On construals and vantages

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Language Sciences 32 (2010) 335–346 www.elsevier.com/locate/langsci

On construals and vantages Margaret E. Winters Wayne State University, Department of Classical and Modern Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, 906 West Warren, 487 Manoogian, Detroit, MI 48202, USA

Abstract Vantage Theory (VT) and Cognitive Grammar (CG) both rely crucially on the cognitive phenomenon of categorization as well as on the semantic/pragmatic notion of participant point of view in making claims about human linguistic production and perception. In this paper these commonalities of commitment are explored, as are the differences in the ways VT and CG apply these notions in analyzing diachronic data. For this latter goal I use a well-known development from later Old English to Middle English, the change from dative experiencers (of the kind found in the now fixed expression me thinks but also some 40 other verbs of cognition and emotion) to either nominatives (I like) or impersonal expressions headed by it (it seems to me). The analysis will be on two levels. First, diachronic work now in progress on the construction itself will be presented, with emphasis on the change in construal/vantage which must be delineated in order to make sense, within either of these theories, of the changes in the construction. On a more abstract level, the paper considers the interaction of the theories and explores how the differences between them with regard to the place of viewpoint in linguistic analysis should be reconciled. Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Categorization; Vantage; Construal; Dative experiencer; Diachrony

1. Introduction In a paper presented at the 1999 International Conference on Cognitive Linguistics and subsequently published (Winters, 2002), I explored some of the ways in which Cognitive Grammar and Vantage Theory might be compared when both were applied to the same diachronic data. Some years earlier, MacLaury (1991) had also looked at what light Vantage Theory might shed on change. This earlier paper was in general concerned with change in progress rather than completed change and did not contain a comparison with other semantics-based approaches; it is nevertheless worthy of consideration in this somewhat diachronic context since it is the only other paper in the Vantage Theory literature, to the best of my knowledge, which takes any kind of stance concerning change over time. The present paper is an extension of these two earlier papers, considering further how historical change can be studied within these two theories. It will also discuss to what extent Cognitive Grammar and Vantage Theory differ and – as is

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more usually the case – to what extent they share similar ways of viewing language change and cognition. After this introduction, the second part of the paper will be a brief overview of MacLaury (1991) and Winters (2002). In the third section some data, drawn from a well-known change in the history of English, will be set out, first described in traditional grammar terms, and then approached through the underlying commitments and analytical apparatus of each of these more recent theoretical frameworks. The goal will be to uncover both similarities and divergences in how change can be studied. The concluding section will further review how language history can be illuminated by each of the frameworks as well as places where further exploration might be useful for both the theoretician and the language-specific historian. 2. Previous work MacLaury’s paper treating change (1991), like much of his work, concerned color categorization. Here he takes what might be identified as a typological approach. He was particularly interested in how set configuration might evolve over time, in this case in the ways that color categorization becomes quite different in two otherwise closely related Mayan dialects. Categorization into sets around ‘‘best instances” (cf. Rosch, 1978), of course, involves the perception that some item belongs in the set; that is, that it is enough like other members of the set that it can be classed with them. The converse is that if there are insufficient similarities or, stated differently, too many differences when comparisons are made with established set members, then there is no recognition of membership in that set. While this is simply a restatement of well-known cognitive phenomena (cf. Rosch, 1978; Lakoff, 1987), MacLaury’s contribution resides in his statement (1991, p. 42) that any one individual can attend simultaneously to similarity and difference. The decision as to how salience is assigned to some feature or other, leading to a decision, achieved through comparison, about the rightness of set membership for any given item, is a cognitive strategy. MacLaury further contributes the notion of ‘‘coextensivity” (1991, p. 40), that is, the situation in which the denotations of color terms overlap but have different colors as the focal point for each of them. His point is that the different colors can be identified as different mental vantages by the speakers/color-perceivers. It is the case, however, that the results of categorization tasks may differ from individual to individual for a variety of reasons. One of these reasons is that there is a range of variation in the degree of precision displayed from individual to individual. This is very much the case in one of the dialects he studies, and change in categorization derives precisely from this variation. In other dialects, however, social prestige plays a more salient role, in part because the speakers of the dialect are much more steeped in tradition and linguistic convention than their neighbors who have been much more influenced by the surrounding wider society. MacLaury’s concluding point is that, at least in regard to color categorization, change proceeds toward greater distinction rather than less; the recognition of novelty, when not constrained by convention, is, therefore, an important factor in change. Winters (2002) takes as its departure the development of French negation elements from Latin, demonstrating how this somewhat complex development can be traced within each framework. A Cognitive Grammar analysis (see also Winters, 1988) pays particular attention to how the arrangement of negators within a given semantic set might evolve with time and how specific morphemes might be recategorized as part of a second set. The Latin passus ‘step’, for example, takes on a negative polarity meaning as a reinforcement of negation, similar to step in (1): (1) She didn’t move (even) a (single) step. That negative meaning becomes more salient and eventually becomes the basic negator (replacing Latin non ‘not’). As part of that evolution it becomes increasingly identified with negation and less with physical movement; this involves crucially a change in semantic category. Modern French retains pas ‘step’ but separates it in all ways but etymologically from pas ‘not’, which in spoken French is virtually the sole negator.

