book vs. That book was written by Bill. We go through a text, collecting all active transitive and passive constructions, and then count the average RDs for the Agents of actives (Bill in Bill wrote that book), the Agents of passives (Bill in That book was written by Bill), the Patients of actives (that book in Bill wrote that book), and the Patients of passives (That book in That book was written by Bill). We then calculate the mean and median RD and TP scores for active Agents, passive Agents, active
Patients, and passive Patients, or list the populations in a table. By doing similar studies in a variety of languages, we can systematically compare the discourse functions of active and passive constructions in different languages. This approach has been useful in providing a typological perspective on functional alternations, clarifying the discourse motivations underlying these alternations, and also sharpening the descriptive tools for typological descriptions; it does not suggest that speakers make such calculations in deciding which construction to use (although RD can be interpreted as being generally correlated with cognitive accessibility). In the remainder of this section, I will discuss a number of studies which have been done using these measures.
  
2.1.1 RD and TP in analysis of voice systems

Voice alternations in different languages have been characterized in various descriptive grammars in a variety of ways, in particular Active vs. Passive, Direct vs. Inverse, Ergative vs. Antipassive, and (for Philippine languages) Agent Focus vs. Goal Focus. However, the basis for such characterizations has often been unclear. Consider, for example, the following constructions in Tagalog :
(1) Bumasa ang lalaki ng diyaryo.
read man newspaper
“The man read a newspaper.”
Case functions in Tagalog are marked by prepositions, here ang and ng. It is clear that ang marks intransitive subjects (e.g. matalino ang lalaki “intelligent ang man” = “The man is intelligent”). The question here is what general function to ascribe to ang and ng. One possibility is to say that ang marks subjects (both intransitive and transitive) and ng marks direct objects and oblique NPs. Then (1) would be an active construction, with lalaki as the subject and diyaryo as the direct object, while (2) would be a passive construction, with diyaryo as the subject and lalaki as the oblique Agent. Alternatively, we might say that ang is an absolutive case marker (marking intransitive subjects and direct objects), while ng is an ergative (transitive subject) and oblique case marker. Then (1) would be an antipassive construction (grammatically intransitive), with lalaki as the intransitive subject marked with the absolutive preposition ang, and diyaryo (which is in this case an oblique rather than direct object) marked with the oblique preposition ng, and (2) would be an ergative construction,
with lalaki as the transitive subject, marked with the ergative preposition ng, an diyaryo as the direct object, marked with the absolutive preposition ang. In fact, earlier studies of Philippine languages (e.g. Schachter and Otanes 1972) used yet anothe type of terminology, referring to ang as marking “focused” constituents (which causes confusion of another type in terms of cross-linguistic comparison, since the term “focus” is usually used with some sort of entirely different meaning) and ng as marking certain nonfocused constituents, so that (1) is an “Actor Focus” construction while (2) is a “Goal Focus” construction. Similar labeling problems arise in many other languages (see Givón 1994).

2.1.2 RD and word order

Linguists have also applied RD to investigating word order variation. Studies from a variety of languages have found that preverbal arguments have on average a higher RD than postverbal arguments (there does not seem to be any corresponding clear pattern relating TP and word order). However, it is possible to suggest a resolution to this apparent contradiction (although this is speculative and should be checked against more data). Supporting this idea is the fact that in the data from the only SVO language here, Spanish, the researcher specifically excluded existential-presentative constructions from the counts (see Bentivoglio 1983); if these constructions are included, the picture changes, as the postverbal subjects
have a higher RD (11.99, N = 141) than the preverbal ones (8.22, N = 180).

2.2 Temporal sequencing

Another criterion for categorizing discourse function in different languages is temporal
sequencing or foregrounding. Introduced in Labov (1972) (as the concept “narrative clause”), this was first extended to data in a variety of languages in Hopper (1979).
For example, Schiffrin (1981) shows that the English historical present is associated with temporally sequenced clauses, while Hopper (1979) shows that temporal sequencing is associated with the use of the verbal forms with a di-prefix in Malay. Myhill (1992) argues that, in languages with a relatively high frequency of VS order, sequencing is particularly associated with VS word order, while SV order is associated with unsequenced clauses. On the other hand, in languages with a lower frequency of VS order, this correlation is not found. This is shown by the data in table 8.3 (see also data from Old English in Hopper 1979). The Biblical Hebrew data here are particularly striking, in that they show that when the language changed to a lower frequency of VS order, the association between temporal sequencing and VS order disappeared. The concept of temporal sequencing therefore makes it possible to make a typological generalization regarding word order type.

2.3 Other types of text-counts

Linguists have proposed other types of text-counts which can be useful in giving a profile of the discourse function of a construction. Myhill and Xing (1996) propose a definition of the term “contrast” which can be objectively applied to naturally occurring usages so as to categorize individual clauses as contrastive or not (and also to distinguish between different subtypes of contrast), so that one or another contrastive function can be shown to be statistically associated with the use of a certain word order, intonation pattern, or particle (e.g. Japanese wa, Korean -(n)In). In Forrest’s (1994) study of voice alternations in Bella Coola, in addition to counts associated with NP information status such as RD and TP, she also uses a text-count distinguishing between NPs which refer to major characters in a story and those which do not, and shows that variation on this parameter correlates with the use of one or other voice construction.

3 Translation Data

Translation provides another means of comparing discourse functions in different languages. It is useful in that it gives some idea of the functional similarity or difference between constructions in different languages. For example, in Dryer’s (1994) study of voice in Kutenai, he asked a bilingual Kutenai–English speaker to translate a Kutenai text into English. He found that, out of 70 clauses using a certain Kutenai construction clearly associated with highly topical Patients, only nine were translated into English as passives, the rest being translated as actives, suggesting that this Kutenai construction is functionally like an inverse rather than a passive. Sometimes, translation data show that text-counts such as RD and TP do not give a true picture of the functional similarity or difference between different constructions in different languages. For example, Sun and Givón (1985) use data such as RD and TP to argue that object-fronting constructions in Chinese and Biblical Hebrew serve basically the same function. However, Myhill and Xing (1993) show that, if we look at translation data, we see that the object-fronting constructions in these languages are frequently not translated as each other; for example, of 82 OV constructions in a Biblical Hebrew database, 48 (59%) do not use an OV construction in the Chinese translation, while of 193 OV constructions in the Chinese translation, 159 (82%) do not use an OV construction in the Hebrew original. In other words, in the majority of cases, an OV construction in one language would not be used where an OV construction would be used in the other language. This shows that the Hebrew and Chinese OV constructions clearly differ significantly in discourse function, in spite of their RD and TP scores.

References

Bentivoglio, Paola. 1983. Topic continuity
and discontinuity in discourse: a
study of spoken Latin-American
Spanish. In Givón 1983a, pp. 255–312.
Blum-Kulka, Shoshana. 1991.
Interlanguage pragmatics: the case of
requests. In R. Phillipson, ed., Foreign/
Second Language Pedagogy Research,
pp. 255–72. Clevedon: Multilingual
Matters.
Brown, Penelope and Stephen C. Levinson.
1987. Politeness: Some Universals in
Language Usage. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Bybee, Joan L. 1985. Morphology.
Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Chafe, Wallace L. 1976. Givenness,
contrastiveness, definiteness, subjects,
topics, and point of view. In Li 1976,
pp. 25–56.
Chafe, Wallace L., ed. 1980a. The Pear Stories.
Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
Chafe, Wallace L. 1980b. The deployment
of consciousness in the production
Typology and Discourse Analysis 173
of a narrative. In Chafe 1990a,
pp. 9–50.

No comments:

Post a Comment