Table Of ContentDIRECTIONS IN FUNCTIONAL LINGUISTICS
STUDIES IN LANGUAGE COMPANION SERIES (SLCS)
The SLCS series has been established as a companion series to STUDIES
IN LANGUAGE, International Journal, sponsored by the Foundation
"Foundations of language".
Series Editors
Werner Abraham Michael Noonan
University of Groningen University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
The Netherlands USA
Editorial Board
Joan Bybee (University of New Mexico)
Ulrike Claudi (University of Cologne)
Bernard Comrie (University of Southern California)
William Croft (University of Manchester)
Östen Dahl (University of Stockholm)
Gerrit Dimmendaal (University of Leiden)
Martin Haspelmath (Free University of Berlin)
Ekkehard König (Free University of Berlin)
Christian Lehmann (University of Bielefeld)
Robert Longacre (University of Texas, Arlington)
Brian Mac Whinney (Carnegie-Mellon University)
Marianne Mithun (University of California, Santa Barbara)
Edith Moravcsik (University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee)
Masayoshi Shibatani (Kobe University)
Russell Tomlin (University of Oregon)
John Verhaar (The Hague)
Volume 36
Akio Kamio (ed.)
Directions in Functional Linguistics
DIRECTIONS
IN FUNCTIONAL
LINGUISTICS
Edited by
AKIO KAMIO
Dokkyo University, Soka, Japan
JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY
AMSTERDAM/PHILADELPHIA
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
American National Standard for Information Sciences — Permanence of
Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Directions in functional linguistics / edited by Akio Kamio.
p. cm. — (Studies in language companion series, ISSN 0165-7763 ; v. 36)
Papers of a symposium held Dec. 20-21, 1991, at Dokkyo University in Soka City, Japan:
the symposium was one of the series of symposia called the Dokkyo Forum which is
sponsored annually by Dokkyo University.
Papers in English: includes some data in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.
Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
1. Functionalism (Linguistics)-Congresses. I. Kamio, Akio, 1942- . II. Dokkyo Daigaku.
III. Series.
P147.D57 1997
415-dc21 97-26691
ISBN 90 272 3039 0 (Eur.) / 1-55619-847-7 (US) (alk. paper) CIP
© Copyright 1997 - John Benjamins B.V.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any
other means, without written permission from the publisher.
John Benjamins Publishing Co. · P.O.Box 75577 · 1070 AN Amsterdam · The Netherlands
John Benjamins North America · P.O.Box 27519 · Philadelphia PA 19118-0519 · USA
Acknowledgments
I would like to express my deepest thanks to Professor Takashi Kotono,
former director of the International Center, Dokkyo University, for providing
a great deal of financial and other support for the Fifth Dokkyo Forum, "The
Future of Functional Linguistics," on which this book is based. I would also
like to thank the staff members of the Center for their kind and generous help
with all aspects of the forum. Thanks are also due to four of my colleagues in
the Department of English at Dokkyo University, members of the acting
committee for the forum, for their cooperation and assistance. My deepest
thanks are due to the late Professor Yukio Yasumoto, the former President of
Dokkyo University, and the faculty members of the Department of English
there, for making it possible to have a very successful conference which has
led to the publication of this volume.
Special thanks are due to Susumu Kuno, who helped me with the plan
ning and preparation of the symposium. His suggestions were extremely
helpful, and without them the symposium would not have been so successful.
The editor of this series, Michael Noonan, and an anonymous reviewer for the
series helped me in various ways, for which I am deeply grateful to them.
I would like to thank my graduate students who participated in the
preparation of the forum for their dedicated assistance. I also thank Takeshi
Ito and Yuuko Iguchi for their editorial help. A generous research fund from
Dokkyo University which I received while staying in the United States in
1996 to 1997 made the preparation of the final manuscripts possible, for
which I am also very grateful. This was done at the Institute of Cognitive
Science, University of Colorado, Boulder, which provided me with necessary
equipment. It is my greatest pleasure to thank the Director of the Institute,
Professor Walter Kintsch, and the Associate Director, Professor Martha
Poison. At this stage, Tara Kerrigan worked unsparingly for making the
editorial processes complete. I would like to thank her, finally but not least,
for her dedication.
