Date: 22-Aug-2006
From: Ruben Stoel <R.B.Stoellet.leidenuniv.nl>
Subject: Grammar and Inference in Conversation
Announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/17/17-485.html
AUTHOR: Ewing, Michael C.TITLE: Grammar and Inference in ConversationSUBTITLE: Identifying clause structure in spoken JavaneseSERIES: Studies in Discourse and Grammar 18PUBLISHER: John BenjaminsYEAR: 2006ISBN: 9027226288
Ruben Stoel, Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL), Leiden University
SUMMARY
This book is about transitive clauses in Cirebon Javanese conversation,based on the author's Ph.D. dissertation. It is written within thetradition that sees grammar as emerging from discourse, initiated by thework of Chafe, Hopper, Thompson, and others. The book is divided into sevenchapters.
Chapter 1: Introduction
The introduction quickly places the book within the perspective of grammarand discourse, presents the language variety discussed in the book, anddescribes the data that were collected. Javanese is a language spoken inIndonesia with some 70 million speakers. While Standard Central Javanesehas a long tradition of study, not much attention has been paid so far tothe other dialects. Cirebon Javanese is almost exclusively a spokenlanguage, with about two million speakers living on the north coast ofJava. The data were collected by Ewing during fieldwork in 1993-94, andconsist of some six hours of spontaneous conversation, or more than 23,000intonation units. One thousand of these were extensively coded for the textcounts presented in chapters 4 and 5.
Chapter 2: The morphology of predicates
Predicates in Cirebon Javanese include intransitive verbs, transitiveverbs, and non-verbal predicates. Intransitive verbs may be monomorphemic,take a nasal prefix N-, or a prefix m-. Transitive clauses have twoarguments, the A (the more agent-like argument) and the P (the morepatient-like argument). A prefix on the verb signals a voice distinction,marking either the A or the P as the trigger. P-trigger constructions takethe prefix di-, the prefix tak- (1st person only), or no prefix. A-triggerconstructions take the nasal prefix N-, or no prefix. Both intransitive andtransitive clauses may thus have a nasal prefix, or no prefix. There arealso two transitive suffixes.
Chapter 3: The morphology of nominal expressions
Nominal expressions include headless relative clauses, lexical nouns, namesand kinship terms, pronouns, and unexpressed participants. Nouns may bemodified, among others by the definite suffix –é, which indicates anassociative relationship with another referent, and also occurs inpossessive constructions. Core arguments are not generally marked withprepositions (except for the A of P-trigger clauses), while obliquearguments are marked by various prepositions. Pronouns are not marked forcase. Thus morphology plays only a limited role in establishing grammaticalrelations.
Chapter 4: Information flow
Following Du Bois and Thompson (1991), Ewing distinguishes five categoriesof information flow: 1. activation (new vs. given), 2. identifiability(identifiable, non-identifiable, or not applicable), 3. identifiabilitypathway (refers to how a referent is made identifiable: previous mention,anchoring, etc.), 4. generality (particular vs. general), and 5. discoursereferentiality (tracking vs. non-tracking, in which tracking refers tocontinuity within the text). Ewing used these categories to analyze asample of 417 nominal expressions. The most common configuration ofinformation flow categories in the sample is (excluding identifiabilitypathway): given + identifiable + particular + tracking (42%), followed bynew + not applicable + general + non tracking (17%).
Chapter 5: Constituents and constituent order
Ewing introduces two prosodic units: the intonation unit (IU) and theprosodic cluster, which contains one or more intonations units. After ashort discussion of intransitive clauses, he turns to constituent order intransitive clauses in a sample of 281 independent main clauses. He thendistinguishes single-IU clauses from multi-IU clauses, and P-triggerclauses from A-trigger clauses. Out of the 107 single-IU P-trigger clausesin the sample, 88 consist of a verb alone, in which the unexpressedarguments mostly represent given identifiable referents that are beingtracked. In other P-trigger clauses there is no dominant order. Insingle-IU A-trigger clauses, 83 out of 136 have VP order, and the Pargument is usually general and non-tracking. V, AVP, and AV orders arealso common among A-trigger clauses. Constituent order is thus morepredictable among A-trigger clauses than among P-trigger clauses, and Ewingconcludes that among the former a higher-level constituent structure isemerging in discourse.
Chapter 6: Clauses and interaction
This chapter is about how the various morphosyntactic properties discussedin chapters 2 to 5 interact with each other. The number of explicitgrammatical cues in a clause varies from several to none, so roleassignment can sometimes be based only on pragmatic understanding. Ewingalso presents a longer example with many unexpressed arguments to show theimportance of pragmatic inferencing.
Chapter 7: Conclusion
Ewing gives a summary of the book, and then discusses two minor issues.First, he concludes that the abstract definition of arguments that he hasused in the book is indeed the best choice. Secondly, he argues that asemantically motivated definition of transitivity is better than agrammatically defined one.
EVALUATION
This book is a welcome addition to the few linguistic studies on Javanesethat have appeared in English. Ewing's book is more specifically concernedwith Cirebon Javanese, and this appears to be the first publications inEnglish on this dialect. However, it remains to be seen if there are anysyntactic differences between Cirebon Javanese and Standard Javanese.
Ewing says that Javanese has been traditionally regarded as an SVOlanguage, but he does not mention Uhlenbeck (1975), who showed that theorder of constituents in a clause can actually be rather free. Ewing showsthat in conversational language there are actually few clauses with twoexpressed arguments. And in clauses that do have two expressed argument,the equivalent AVP order is common only in case of A-trigger verb.
Ewing rightly points to the important role of intonation in theinterpretation of a clause. The order of two constituent in an A-triggerclause is free only if they appear in different intonation units. But, asEwing admits, the intonation of Javanese is still a topic that deservesmore study.
The book shows that pragmatic understanding is often essential in order tounderstand what the referents are of the A and P in a transitive clause.The longer example in chapter 6 is particularly convincing in this respect.
The book is well written and easy to read, although repetitive at times.There are numerous examples of every structure discussed. The book is lighton theory and will therefore be accessible to a wide range of linguists.
REFERENCES
Du Bois, J.W. and S.A. Thompson (1991). 'Dimensions of a theory ofinformation flow'. Unpublished Ms. University of California, Santa Barbara.
Uhlenbeck, E.M. (1975). 'Sentence segment and word groups: basic conceptsof Javanese syntax'. In J.W.M. Verhaar (ed.), Miscellaneous studies inIndonesian and Languages in Indonesia. Part 1, 6-10. Jakarta: Badanpenyelenggara Seri NUSA.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Ruben Stoel is a researcher at Leiden University associated with theFataluku Language Project (for more information visit: www.fataluku.com).His interests include the Austronesian and Papuan languages of Indonesiaand East Timor, the study of intonation, and the expression of informationstructure across languages.
|