Great post, Joanna, as usual!
Herb
-----Original Message-----
From: Johanna Rubba [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Sunday, March 12, 2006 10:03 PM
To: Stahlke, Herbert F.W.
Cc: Jo Rubba
Subject: post, please?
Hi, Herb,
My account is supposed to be fixed, but apparently it is not. Could you
post this for me?
"Running from the back of his skull down to the front, is a patch of
white hair that opens up into his lips."
My main question about this sentence is how on earth a patch of white
hair can get from the front of the skull to a position opening up into
one's lips. Is this a description of a noseless jetti??
The comma shouldn't be there. Beyond that, this is a sentence with a
non-basic order: the participal phrase "running from the back of his
skull down to the front" is placed before the verb, and the subject ("a
patch of white hair that opens up into his lips") after the verb.
"Running" etc. is not in focus position. Here, systemic grammar gives
us a better way to think about it, as "theme", i.e., a phrase that
introduces or sets the scene for the rest of the sentence. Subject is
not a typical focus position; if I'm right, focus position is usually
after the verb. In fact, I would say that "a patch of white hair
[etc.]" is in focus position -- it is the salient part of the sentence;
the participial phrase is set up to give us a reference point by which
we can locate it. There is no other possible analysis of this
sentence's structure.
Other examples of this kind of structure:
a. Lying on the table was the bloody knife that had been used in the
murder.
b. Gone were the ancestors we so revered.
Some will say that the participials here are part of the verb phrase,
since we can paraphrase them thus:
i. The bloody knife that had been used in the murder was lying on the
table.
ii. The ancestors we so revered were gone. -- That "gone" is
predicative here and not part of the verb phase is proven by "was",
which would need to be "have" if "gone" were in the verb phrase.
These are similar to those cases in which it is hard to tell whether a
sentence is passive or predicative:
iii. The windows of the old house were broken.
iv. The windows were broken by the storm's strong winds.
Aspect helps sort out which structure underlies the sentence. The reason
"A patch of white hair that opens up into his lips is running from the
back of his skull down to the front."
sounds bad is that the aspect is wrong. With an action verb like "run",
the default reading of progressive aspect ("be" + "-ing") is present
time, as in:
"Time is running out as we speak."
The sentence we are discussing here describes a state, a stable
situation that holds over time, or an abiding characteristic of a
person. For such sentences we use plain present tense, one of whose
functions is to describe states that hold at the time of speaking or
generic truths:
"A patch of white hair that opens up into his lips runs from the back
of his skull down to the front."
Regarding "run", this kind of meaning is known as "fictive motion" in
Cognitive Grammar. "Running" describes the trajectory your vision would
trace if you were looking at him (with the back of his skull specified
as the starting point). Similar examples:
v. The road winds through the mountains. -- It's the traveling
object/person that does the winding, not the road. The road just lies
there.
vi. The sea bottom slopes steeply down beyond this point. -- "Slope"
is used as a verb describing the motion of an object that would move
along the sea bottom, not the sea bottom itself. The sea bottom just
has a particular geometric relationship to nearby reference points.
Note that the simple present tense is used to describe the stable
configuration of the road and the sea bottom.
This is a metonymy, not a metaphor. The object viewed or traveled upon
(patch of white hair, road, sea bottom) stands in for the vision of an
observer or the motion of an object. In metaphor, properties of the
source are transferred to the target. The speaker is not suggesting
that the patch of hair, road, or sea bottom has the properites of the
directed vision of an observer or an object that moves. Metonymy
underlies many, many everyday expressions, and serves as a mechanism to
extend the meanings of verbs. Examples:
Your dog smells bad. (It's the nose that does the smelling.)
Your dog smells badly. (It would fail a bloodhound test.)
John looks a little sick. (John is not doing the looking, an observer
is.)
My favorite metonymy is one that was spoken by a garage mechanic in
Ohio or Indiana many years ago when I was on a long drive from Illinois
to New Jersey. I was driving a Pinto that had occasional leaks from its
universal joint. I stopped at a garage on the way to have it looked at
and greased if necessary. Here's what the man said:
"Hey, Joe, open up Bay Three. This lady needs her rear end lubed."
This is an example of POSSESSOR FOR POSSESSED -- we use a phrase naming
to the owner to refer to the object owned. Nobody else in the shop
batted an eye, but for some reason the literal meaning hit me between
the eyes, and I blushed. This sentence is not metaphorical -- it does
not attribute to the car any of my characteristics. It is merely an
abbreviated reference, shortening "This lady's car".
Other typical metonymies:
NAME OF PLACE FOR INSTITUTION LOCATED AT THAT PLACE: "Washington has
not yet taken a position on the treaty."
AUTHOR FOR WORK: "James Mitchener takes up a full two feet of my
bookshelf."
PRODUCER FOR PRODUCT: "Can you hand me a Kleenex?"
SUBSTANCE USED FOR ACTION OF USING IT: "Please butter my toast." "I
have to grease the pan."
ACTION FOR INSTRUMENT: "She was hammering away at the floorboards."
And numerous others. For a fuller list, see George Lakoff and Mark
Johnsons' _Metaphors We Live By_, 1982, U Chicago Press.
Johanna Rubba, Assoc. Prof., Linguistics
Linguistics Minor Advisor
English Department
Cal Poly State University
San Luis Obispo, CA 93047
Tel. 805.756.2184
Dept. Tel. 805.756.6374
Home page:
http://www.cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba
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