Journal of Pragmatics 12 (1988) 567-600 North-Holland
567
RETRIEVING PROPOSITIONS FROM CONTEXT: WHY AND HOW
Mira ARIEL*
Retrieving from context is an essential part of discourse interpretation. According to Relevance theory, i'~ is a precondition on the establishment of utterance Relevance. This paper analyzes the system of marking syntactically independent propositions as background for other, usually adjacent utterances. The propositions thus modified are those which are assumed to be accessible to the addressee, and are presented in order :o support an original proposition.
1. On the role of context
One of the important contributions of the theory of Relevance advanced by Sperber and Wilson (1982,1986) is its view of context. Rather than assume that when communicating, a unique context is 'given', as is common practice in pragmatic analyses, Sperber and Wilson adopt an approach according to which the specific context is to be actively searched for. Thus, processing procedures employed in utterance comprehension are not carded out against a fixed, predetermined set of assumptions. Instead, they argue, a procedure for context search must be conducted simultaneously with the comprehension process. That context should be taken into consideration when accounting for the full range of natural language phenomena is, of course, by now noncontroversial. All the pragmatic research has assumed that. Most of the pragmatists, however, have suggested local principles, tying grammatical forms, such as indexicals, cleft sentences, definite descriptions, existential sentences, etc., to specific contextual factors, in order to account for their actual distribution. Gr/ce's (1975) theory on the cooperative nature of conversation was the first to assign context a more general function. Unlike the general pragmatic trend, this proposal was not aimed at accounting for form-function correlations whic~ simply happen to be due to contextual factors. The context, according to Grice, serves as the basis on which a particular utterance gives rise to particular conversational implicatures. In other words, Grice argued that once the literal meaning of the utterance has been established, it combines with the context to generate additional, implicit messages. .
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* Author's addre, ss: M. Ariel, Linguistics Department, Tel-Aviv University, Ramat-Aviv, Telo Aviv, 69978, Israel. 0378-2166/88/$3.50 © 1988, F|:,~'~~.c =, ,,=,l~e P~. ~:',c o ~
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Sperber and Wilson extend the role of context even more. Using context is viewed as an obligatory, rather than an additional/optional part of utterance processing, since it is claimed to influence literal interpretations (so-called proposifionai content), and not only non-literal interpretations. Most importantly, it is essential that utterances be evaluated against some context for the establishment of Relevance - Sperber and Wilson's proposal for an overall pragmatic principle governing natural language discourse. Having specifically contextual implications is a necessary condition they impose on utterance Relevance. Totally New information, unable to link up with any background context in order to generate contextual implications, is never considered Relevant. However, although context is not seen as a predetermined, well-defined body of assumptions, and although in principle any piece of information can be employed by addressees in order to derive more and more contextual implications, context search is not at all accidental. Neither is it infinite. In order to account for the obviously fast mechanisms operating in natural . language . . processing, . ,qnerherr and Wil.~cm.. ~,~,~t,,,,_~ . that . . addressees . . . . opt f'nrv. Optimal Relevance, rather than simply Relevance. Optimal Relevance takes into account processing costs. Thus, addressees compute as many contextual implications as they can, provided they use only a plausible amount of processing effort. In other words, Optimal Relevance is defined in terms of cost (processing effort) against benefit (contextual'lmpm,,,"-'~t;,,-o~,. It is this notion of Optimal Relevance which constrains the potentially infinite context search. It dictates that the process be fast and efficient. A reasonable way to go about it is to assume that some contexts should be preferred as candidates for serving as basis for the derivation of contextual implications. Those assumptions which are extremely accessible to t h e addressee require less effort to implement than those which are accessible to lesser and lesser degrees. Thus, accessing information from long-term memory is~ othe~ things being equal, much more costly than accessing from short-term memory, where recent propo:itions processed are still stored. Also, accessing as background perceived information from the physical context of the speech event is relatively uncostly. ~ Encyclopedic knowledge is, usually, the least accessible source of information to retrieve from. On the other hand, it is a very rich source, enabling an i The three-way division of Accessibility degree into recent linguistic material, physical context attended to, and encyclopedic knowledge, is actually a simplified picture of the facts. Many other factors contribute to the saliency and hence the Accessibility of a piece of information used by addressees. But the classical division of context into three main types is sufficient for the purposes of this paper. For a discussion of a richer Accessibility system see Ariel (1985a,1988). When reading Ariel (1985a,b) one should be aware of a terminological change I have since made: Accessibility replaces Givenness. Also, High Givenness corresponds to Low Accessibility, whereas Low Givenness corresponds to High Accessibility.
