Craig,
Langacker is providing an excellent way of talking about *why* certain
clauses are "backgrounded" -- I would certainly agree that a
nonrestrictive relative basically presents something you already know in
order to help you pin down a referent that would otherwise be tricky,
and since it's there as a support structure only, it's not likely to
occupy center stage. Likewise, nominalized structures like infinitives
and gerunds are there to be commented *on*, not to constitute comments,
so they're untaggable and in fact uncontradictable ("Have you stopped
setting fire to baby seals?"). At the other end of the spectrum, full
independent clauses are presented as "center stage" material, although
in some cases tagging them is a trifle odd ("I like chocolate, don't
I?").
I had trouble with the "didn't you" tags in your email below, but that
might be because I can't attach them to the right intonation contour.
There are plenty of other grammatical phenomena in which a "default"
status can be overridden with enough context and cues -- I've heard
things that sounded perfectly normal, written them down, and had them
look bizarre when floating on their own line in black and white. "Out of
context" is its own context.
Bill Spruiell
Dept. of English
Central Michigan University
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Craig Hancock
Sent: Thursday, June 26, 2008 9:03 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: The importance of the competence-performance distinction
andthe category sentence
Bill,
I think we have trouble asking tag questions about restrictive
relative
clauses because they are part of what Langacker calls "grounding", the
apparatus that helps us understand the identity of what we are talking
about (within the discourse context). It's hard to assert and question
at the same time. It's not that it's ungrammatical so much as
confusing, carrying contrary messages.
Maybe this will make it clearer. In "the book you read yesterday",
"you
read yesterday" tells us which book I am talking about. I can't then
ask a question like "Did you read the book you read yesterday?" because
if the answer is no, then the book doesn't exist and the assertion
stops being meaningful.
If I amend it slightly, though, the question makes sense: "Did you
really read the book you read yesterday?" In this case, "really read"
assumes a different kind of lens and makes a yes/no response possible.
I think we can add secondary tag questions to some relative clause
constructions even when they are restrictive.
"I loved the book you read yesterday, didn't you?"
"The book you read yesterday is one I really loved, didn't you?"
"The book you read yesterday is one I really loved, didn't I?"
"The book you read yesterday is one I really loved, isn't it?"
All seem to me very reasonable in speech. The tag question fine-tunes
what the speaker is asking for in response.
What makes a statement acceptable or not is certainly a matter of how
it functions within the context it occurs.
I agree: the patterns are dynamic.
Craig
>
Bob,
>
>
> ******************
> If "Bob" is the assertion, then why can't it be:
>
> 1) *Bob, isn't he?
> ******************
>
> With the "Bob, isn't it" example, it's possible that the speaker and
> hearer simply use knowledge of likely speech purposes given the
context
> -- in other words, given the situation, a speaker is much more likely
to
> make a guess about the source of the phenomenon than the identity of a
> person, even if a person is the source of the phenomenon. Note that
> "Bob, isn't it," in an ellipsis account could be shorthand for variety
> of "underlying" expressions, like "That noise is being made by Bob,
> isn't it?" or "It's Bob out there in the hallway, isn't it?" They're
not
> really assertions about Bob's identity; they're assertions about the
> probable cause of the noise (and as a side note, the fact that there
ARE
> multiple possibilities would render this a problem case for ellipsis
as
> well -- most analysts constrain ellipsis by confining it to those
cases
> in which everyone would fill in exactly the same missing material).
> "Bob, isn't he" *would* in fact work in some situations -- you just
need
> a context in which someone's identity is being confirmed. While "isn't
> it" will work in the following, I think the "he" version will too (I
> don't know any plays with characters named Bob, so I'm having to shift
> to Hamlet):
>
> [Context: Cletus and Bocephus are watching a play being performed by
the
> local theater club. ]
>
> Cletus: Can't figure out the guy on the left.
> Bocephus: Hamlet, isn't he?
>
> If that doesn't work for you, the corresponding positive tag to
indicate
> skepticism might:
>
> Cletus: Can't figure out the one on the left.
> Bocephus: Oh, *Hamlet*, is he? That's not a good Hamlet.
>
>
> **************************
> 2) *We are canceling the play in which the lead actor is sick, isn't
he?
>
> If there is not concept of "sentence" why is (2) not a possible
> sentence?
> **************************
>
> I mentioned in the previous post that restrictive relatives seem to be
> backgrounded to the point where they can't be "checked" or
> "contradicted"; this is a good example of that. I brought up
subordinate
> clauses because they're the type of thing that most grammars class as
> dependent, and which we certainly have to *punctuate* as if they're
> dependent, but which may be foregroundable to the point where they act
> like independent assertions rather than subsidiary ones. Note that
even
> a main clause (or what's treated as one in traditional grammar, at
> least) can be backgroundable if it's the kind of thing that can't
easily
> come into play in the discourse:
>
> Bocephus: I think the play starts at 6:00
> Cletus: No it doesn't.
> ?? No you don't.
>
>
> Again, I have no problem with the notion that people frequently
> communicate with clause clusters. What I do have trouble with is the
> notion that, given any abstract sequence of clauses like [A B C D E
F],
> there's a single unambiguous boundary-procedure that will produce (for
> example) [ [A B C] [D] [E F] ], and that the groupings thus produced
are
> "real" in some sense. The tradition of punctuation we've inherited
>
>
> **********************
> The point is that for corpus linguistics to have ANY results requires
> underlying knowledge of the language (1) to know what to search for
and
> (2) to evaluate the examples for relevancy.
> ***********************
>
> I would argue that there's a crucial distinction between what is
> entailed by the phrase "underlying knowledge of the language," and
what
> is entailed by "competence." The second (if taken in terms of its use
> by Chomsky) has a very specific meaning. Competence is fully
> deterministic, is not controlled by context, and is grounded in a
> "mental faculty" that is unlike any others people have. It's
Saussure's
> "langue" as if interpreted by Plato. If language isn't fully
> deterministic, is *inherently* controlled by context, and represents
one
> application of general cognitive functions that subserve other,
> nonlinguistic, abilities, we can still have knowledge of it, but that
> knowledge won't be "competence" according to Chomsky's definition. Of
> *course* corpus linguists use "underlying knowledge of language" --
any
> given item one searches for is structurally polyvalent; it's the
status
> of the item as part of a *construction* that's usually of interest.
> Acknowledging that constructions exist, and acknowledging that we can
> talk about them, does not require us to accept OR reject Chomsky's
> notion of competence.
>
> Bill Spruiell
> Dept. of English
> Central Michigan University
>
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