Andrew Goatly Dept. of English, Lingnan University, Tuen Mun, N.T. Hong Kong, goatly@Ln.edu.hk

‘We think of our world as being populated by discrete physical objects. These objects are capable of moving about through space and making contact with one another. Motion is driven by energy, which some objects draw from internal resources and others receive from the exterior. When motion results in forceful physical contact, energy is transmitted from the mover to the impacted object, which may thereby be set in motion to participate in further interactions.’ This billiard ball model ‘exerts a powerful influence on both everyday and scientific thought, and no doubt reflects fundamental aspects of cognitive organisation, … providing the conceptual basis for certain grammatical constructs. Among these universal categories are noun and verb’ (L 1991: 13-14)

OBJECT ENERGETIC

INTERACTIONS INSTANTIATED In space In time EXTENSION Spatially compact

Temporally unbounded Temporally compact Spatially unbounded

AUTONOMY/ DEPENDENCE

Autonomous Dependent

WORD CLASS Noun Verb

‘The billiard-ball model also figures in the characterisation of the prototypical finite clause, which inherits its profile from a content verb designating an energetic interaction’. The action chain can be used to model many aspects of clause structure:

HEAD TAIL head tail

Viewer

Agent Patient SETTING

Commonsense views of prototypical actions, like naïve Newtonian physics, are represented by the canonical event (CE) model (Langacker 1991) (Figure 1). In an event/action one discrete object (‘billiard ball’), the head of the action chain or agent transmits energy, by forceful physical contact, to another (‘billiard ball’), a patient, resulting in a change of state (the squiggly arrow). This takes place within a setting and a viewer observes it from an external standpoint.

(A) The Affected participant in a physical process/CE is passive and controllable: the billiard-ball which is hit. But thermodynamics and the theory of entropy undermine this, allowing for the dissipation of energy :

“Thus the "negative" property of dissipation shows that, unlike dynamic objects, thermodynamic objects can only be partially controlled. Occasionally they "break loose" into spontaneous change” (Prigogine and Stengers 1985: 120).

 

The CE model depends upon the absolute distinction between things and energetic interactions, undermined by relativity theory, which necessitated the notion of process or event as primary:“Indeed it is not possible in relativity to obtain a consistent definition of an extended rigid body, … Actually, relativity implies that neither the point particles nor the quasi-rigid body can be taken as primary concepts. Rather these have to be expressed in terms of events and processes” (Bohm 1980:123-124).

The CE model separates setting (environment), participants and their energetic interactions. This is challenged by Gaia theory: that the world, including the atmosphere, oceans, biota, rocks and minerals of the crust, functions as one large self-regulating system (Lovelock 1988: 19). Gaia emphasises wholeness and interrelatedness, abolishing the dangerous separation between CE’s agents, settings, and patients.

‘Properties characteristic of a prototypical transitive clause: (1) it has two participants expressed by overt nominals that

function as subject and object(2) it describes an event (as opposed to a static situation) (3) the event is energetic, relatively brief and has a well-

defined endpoint (4) the subject and object represent discrete, highly

individuated physical entities (5) these entities already exist when the event occurs (i.e.

they are not products of the event) (6) the subject and object are fully distinct and participate in a

strongly asymmetrical relationship (7) the subject’s participation is volitional, while that of the

object is non-volitional (8) the subject is the source of the energy and the object is its

target(9) the object is totally affected by the action.’ (L 1991: 302)

Traditionally

fishermen

caught

100,000 tons of fish

a year in the North Sea

Circumstance (time setting)

Actor Process

Affected/Goal

Circumstance (time setting)

Circumstance (place setting)

Adverbial NominalSubject

Verbal Group

Nominal Object

Adverbial Adverbial

A division into agentive participants (fishermen), affected participants (fish) and circumstances (North Sea) on the other, which is not consonant with modern scientific theory, Gaia theory in particular.

The particular division into (volitional) agent and (passive) affected, which conflicts with the notion of matter being active or with feedback within Gaia. The fish are not thought to have any effect on the fisherman, though it is their presence and market value which causes the fishermen to catch them: a false unidirectionality of cause and effect.

The division into agent/affected participants, on the one hand, and location circumstances on the other, misguidedly suggesting that the environment, the circumstance, is either powerless, or is not affected. For example “The North Sea” is seen as part of the setting, rather than involved in or affected by the process, as inevitably it is from an environmental point of view.

  The categorization of phenomena into processes and things, which is doubtful given the primacy of process in modern physics. The catching is seen as a process, but the fishermen and the tons of fish and the North Sea as relatively permanent things or substances.