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extremely wide range of contextual implications. Indeed, this paper will concentrate on mechanisms for accessing as background assumptions information which is of low Accessibility. Note first, that as is predicted by the principle of Relevance, such accessing is commonly performed, and even quite automatically so. Addressees often access background assumptions from their encyclopedic storage, which will then enable them to draw some implications, thus rendering the utterance Relevant. This is the case in the following mundane example (originally Sperber and Wilson's (34), p. 134):
(1) Peter: I'm tired. Mary: The dessert is ready. I'll make an ossobuco. In order to process the above conversation one would have to compute much more than the two explicit propositions expressed. To list some of the assumptions brought in, consider Mary first. Mary must use her knowledge on what it feels like to be tired in combination with the time being close to dinner time in ulu~t "-'~^- "to. ~nmatv . . . the. implication . . . that . .Peter . would . n~e her to cook dinner that evenii,g. Peter will also be busy in interpreting Mary's response. He will have to conjure up his knowledge on what a proper meal is (say, a main course and dessert), as well as his knowledge that an ossobuco constitutes a main course, in order to derive the implication that Mary has actually released him from participating in the preparation of the meal. Note that the above assumptions were brought in by the addressee from his encyclopedic knowledge without the speaker ever making any formal 'request' for their accessing. This is not always the case. Some accessing is performed because speaker explicitly instructs her addressee to do so. Given the principle of Optimal Relevance, whether speaker takes the trouble to guide her addressee as to what information needs to be accessed and implemented in the interpretation is again determined by cost assessment. Hence, stereotypic, script-based details are probably always left to the addressee to work out by himself. Less automatic or salient assumptions tend to be mentioned explicitly. We turn now to discuss speaker's marked instructions to the addressee to access certain propositions from context.
2. Retrieving Low Accessibility propositions In view of the importance of context retrievals in utterance interpretations, it is hardly surprising that natural languages have developed a rich system for marking information accessible in varying degrees to the addressee (see Ariel (1985a, 1988)). These linguistic devices mark accessible mental entities corresponding to referents, predicates and whole propositions. Elsewhere (Ariel (!985a,b, 1988)), I have analyzed Accessibility markers referring ,,o the mental
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entities corresponding to predicates (e.g., Gapping), dependent propositions (e.g., factive and cleft 'presuppositions'), and referents (the reference system). I have also discussed the main discourse function of independent propositions in Ariel (1985a), but in this paper I wish to discuss a variety of types of syntactically independent propositions marked as beating Low Accessibility. Section 2 will be a rather detailed analysis of a few such markers (Hebrew particles in 2.1, English sentential adverbs in 2.2, and intonation in 2.3). In section 3, I analyze some examples where Accessibility marking is used manipulatively. A more general discussion, based On the conclusions arrived at in sections 2 and 3, is presented in section 4. All the markers to be discussed below have other uses in addition to their function of marking Low Accessibility propositions (henceforth LA). The bulk of this section will be dedicated therefore to motivating a distinct analysis for these expressions as LA proposition markers. Thus, though the linguistic devices seem ambiguous in the abstract, I wifl argue that they are not so in actual discourse. Syntactic factors, as well as intonation, distinguish LA proposition marking from other uses these expressions might have.
2.1. Sentence particles By sentence particles marking LA propositions, I mean those discourse particles whose felicitous use relies on their referring to information accessible to the addressee. Typically, they refer ~ddressees to information of Low Accessibility. Examples are Hebrew harey, hen, and halo, to be discussed shortly, Russian vedy, German doch and ja, Swedish ju, Finni.~h -ban, Polish przecie~., Czech pfece, Hungarian hat, Armenian arten, Palestinian Arabic ma+ (conjoined to the subject of the clause) and others. The claims to be argued below for the Hebrew particles apply in principle to all of them.
2.1.1. The syntax of harey, hen, and halo Hebrew grammarians have categorized harey, hen, and halo quite inconsistently. They have been termed: deictics, particles, emphatic words, conjunctions, connectives, adverbs, introducers and interjections (see Levy (1867), Gesenius (1907), Krupnik (1927), Segal (1927), Ben-Yehuda (1948), Stuchkov (1948), Gur (1952), Kasovsky (1955), Lowenstamm (1957), Knaani (1961), Ben-David (1967), Alkalay (1969), Even-ghoshan (1982)). I prepose to analyze these expressions (in their common function) as sentential adverbs, a Despite the fact that harey (only) is replaceable by conventional sentence connectives sometimes ('then', 'still', 'because'), it should not be analyzed as a 2 However, harey, hen, and halo each have other meanings too. Hen is formal Hebrew for 'yes', halo is also a rhetorical question particle (hardly ever in use now), and harey often functions as a Dominant Sentence marker (see below), as a deictic and as a performative. In Mishnaic Hebrew it was also used to introduce a conditional.