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(2) a b

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Elle fait un pas en avance. ‘She takes a step forward.’ Elle (ne) le voit pas. ‘She doesn’t see it.’ (ne is normally omitted in spoken French)

Within the framework of Vantage Theory, the change can be grasped as one in viewpoint; the coordinates of any vantage can change over time through assigning greater salience to difference rather than similarity (MacLaury’s 1991 summation of changes in color categorization) or vice versa. Most of the descriptions of vantages are largely synchronic, but with reference to what is often called ‘‘dynamic synchrony.” It becomes a process by which ‘‘vantage construction is retaining in memory earlier levels of viewing and using new information (mobile coordinates) as known information or reference points (fixed coordinates)” (MacLaury, 1995, pp. 243–244). Here we have greater attention to difference as the key to the evolution of negators (to pursue further the example set out above), with the vivid language/negative polarity use of passus gradually becoming less and less similar to passus ‘step’ until an entire category boundary is traversed. One might say, however, that once pas ‘negator’ becomes part of the more general semantic set of negation, attention shifts from difference to similarity until this newly generalized negative marker is viewed as extremely similar to other negators already being used in Old French. Eventually the comparison leads to complete identification of meaning and the loss, for a variety of reasons, of other generalized negative elements such as mie (from Latin mica ‘crumb’) which, like pas, was originally held to be the least quantity of something.1 Winters (2002) points out that differentiation is only one of the ways that categories can change. Attention to similarity is another force. It is achieved, to use another image much employed by MacLaury, through increased panning out (as opposed to the action of zooming in, paying attention to differences by concentration on the details of comparison). When panning out, language users turn their attention from the smaller to the broader setting of a given term and therefore become more conscious of where there are similarities. An example in Winters (2002) is the extension in French of the subjunctive mood after temporal subordination. Where earlier French used the subjunctive after avant que ‘before,’ whose semantics are a clear example of a situation where uncertainty of outcome governs the non-indicative, modern French also requires the subjunctive after apre`s que ‘after,’ where there is no doubt about outcomes, since the speaker knows what happens next. A variety of similarities may explain this change; we can think of speakers as ‘‘panning out: from the core semantics of uncertainty and thus noticing temporality as a similarity, as well as the prosodic or phonological structure of a two-syllable, vowel-initial morpheme followed by que that serves as a subordinating conjunction. 3. A data-based comparison of theories This section will first present, in terms as close to those of traditional grammar as possible, the data to be used as the basis of comparison. Following this short presentation I will propose two analyses of the data, the first within Cognitive Grammar and the second in Vantage Theory. 3.1. The data Late Old English had a class of verbs which might generally be defined semantically as designating forms of cognition (thinking,2 believing, evaluating). There were some 30 to 40 of them, some of which displayed, 1 In earlier Old French mie was the most frequent general negator, later overtaken by pas. Others, like point, narrowed in their meaning (in the case of point to an emphatic ‘not at all’) while mie disappeared completely. 2 Ironically, the one verb which is still used as a (very much distorted) version of this construction in contemporary English did not become part of the pattern in Old or early Middle English. The modern form think results from a phonological merger of þencan ‘to think,’ which had a nominative thinker, and þyncan ‘to seem,’ which conformed to the construction under discussion here by being preceded by a dative of the experiencer. In 3a I use think for verbs of mental activity as a schematic representation only and do not intend any claim about the specific history of this diachronically rather complex verb. On the other hand, once the discussion shifts from the earliest versions of this construction, it is useful to include think – at least from the time of Shakespeare – since, as a result of the merger of the two Old English verbs, speakers did indeed construe think, in its narrower mental activity sense, as a dative experiencer verb.