 Choice of subject (theme/participant) partly determined by the empathy hierarchy: 

speaker > hearer > human > animal > physical object > abstract entity

The dog chased me + I was chased by the dogI chased the dog ??The dog was chased by me

Doubtful case is because the subject is neither the agent nor very high in the empathy hierarchy (L 1991: 307). ‘Since animacy is strongly correlated with ability to serve as an energy source, there is a natural association between subjects and the upper portion of the [empathy] hierarchy’ (L 1991: 322)

 

Imposing the empathy hierarchy and the correlation between energy sources and animacy onto the canonical event we have the construal of the prototypical clause in which a volitional human agent provides the energy to act upon a passive (perhaps non-human) patient in a setting /environment which is marginalized as less important. This typical construal of material events is one which is out of step with the insights of modern scientific thinking and environmentally dangerous. It suggests humans can dominate or ignore a passive nature.

To overcome the misrepresentations of the nature of matter and life inherent in the CE model and construed by congruent grammar, in English certain kinds of grammatical metaphor can be employed, more in tune with modern/ postmodern physics. I shall call these structures consonant.

I have suggested ways of using marked or grammatically metaphorical English constructions to construe the world in a less billiard-ball, less canonical event and more ecologically-friendly way:(Goatly 1996, 2000, 2007)

Activation of tokens Activation of experiences / phenomena Reciprocal verbs Nominalization

‘The garden lay upon a slope surmounted by a plain of a small bowling green; beneath us stood a grove’. (Wordsworth: The Prelude)

the garden was below a slope the garden lay upon a slope

the slope (was) above the plain of a small bowling green, a slope surmounted by a plain of a small bowling green

beneath us was a grove beneath us stood a grove

‘the whole cave busies the eye with images and forms boldly assembled’

cf. I looked long and hard at the cave and its connected images and forms

‘The sky and sea merged at the horizon’ cf ‘the sky merged with the sea’

Blurring the distinction between process and thing by using nominals to refer to processes and eliminate reference to participants: ‘Economic growth causes pollution’(cf. ‘the economy grows and this causes X to pollute Y’)

Setting-subject constructions (Activation of Circumstances)

Creative processes Noun incorporation into verbs Meteorological conditions Reflexives and middles Ergatives Dative case

In canonical events there is a distinction between stable inclusive setting and the smaller more mobile participants (L 1991: 34) Some structures blur this distinction:

1. Thursday saw yet another startling development2. The dam contains 10,000 million gallons of water.3. The garden is swarming with bees4. The flowers are glistening with dew

In 3. and 4. ‘The subject hosts a certain type of activity by the components of a mass that is essentially co-extensive with it, so that instances of that activity also extend to its boundaries’

There constructions There was a loud commotion There is a vase on the table

‘There designates an abstract setting construed as hosting some relationship’ (L 1991: 352)

blur the distinction between process and participant, by making the participant dependent on the process: light a fire, write a letter, knit a sweater, and sing a song, live a hard life, fight a good fight With the cognate noun construction ‘existence of the thing referred to by the nominalization is limited to the time-span of the verb’s temporal profile’ (L 1991: 363)

The reified process in cognate object constructions is not really the tail of an action chain—since there is no sense that there is a transfer of energy affecting another participant, the end of the path of energy flow (L 1991: 364)

e.g. Latin amo I love; Shoshoni: ta-kahni-pai; Tetelcingo Nahuatl tonal-kiisa [sun-emerge] ‘sun come out’ and lapis-kwilowa [pencil-write] ‘write with pencil’ (L 1991: 374-5) cf. miaow

These seem to make the noun syntactically and morphologically dependent on the verb. Things are now no longer independent of processes.

Omission of subject in Chinese?

In ‘It is raining’ it refers to ‘ambience or all encompassing environment’ ‘It embraces weather, time, circumstance, whatever is obvious by the nature of reality or the implications of context’ (Bolinger 1977: 84-5): abstract setting-- ‘the “dummy” or “ambient” it pushes lack of specificity to the limit; its referent is the polar opposite of a well-articulated, clearly focused participant, being characterised instead by maximal extension and minimal differentiation.’ ‘it neutralises the setting/participant distinction…’(L 1991: 377)

Reflexives washed himself and middle verbs wash, stand, stretch (ergative verbs in Halliday) blur the distinction between actor/agent and goal/patient. ‘Hence a true reflexive and a middle represent successive degrees of departure from the archetypal conception of distinct objects interacting asymmetrically—they share the property of conflating dual roles in a single participant, but the middle goes further by lacking even the expectation of distinct participants’.(L 1991: 371) ‘The book is selling well’: unspecificity of the action chain head. The event is now symmetrical.

