Subordination and discourse segmentation revisited, or: Why matrix clauses may be more dependent than complements

Human Cognitive Processing

Volumn 8, Issue , 2001, Pages 337-357

  Verhagen, Arie ^a  

^a LEIDEN UNIVERSITY   (Netherlands)

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EID: 85190684566     PISSN: 13876724     EISSN: None     Source Type: Book Series    
DOI: 10.1075/hcp.8.18ver     Document Type: Chapter

References (55)

1. Under certain analyses, the second segment of (1) might be said to properly contain an infinite clause (the complement of want), but I will not consider that issue in this paper, though I believe that the present approach can ultimately be helpful in clarifying that as well.
2. See Verhagen (1995) for some suggestions.
3. This is not meant to imply that the three arguments are necessarily to be taken as equal. Recall that the issue here is just segmentation, not the assignment of (hierarchical) structure. Thus the grammatical structure of
4. could very well be taken as an indication that the last two arguments are to be taken as constituting a set to be added to the single argument in sentence
5. (cf. below). The point here is simply that the question of segmentation precedes the assignment of structure.
6. Again: only segmentation is the issue here, not the assignment of structural relationships; cf. note 2.
7. A clear exposition of the view of linguistic communication as influencing another person's cognition by displaying the intention to do so can be found in Keller (1995, p. 153ff., 1998, p. 136ff.).
8. NN' and also occurs, in slightly variable forms, in several other approaches to pragmatics.
9. This distinction is related, but not identical, to distinctions between different domains of use, for example the distinction between epistemic and content domains as proposed in Sweetser (1990)
10. or that between pragmatic and semantic sources of coherence as proposed in Sanders (1992).
11. Cf. Foolen (1996) and Verhagen (1996b, p. 274/5) for some discussion.
12. This difference consists in the distinction between what I called “speaker-hearer-subjectivity” and “character-subjectivity” (cf. below; also J. Sanders 1994).
13. In certain areas, such as that of language change, this difference is very important (cf. Verhagen 2000, for an example).
14. In this representation the coordinating conjunction is taken to be an element in the coordination dimension, but this is not crucial. At the moment I have no principled considerations to offer on this point, but I find this representation useful for expository purposes.
15. In a different terminology, a similar insight has been formulated for that-clauses, the most prototypical subclass of complements, by Wierzbicka (1988: 132-140): “… reference to knowledge is present in all sentences with THAT” (p.137; Wierzbicka in turn cites a few other linguists who have proposed partly similar analyses, notably Bolinger).
16. I believe that the mental space cum construction approach provides a generalization over these and other types of complements (linking the 'space building' feature to the construction and leaving other aspects of the semantics to the lexical specifications of the verbs and complementizers involved), as well as one that allows for integration into a more general theory of perspectivization.
17. The direction of the generalization I would like to propose is that causation is also attribution of the situation denoted by the complement clause to something else, but then to an objective factor (i.e. the cause) rather than to a subjective one.
18. In that perspective, the complementation construction would constitute an example of a particular kind of constructional polysemy.
19. See Verhagen (1996b) for some discussion of this idea, and Foolen (1996) for some criticism.
20. In Dutch, the matrix clauses do not have to contain the pro-form it, for neither category of predicate nominal. Thus Dutch does not only have matrix clauses of the type Een probleem is dat… (“A problem is that…”)
21. but also Duidelijk is dat… (lit. “Clear is that…”).
22. The parallel between these two types is one reason why in some grammatical traditions, the initial noun phrase in a clause of the type Een/het probleem is dat.. is analyzed as a preposed predicate nominal rather than a subject.
23. As with complement clauses, the matrix of a subject clause may also have a causal relationship with the subordinate clause (Cf. The result/reason is…). As mentioned in note 9, I think a further generalization is possible, so that we actually have constructional polysemy here, but I will not pursue that issue in this paper.
24. There should also be independent grammar-internal arguments for positing a construction such as (11) as part of the grammar of a language. I think such arguments can indeed be provided, at least for Dutch (cf. Verhagen 1996b and Foolen 1996, for somewhat different views).
25. Furthermore, this analysis has consequences for the grammatical characterization of subordination as such. Again, these issues are only indirectly related to the matter of discourse segmentation, so I will not go into them here.
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