Proverbial poetry: its settings and syntax
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+verb SUBJECT +verb +sentence +finite +nominal +S-comp -interrog.
TOPIC +article SUBJECT +finite +wh-phrase +noun +nominal +transitiv
+article +article +noun +noun etc. etc. 
what do you think she did2 ____________________
One will immediately notice the difference from traditional types of grammars, in that this specifies, in a matrix underneath the functional unit, the features of that unit. Thus, in tagmemic terms, one is given the slot and then the filler. This is in line with what tagmemics does, although this writer does consider a feature list more sophisticated and descriptively accurate than a mere listing of the grammatical class (N, NP, Adj., etc.) as given in the filler slot in tagmemics. Perlmutter is correct when he notes that relational grammars add another dimension to the linear order and dominance type approaches of most grammars, instead it focuses on inter-unital relations on the same level (sister rather than daughter relationships).1 Tagmemics initially divides the sentence in a manner comparable to the way daughter-dependency (viz., VSO) rather than as transformational grammar (viz., VP + NP, where VP is composed of a V and an O).2 On a very pragmatic level, tagmemics specifies four features about each constituent (slot, filler, role/case, cohesion). These features are usually listed diagonally above (slot) and below (role) ____________________
(Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1983), p. ix. 2R. A. Hudson, English Complex Sentences: An Introduction to Systematic Grammar (Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Co., 1971), pp. 21-22. the tree diagram lines and at the node (filler class [N, V, Adj etc.]). Hudson's dependency grammar lists all features columnically at the node. A columnic node list allows for the inclusion of other features (viz., parsings) which are not normally specified in the tagmemic above/below branch-line display technique. Relational grammar is helpful because of its focus on sister relations. These relations will be monitored in the cohesion box of the tagmeme.
pragmalinguistics has added support to the procedure taken in this dissertation--that non-grammatical information (historical situation and setting, as well as genre and ideational patterns) is important to the total meaning package of a text. Pragmatics seems to be based on the works of Austin,1 and Searle,2 although neither of these men have employed the term.3 While this field of study is ____________________
Oxford University Press, 1962). 2J. R. Searle, Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969); and "A Classification of Illocutionary Acts," Language in Society 5:1 (1976):1-23. 3For a very extensive bibliography of this field vid., Jer Verschueren, Pragmatics: An Annotated Bibliography (Amsterdam: John Benjamins B.V., 1978); or a work edited by Herman Parret, Marina Sbisa, and Jef Verschueren, Possibilities and Limitations of Pragmatics: rather anomalous and undefinable at present,1 it may be seen as an attempt to describe the functions and uses to which speech acts (rather than sentences) are put-- influencing another's intentions, goals, actions, or even beliefs. Thus pragmatics addresses the broader communication process as it relates to the function of language in specific speech acts.2 That is, how is language used? In pragmatics it is not enough only to describe what type of rhetorical device is used but one must also note how this device actually functions in the communication process between the speaker and the hearer.3 This approach is contrasted with a strictly structuralistic-text-limited methodology which inseparably ____________________ Proceedings of the Conference on Pragmatics Urbino, July 8-14, 1979 (Amsterdam: John Benjamins B.V., 1981), pp. 799-831; as well as the journals Pragmatics Microfiche, Journal of Pragmatics, and Pragmatics and Beyond. 1Parret, "Introduction," in Possibilities and Limitations of Pragmatics, pp. 7-8. 2Hugo Verdaasdonk, "Concepts of Acceptance and the Basis of a Theory of Texts," in Pragmatics of Language and Literature, ed. Teun A. van Dijk (Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Co., 1976), p. 184; Jacob Mey, "Introduction," in Pragmalinguistics: Theory and Practice, p. 10; Franz Guenther and Christian Rohrer, "Introduction: Formal Semantics, Logic and Linguistics," in Studies in Formal
Franz Guenther and Christian Rohrer (Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Co., 1978), p. 1.
of a Theory of Texts," p. 196. locks text and form to meaning.1 Pragmatics tries to isolate scientifically how speaker/hearer situation, intention, as well as text and contexts influence what the speech act means or is designed to accomplish. Pragmatics, then, attempts to isolate the differences between sentences which are phonetically equivalent but used in diverse ways. For example, if one says "Take a seat, here," note how differently it is understood depending on whether it is a cordial invitation, a strict order, a question, or a piece of reflective advice.2 Pragmatics distinguishes between the following three parts of a speech act: (1) locution (the simple utterance itself in terms of syntactic and semantic well-formedness and content); (2) illocution (what the speech act is intended to do); and (3) perlocutionary effect (what effect it actually does have on the hearer).3 Thus, one ____________________
delimitation of semantics and the characterization of meaning: Some remarks," Possibilities and Limitations of
rhetoric," in Possibilities and Limitations of Pragmatics, pp. 418-19. Cf. also "You are going to leave" as a statement, question and command (Paul Gochet, "How to combine speech act theory with formal semantics: A new account of Searle's concept of proposition," in Possibilities and Limitations of Pragmatics, p. 252.