Contents
Acknowledgments v
Preface ix
Contributors xiii
Dispersed Verbal Predicates in Vernacular Written Narrative 1
Paul J. Hopper
Deontic Modality and Conditionality in Discourse: A Cross-linguistic 19
Study of Adult Speech to Young Children
Patricia M. Clancy, Noriko Akatasuka and Susan Strauss
Discourse Motivations for the Core-Oblique Distinction as a Language 59
Universal
Sandra A. Thompson
Agentivity and Aspect in Japanese: A Functional Perspective 83
Wesley M. Jacobsen
On the Functions of Left-Dislocation in English Discourse 117
Ellen F. Prince
Evidentiality and Some Discourse Characteristics in Japanese 145
Akio Kamio
On Japanese Quantifier Floating 173
Shoko Hamano
The Battle over Anaphoric 'Islands': Syntax vs. Pragmatics 199
Gregory Ward
viii Contents
Structural or Functional Accounts? 221
Susumu Kuno and Ken-ichi Takami
Index of Names 251
Index of Subjects
Preface
The term "functional linguistics" refers to a wide range of theoretical and
methodological concerns in contemporary linguistics. A unifying element of
diverse functional approaches is a concern with discourse. Since current
functional linguistics is based on the idea that the essence of language lies in
its function, and since the function of language presupposes the actual use of
language, discourse is considered the most basic and significant object of
research. This should be clear because language is used to produce discourse
and not isolated sentences.
Other innovative features of functional linguistics derive from this fun
damental importance of discourse. For example, its consideration of context
is directly tied to discourse, since discourse without context could not exist.
Furthermore, an increasingly notable trend in functional linguistics is the use
of statistical methods in the analysis of discourse. This is also very natural,
since discourse has many aspects that reflect the significant properties of
language statistically.
Thus, it is quite appropriate to say that functional linguistics is funda
mentally based on discourse. From this point of view, functional syntax, a
major subarea of functional linguistics, always considers the importance of
discourse and how it is produced. Of course, actual research in functional
syntax is quite various in its focus and emphasis. Even looking at it quite
broadly, we can enumerate a number of different lines of research, some of
which are represented by the papers included in this volume.
A very general concern of functionalist approach to syntax is the impor
tance of discourse. Paul Hopper's paper strongly suggests we rethink our
notion of data, being aware of the fundamental significance of discourse.
From a very different angle, the paper by Susumu Kuno and Ken-ichi Takami
examines the data which constitute the basis of some recent work in formal
syntax. Kuno and Takami claim that the analyses embodied in them must be
defective because they neglect contextual or discourse factors embodied in
their data. A developmental study by Patricia Clancy, Noriko Akatsuka, and
Susan Strauss discusses deontic modality in discourse rather than the analysis
of made-up data.
Another concern of functional syntax is to reexamine and reinterpret the
χ Preface
results of formal syntactic research, taking discourse into consideration. The
Kuno-Takami paper just referred to can also be considered to fall into this
category. Gregory Ward's paper, which discusses a morpho-syntactic phe
nomenon from a functional point of view, also represents this type of research
very well. Sandra Thompson's paper can be considered a further illustration
of this class of work, reexamining what formalists call case theory from the
point of view of discourse.
Another central concern is the exploration of the discourse basis of
traditional and modern grammatical categories. Hopper and Thompson
(1980) on transitivity is a celebrated example of this class. In this volume,
Thompson's work just cited represents a new but typical approach to this
subarea of functional syntax.
A series of papers by Ellen Prince (e.g. 1984; 1985) represent a concern
with detailed functional descriptions of such constructions as Topicalization
and Dislocation. This volume includes her discussion of these constructions,
embodying a well-balanced approach to the informational structure of certain
syntactic structures. Akio Kamio's paper discusses an aspect of the informa
tional structure of three languages, English, Chinese, and Japanese, from a
different point of view. Shoko Hamano's paper on Japanese quantifiers may
also fall into this category, since it highlights a hitherto unnoticed informa
tional property of the construction. This concern with informational structure
is a subpart of a more general concern with the discourse functions of
syntactic rules and constructions. This latter concern is also represented by
Ellen Prince's paper in this volume. Gregory Ward's (1990) paper is a good
example of such studies. Both Prince and Ward consider the function(s) of
some "marked" rules or constructions like Topicalization, Left Dislocation
and VP Preposing, based on actual samples of discourse.
Work exploring the cognitive basis of syntactic structure is also part of
the functionalist tradition. This kind of work includes research on information
flow initiated by such functionalists as Wallace Chafe (e.g. 1987). In this
volume, Wesley Jacobsen examines in detail the notion of agentivity in
relation to aspect in Japanese, attempting to explore its cognitive basis. The
paper by Clancy, Akatsuka, and Strauss also discusses the development and
cognitive basis of the conditional construction in three languages, English,
Korean, and Japanese.
A still different concern in functional syntax may be characterized as
constituting the struggle between functional and formal syntax. Kuno and
Takami (1993) will be a landmark in the competitive coexistence of these two