M. Ariel / Retrieving propositions from context
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three-way (or four-way, for Mishnaic Hebrew) ambiguous connective. Fo~ one thing, note that while two sentential connectives which have identical scope and identical semantic function cannot cooccur, harey can cooccur with conventional connectives and adverbial PP's, such as mipney Je, 'because', creating natural utterances: (2a) kayam maacor.., be+ kabala ke+ naxon mi~pat ha+ medaber (There) is (a) block.., in accepting as correct (a) sentence which talks al almana ~e + ye~ la baal ki *mipney Je/harey maamad of (a) widow who has (a) husband because because (the) status (of) almana mecayen ~e+ baala niftar. (a) widow indicates that her husband (has) passed away (2b) im axen eyn mi~pat ~eela ela transformacya get If indeed not (a) sentence (of) interrogative but (a) transformation of mi~pat xivuy az *azay/harey lefanenu ~aj sentence ~ot] l n u ~ a u v g tu~u tu~u lU-ll Olat-Ul-Ua S al~ ! tosefet ma~maut ha + nigremet al-yedey h a + transformacya. addition (of) meaning which is created by the transformation (Ha-Mishpat Ha-Shemani, p. 37) (If indeed an interrogative is but a transformation of an indicative sentence then we have an added meaning caused by the transformation.) Another feature distinguishing harey words from the various conventional connectives is their relative freedom to occur in different positions within the sentence. 3 Connectives are limited to initial position: (3a) ...harey/ki maamad almana mecayen ge... ... because (the) status (of) (a) widow indicates that... (3b) ...maamad almana harey/*ki mecayen ge + ... ...(The) status (of) (a) widow because indicates that... (3c) ...maamad almana mecayen harey/*ki ~e+... ...(The) status (of) (a) widow indicates because that... (3d) ...maamad almana mecayen ge + baala ...(The) status (of) (a) widow indicates her-husband niftar harey/*ki has passed-away because. This ability to be inserted in various syntactic slots is characteristic of sentential adverbs. Indeed, hare), words are best analyzed as such. Though 3 While I mostly refer to harey in this section, the most popular of these expressions, I mean to include hen and halo too. I sometimes use the term harey ,vords for all three. Where harey is different, the text will specifically indicate this.
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they have a whole sen~,ence as their scope (like the connectives) their eyntactic behaviour is that of an adverb, and not that of a connective.
2.1.2. The pragmatics of harey, hen, and halo Modern Hebrew dictionaries (Alkalay (1969), Even Shoshan (1982), Gur (1952), Knaani (1961)) have under their entries for harey, hen, and halo (in the relevant sense) the very same words, indicating that they are synonymous. They thus explain nothing about the use and interpretation of these expressions. Older dictionaries make an attempt at reducing these words (harey especially) to sentential connectives. Krupnik (1927), for example, explains harey as a connective meaning 'if' and 'then', in addition to its meaning as deictic. Ben-Yebuda ~1948) refrains from terming these words sentential connectives, tho ~gh he does say that they are used to mark 'consequences', 'causes', 'contrasts', etc. Both he and Ben-David (1967) formulate their explanations in a hedgy fashion, very much unlike their regular style: "A bit in the meaning of "then' ... A bit as a result or the opposite of a previous thing" (Ben-Yehuda (I 948: 1190), emphases are mine). The syntactic arguments above, these strangely weak formulations and the fact that the Hebrew thesauruses (Sruchkov (1948), Rabin and Raday (1970)) do not list hare),, hen, and halo as synonyms for az or azay, 'then', aval, or ax, 'but', or ki, 'because' indeed reflect a linguistic intuition that the above should not be analyzed as actually carrying the meaning of 'then', 'but', etc. We need, then, a different analysis for these expressions. The one that seems best suited is to claim that harey, hen, and halo are semantically empty, and that context determines tI0.qr discourse functions. The cause and contrast relations with the rest of the text can then be explained via Relevance theory. But first, we must distinguish between the various pragmatic functions of harey words, s;.nce marking LA propositions is only one of them.
Matrix harev. Vnid Pragmatic Connectives is Even-Zohar's (1981, ~932, J~5) term, referring to empty lexical categories, used 'to help both encoder and decoder navigate along a specific discourse' (1981" 1-2). Kouzar (1980) in effect sugrests to classify harey within this class of function words. He claims that harey is used to organize discourse logically rather than linear!y. The harey Kouzar has in mind is, in fact, a matrix marker. This harey aiways shows up in the beginning of a non-initial matrix in a complex sentence, never in the syntactic positions allowed for sentential adverbs. This non-initial positioning is only n~,tural if the harey modifies Dominant information, ~ince such material is likely to be non-initial. However, if the r~..~:_,._, material h~r~pens to h~ initinl, k a r e y simrdv canncDt cmcur at a]] The opening section may be a conditionai (4a), a topic announcer PP (4b), a qualifying clause (4c), etc. More often ,:ban ,-~:, it is not a sentence, but rather, an Adverbial Phrase or a PP: L'nUI
111 llCll'i I L
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Jr- " d
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
M. Ariel / Retrievr;~gpropositions from context
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(4a) im eyn hem muxanim le + vater be + inyan ko paut. If are not they willing to give-in in (a) matter so small, harey ani vaday patur mi + viturim. I certainly (am) exempt from concessions. 'If they are not willing to give in in such a small matter I certainly do not have to.' (Kouzar, no. 2) (4b) a~er le + nikud ha + hesgerim be + ~ira harey hu As for the punctuation (of) parentheticals in poetry it taluy be + mida raba... depends to (a) large extent... (4e) bli le + hikanes le + firtey ha vikuax al Without. going-into the details (of) the argument on macav ha + kalkala,.., harey kol ha-' simanim meidim ki the-state (of) the economics,.., all the signs show that ha + me~ek mitkarev el ma~ber xamur. the. . . .market ~*O~ ~ ~;~;~ . . . . . . . . .is-~ppmach;-g .... ~. , {~,., ..... o ~..,~;~t ,,,,,,.~,,, ( = a crucial crisis) (Kouzar, no. 5)