Act a Poem Is," in Pragmatics of Language and Literature, p. 144; Franz Hundsnurscher, "On Insisting," in Possibilities
"Semantics and the Relation between Language and may utter the locution "Look out," with the illocutionary intent to "warn" (desiring that the individual duck), but have the actual perlocutionary effect of paralyzingly alarming the hearer. Pragmatics isolates and examines each of these aspects of speech. It seems to this writer that such studies will hold rich rewards for biblical interpreters, although, because of the recentness of this field, it has not officially entered the biblical studies arena. One final contribution which pragmatics makes is in the area of context. Pragmatics desires to examine and formalize utterances in terms of co-text (linguistic environments of or in the text itself) and context (non-linguistic situational features (speaker, audience, spatio-temporal location, atmosphere, etc.).1 Contexts, therefore, are not static, but are dynamic and meaning- creative.2 Thus, Olson is correct when he complains about
____________________ Non-language," in Pragmalinguistics: Theory and Practice, p. 115.
and Jorgen Door, "Language, Theory, and Conditions for Production," in Pragmalinguistics: Theory and Practice, pp. 46-47, where it is noted that context or situation may be unique to the person while other aspects are more socially determined and predictable. Thus the speech situation is composed of all socio-psychological factors which determine and help to interpret the speech utterance (cf. Teun A. Van Dijk, "Pragmatics and Poetics," in
the very vague, unspecified statements concerning context in language studies, which pay lip service to the importance of context, but which, in fact, have not explicated specifically how that importance makes itself felt in actual utterances.1 The initial chapters of this study were an attempt to weave an historical, situational and ideational tapestry for wisdom against which individual proverbs and collections of proverbs may be understood. Although this is merely the inchoation of such a study, which needs to be made proverb specific, at least some broad sociological, psychological, and notional parameters have been broached as a background to a scrutiny of one very restricted aspect of the text itself--syntactic parallelism. It must be observed that the schools of Prague2 ____________________ Theory and Practice, p. 12. 1Svend Erik Olsen, "Psychopathology, Interaction, and Pragmatic Linguistics," in Pragmalinguistics: Theory and Practice, p. 247. 2The Prague school can easily be accessed in works such as Josef Vachek's book, The Linguistic School of Prague (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1966); and a work which he compiled, A Prague School Reader in Linguistics (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1966); as well as the works of Roman Jakobson which are heavily used in the poetics aspect of this study. On the more literary output of this group, vid. Paul L. Garvin, ed., A Prague School Reader on Esthetics, Literary Structure, and Style, (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1964).
that the Prague group has made its impact on this study through the theoretical poetics of Jakobson, whose sensitivities are reflected by O'Connor. The algebraic calculus of Copenhagen's Hjelmslev is indirectly reflected in Pike's tagmemic syntactic calculus.2
employed in this study, it is important to examine one other linguistic approach which has been beneficial--case grammar. A form of case grammar will be embedded into the role box in the tagmemic model, so, in fact, to study case is to study part of the tagmemic model. Case grammar was initially proposed in an article by Charles Fillmore (1968).3 While Fillmore concentrated more on nominal case relationships, Chafe (1970) independently began with the verb, then specified ____________________
Glossematics: A Study in the Methodology of the Humanities with Special Reference to Linguistics," Travaux du cercle
between some of these groups, vid. Vern S. Poythress, "Structuralism and Biblical Studies," JETS 21.3 (1978): 228.
3Charles J. Fillmore, "The Case for Case," in Universals in Linguistic Theory, ed. Emmon Bach and Robert Harms (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1968), pp. 1-88.