In languages with case markings according to the Ergative/Absolutive system (rather than Nominative/Accusative system) transitive subject is specially marked (ergative) while intransitive subject and transitive object have same (usu. zero-marked) form (absolutive).

Halliday and Langacker (1991: 387) ergative class of verbs: cook, sail, tear, boil, freeze, etc

The ergative system reverses the action-chain canonical event path of energy flow

The ice cracked. A rock cracked the ice. The waiter cracked the ice with a rock. The manager made the waiter crack the ice with a

rock. The owner had the manager make the waiter

crack the ice with a rock.

‘Either convention or personal choice may lead a speaker to focus just on the final segment of an action chain, effectively portraying it as an autonomous occurrence’(L 1991:389) The energy for the interaction could therefore be seen as residing within the theme participant, e.g. the ice.

Ergatives in Chinese?

Accusative marking of Objects associated with the canonical event model.: directionality and reaching the goal special examples of asymmetry and completion. ACC-marked objects associated with this pattern.

Er klopte mich (accusative) auf der Shulter‘he hit me on the shoulder’ 

Er klopfte mir (dative) auf der Shulter:‘he patted me on the shoulder’

treffen ‘go to meet possibly after arranging to do so’

ACC more asymmetricbegegnen ‘encounter by chance’ DAT symmetrical and non-volitional

jagen ‘chase, hunt’ ACC subject controls the action; object’s action is avoidancefolgen ‘follow’ DAT intent to reach not necessary; indirect object has some independence or initiative of movement—less controlled.

1. Taroo ga ziroo o ik-ase-taTaro NOM Jiro ACC go-CAUS-PAST

2. Taroo ga ziroo ni ik-ase-taTaro NOM Jiro DAT go-CAUS-PAST

o is used in 1. when Taro is indifferent as to whether Jiro consents to go. Ni is used in 2. where Jiro willingly carries out the action of going. Typically the dative or instrumental case marks a partly agentive causee, accusative a passive participant. (L 1991: 411-12).

So typical canonical event is non-reciprocal and asymmetric. Dative indicates that the profiled relationship significantly deviates from the accusative schema in terms of asymmetry, contact or completion. (L 1991: 400-1)

Activation of Tokens: more active environment Activation of Experiences: more active perceived

environment Reciprocal verbs: two billiard balls equally active Nominalisation: interaction becomes participant/agent Setting-subject/circumstance-actor constructions (there,

etc.) environment and participants blurred Creative processes and cognate objects: participant not

independent of process Noun incorporation in verbs: participant not independent

of process Ambient it (meteorological expressions): environment

and process blurred Reflexives: process involves one participant Ergative/middle: patient becomes more active Dative: agent less in control, patient more independent

David Peat in Blackfoot Physics (1996), following David Bohm (1980), recognised that Niitsi’powahsin structures the world in ways closer to the insights of modern theoretical physics.Bohm met several Algonquin speakers before his death and saw a correspondence between their language/world-view and the findings of modern physics. “What to Bohm had been a major breakthrough in human thought – quantum theory, relativity, his implicate order and rheomode – were part of the everyday life and speech of the Blackfoot…” (pp. 237-238).

Peat presents interesting informant evidence on the nature of Niitsi’powahsin: “Sa’ke’j Henderson has said that he can go for a whole day without ever speaking a noun, just dealing in the rhythms and vibrations of process. Nouns do exist within the language but, like the vortex that forms in a fast flowing river, the nouns are not primary in themselves but are temporary aspects of the everflowing process” (p. 237).

Prefixes and suffixes, and other variations of “verb stems” are numerous, distinguishing: transitive-intransitive; “animate-inanimate”; independent-conjunctive-subjunctive-imperative-unreal; “singular-plural”; “first-first+second-second-third-fourth person”; “present-future-past tense”; and durative-perfective “aspect”, giving well over a hundred possible inflexions. “Verb stems” are often complex, including “negatives, quantifiers, intensifiers, all kinds of adverbials, and many many others, including numerous morphemes which would be main or auxiliary verbs in other languages” (Frantz 1991: 84).

“Verbalisation” incorporates “nouns” into “verbs”

by suffixation:–yi, can derive intransitive verbs from “nouns”

with a meaning equivalent to the English Relational process plus Value: ínaa (chief) ikitáaksinaayi “you will be chief”.

–wa’si conveys the meaning of “turning into”: nítohkiáayowa’si “I bear became” or “I became enraged”

--hkaa/-Ihkaa carries the meaning “acquire” iimííhkaayaawa “they acquired fish” “they fished”.