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although not exclusively, a construction, already in earlier Old English, consisting of a nominative form for the cognitive stimulus with the experiencer, often preposed, in the dative case. This construction coexisted with the more modern-looking construction with the experiencer in the nominative case. The dative-experiencer type was much more frequent for the verbs with the competing patterns. Other verbs of cognition only appeared with nominative experiencers; these verbs will not be further discussed in the paper. The dative experiencer construction might be schematized as follows: (3) a b c

medative thinks NOM medative seems NOM himdative likes NOM

In each case the nominative marks what causes the thought or belief or stimulates the positive or negative reaction. It should be noted that these constructions often competed with others where the experiencer was expressed in the nominative and the thought/belief/target of evaluation were in some objective case (Allen, 1995). The dative-experiencer type was much more frequent at the time and will be the focus of this somewhat simplified data analysis. On the other hand, this paper will not address the substantial formal literature on the evolution of this construction (among others, Lightfoot, 1979; Fischer and van der Leek, 1983, 1987; Allen, 1995). Rather, the question is how to capture these changes from the point of view of the cognitive subject, that is, the (non-idealized) speaker/hearer. In modern English, nothing remains of this construction, with the exception of the overused and usually misquoted line from Hamlet: the lady doth protest too much methinks [III, ii, 239]. It is often rendered with methinks in first position and has become a discourse marker expressing, roughly, that the speaker does not believe that some given act of communication is to be believed.3 In all other cases, these verbs have lost their pre-verbal dative-experiencers paired with a stimulus in the nominative. Rather, two other constructions, one personal and one impersonal,4 have replaced them, as exemplified here: (4) a She likes5. . . b It seems to her c We grieve/it is grievous to us Of these possibilities, two exemplify a change in only one direction, with (4a) today allowing only a personal expression while (4b) in this sense is always impersonal. As for (4c), while the two constructions coexist today, the impersonal has a definitely archaic/poetic feel. There are, more fundamentally, differences in meaning in those cases where personal and impersonal expressions coexist. These differences emerge variously from both the nature of the pronoun and also the location of focus, which may fall on either the verb or a pronoun as a result, to some degree, of word order. The prepositional phrase to her/us, etc., I would

3

As well as moving methinks to the beginning of the phrase (Methinks the lady doth protest too much is the more common modern rendering of the phrase), the choice of verb is occasionally another way in which the expression moved away from its source; a quick survey on-line uncovered Methinks the lady doth booeth (sic) too much (4nightswimmers.blogspot.com/2007/07/me-thinks-lady-dothbooeth-too-much.html) and Methinks the lady doth think too much (jac-andria.blogspot.com/2006/11/lady-doth-think-too-muchmethinks.html). 4 The term ‘impersonal’ is used in the paper in speaking of modern English to designate an expression consisting of it and a verb, where it does not have a concrete referent and where the verb does not appear with any other person or number, at least without a change in meaning; Harris and Campbell (1995, p. 83) call the verbs in question here ‘inversion verbs’ since many of them in Old and Middle English were not strictly impersonal. 5 An anonymous reviewer has pointed out that many of the verbs with dative experiencers simply died out and were replaced by verbs from Scandinavian and French, with English borrowing a nominative construction with the verb. While that may be one of the motivations for the change in English, there were competing constructions already present in Old English. In addition, the construction in the donor language was not always the more progressive one in English. A case in point, the verb to like persists, although English also takes in the French to please a dative experiencer verb in that language to the present.

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suggest, moves the focus to the experiencer from the verb as well as from the sources of the judgment or emotion.6 The change in question, then, resides in the need to determine what arguments are governed by what kinds of verbs. In Old English a specific class can be identified: verbs with a nominative source and a dative experiencer. In modern English many of these verbs have become at least morphologically merged into a larger, default class taking nominative experiencers (where the fact that they are experiencers and not agents is somewhat hidden by a lack of distinctive morphology). Virtually all of the impersonal expressions coexist with personal, agent-like constructions and, as exemplified by (4c), may have a more marginal use than their personal counterparts. The emphasis in the rest of this paper is largely on these personal constructions, in part because the change is much more dramatic, but also because this is the direction taken by the majority of the verbs which survive into the contemporary language. 3.2. Cognitive Grammar and Vantage Theory: similarities Cognitive Grammar, like Vantage Theory, falls into the wider category of functionalist approaches to the analysis of language. For that reason, among others, it is a legitimate undertaking to compare them. The basic commitments of the two theories are very similar, differing perhaps in the degree of centrality afforded to some of them; it is fair to state, however, that they never contradict each other. Of highest importance for both Cognitive Grammar and Vantage Theory is the salience of what is most often called ‘‘psychological reality,” the claim that what is said about language production and perception is based on how human cognition really functions. The theories both view categorization as the cognitive function most pivotal in language use. There is no need to spend much time on this point, which has been developed since early work, among others, by Rosch in psychology (1978 is representative), Lakoff (most notably 1987, though this is by no means the earliest linguistic consideration), MacLaury (1991) from an anthropological linguistic point of view, and, diachronically, Winters (1992). One can say that the essential nature of categorization for any kind of linguistic analysis is a given for both theories. A second point of fundamental agreement is the importance of what, neutrally, might be called ‘‘viewpoint.” In Cognitive Grammar it has been developed through the notion of construal (Langacker, 1987) or the role of the speaker/grammatical subject as an observer or participant or both in the event or situation being expressed, who, in Langacker’s own words, may ‘‘conceptualize the same situation in alternate ways” (1998, p. 4). To use one of his examples, the difference in meaning in the following sentences resides in the viewpoint expressed by the speaker and reflected in the choice of verb (Langacker, 1987, p. 141, his 13a and b): (5) a b

