LINGUIST List 22.4860 Mon Dec 05 2011 Review: Discourse Analysis; Pragmatics; Syntax: Laury & Suzuki (2011) Editor for this issue: Rajiv Rao <rajivlinguistlist.org> This LINGUIST List issue is a review of a book published by one of our supporting publishers, commissioned by our book review editorial staff. We welcome discussion of this book review on the list, and particularly invite the author(s) or editor(s) of this book to join in. If you are interested in reviewing a book for LINGUIST, look for the most recent posting with the subject "Reviews: AVAILABLE FOR REVIEW", and follow the instructions at the top of the message. You can also contact the book review staff directly. Directory         1.     Mark Brenchley , Subordination in Conversation Message 1: Subordination in Conversation Date: 05-Dec-2011 From: Mark Brenchley <schlemihlgmail.com> Subject: Subordination in Conversation E-mail this message to a friend Discuss this message Announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/22/22-3180.html EDITORS: Laury, Ritva and Suzuki, Ryoko TITLE: Subordination in Conversation SUBTITLE: A Cross-Linguistic Perspective SERIES: Studies in Language and Social Interaction 24 YEAR: 2011 PUBLISHER: John Benjamins Mark Brenchley, PhD Candidate, Graduate School of Education, University of Exeter SUMMARY Subordination in Conversation (SC, hereafter) comprises a cross-linguistic collection of articles, each of which analyzes various ''subordination'' constructions as they appear within various corpora of informal conversation. Utilizing this corpus-based methodology, the individual authors question the traditional accounts of these constructions and, thereby, traditional approaches to the nature of subordination more generally. The overall explanatory framework is functional in nature, with the chosen ''subordinations'' all analyzed in terms of the communicative purposes they serve within ongoing interactional and conversational practices. The first article is Susanne Günthner's 'N-Be-That- Constructions in Everyday German Conversation'. This queries the classical bi-clausal account of German ''N-be-that-'' structures, which sees them as subordination constructions composed of a main and complement clause. Focusing on the distribution of the die-sache-ist/das-ding-ist (''the thing is...'') construction within a small corpora of everyday conversation, Günthner uses both prosodic and syntactic evidence - such as the presence/absence of the verb-final word order characteristic of German subordination structures - to identify three distinct patterns: (1) Die-sache/Das-ding-ist + subjunctor + subordinate clause; (2) Die-sache/Das-ding-ist + main clause; and (3) Die-sache/Das-ding-ist + longer stretch of discourse. As such, Günthner argues that die-sache/das-ding-ist is actually more appropriately analyzed as a grammaticalized projector phrase. This phrase serves to frame and focus the interlocutors' attention on the following ''complement'', be it a subordinate clause or a stretch of discourse. Indeed, it is precisely this 'functional upgrading' (p. 11) of the complement that has given rise to the three patterns, allowing the following segment to surface without displaying the traditional syntactic and prosodic markers of dependence. The second article is Leelo Keevallik's 'Interrogative ''Complements'' and Question Design in Estonian'. This comprises an analysis of four Estonian complement-taking predicates (CTPs): (1) ütle (''tell me''); (2) räägi (''tell me''); (3) ei tea (''I wonder''); and (4) uvitav (''I wonder''). Based on their patterning within two corpora of contemporary Estonian conversation, Keevallik argues that the complements selected by these four predicates display syntactic and prosodic markers of independence, not the dependence that would be indicative of classical subordination. These markers include, for example, the fact that the clause following ütle displays word order inversion with respect to yes/no questions, something that Estonian prohibits within dependent interrogative clauses. Instead, Keevallik argues that the four CTPs function as epistemic particles. These are used by the speaker to project his/her interrogative complements as the informational focus of an utterance. These complements, in turn, reflect their status as the main information bearer by surfacing as independent, rather than dependent, clauses. The third article is Aino Koivisto, Ritva Laury & Eeva-Leena Seppänen's 'Syntactic and Actional Characteristics of Finnish Että-Clauses'. This consists of a study of Finnish että, analyzed according to its three functions: (1) complementizer; (2) utterance-initial particle; and (3) turn-final particle. All three uses, the authors argue, can be unified through their highlighting of some prior stretch of talk. Furthermore, they argue that their data do not justify classifying että as a subordinator. Firstly, though subordination is clausal in nature, the material projected by että often constitutes more a stretch of discourse than a single clause. Secondly, it seems that what the participants focus on is not että itself but the linguistic material immediately succeeding it, something that should not be the case were että being used as a subordinator. This does not mean that either että, or the CTPs within which it appears, should thereby be construed as themselves subordinate to any subsequent linguistic material, however. Rather, these elements carry out independent metacommunicative actions that serve to strategically manage the framework of the conversation. The fourth article is Simona Pekarek Doehler's 