contribution to TG, described relationships between semantic-oriented deep structures and the grammatical realizations on the syntactic surface structure. This fruitful approach has been pursued in separate monographs and has found its way into most present transformational generative systems.2 Case grammar provides one nexus ____________________ 1Chafe, Meaning and the Structure of Language pp. 95-104. 2Walter A. Cook, Case Grammar: Development of the Matrix Model (1970-78) (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1979) presents one of the most lucid explications of this approach to date. John M. Anderson,
Cambridge University Press, 1971). John Platt applied case grammar to tagmemic analysis in Grammatical Form and
vol. 5, ed. S. C. Dik and J. G. Kooij (Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Co., 1971). Cf. also Longacre, An
Pike prefers to designate this as "role" rather than "case," since he sees these types of relations on all levels rather than strictly on the sentence level as TG does [p. xx]). Cook is right when he observes that case grammar provides tagmemics with a means of monitoring and separating deep and surface structures (Cook, Case Grammar, p. 33). For an application of case grammar to TG, vid. Liles, An Introduction to Linguistics, pp. 146-70. More recent, with a European flavor, is a work edited by Werner Abraham, Valence, Semantic Case, and Grammatical Relations, Studies in Language Companion Series, vol. 1 (Amsterdam: John Benjamins B.V., 1978). Werner Abraham, "Valence and Case: Remarks on Their Contribution to the Identification of Grammatical Relations," in Valence, Semantic Case, and
now given up this approach as a consequence of a work by P. Finke, Theoretische Probleme der Kasusgrammtik (Kronberg: Scriptor, 1974). between semantics and syntax. But the connection is very diversified so one should not expect a one-to-one mapping; rather, case grammar reveals, in elements of syntactic sameness, semantic diversity. Instead of examining functions, such as subject and object, semantic roles provide a better means of specifying deep structure. Nida has noted that these roles are of three basic types: (1) participants (agents, recipients, et al.); (2) qualifications (ways in which events, entities and abstracts are qualified and quantified); and (3) relationships (the way in which constituents are related to entities of space, time, and logical order).1 Traditionally, the subject has been described as the one who performs the action, which is a bit strained in the following sentence: "The pungent proverb was queerly quoted in Annette's anagram."2 The following illustrations demonstrate the semantic incongruity of syntactically equivalent units and, by example, elucidate the types of deep relationships which case grammar treats.3 Examine the diverse relations of ____________________
16.
2Liles, An Introduction to Linguistics, p. 140.
3For statements on the lack of congruence between syntactic and case functions, vid. Palmer, Semantics, p. 147; Abraham, "Valence and Case: Remarks on Their Contribution to the Identification of Grammatical Relations," pp. 710, 714.
Dick received a headache from reading the paper. (Dick = Subject = Experiencer) Weston received a halibut from the incoming net. (Weston = Subject = Goal) Don went to a Cubs game. (Don = Subject = actor) Chicago is cold, wet and windy. (Chicago = Subject = item) The computer destroyed the data. (Computer = subject = agent/instrument) The March snows are melting. (Snows = subject = patient)1
functions in the following sentences:2 I ate salmon with my spoon. (instrument) I ate salmon with my pie. (accompaniment/patient) I ate salmon with my wife. (accompaniment/agent) I ate salmon with a stomach ache. (accompaniment/ manner or circumstance)
(subject, object, prepositional phrase, etc.) and semantic categories should not be strange to biblical scholars, as many of the intermediate grammars contain such associations.3 Some linguists have attempted to ____________________ 1For similar examples, vid. Brown and Miller, Syntax, p. 338; Cook, Case Grammar, p. 140; or Barnwell, Introduction to Semantics and Translation, pp. 167-76 (which provides a series of explanations and easy problems in a pedagogical manner which may be used to teach this method to beginning students via scriptural examples). 2Barnwell, Introduction to Semantics and Translation, p. 173. 3Ronald J. Williams, Hebrew Syntax: An Outline (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1967); or H. E. Dana and J. R. Mantey, A Manual Grammar of the Greek New
determine, through frequency, what are to be considered normal syntactic, case mappings. Cook, for example, has observed the following hierarchy the subject slot prefers first an agent, second an instrument, and third an object.1 One of the significant features of case grammar is its ability to describe semantic relations which are language universals. This makes translation and bi-lingual work more definable in terms of common deep categories, even though the surface grammatical forms may be very diverse. Pike suggests that language is a composite of relations of form and meaning and that both of these should be monitored simultaneously.2 Numerous lists of case roles have been suggested. An interesting comparison of these is presented by Longacre.3 The following is a list of roles defined and ____________________
(Lisse: The Peter De Ridder Press, 1975), pp. 21, 24. 3Longacre gives extended definitions and examples of the following cases: experiencer, patient, agent, range, measure, instrument, locative, source, goal, path, time, manner, cause (An Anatomy of Speech Notions, pp. 22-37). He also provides a chart which compares the results of Fillmore, Platt, Chafe, Cook, and himself (p. 25). Cf. Chafe, Meaning and the Structure of Language, pp. 144-66; Cook, Case Grammar, p. 18; Barnwell, Introduction to Semantics and Translation, p. 168; and Liles, An Introduction to Linguistics, pp. 147-61. Beekman provides a helpful chart giving definitions and examples (John Beekman et al., The Semantic Structure of Written Communication, p. 56). exampled which will be employed in this study. Agent: the instigator (if animate) or doer (animate or inanimate) of an act She introduced the speaker. [Actor] The water ran down the wadi. Experiencer: animate being which undergoes or is affected by the event
John hit Bill. Patient: that which is affected by the event (inanimate) The antifreeze froze.1 Causer: that which instigates the event He made me happy. Item: that which is named or talked about The banana smelled rotten. Instrument: the force or object used in the carrying out of the action She corrected the exam with a pencil. Source: the origin Yüklə 6,58 Mb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
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