I will go to Chicago tomorrow. I will come to Chicago tomorrow.

The first of these (5a) defines the trip to Chicago from its unnamed starting point, while the second (5b) emphasizes the goal or arrival point. In each case the speaker is making the same trip from the same starting point to the same destination, but each viewpoint evokes a meaning which is quite different from the other one.

6 It has been suggested by an anonymous reader that the prepositional phrase in modern English is simply equivalent to dative case. I would argue that the dative case has to be understood as part of a system of cases and takes its meaning from its place in the system as well as from its various functions. The system is a different kind of meaningful entity from the collocation of preposition and noun (phrase) or pronoun (Langacker, 1987, pp. 81–86 discusses the symbolic nature of grammar, which would come into play in differentiating these two constructions). Prepositional phrases are more salient as well, especially at the end of a clause, than case endings often are or were. To assign further salience, languages which mark case with adfixes often have alternative forms, sometimes as grammatical repetitions in the same clause as noun endings.

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It is undeniable that the very name ‘‘Vantage Theory” evokes the notion of viewpoint in a general way, but within this framework vantage has a technical definition. It is used to designate what MacLaury (1995, p. 240) refers to as the placement of coordinates of a viewpoint. One of these coordinates is fixed within its set at any point in time, while the others are mobile. More specifically, the fixed coordinate is a pre-determined reference and the mobile coordinates are indicators of relative similarity or difference between that point and other entities. To use another comparison taken from Gestalt Theory, we can think of the mobile coordinate(s) as the figure with the fixed coordinate as ground. What is essential to meaning, therefore, is the vantage taken on the unit being defined. The fixed coordinate can be equated with the best instance or prototype within a radial set (Lakoff, 1987), and the mobiles with other members of the set. Among them, they define the configuration of the set. When used to define speakers’ judgments about focal or less focal colors with no pre-determined prototype, this notion of vantage allows those judging to zoom in on the focal color in a series of stages; the central member of a series of possibly related colors can emerge in this way since comparisons call for ‘‘better” or ‘‘worse” examples. Underlying this technical use of vantage, as applied to color categorization, is, however, a more general phenomenon which is close to Cognitive Grammar’s notion of construal. In both cases the point of view of the language user as to what a prototypical instance might be and what instances are more peripheral emerges at least in part from where the language user (or community of users where such judgments are conventionalized) stands metaphorically as well as literally in relationship to the units of the set. 3.3. Cognitive Grammar and Vantage Theory: differences When we turn from color categorization and toward diachronic rather than synchronic linguistic data, the story becomes more complicated and there seems to be quite a bit of difference between the two theories. In this section they will be taken up one after another by means of successive proposals on how the data set out above can be accounted for. In looking at the change from dative to nominative experiencers through the lens of Cognitive Grammar, it is useful to call upon Langacker’s (1987, pp. 128–132 and elsewhere) notion of subjectivity and objectivity, the direct result of cognitive activity which evokes both linguistic and non-linguistic results. It is, in short, a measure of the expression of involvement of participants in a given action or, again, a question of viewpoint. The fully subjective point of view, on one hand, is one where the speaker/observer considers her/himself to be completely outside the domain of action; from the linguistic point of view, s/he states an event or situation as if totally from an exterior stance: (6)

It is raining.

