L ANGUAGE AND L INGUISTICS 4.2:301-316, 2003
2003-0-004-002-000041-1
Cognitive Relativism: Resultative Construction in Chine*
James H-Y. Tai
National Chung Cheng University
Cognitive linguistics is viewed as a modern approach to linguistic relativity and cognitive relativism. Resultative verb compounds in Chine are analyzed in
terms of Talmy’s conceptual approach and are shown to prent a problem for
Talmy’s well-known typological dichotomy between “verb-framed” and “satellite-
framed” languages. It is also argued that the so-called “resultative complement” in
Chine resultative verb compounds can be treated as the center of predication,
even as the main verb. Pending further psycholinguistic evidence, it appears that
Chine speakers attend relatively more to the result of an event, whereas English
speakers attend more to the process of an event.
Key words: cognitive linguistics, relativism, conceptual approach, verb mantics,
Chine resultative verb compounds
1. Cognitive linguistics and linguistic relativity
The study of conceptualization of reality in different languages and cultures has been enthusiastically pursued by anthropologists and psychologists, especially in the well-known Boas-Sapir-Whorf tradition. In contrast, American structuralists and generative grammarians have shunned away from the study of language as capable of reflecting conceptualization in different cultures. In retrospect, we can perhaps identify three main reasons for linguists to have taken a very different approach to the study of language. First, psycholinguistic experiments have generally failed to confirm either strong or weak versions of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, that is, linguistic determinism or linguistic relativity. For instance, in reference to Chine grammar, Bloom’s (1981) controversial hypothesis regarding the abnce of overt counterfactual grammatical *A n earlier versi
on of this paper entitled “Chine Verb Semantics and Cognitive Relativism” was prented at the First Cognitive Linguistics Conference in Taiwan held at the National Chengchi University, January 12-13, 2002. I have benefited from discussions and comments from the participants at the conference, especially Leonard Talmy. I have also benefited from two anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions. I am very grateful to Yuchau E. Hsiao, the conference organizer, who invited me to prent the paper at the conference and exerted friendly pressure on me to revi the paper for publication. Needless to say, I am solely responsible for any infelicities herein.
James H-Y. Tai
devices in Chine and its effect on the thought of native speakers of Chine have been repeatedly challenged (cf. Wu 1994). Second, American structuralists and generative grammarians have subscribed to Saussure’s arbitrariness principle of linguistic signs and believed in the autonomy of syntax. The third reason has to do with the influential view shared by philosophers (e.g., Fodor), linguists (e.g., Chomsky) and cognitive scientists (e.g., Pinker) that language is independent of culture and thought and that the mental reprentation of language involves only symbols and their operations but not images.
The emergence of cognitive linguistics as developed by Lakoff, Langacker, and Talmy in the last two decades can be viewed as a revival of the interest in the study of conceptualization of reality by language in different cultures. In his very recent work, Talmy (2000b:1-5) has characterized cognitive linguistics as a conceptual approach to the study of language, in contrast with the formal approach adopted in the tradition of generative grammar and the psychological approach as practiced by cognitive psychologists. Furthermore, as pointed by Talmy (ibid.), cognitive linguistics also address the concerns of the two other approaches to language; for cognitive linguistics eks to understand the formal structure of language as patterns of organization of conceptual content in language from the perspective of general cognitive mechanism. In fact, this is also the endeavor of the Boas-Sapir-Whorf tradition, although it places emphasis on cognitive relativity as well as cognitive universality. Therefore, the emergence of cognitive linguistics calls for a new interest in cognitive relativism.
Lakoff (1987:304-337) has devoted a whole chapter to Whorf and relativism. In contrast, Langacker (1987, 1991) has not explicitly addresd the issue of linguistic relativity in his minal works on the foundations of cognitive linguistics. However, the attempt to restate the Boasian conceptual approach to language ems to be very clear in Langacker’s view of language structure. Thus, accor
ding to Langacker, “if one language says I am cold, a cond I have cold, and a third It is cold to me, the expressions differ mantically even though they refer to the same experience, for they employ different images to structure the same basic conceptual content” (1987:47). He thus claimed (ibid.) that “meaning is language-specific to a considerable extent” and that “full universality of mantic structure cannot be presumed even on the assumption that human cognitive ability and experience are quite comparable across cultures.” In short, it appears that the impact of cognitive linguistics can be made stronger in the context of linguistic relativism and that cognitive linguistics can rve as a modern approach to linguistic relativity.
