语言研究院、中国外语战略研究中心成立十周年庆祝活动
名家讲坛
讲座题目：On the scope of the grammatical form-frequency correspondence Hypothesis
时间：11月23日(周四) 14：00 – 16：00
地点：上海外国语大学（虹口校区）图书馆606室
主讲人: Martin Haspelmath（马丁·哈斯普马特）
主持人：吴建明
主讲人简介：
马丁· 哈斯普马特教授是世界著名的语言类型学家，先后在德国“马克斯·普朗克进化人类学研究所”、 “马克斯·普朗克人类历史科学研究所”工作，还担任莱比锡大学荣誉教授、欧洲科学院院士以及欧洲语言学会主席等职，主要研究领域涉及句法、形态、语言共性、语言接触与演变等。
本次报告，马丁先生将介绍获欧洲研究理事会资助的大型研究项目，即“语言用法与共性”的阶段性研究成果。
讲座摘要：
The form-frequency correspondence hypothesis says that when two grammatical patterns that differ minimally in meaning (i.e. that form a semantic opposition) occur with significantly different frequencies, the less frequent pattern tends to be overtly coded (or coded with more coding material), while the more frequent pattern tends to be zero-coded (or coded with less coding material). Salient examples are the pairs of categories in (1), where the first member is more frequent and coded with shorter material (or with zero) in all languages.
（1） | singular | plural | (book – book-s) |
present | future | (go – will go) | |
3rd person | 2nd person | (Spanish canta – canta-s) | |
nominative | accusative | (Hungarian ember – ember-t) | |
affirmative | negative | (go –don’t go) | |
allative | ablative | (to – from) | |
positive | comparative | (small – small-er) | |
predicative verb | nominalized verb | (go – go-ing) |
The idea that cross-linguistically systematic coding asymmetries like those in (1) are related to frequency of use is found in Greenberg (1963) and Croft (2003: Chapter 4), but the precise causal mechanism has not been widely discussed, and alternative views are still common (e.g. Haiman 2008 on iconic motivation, or the generative literature that still often appeals to abstract markedness).
In this presentation, I would like to present results from a larger research project that studies form-frequency correspondences in grammar and I argue that the scope of the observation is much broader than has generally been recognized. In particular, it comprises the pairs of forms given in (2).
（2） | noncausal | causal | (Swahili ganda – gand-isha ‘freeze’) |
causal | noncausal | (Maltese fetaħ – n-fetaħ ‘open’) | |
inalienable | alienable | (Nyulnyul nga-lirr – ja-n yil ‘my mouth/dog’) | |
alienable | inalienable | (Paamese ani – a-vat ‘coconut/head (no possr.)’ | |
singular | plural | (English carrot – carrot-s) | |
plural | singulative | (Welsh moron – moron-en) | |
P-argument | A-argument | (Dyirbal yarra – yarra-ŋgu ‘man’) | |
A-argument | P-argument | (Dyirbal ŋadya – ŋayguna ‘I’) |
These pairs seem to contradict the idea of a general form-frequency correspondence, but when looking more closely at the types of elements found in the first and the second line, one sees that the form-frequency hypothesis is strikingly confirmed: While for some kinds of meanings (such as ‘freeze’), the causal verb is clearly less frequent, the situation is the opposite for other kinds of verbs (such as ‘open’) – and analogously for the other cases.
Form-frequency correspondence also explains many other cross-linguistically systematic patterns that are normally seen as unrelated because grammatical marking and lexical marking are rarely seen together, e.g. the fact that some relations tend to be expressed by cases (e.g. ‘at’, ‘in’), and others by adpositions (e.g. ‘under’, ‘behind’, cf. Zwarts 2010), or that perfects tend to be expressed periphrastically (Dahl 1985).
I also briefly address the issue of a causal mechanism, arguing that the causal chain is “frequency –> predictability –> shortness of coding (or zero coding)”, and that an explanation of the ultimate sources of the frequency asymmetries is not necessary. This explanation is shown to be superior to alternative explanations in terms of semantic complexity that are still widespread.
References
Croft, William. 2003. Typology and universals. 2nd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Dahl, Östen. 1985. Tense and aspect systems. Oxford: Blackwell.
Greenberg, Joseph H. 1966. Language universals, with special reference to feature hierarchies. The Hague: Mouton.
Haiman, John. 2008. In defence of iconicity. Cognitive Linguistics 19(1). 35–48.
Zwarts, Joost. 2010. A hierarchy of locations: Evidence from the encoding of direction in adpositions and cases. Linguistics 48(5). 983–1009. doi:10.1515/ling.2010.032.