The fully objective point of view, on the other hand, is one where the speaker/observer views her/himself as an active participant (an object) in the event/situation and produces an utterance which shows this involvement as from within: (7) I walked out into the rain. The distinction then calls upon a series of cognitive functions summed up by construal, but construal as instantiated by the degree of subjectivity (on a continuum from none to full) brought to bear in the production of the utterance. The change being considered here does not evoke either end-point of the continuum mentioned in the previous paragraph; there is no absolute change from fully objective to fully subjective or the reverse. Rather, the earlier and later versions of the construction, on the whole, remain at the objective end of the continuum. In late Old English the dative experiencer is the observer who is partly involved in the action but, by the nature of experiencers, in a relatively passive way. Where the verb and argument constellation changed to a nominative experiencer, the degree of objectivity increases, precisely with the perception of the experiencer as nominative, more actively engaged than would be a participant in the dative. This proposal is based on the idea that in some sense a nominative subject in a clause with an active (as opposed to stative) verb is prototypically an

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agent (cf. Van Oosten (1986)) for a cognitively-based approach to this idea.7 With the shift from dative to nominative morphology, therefore, the construction would be understood, as a result, as evoking something more like a semantic agent. In other cases, where the expression becomes an impersonal (see the discussion of this term in note 4), the degree of subjectivity will increase, particularly in cases where there is no dative expression. It must remembered, however, that virtually every impersonal expression in modern English of the kind which evolved from dative experiencer verbs has a competing personal version and, in fact, may as an impersonal still be constructed with a dative experiencer. The result is a series of expressions along the continuum from subjectivity to objectivity: (8) a b c d

It seems certain. It seems to him that she’ll do it. He is sorry that the choir stopped singing. She thinks that she’ll do it.

(8a) has no experiencer and is certainly the most subjective of these utterances. With (8b) the move toward objectivity is realized within the framework of an impersonal expression, which reduces by some amount the subjectivity of the statement. A crucial difference between (8a) and (8b), therefore, is one of focus, with a., one might argue, carrying two equal focal points, the indefinite unit calling for an evaluation and the evaluation itself, and b. with a third (the evaluator) which, because it is optional, draws more than its equal share of the focus within the entire sentence. Both (8c) and (8d) have nominative subjects, with (8c) arguably more passive than (8d) since the expression of regret is directly caused by an exterior event, the cessation of vocal music, while in (8d) the act of thinking has some degree of greater volition. The change, then, is one of degree, from a more subjective dative experiencer to a somewhat less subjective nominative experiencer and an even more subjective impersonal expression, all the more so when the dative experiencer is omitted. The changes being examined do not, however, have to do solely with the nominal arguments of the verb, but with the meaning of the verb itself with which they interact in fairly complicated ways. The key to this evolution lies in the importance of categorization for Cognitive Grammar. It manifests itself in that one of the more obvious changes in the verbs in question is that they acquire much more prototypical subjects, expressed in the nominative and referring most usually to human beings. This is in contrast to the late Old English, where the subject of these verbs was the thought, the source of the emotion, or the stimulus for evaluation. The categories of verbs, established in terms of the relationship between verb and object, change in that the dative experiencer category all but disappears and the verbs which were part of it become part of a much wider number of verbs, no longer overtly separate (this was actually the case when the members of the category all contained a morphologically obvious experiencing animate). These verbs become rather a peripheral subset within a larger category which can be schematized as representing the very common construction of {nominative subject + verb}. A more interesting question is what causes the set of these verbs to merge with the larger construction set. Part of the answer lies in the nature of analogical extension (Winters, 1997 is a discussion of analogical change within this framework). Through lower level cognitive functions, specifically the comparison of new or salient items to a base (interestingly, this base may be either the prototype of a semantic set or one or another very peripheral member), these new or salient items are found to have features in common with the base. They are, as a result, categorized with the base and will take on further more prototypical features. In this instance, since the large majority of verbs in Old English took nominative subjects that were often in pre-verbal position, their frequency influenced the interpretation of other nominals which preceded the verb. These nominals – more specifically those with experiencer function – were identified with higher frequency pre-verbal pronouns and nouns and were expressed in the nominative as well (Allen (1995) makes this claim although using a more formal framework).

7

Within Role and Reference Grammar (Van Valin and LaPolla, 1997) the term actor is preferred and may be more accurate.