Low Accessibility harey. Kouzar notes that this harey is optional, but that it tends to occur in long, complex sentences. He does not mention the question of register, but the harey that he (and Even-Zohar) have in mind belongs only in formal Hebrew. In colloquial Hebrew, when speakers mark non-initial Dominant material, az (literally 'then') is chosen, probably by influence of Yiddish iz (see Kahan-Newman (1984)). Also, the sentences that Matrix harey is attached to are Dominant, and they therefore have a typical main clause intonation. Matrix harey, then, which is syntactically restricted to pre-Dominant clause position, regulates relations within the utterance, signaling where the Dominant clause begins. A different kind of harey is attached to non-Dominant clauses. Only in this context hen and halo can occur too. The sentences then have a completely different intonation (see below). Also, the sentences are not particularly long or highly formal and complex, as with Matrix harey. This is the LA harey. It typically occurs sentence-initially, but it can also occur in the middle or the end of the sentence. Since Matrix harey's have a fixed position (they must immediately precede the clause they modify), once a harey appears anywhere else, or once the sentence contains a conventional sentence connective - harey Unlike Matrix harey, LA harey marks a relation of the utterance to the rest of the discourse, to a stretch of information that is not contained in the same utterance. This relation may be of contrast, but most often it is a support
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relation. Table 1 lists the relative distribution of various harey types. 4 Note that the LA function is by far the most common one, even though the data contain an unproportionate percentage of written and formal registers. Colloquial speech hardly has any Matrix harey. Neither does it have deictic
harey's: Table 1 Statistics on harey functions in discourse. LA
Matrix
Deictic
?
156 = 55.9%
111 = 39.9%
11 = 3.9%
1 = 0.4%
The Accessibility Condition. Most harey utterantces serve as reasons or motivations for other prop(~sitions. Those propositions, which are normally the Dominant information, ~he point of the current discourse, appear prior to the harey clause. (5) is a typacal example: (5a) h a + d o r gelanu !o yad:~ od be+ofe~i ma.magi mahi milxama. Our generation ¢dld),_.. not know yet hi ~ real sense what is war. harey be + mivca sinay hayinu kimat yeladim in (the) Sinai Campaign we-were almost children (Siach-Lochamim, p. 27) However, this discourse function is not a sufficient condition on appropriate uses of harey. We have to examine what type of information may be included in such sentences. Most importantly, | claim, the information ~n harey clauses must be already accessible to the _~ddressee. Note that in the following example even though the clause modified by harey seems to satisfy the conditio~ we ~tated so far, the sentence is unac~ptable: (6) mekubal la + x~ov ~e + ha + mahapexa ha + corfatit hi tocaa ~el (It is) accepted to think that the revolution the French is result of aliyat maamad ha+ burganut, aval ani svura ~e+ hayta the-rising-oI" the-class-of the bourgeois, but I think that was 4 The ta~.a consist of 279 harey and 32 ve + harey ('and harey') sentences, 34 halo sentences, and 42 hen ~ntences. The sources are quite varied in terms of registers: Most of the examples were tar:.:n out of the Knesset Transcripts of one da~, 19 December 1978 (oral formal Hebrew). Some spontaneous examples reflect a more colloquial style, and Siach-Loacharnim, an edited and publish ,~'. series of conversations among so!diers, is also close to being an authentic source for spontaneous speech. Other examples were gathered from written te.xts: newspapers, magazines, marginal k, ffi~t, rightist, and re!igious publications, 2 novels, 3 grammar books, a book of poems~ some students' exams, children's stories and poem~ ! , addition, ! us;ed translations into Hebrew, where hare) words seemed to appear 'out of nowhere'.
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be + ecem siba axeret- ??harey/ki luwi ha- 16 maas actually (a) reason another /because Louis the 16 was-fed-up ba + mluxa pagut. vdth ruling simply 'It is agreed that the French Revolution ts a result of the rising of the Bourgeois class, but I think that actually there was a different reason Louis the 16th was simply fed up with ruling.' (6) is unacceptable with harey because the information modified by harey is not accessible to the addressee. It is original. And original reasons to other propositions cannot be modified by harey. Harey words are limited to accessible information only. They are Low Accessibility markers, s As supporting evidence for this claim on harev, note also that the potential ambiguity between Matrix and LA harcy, which can occur in (written) cvnd-~tionai sentences, disappears once we have a counterfactuai, where the consequence is known to be false. Hare): cannot be an LA marker in such cases, since obviously false information camiot be assumed accessible to the addressee. Hence, harey can only be the Matrix one. Thus, (7) has only one reading: (7) im hu yaazor lax harey ant cincenet. If he will-help you MTR./*LA I (am) (a) jar The functions mentioned above, reason and contrast, are merely side-effects of LA harey. They are not the primary characteristics of these words. They are better analyzed as relations inferred by the addressee (via Relevance, or alternatively, via Gficean implicature), in order to account for the seeming redundancy in the speaker's utterance. More on this in section a.