'Clause-Combining and the Sequencing of Actions: Projector Constructions in French Talk-in-Interaction'. This focuses on three French constructions: (1) je-veux-dire (''I want to say'' + complement); (2) the il-y-a (''there is'') presentational cleft; and (3) pseudo-clefts. Against the traditional bi-clausal analysis, Doehler argues that these constructions are more a 'juxtaposition of two syntactically autonomous pieces' that are linked prosodically rather than morphosyntactically (p. 125). Indeed, they seem better understood as grammaticalized projector constructions, serving to structure the on-going conversation by projecting forthcoming talk and thereby guiding the participants through the conversation. As such, they provide support for a view of grammar as emerging through habitualized, if contingent, patterns of language use deployed in response to particular communicative circumstances. The fifth article is Ryoko Suzuki's 'A Note on the Emergence of Quotative Constructions in Japanese Conversation'. This comprises a diachronic study of the Japanese quotative particle tte, as found within conversations sampled from Japanese novels originally written in both the early and late 1800s. In present-day Japanese, tte surfaces in two ways: as part of a subordinate complement clause and as an independent, utterance-final pragmatic particle. Based on the work of Hopper & Traugott (2003), Suzuki notes that we might therefore suppose the present-day independent use of tte to have developed from its prior subordinate usage. However, the diachronic data argues this supposition to be false since there are clear examples of both types of tte from the outset. Instead, Suzuki suggests, both forms result from the interactional practices with which tte is associated, with the dependent and independent versions each allowing speakers to frame relevant information as appropriate within the immediate communicative context. The sixth article is Wolfgang Imo's 'Clines of Subordination -- Constructions with the German ''Complement-Taking Predicate'' Glauben'. This comprises a study of the specific forms ich-glaube/glaub(e)-ich (''I think'') by which glauben (''to believe''/''to think'') appears in a corpus of conversational German. Imo uses his data to query the standard classification of glauben as a classical CTP. If this classification were accurate, we would expect glauben to be typically employed as part of a matrix + subordinate clause construction. In fact, Imo's corpus points to a cline of constructions: (1) a matrix clause followed by a subordinate clause; (2) a pragmatic particle followed by a main clause; (3) a modal particle or modal adverb; and (4) fully embedded within the surrounding clause. According to Imo, these additional uses suggest glauben constructions to be undergoing processes of re-analysis and grammaticalization, a feature which he relates to the meaning potentials of the phrases in which glauben appears. This is particularly so in the case of the inverted structure (that is, glaub(e)-ich), which appears to be in a state of indeterminacy between different constructions. Overall, Imo argues that his evidence points to the emergent and fragmentary nature of language, with users continually reanalyzing various constructions according to their communicative needs. The seventh article is Yuko Higashiizumi's 'Are Kara 'Because'-clauses Causal Subordinate Clauses in Present-Day Japanese?'. This focuses on the analysis of 542 kara-(''because-'') clauses in a corpus that covers around four hundred years of conversational Japanese. Based on this analysis, Higashiizumi concludes that the traditional subordinate-coordinate dichotomy of complex clause structures fails to accurately capture the data at hand. Rather, what is needed, both synchronically and diachronically, is Hopper & Traugott's (2003) three-way continuum of parataxis-hypotaxis-subordination. According to this continuum, ''subordination'' can be approached in terms of increasing degrees of clausal integration, from the independence of the two clauses (parataxis), through one of the clauses being dependent on but not embedded within the other (hypotaxis), to one clause being both dependent on and embedded within the other (subordination). With this in mind, Higashiizumi further argues that the historical trend actually opposes the increased subordination that would be expected according to current accounts, reflecting instead a shift from subordination to an increasingly paratactic manifestation of kara-clauses. The eighth, and final article, is Ritva Laury & Shigeko Okamoto's 'Teyuuka and I-Mean as Pragmatic Parentheticals in Japanese and English'. This comprises a comparative analysis of Japanese teyuuka and English I-mean, based on their distributions within a corpus of English conversation and one of Japanese conversation. Laury & Okamoto claim that, despite differing semantically and syntactically, both forms operate as pragmatic parentheticals. As such, Japanese and English seemingly make use of non-identical structural resources to serve similar pragmatic functions. Moreover, the fact that these functions are not strictly identical, however broadly similar they might be, can be related to the specific syntactic and semantic qualities of the two forms within each language. As such, teyuuka or I-mean cannot be easily subsumed within a single 'cross-linguistically valid, universal category label' (p. 235), a state-of-affairs which points to the close matching of form and function that is at work within individual languages. EVALUATION As might already have been inferred from the summaries