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Cognitive Relativism: Resultative Construction in Chine 2. Relativism and construction of Chine grammar
As pointed out by Lakoff (1987:306-337), there are many different views of what relativism is. For the prent purpo, I shall not attempt to define my own version in answering to the host of questions which Lakoff has put for distinguishing different varieties of relativism. Instead, I shall take a naïve relativist position to start with. That position is no different from the original Boasian approach which
aims to describe the grammars of non-Indo-European languages in their own terms rather than in terms of the meta-language developed from the structure of Indo-European languages. The Boasian approach should be greatly appreciated in the analysis of Chine grammar. For one reason, there is no indigenous Chine grammar. The only two indigenous Chine grammatical concepts are ‘full words’ and ‘empty words’ developed from the study of classical Chine. For another reason, rearch on Chine grammar since Mashi Wentong in 1898 has invariably been bad on grammatical theories derived from studies of Indo-European languages. Chine grammarians have relied heavily on English translations and on grammatical theories of English to analyze Chine. It is not at all surprising that the result of the objectivist approach bad on truth-conditional mantics supports the main theme of generative grammar that languages are largely no different from each other in structuring principles. There is perhaps nothing wrong with using translation as a heuristic device to analyze Chine or any non-Indo-European language that does not have its own indigenous grammar. However, this kind of objective approach assumes not only that mantics is universal, but also that structural relationships among ntences are also universal. This assumption makes the arch for linguistic universals easier. But on clor obrvation, it is superficial at best, and fallacious at worst. The fact is that Chine ntence patterns are structured with each other under a t of conceptual systems on the one hand, and, on the other, that English ntence pattern
s are also structured with each other under another t of conceptual systems. An instructive example of misconception due to the objectivist approach in rearch on Chine grammar during the last century can be found in the analysis of active and passive ntences in Chine. Thus, with rare exception, Chine grammarians, be they structuralist or generativist, have invariably treated (1a) as the active construction and (1c) as its corresponding passive. Syntacticians who have worked on language typology and language universals have also taken this analysis for granted. However, as pointed out in Tai (1989), on both mantic and syntactic grounds, (1b) and not (1a) should be treated as the corresponding active for the passive ntence (1c).
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James H-Y. Tai
304 (1) a. Ta mai-le chezi.
he
ll-ASP
car
‘He sold the car.’
b. Ta ba chezi mai-le.
‘He sold the car.’
c. Chezi bei ta mai-le.
‘The car was sold by him.’
In fact, the conceptual approach with a tint of relativism to the study of Chine
grammar has uncovered veral important conceptual principles underlying the organization of Chine grammar. They include the Principle of Temporal Sequence (Tai 1985), the Principle of Whole-and-part (Tai 1989), a t of cognitive parameters for categorization involving Chine classifiers (Tai 1994), certain iconic constraints on the denominal verb convention in Chine (1997), and iconic motivations for verb-copying in Chine (Tai 1999). I believe that within the framework of the conceptual approach, many more conceptual principles of great explanatory value are to be uncovered. In the following ction, I shall show that the mantic category “result” is a mantic prime in Chine verb mantics and the action-result schema has played a much more important ro
le in the Chine conceptual system than in English.
3. The mantic category “result” in Chine
In Talmy’s (2000b, chapters 1&2) framework of cognitive mantics, “result” is a mantic category under co-event which accompanies the main event’s action or state. Although the category of “result” is expresd in both Chine and English, it has different ranges of meaning which provide motivations for different syntactic patterns. Consider the following contrast between Chine and English ntences.
(2) a. Ta jia-cuo-le laogong.
she
marry-wrong-ASP
h usband
‘She has married the wrong husband.’
b. Ta qu-cuo-le laopo.
he marry-wrong-ASP w ife
‘He has married the wrong wife.’