The Non-Dominance Condition. I have distinguished LA harey from Matrix harey by claiming that LA harey modifies utterances which are non-Dominant. However, LA hare), in contrast sentences may seem to function like 'but' at first glance. As such, we should expect it to modify a Dominant utterance. In fact, I do not believe that this is the case. Note the following: (8a) gever ve+ Man and ... kaavor ... After
iga xagudim bi + znut. wife suspect of prostitution (newspaper headline). gaga kala huva le + veyt ha mJ~pat ha + baal, time short was-brought to the court house the husband,
s See Ariel (1985a,b) |br a brief discussion of 'because' expressions, divided into those marking neutral reasons as oppo,,;ed to others marking reasons which are based on accessible information.
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yexezkel ben ha-49, k e + xagud b e + gidul igto li+ Yehezkel (who) is 49, as (a) suspect of soliciting his-wife to znut. tguvat ha + x;~ud hayta: prostitution. The, reaction (of) the su~pect w~s: (After a while the husband Yehezkel;, 49 years old, was brought into the courthouse as a...) saba. (8b) hare), ani I (am) (a) grandfather. davar kaze?? ze lo naxon! (8c) ~e+ ani eese (That) I should commit (a) thing such-as-this?? It (is) not true! (Yed. Ahronot, 7 D r.cember 1979) (Sb) is presented as a contrast to the acc:asation in (Sa). ~ The speaker could have used aval, 'but', instead of harey. But then, (8b) is not the speaker's last word. Being a grandfather (the harey proposition in (Sb)) serves as the basis for rejecting the charges brought against him. Beir_,g a grandfather contradicts vci~,g a pimp, he assumcz (or e,~..~ -~--'o"'~" . . . . . t.~ assume). Ha,,~ng ~aid that as a preparatory background, he goes on to assert the Dominant information: 'It is not true!' (in (8c)). (8) is the only example in my data where a harey utterance is contrasted without an explicit contrastive connective. But other examples come to mind: (9) A; ani muxraxa la + lexet la + misrad hayom. I have to go to-the office today. B: harey at xola! (1o keday lax). you (are) sick! (Not worth to-you = You'd better not). However, I maintain that even when the harey utterances in contrastive contexts cc~~.ain an e×p~icit contrastive connective, the utterances are still non-Dominant. Dominance was defined by Erteschik-Shir and Laypin 0o70) as that constituent to which the speaker wishes to draw the addressee's attention. They originally suggested this notion for sentence-level phenomena (island constraints), but the same intuition holds for stretches longer than the sentence. One feature of Dominant material is that it serves as a natural candidate for being the next sentence topic. Indeed, the utterance following an LA utterance never picks up its topic. Rather, the next utterance (even when the LA utterance occurs in a 'but' ~.n,,.,~c) ~ ~. . . . . " picks up the topic established before it, not the t~pfic introduced t~y the harey sentence. For a smoother flow of the concatenated sentences below. I choose to present the followit~g, 6 This contrast is obviously not logic~,y/seman!~cai!y justified, but contrasts in natural language are net neee,~arilv ~rnantic in character. See Dascal a~d Katriel (1977 ~. f"" types of allowed contrasts in language.
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originally Hebrew examples, in translation, rather than in phonetic transcription" (10a) ...The principle [of the "IV series Startrek] is simple, and actually- very unsophisticated, but H A R E Y no one expects a TV series in this format to be comparable to "2001" Space Odyssey" of Clark and Kubrik. Within the science fiction genre, Startrek can be classified ,_'~to the oldfashioned, more primitive style; ... (Fantasia 2000, p. 25) (10b) ...He left his job at the faculty aad built his own lab far away in the country, according to him - because of the inexpensive land and the solitary place . . . . I tried to resist, I said "But it's not necessary, Lancelot. H A R E Y it's not as if we have economic problems, or they don't want you at the university. All I want is children and a normal life." I|l.lt I! -l =l l-l-l O 11 ... But the nr¢ wnlt;n ournt m him 3-'---" -'~" (Fantasia 2000, p. 7) "l~__~
.t~ . . . . .
L'--L
L____a.
:__
In fact, the discourse will remain as coherent if we delete the LA utterance. Compare (1 l a), the full version, with (1 l b), where I deleted the LA utterance: (1 la) We only met again at the end of the war, at the class reunion party ... At first I did not recognize the young woman who approached me ... From that moment she did not let go. Both of us felt a little strange there. Hare), we both left school at first grade of senior high school. Many people were not familiar to us. Quite a few had already been married and brought their wives and husbands with them ... (Yehoshua, 1977, 55/6) (1 lb) We only met again at the end of the war, at the class reunion party. At first I did not recognize the young woman who approached me ... From that moment she did not let go. Both of us felt a little strange the~c. O. Many people were not familiar to us. Quite a few bad already been married, and brought their wives and husbands with them ... But vote (12), where the LA ~OAerancc cannot be deleted without affecting *. .h. .~
.. '~-i~ l - e n c e r e x .~.~,-..-o
•
(12) A" Wanna go see a movie tonight! B: !-tarey i have to grade papers! C' O.K, i'li try some other time.