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At the same time, however, changes in the core meaning of the verbs are also taking place. In Old English it was not just the nature of their arguments that made them a separate category, but also the fact that they represented a set of ideas which seemed to be understood as, one might say, almost passive. This passivity is not a grammatical feature of the verbs, but rather represents the results of sensory or otherwise external events which brought about a cognitive or emotional reaction. The emotion-based verb regret, for example, might be paraphrased as have cause to regret, perhaps best captured by the impersonal it is regrettable to someone. Both these paraphrases exist as normal expressions today. With verbs of cognition, however, although cause to think is still possible, our usual modern view is that thoughts come as a result of human mental labor. Although emotions and emotion-based evaluations are, often, the result of external stimuli, the semantics of verbs expressing them (if they are not otherwise modified) evoke a view of the feeling of emotion or reaction to sensory stimuli as mental processes over which there is a level of control approaching agentivity. As these verbs changed, therefore, from expressing a more passive reaction to something closer to mental action, the potential for change in arguments through analogy was reinforced by this different view of the relationship between the source of the thought, evaluation, or emotion and the person who, for need of an overarching term, is involved in this activity. The change in argument structure and the change in core verb meaning can be seen to evolve together as a complex set of mutually reinforcing developments. The following Vantage Theory discussion is rather more of a sketch of what an analysis might look like within this framework than a complete analysis. An essential aspect of change consists of modification in the distance from which the language speaker views the event or situation. For this, as was said above, MacLaury adapts a pair of cinematic terms; one may in some cognitive fashion zoom in on the scene in question or pan out from it (a good discussion is found in MacLaury (1995, pp. 243–245)). Zooming in gives one a closer perspective, with the result that certain details become more salient since they are now the object of focus; the larger scene may thus become less important than these details. Panning out, on the other hand, leads to less specificity, since the larger scene is in focus rather than any specific part of it. Details, as a result, lose their sharpness and matter less to the observer. The following sentences provide an illustration of the synchronic notion: (9) a b c

The weather is bad today. It’s raining. Large raindrops were falling rapidly.

In (9a) the observer has panned as far out as one could in discussing the weather (in a naturalistic way, that is; an existential statement with no qualifier either stated or understood like There is weather is unnatural at best, though one could state that There is bad weather with somewhat more felicity). The next two sentences provide increased zooming in from a comment on the general meteorological situation, via a specific kind of weather (9b), to a statement with two further kinds of detail, drops of a certain kind instead of rain as a mass, and the adverbial qualifier making this a closer observation and a specific comment about what kind of rain is being described (9c). One can as well transfer this cinematic image from descriptions of the exterior, sensory world to the epistemic realm. Language users are capable of choosing to focus attention on more or less detail of meaning, and can thus bring this degree of focus to their way of producing or even perceiving an utterance and its structure. It is important to note, however, that this choice is not an absolute one, since, for MacLaury (1995, pp. 238ff) an increase in attention to similarity (as a prelude to panning out) or to difference (causing zooming in) can co-occur in the individual at any given time. The crucial point is that the language user assigns salience to one or the other, thus relegating the non-salient element to the background. It can still be called upon as part of one’s understanding of a given unit, without bringing about change to its backgrounded state. Rather, the actuation of change might be said to necessitate increased attention to some element; the decrease of attention to another one may be a component of the spread of change.8 To return to the sentences in (9), stating that the 8

This point deserves more exploration in other work on Vantage Theory and language change.