However, native speakers, like Ryan Heavy Head (personal communication) dispute Frantz’s analytical categories.

 

“It’s apparent to me that there were never any ‘nouns’ here to begin with. Ohkiaayo is not literally a “bear”, nor mamii a “fish”- each of these supposed nouns are really just describing characteristics, events, processes, and such. Ohkiaayo is not verbalized with the addition of -wa’si, instead, -wa’si just describes the state of its manifestation, the early stage of transformation toward ohkiaayo-ness (which includes rage, the practice of violently seizing, gestures of intimidation, etc) … There really are no nouns that I can find in Niitsi’powahsin [Blackfoot] to verbalise.”

What Western languages refer to with nouns is referred to by verbs or clauses, undermining the noun-verb distinction:

conversions -- “intransitive verb used as a noun stem referring to the subject of the underlying verb” (Frantz 116 ff.) e.g., omiksi áyo’kaiksi ‘who sleep/those sleepers’.

associated instrument nominalizations -- a’tsiS added to “Animate” Intransitive stems, e.g.: Sináákia’tsisi ‘which makes an image/book’; ‘which cut in strips/scissors’, ‘which covers/lid’.

instrumental “nominalisations” with the ‘instrument/means’ prefix: omoht-/iiht-/oht-, e.g. iihtáóoyo’pa ‘that one eats with/fork’; ‘that one speaks with/telephone’, ‘that one buys with/money’, ‘that one sees afar with/telescope’.

locational nominals with the prefix it-/iit (‘there’), e.g. iitáóoyo’pi ‘where one eats/restaurant’; ‘that one eats on/table’, ‘where one washes clothes/laundry’, ‘where one washes dishes/sink’.

In ‘A Conceptual Anatomy of the Blackfoot Word’ (2004), abandoning SAE grammatical categories, Leroy and Ryan distinguish 3 linguistic levels in a ‘sentence’. áóhtakoistsi, or “sounding” aanissin or “the completed saying.” áíkia’pii reference to multiple happenings or one event as dependent on another

the smallest meaningful unit is called áóhtakoistsi, or “sounding”, rather like the –ing of English. Unlike morphemes these units “suggest only a potential to contribute to transitional meaning, to mark a temporary aspect of a view, quality, process or essence associated with an event not yet delineated” (p. 33).

áóhtakoistsi can be joined together into aanissin to convey the experience of an event, “marking a perceptible happening that issues from a more all-encompassing dimension of reality as constant flux”. Niitsi’powahsin addresses different aspects of an event that English might label with the same noun or its hyponyms.

 

The English speaker has the generic word book and a small group of specific type-terminology like text, novel, journal etc.

The Blackfoot speaker can have multiple perspectives on this “object” in terms of various processes:

sinaakia’tsisi (‘facilitates the generation of images’), iihtáísinaakio’pi (‘means of generating images’), okstakia’tsisi (‘facilitates recording’), áípá’sókinnihpi (‘held wide open and flat’).

The referent of aanissin is not a subject or an object, and does not suggest a relationship between agent/actor and patient/goal. Aanissin is action alone, or the manifestation of form. “Actors” and “Goals” are inseparable from, arising within, or the essence of the event.

So the distinction between noun and verb entirely dissolves in the Blackfoot language, as one cannot exist without the other (Leroy and Ryan 33).

Aanissin can be combined into áíkia’pii even though “words” equivalent to book already represent a complete idea in Niitsi’powahsin. Below we have “that boy brought a chair”: which in Blackfoot involves at least three processes: moving/ transferring near, being young and facilitating sitting:iihpommaatooma anna saahkómaapiwa amoyi asóópa’tsisi

iih pommaat oom wa ann wa saahk oma a’pii wa amo yi a’s opii a’tsis yi by way of

transfer move ing that familiar

ing young yet state of

ing this near

ing bec-ome

sit facil- itate

ing

English (German, Japanese) to some extent through non-congruent structures can use marked grammar to construe a world of process more in keeping with or consonant with the insights of modern physics.

Blackfoot does this in a much more fundamental way. It undermines the SAE structures which reinforce unhelpful attitudes to the environment (Goatly 2007, chapter 7)

The idea that as volitional Actors on passive Goals we humans can dominate nature in a unidirectional fashion, or that we can separate ourselves off from our environmental settings, Circumstances, has proved and will increasingly prove disastrous.

We need the voice of Blackfoot and languages like it. How does Chinese compare: is it more like English or Blackfoot?

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