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Even in this case, where the LA 2tterance is not dispensable, it is still not the Dominant information. I believe that the inexplicit negative answer hinted at by B is the main point of B's words. It is perhaps somewhat counterintuitive to claim that an inference, i.e. an understanding which is not part of the discourse literally, is its main point, whereas explicit material is nonDominant. But, note that B above is not directly relevant to A. And Dominant materials, we would like to maintain, are directly relevant to each other. In fact, this is not the only ease where the inference, and not the explicit assertion is the main point. There are circumstances where speaker chooses to communicate in an indirect fashion, for politeness, etc. Labov and Fanshel (1977) discuss a similar case, with no connection to the Accessibility status of the utterance. They suggest that a proposition, which is known by the speakers to foll6w from the stated response constitutes the real answer, when the latter provides no real response. Thi~ is, of course, also the prediction of Relevance theory. One last potential counter-example has to be explained. If we prove the non-Dominance of LA utterances relying on the discourse following it, how can we explain the fact that in (i3) below B does take up on A's LA utterance?: (13) A: You shouldn't go out tonight. 18: Oh, no. I'm not really tired.
Harey you
are tired.
The answer to that is that (13) is a marked (though by no means a less natural) exchange. (13) is a case where one speaker corrects another~ mistaken presupposition. Cooperative speakers should always correct others' wrong assumptions when they detect them. But such repairs are outside the norr~al course of the discourse. (13), then, is nu counter-example. Li~e all non-Dominant material, when incorrect, speaker has to relate to it, temporarily ignoring the main point. In conclusion, LA harey words, even in seemingly contrastive contexts, should be analyzed uniformly. They modify non-Dominant propositions presented only in order to support a main point. This main point is in most cases the preceding utterance, but, as we have seen, in a few cases it is the inference drawn from the LA itself. Tho~_!gh the unmarked motivation for mentioning the LA proposit,~en ~.~. the support it !ends to the Dominant assertion, there are rare cases where LA utterances relate in a different way to their Dominant propositions. Such an example is presented in (14), where the harey clause serves as a qualification, the speaker apologizing for asserting what is known to the addressee: u
M. Ariel / Retrieving propositions from context
579
(14) ?fir~::'on ~elxa' ze makom xalomi. (ve+ ata hare), yodea zot). 'Yo~': Princeton' is (a) place wonderful. (And you know it) (personal letter, 15 September 1984) (~$ our Princeton' is a wonderful place. (And you know it.)) Similer ;:;eneralizations hold for all LA markers, though I will not argue them in ar~,, ~zr~:atdetail for the following markers.
2.2. Aa"~,e~:':,smarking Low Accessibility I hrvt~ r h~e'~ ~]:~'e English ~entential adverbs (after all, obvious&, and of couea'e) az e~:~'~, " ,~~e.~.. ~br adverbial LA markers. As in the previous section, the argume~ts :~;~:)p6rfng the analysis and the claims made (although excluding specific details) are me~:: ,: extend to all languages which have counterpart expressions. However, I do not mean to imply that each semantic correlate of the three adverbials mentioned is automatically an LA marker. A good example is the of course-surely vair, of which only of course (in fact only one of its uses) is argued to be an LA marker. Also, simi!~r to the particles above, being an LA marker is not the only use these markers are put to. I will therefore try to distinguish the LA reading, showing it to be distinct.