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weather is bad today does not preclude an understanding that it is raining hard; the speaker of (9a) has, on some level of consciousness, chosen as salient the most widely focused expression. These same principles apply, then, when changes occur in grammatical units. In the experiencer construction under consideration here, the change from dative to nominative to mark the experiencers can be described as a case of panning out, resulting in a wider generalization and the concomitant loss of attention to certain grammatical details. More specifically, speakers of late Old English focused not on this specific construction with its frequent (dative) OVS structure, but on a wider constructional generalization of the basic SV(O) word order as a template. In production as well as in the perception/interpretation of utterances with dative experiencer verbs, language users lost the sense that the relevant verb/argument pairs constituted a special meaning represented by a special construction. Rather, from this newer perspective, pronouns and nouns preceding verbs are generalized to something more generally subject-like, a change both facilitated and reinforced by the gradual disappearance of case endings. This new perspective is based on a more schematic view, which, in the large majority of cases, causes speakers to produce and hearers to perceive a nominative at the beginning of the sentence before the verb. By panning out from a view which focuses on detail, therefore, speakers generalize structure. At the same time, we must account for the change in the categorization of what was a particular class of verbs. For this we turn to the notion of the coordinates of a particular vantage. As was said above, each category has what is called a fixed coordinate (MacLaury, 1995, p. 245), which is equivalent to the prototype for that category, the instance of the unit around which the category is developed. Around it are the mobile coordinates, those which adjust as the vantage shifts, becoming more or less detailed as the observer shifts from assigning salience to similarity (panning out) or difference (zooming in). In the evolution of the dative experiencer to a nominative experiencer, the mobile coordinates change through the mental action of speakers (eventually more or less frozen into conventional change), who have over time panned out to less detailed generalizations about the information afforded by the order of arguments in relation to the verb. The result is that language users perceive the verbs which formerly evoked a dative for the human experiencer and a nominative cause of the experience (or trigger of the evaluation) as part of the larger class of human subject/verb constructions. In this case the once-fixed coordinate (dative experiencer and verb) becomes a new mobile, a more peripheral member of the category whose prototype, in turn, is one of a nominative agent and a verb denoting some action. With the shift to the mobile coordinate in relationship to a new fixed coordinate, the prototype might be said to be strengthened since what was once a separate category is part of the new set. However, the extension is not full since the impersonal construction is also further developed and interacts in new ways with a constructional set, involving multiple uses of the impersonal pronoun it. It is, however, beyond the scope of this paper to develop either the synchronic semantic set or history of the impersonal construction in English. 4. Comparisons and final discussion Cognitive Grammar and Vantage Theory both take their departure from a claim of complete psychological reality; every aspect of language production and perception can be related to human cognitive functioning. Language is, in many if not all its fundamental features, realized through more widely applied cognitive phenomena, which are most often not themselves exclusively linguistic. For both theories, categorization is – arguably – the main phenomenon involved in how we learn and understand linguistic units (where single words and entire constructions count as units) and how we determine which one(s) to call upon to express a given concept. Change, then, is change in categorization (cf. Winters (1992) for a more complete discussion of this point); to repeat, the goal of this paper has been to explore what underlies a specific change given these presuppositions within the framework of these theories. For both Cognitive Grammar and Vantage Theory, categorization, as a cognitive process, emerges from a combination of conventionalized patterns and human decisions, made on a more or less unconscious level (Langacker, 1987; MacLaury, 1991, 1997; cf. also Lakoff, 1987). Langacker (1987) emphasizes the place of construal, the result of the way in which the language user views her/himself in relationship to the action or situation being expressed. It should be noted that the process of construal has both conceptual and linguistic outcomes; the language user conceptualizes her/himself within the situation to be expressed and then decides how to express it. MacLaury, somewhat differently, speaks less directly to that kind of language user

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involvement (or lack thereof) in what is being said, but rather more immediately to the resultant pattern of set members, the prototype and others, which are more or less peripheral. The human side, as expressed by Vantage Theory, comes from its particular attention to judgments of similarity and difference, which would, of course, come from how one conceptualizes what is being categorized. The notion of choice here, therefore, emerges not from degrees of subjectivity, but rather from human decisions on where to assign greater or lesser salience. This difference may come from the fact that the theory was developed through research on color categorization, that is, with data which in some real way are ‘‘out there” in the world whether speakers conceptualize them or not. In both frameworks the evolution of experiencers from dative to nominative, with the concomitant change in the meaning of the verbs, can be seen as a series of changes in categorization. The change in pronoun morphology in the majority of cases (and the development of the impersonal construction in others) calls into question how experiencers are classified in relationship to the entire clause or sentence. At the same time, the semantic evolution of the verbs brings about a change to an expression of expectation of intellectual control in how one experiences and judges matters. What has evolved is an active – although not agentive – decision (in the nominative) about these evaluative reactions rather than the imposition of a reaction from outside, that is, the anticipation of a more passive (dative) recipient of the notions or events to be evaluated. When we turn to final causes for these changes, I would argue that the differences between the theories largely disappear, as they do when we look at fundamental commitments such as psychological reality and the centrality of categorization in language use. It should be noted that the line between fundamental commitments and final causes of change is not at all a clear one. If the theory is based, atemporally, on the ideas that conclusions must be drawn on the basis of cognitive phenomena (psychological reality) and that certain of these phenomena are more central than others (categorization), it is not surprising that researchers in language change will take the same paths in hypothesizing the overarching causes of change. This is not to say that there is necessarily circularity of argumentation (and I do not believe that we are dealing with that fallacy here), but that a theory will gain strength from the unity of its framing belief and its way of looking at the nature of language change. One of the contributions of MacLaury’s work on changes in color categorization (1991, 1997) is his pointing out a relatively unusual phenomenon which he calls coextension, that is, the naming of the category with two terms whose distribution within a given set substantially overlaps and ‘‘the mapping of each term [encompassing] the focus of the opposite term” (MacLaury, 1997, p. 113). That is to say, he found that consultants categorized items as within the same category but with different focal points – a term he uses for color categorization as equivalent to prototype or, within his own theory, the fixed coordinate. With color this is a way of expressing the idea that something might be, for example, blue and green in appearance at the same time to a single speaker, even though a best instance of blue is different from a best instance of green. The idea can be extended, however, to other realms and sheds light on part of the change here since it serves to elucidate the interplay of pronouns within a single semantic category. If pronouns in preverbal position are all perceived as more similar to each other than different, because they are in the same linear relationship to the verb and because – very generally – they designate the interaction of human beings with situations or actions, they may indeed have different prototypes but still be viewed as in a single category. Over time, we can envision them as moving gradually from two separate semantic sets to this merged category, which first exemplifies coextension, that is the existence within a single category of two focal points or prototypes. As the set evolves and similarity becomes more and more dominant over difference, there finally emerges a single prototype. To return to a more Cognitive Grammar-based set of images, this new prototype would be somewhat more schematic, in that it would consist of a construction with {agent + active verb}. The configuration of {nominative experiencer + evaluative/cognitive activity verb} then becomes an extension which is moderately close to the prototype, while impersonal verbs are rather more peripheral given the inanimate subject. In an earlier paper (Winters, 2002), I discuss examples of sets which merge, those which separate after the movement of members from one to another, and, finally, sets which merge completely. What we have here is closer to the last type, since nothing remains, except the consciously archaic expression methinks, of the earlier dative experiencer semantic set. However, the prototype must also evolve here through increased attention to similarity into something more schematic.