above, there is a close kinship marking the individual articles in SC, one that goes beyond the specific domain of study itself. Thus, whilst all the articles represent studies of the relationship between subordination and conversation, strong thematic continuities also extend throughout (such themes are, to name a few: ''grammar-in-use'', ''grammaticalization'', ''projection'', ''profiling'', ''emergence'', and ''subordination-as-continuum''), and all are characterized by what appears to be a construction grammar-framed approach to linguistic analysis (though this is not always explicitly noted). This is both a strength and weakness of the book. It is a definite strength in that it allows a holistic sensibility to be built up as the reader progresses through the various articles, enabling him/her to see how the arguments might apply cross-linguistically and to get a nuanced feel for both the overall approach and the individual arguments themselves. It is a weakness, however, in that SC at times gives the impression of being somewhat inward-looking, with all the authors singing from the same hymn sheet. As such, the book would have definitely benefited from the inclusion of critical voices from alternative, non-construction-based frameworks, perhaps in the form of an extended commentary section at the back. This notion of "flipside" strength and weakness can be further extended to SC's general corpus-based methodology. The natural strength of such a methodology is the focus it gives to actual language use. This strength is amply on show throughout the book, as the various articles' analysis of actual conversation allows them to provide cogent critiques of traditional accounts of individual ''subordinate'' forms, and thereby question the traditional approach to subordination as a whole. Unfortunately, a reliance on corpora can also be arbitrarily (and unnecessarily) limiting. Thus, the absence of phrase-internal use of ''I mean'' in Laury and Okamoto's data is a contributory factor to their overall argument; yet, such a manifestation was exactly something I caught myself using several times only recently. As always with corpora, the old adage would seem applicable here: absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Moreover, it is not always clear how genuinely representative the individual data sets are. For example, Suzuki's corpus is composed of conversations found within nineteenth century Japanese novels, a corpus which is prima-facie more one of contrived, rather than actual, conversation. In the case of Günthner's corpus, this comprises only ninety-one interactions collected over a period of seventeen years. Whilst the shallow coverage of the corpus is less problematic for her analysis, in that she provides good evidence that die-sache-ist/ das-ding-ist is actually used in the manner proposed, it is nevertheless difficult to ascertain how endemic to present-day German such usage might be. Finally, there is the ''low key'' nature of the articles, with each focusing on (at most) a few specific constructions within (mostly) one language. The virtue of such an approach is clear, particularly given the generally strong individual analyses through which the articles provide detailed accounts of some extremely interesting data. However, the specific nature of the studies means that, despite the thematic similarities, it is tricky to fully situate each construction within the overall context of the language under study (which is surely more than one construction). Hence, it is also difficult to get an insight into the pervasiveness and full import of these kinds of structures (together with their full implications for understanding subordination), either within that specific language or across several languages. Nevertheless, this discussion, though couched in terms of the counterbalanced strengths and weaknesses of SC, is not intended to undermine the general value of the book, which I would recommend. As already noted, the analyses presented are both interesting and insightful, and all highlight the value of studying actual language use in its specific context of use. Moreover, in their questioning of traditional accounts and provision of alternative analyses, the authors clearly highlight the need for giving further empirical thought to the nature and place of subordination within grammatical systems. Subordination, simply put, remains a central and yet to be fully understood topic within linguistic theory. In terms of readership, SC will be of interest to those seeking a more comprehensive and critical view of subordination based on cross-linguistic data, particularly those inclined to treat grammatical phenomena as emerging from the way language is put to use. It will also be of interest to anyone concerned with the implications of modality for analyzing language, and specifically, the manner in which language-users combine clauses in order to frame and structure ongoing conversations. REFERENCES Hopper, P. J. & Traugott, E. C. (2003) Grammaticalization (2nd edition). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ABOUT THE REVIEWER Mark Brenchley is a beginning PhD student at the University of Exeter. His research comprises a study of the developmental relationship between spoken and written syntax during the secondary phase of the English national curriculum. Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue Page Updated: 05-Dec-2011       About LINGUIST    |   Contact Us       While the LINGUIST List makes every effort to ensure the linguistic relevance of sites listed on its pages, it cannot vouch for their contents.