2.2.1. After all Halliday and Hasan (1976: 270) stick to the literal meaning of after all ("After everything relevant has been considered, what remains is..."), in their analysis of after all uses. They notice that intonation distinguishes two types of after uil~, IS ~ " ,,-,~ ~"~|~' .f a. t.. .t a. r. . .d.i.~.t .l n. o~ l ; ........ i ~ h l n e ~, what I would all, b u t it t u r n s ot~t ~~.l~aL ' - " ,L-_ • n o t *,,~ call Contrastive after all from LA after all (henceforth AA). They are distinguished syntactically, as well ~s with respect to the material they are allowed to modify. Contrastive AA may contain New information: (15) A: Did you know that John went to America after all? B: No, I didn't. I am glad for him. This is not true of LA AA. It is not necessarily contrastive in meaaing, an a it is, moreove~-~, restricted to w_odifying available information only. The following is a typical example: (16) The existence of such individuals is PRESUPPOSED (we cannot after all identify something that does not exist). (Keenar: and Hull (1978: 7)) In order to clearly see the difference between the AA jr (15) and (16), note (17a), which, unlike (17b), is unacceptable, since the syntactic position of AA
580
M. Ariel / Retrieving propositions from context
is the one appropriate for LA interpretations, but only the contrastive sense seems appropriate pragmatically: (17a) ? After all, can I see Jane now? (17b) Can I see Jane now, after all! An examination of two books plus a few other randomly collected examples shows that destressed AA typically occurs in sentence-initial position (58%) and sentence-medial position (39%). :' Only 3% have a destressed AA in final position, a A Contrastive AA is not o~ly stressed. It typically occurs at the end of the sentence. In all the examples collected, the accessible information modified by the LA AA is presented in order to explain or motivate the material immediately preceding the AA utterance. This function was independently arrived at by Blakemore (1987), who analyses AA as a processing instruction to the addressee to take the AA proposition as a premise for the deduction of the preceding clause. Consider the following:
(18a) Jenny's book was more of a shock to Helen, when she first read it, than it was to Garp who, after all, had lived with his mother and was unsurprised by her eccentricity. (The World According to Garp, p. 183) (~sb) (From a story about a man who set out to kiil a lion) "I wanted to give the child something he could be proud of as he grows up. After all, it's not every boy who can tell his playmates that his grandpa killed a mountain lion with a knife." (National Enquirer, 26 June 1979) (18c) Poor Vita. Poor Hadji. Poor POOR Violet. After aii, what does our pain mean in comparison with hers? (Portrait of a Marriage, pp. !65-166) Can such a eempliment [you are gorgeous] be trusted? After all, beauty itself cannot be trusted because age destroys the most beautiful body, and a woman wants proof that her lover's affection will survive the ravages of time. (A Married Feminist, p. 26) The above examples show. moreover, th.~t the AA reasoJa clause is of the nonrestrictive type, i.e. the 'why I say so' justification (see Rutherford (1970)), rather than the establishment of a causal relation between two events or states of affairs. Thus, in (18c) the AA clause explains the choice of the emphatic 'Poor POOR Violet', as opposed to 'Poor Vita. Poor Hadji', and in (18d) the AA clause gives the raisan d~tre of the question to be discussed. This is 7 The data ccnsis,t of 33 examples, most of which come from 2 novels: Portrait of a Marriage, and The World According to Gorp. 8 In fact, these ale probably contrastive after all too. And contrastive information may very well be accessible. Hence the position.
M. Ariel,t Retrievingproposuionsfrom context
581
characteristic of all LA markers, in fact, though it is not mentioned explicitly in reference to the other markers. Note that although genuine questions cannot be considered presupposed/ accessible information, rhetorical questions pattern with accessible informa-. tion, since the answer is assumed to be known already. AA can indeed modify such questions: (19) ... Since we're in favor of promoting a good friendship between you and DSM-I 1, let's start with a formal introduction. An introduction, after all, isn't that the way most friendships begin! (Introduction to DSM-I 1, p. 1)
2.2.2. Obviously Michell (1975,1976) is the only analysis of obviously I am aware of. MicheU's work classifies various adverbs, such as probably, possibly, allegedly, apparently, conceivably, as well as obviously in two ways. First, she claims, such adverbs are to be classified as to how they relate to the speaker's commitment to the truth of the proposition expressed by her utterance. Thus, possibly, probably, and necessarily, for example, differ in the degree of 'truth' marking. Obviously, she argues, belongs in the 'necessary' class. 9 It marks maximal speaker's commitment to the proposition expressed. Another functional distinction is the division between inferential adverbs (apparently, undoubtedly), indicating that the proposition thus modified has been arrived at by some inferencing, vs. non-inferential adverbs (certainly). Obviously, she believes, belongs with the inferential group. i disagree with IVItIUIII~II ~ " '~-"' b. . aui~.|y~l~ . . " - : - for ovvzou~ly, '-" ...... as well as with her claim on strong truth marking. In fact, I see no basis for the claim that people mark strong commitment to the truth of propositions at all. it is lack of marking which indicates full commitment, while non-commitment to truth, or partial commitment to truth are marked. Compare the ~ marked (20a) with (20b,c): (20a) John is sick. (20b) Probably John is sick. (20c) Possibly John is sick. Note also that while 21(a) is appropriate, 21(b) are unnatural: (21a) Necessarily John is sick. (21b) (i) '.~. Necessarily the sun will rise tomorrow. (ii) .9?.I am sure the san will rise tomorrow. 9 tler classification of adverbs is not binary, however. She actually views these adverbs along a of commitment to truth.