(3) Ta zou-jin-le gongyuan.
s/he
walk-enter-ASP
park
‘S/he walked into the park.’
Cognitive Relativism: Resultative Construction in Chine
(4) Ta ku-hong-le yanjing
s/he cry-red-ASP eye
‘S/he cried so hard that her/his eyes turned red.’
(5) Women yao wu-chu jiankang.
we want dance-out health
‘We want to dance to become healthy.’
(6) (Tamen chi yao) chi-chu wenti.
they eat medicine eat-out problem
‘They became unhealthy from taking medicine.’
(7) Ta jintian zhi pao-dao-le san-ge keren.
he today only r un-reach-ASP three-CL customer
‘He (taxi driver) has only run three trips today.’
The ntence in (2) illustrates a systematic difference between Chine and English in describing situations wherein a mistake occurred. While the Chine word cuo ‘wrong’ is the resultative component in action-result verb compounds indicating the result of an action, the English word ‘wron
g’ is an adjective modifying the object noun. If one takes an objectivist approach and assumes Chine and English have the same mantics describing the making of mistakes, one would perhaps be inclined to subscribe to the principle and parameter approach to account for the difference between the two languages. On the other hand, if we take a non-objectivist approach, we immediately e the difference in (2) as the grammatical embodiment of two different conceptual systems that are equally effective. Chine speakers attribute the mistake as a result of the action that the subject performs. In contrast, English speakers report a discrepancy between the person s/he ts out to marry and the person s/he has actually married. Similarly, the action-result schema is consistently patterned in Chine, as shown in ntences (3) to (7). In contrast, the corresponding English ntences are expresd with different grammatical patterns in which the result is only implied, rather than overtly expresd as in Chine.
It is clear from the above examples that the action-result schema provides a unified conceptual schema for describing various situations which are not necessarily construed as action-result schema in English, even though English does have an action-result schema as illustrated below.
(8) He hammered the metal flat.
(9) He kicked the door open.
(10) He painted the hou red.
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James H-Y. Tai
306 The recognition of ‘result’ as a mantic prime in Chine verb mantics was in
fact first propod in Tai (1984), where I argue that, in contrast with the four mantic categories which Vendler (1967) has propod for English, Chine has only state, activities, and result, lacking accomplishment and achievement categories.1 The latter two categories are expresd mostly in action-result verb compounds (V1-V2). Moreover, the resultative complement V2 ems to indicate foreground information and the action verb V1 ems to indicated background information.
Let me repeat a couple of key arguments in Tai (1984). First, while accomplishment verbs in English necessarily imply an attainment of the goal, their eming equivalents in Chine do not necessarily so imply. For instance, the accomplishment verb ‘to kill’ in English necessarily implies the death of the recipient of the action. Therefore, (11) is ungrammatical in English.
(11) *I killed John, but he didn’t die.
The verb sha in Chine is assumed in most English-Chine and Chine-English dictionaries as equivalent to ‘to kill’ in English. However, as shown in (12), the verb sha doesn’t necessarily imply the death of the recipient of the action.2
(12) Wo sha-le John liang-ci, ta dou mei si.
I kill-ASP John two-CL he all not die
‘I performed the action of attempting to kill John twice, but he didn’t die.’
To guarantee the death of the recipient of the action, the verb compound sha-si has to be ud. The ungrammaticality of (13) shows that sha-si does imply the death of the recipient of the action.
(13) *Wo sha-si-le John liang-ci, ta dou mei si.
I kill-die-ASP John two-CL he all not die
*‘I killed John twice, but he didn’t die.’
In fact, I would argue that the verb ‘to kill’ doesn’t really exist in Chine. On the
1H owever, Teng (1986), Smith (1990), He (1992), and Chang (2001) have maintained that Chine has all four categories given by Vendler.
2I f context information is properly provided, the verb sha can carry a pragmatic connotation implying the death of the recipient of the action. When the verb sha is ud in bei and ba constructions, the implication of death tends to be stronger. It is also the ca in verb compound mousha ‘murder.’
