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A CREAKY GRAMMAR OF PATHS
John Robert "Haj" Ross
University of North Texas
Friday, October 29, 3:30PM MJH Rm 126
Sponsored by the Stanford Humanities Center/Mellon Foundation
Graduate Research Program
This talk will concern the grammar of "paths" --- the large macroconstituents which specify where "themes" --- the actants which move, to use Jeff Gruber's term --- begin their movement, continue it, and end it. "From LA along the coast to SF" is a typical path, consisting of only a Source, a Trajectory, and a Goal. All of these are optional; only the central one can be repeated in a path as many times as one wants. These three types of legs of paths all have a common structure, all can be modified by adverbs like "just", "right", "straight", "spang", "smackdab" and "plumb"; and most pathworthy prepositions can be followed by "there", which turns out to be restricted to occurring in paths and locatives. Cf. "[along/behind/under] there", vs. "[*at/*beside*between] there". "Where", however, often thought to correspond closely to "there", has in fact a more limited distribution: it can only occur after the two end-prepositions "from" and "to", [As we see from "who jumped [from where / *along where / to where?"]] My work has led me to a lot of surprising restrictions on proforms like "there" (and related spatial terms containing the "-ere" morpheme, like "[every/some/any/no]where", and temporal analogues like "now/then/[sometime/anytime, etc.]". These "contexters" (a loathesome term I feel, "faute de mieux", forced to use) cannot advance (cf. "I cleared the snow from there" but not "*I cleared there of the snow"); only some of them can be preposed (cf. "There I would never jump [from / *along]"); and only some of them can be modified by "right" (cf. "We're going to fly [from (right) there / along (*right) there]", and also "We're going to leave (from) there at noon" vs. "We're going to leave *(from) right there at noon".
These are not isolated facts; the function of spatial proforms like "here, there", and "where" is to background the subconstituents of the paths in which they can occur, by contrast with the constituents which are pronominalized with definite pronouns like "she, he, it", and "they". Constituents that are linked to the former type of proforms cannot serve as topics, while those linked to the latter type can: "What Mort said about the tower was that[ that was what he would leap from / *there was where he would leap from]".
I want to use the details of the syntax of paths to arrive at a deeper understanding of the spatial basis of the semantics of many prepositions, as well as verbs and nouns. For instance, whether an NP is pronominalized with "it" or "there" affects whether it can be taken as a patient: "What they did to the sidewalk was to clear the snow [from it / ?from there]". And while it feels correct to treat many uses of from as being metaphorically extended Sources, I believe that the microsyntax of paths can tell us something about exactly how this extension takes place. The further away a path goes from its spatial roots, the less can its legs be modified by "right": cf. "I am clearing the snow (right) from the driveway" vs. "I am learning calc [(right) from the book / (?right) from Professor Dudsworth]" vs. "I am benefitting (*right) from your advice" vs. "I stopped him (**right) from publishing the book".
Metaphorical extension lies at the heart of semantactic change, and thus of grammaticalization. Terms taken from the spatial vocabulary of languages are used again and again as a basis for talking about time "( (??right) on Tuesday)", about aspect "( (*right) in the course of studying)", grammatical role and case ("surprising (**right) to me"); about quality ( "(*right) under par"), about quantity ("a high number"), emotions ("in love, on edge"), and too many others to mention. It may even be the case that in any language, space is the basis for the most metaphors. Whether or not this proves to be right, it is my hope that the greater the understanding we have of the literal spatial system, the greater clarity we will be able to bring to bear on the ways in which this system can be extended to provide the foundations for the conceptual architecture of a language.
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