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Categorization, with the resultant formation and re-formation of semantic sets alone, however, does not fully capture the notion of change in either Cognitive Grammar or Vantage Theory, since these mechanisms do not exist in a (mental) vacuum. A frequent consequence of attention to similarity is the time-honored activity of analogical extension. It too must be considered a final cause in this particular change in verbal constructions and has been recognized as such elsewhere in formal diachronic studies of the same data (Allen, 1995). When language users compare items and find compelling similarities, they are apt to make the items even more similar to each other (Winters, 1997). This further cognitive activity may take several forms, among them, most obviously, the extension of the category of the type {subject + verb} to include experiencer as well as agentive subjects. It may also include extensions of either subjectification or objectification in the sense used above, leading either to wider use of the impersonal (10a) or the increase in subjectivity (10b), which accompanies the change to nominal experiencers: (10) a b

It seems a good idea. She likes the idea.

Each of these extensions, whether increases in already existing patterns or new constructions, can then be spread further by analogy (Allen (1995), in fact, sees a slow spread of the loss of the dative experiencer from one verb to another) until the entire set of verbs with the potential for this kind of change is modified and the gradual nature of the spread is lost in what has become a uniform result (Wanner, 2006). We are left then with the question of how much difference there really is between the two theories. It is quite clear that they share multiple fundamental commitments, most notably to psychological reality and the centrality of categorization. In addition, they claim the same final causes for change, the cognitive activities which underlie categorization via comparison, recognition of similarity and difference, and assignment of salience to one or another feature of a unit. Where they differ most is in the processes which act at what might be thought of as an intermediate level between final causes and their linguistic results. To repeat briefly what was said above, Vantage Theory is most interested in how categories change, usually by an individual’s attention to greater detail (which can be extrapolated to true diachronic development) while Cognitive Grammar pays more attention to change in how the individual sees her/himself as interacting with the situation or action. The former consists of panning in and/or zooming out, while the latter is captured by degrees of subjectivity/objectivity. In both cases, again, we are – correctly – looking at change in terms of the language user. Even here, however, the similarities in approach are more robust than the differences. Głaz (2006) argues that MacLaury’s (1997, pp. 281ff) levels of viewpoint are based on many of the same observations as Langacker’s (1987) on degrees of subjectivity and objectivity. The differences pointed out here are perhaps more a matter of presentation, though the overall impression in looking at both theories is one of differences in degree of focus on the participant/observer as opposed to a way of situating the event itself using two points of reference (MacLaury’s coordinates) instead of one (Langacker’s measure of subjectivity/objectivity). To conclude, there does not, therefore, seem to be a great deal of difference in Vantage Theory and Cognitive Grammar in the way they approach cognition or what one might think of as the human decisions with regard to linguistic expression. This conclusion is born out by Głaz (2006), who states: Despite unquestionable differences between CG and VT, the two also exhibit clear and sometimes even striking parallelisms. Moreover, analyses of specific data couched within these theories lead to parallel results, which testifies to a high degree of credibility of each model as an independent whole. The discussion here has been largely diachronic; however, there certainly remains the need to examine more aspects of synchronic description and the entire question of first language acquisition before this conclusion can be generalized across all applications of the two theories. What has been discussed in the present paper can, nevertheless, be considered suggestive of what the results of such investigations might tell us about the nature of the theories and – more widely – the nature of language and the brain.

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