~a',
582
M. Ariel / Retrieving propositions from context
The reason for the unnaturalness is that necessarily true statements need no strengthening. ~ marking suits them best. Phrases such as 'it is true that ...' are used only when some denial or disbelief in the proposition under discussion serves as background. Compare: (22a) A l" Dana had twins last night. B l" I don't believe it. A2: It's true! I swear ! (22b) ## 9.? It's true that Dana had twins last night. Dana really had twins last night. While (22a) is a felicitous discourse, the utterances in (22b) are bizarre discourse initially. Unless the context contains either an unconfirmed rumour about Dana's giving birth, or else someone's denial of that fact, it is true that ... sounds most unnatural. Hence~ the common marking of fidi commitment is ¢~marking. This applies to LA marked utterances as well, so that LA marking also entails full commitment in the unmarked case (but see section 3 below). The reason is simple enough. If the LA assumption is to be used as a premise in an inferencing chain, it has to be assumed to be true for the conclusion to be judged valid. Indeed, the following example shows a repair from an LA marker (of course, to be discussed shortly) to a 'truth' marker (surely), the latter ob~ously a weakening device in this case" (23) G: You know how I warm myself up foi ~ sp~nting? I ask someone to compete with me. Of course I ~ n faster. M: Of course? G: Not of eourse, but surely. (Ginat, 8 years old, 2 October i983, translated from Hebrew) Going back to obviously, necessary to assume that it ment to the proposition in commits the speaker to that
we are now in a position to say that it is not is obviouslr which marks the speaker's commit(24a). (24b), which d.0:s not contain obviously, proposition just the same:
(24a) Obviously Chomsky is an important linguist. (24b) Chomsky is an important linguist. Wh ~t, then, is special about obviously? As Michell notes, the inlfbrmation contained under the scope of obviously cannot be unavailable to the addressee, as the straegeness of (25) (her (8)) shows: (25) A: How old is your son now? B: .9?.Well, obviously he turned thirteen this January.
M. d.riel / Retrieviag propositions from context
583
If wc analyze obviously as an Accessibility marker, then the difference between (24a) and (24b) is that in the (a) sentence it is assumed to be an available (= true) fact for the addressee, and not only for the speaker. (25B), on the other hand, is unacceptable precisely because the answer could not possibly have been accessible to the addressee. Before we move on to discuss whether obviously should be viewed as an inference marker, another potential argument of Michell against an LA analysis for obviously must be mentioned. MicheU claims that despite its literal meaning, which is something like 'clearly perceptible', obviously cannot be used properly in (26) (her 1976: (7)): (26)
Obviously the sky is blue.
Even if the speaker and hearer are outside on a sunny day, a situation which would render (26) a true proposition, (26) seems inappropriate. This is potentially a counter-example for the LA analysis as well. In order to explain this, MicheU appeals to Grice's Maxim of Quantity which dictates to speakers that (26) contains too little information, since it is already available to the hearer. However, though I agree with Michelrs judgment, I do not accept her conclusion that obviously presents some 'golden line' compromise between availability and non-availability. Rather, obviously, like all LA markers, is governed by the more general constraint of Relevance, dictating that already accessible information should be used only if the inferences derived from it are Relevant. What is wrong about (26) is that there seems to be no reason to mention this piece of information. It does not support anything in the discourse. Once we attach the LA utterance in (26) to a Dominant proposition it supports, (26) becomes acceptable, even .*hough the physical context is the same, i.e. the interlocutors are outside on a sunny day: (27) A: A fortune-teller predicted last week that the heavens would turn to fire today, and the world would end by noon. B: Well. Obviously the sky is blue. (Implicauoli: your fortune-teller miscalculated Doomsday.) Last, I will argue that the distinctive aspect of obviously, as well as all the LA markers, is indeed their Accessibility status, rather than ~heir potential use as ('good') inference markers (as Michell argues for obviously). Though Accessibility status can be assumed on the basis of an inferred assumption, note that in actual discourse, adverbs marking ~nferred conclusions are necessarily of the 'possible' type, therefore never fu!iy com~aitting the speaker to their truth. LA marked utterances, on the other hand, are in the unmarked case interpreted ~s 'true', .~i,',ce ttac speaker did not choose a 'hedging device' on the one hand, and on the other, they are retrieved from the addressee's 'Encyclopedic Knowledge'. It seems that adverbs marking inferred informa-
584
M. Ariel / Retrieving prop, ,sJtions from context
tion all fall in the 'possible' class just beck:use inference in daily life is not limited to logical inference, but is frequently a result of plausible reasoning. In many cases one is not sure whether one's conclusions are valid - possibly because one is often unsure of the premises (since they may turn out to consist of partial or misinterpreted facts). Adverbs of inference are therefore used in natural discourse to mark non-commitment to truth rather than inferencing per se. The reason is that inferences we are sure of, we regard as facts. We therefore fully commit ourselves to them, using neither a 'truth' marker nor a 'goed' inference marker. Contrast (28a) with (28b): (28a) A" How many slices of bread did Ellen have? B" ? Evidently three (since I saw her eat one slice with peanut-butter and two slices with jelly. Moreover, there were only three slices of bread in the house). (2gb) A" Hew many slices of bread did Ellen have? B: Evidently three (there were only three slices of bread left, and now they are gone). That is, B's belief that three slices were eaten is arrived at via inference in both (28a) and (28b). in (28a), however, where the inference is logical- 1+ 2 = 3 the use of evidently is infelicitous. In contrast, the inference in (28b) is nonlogical, a result of plausible reasoning, and therefore evidently is felicitous. After all, for all the speaker knows, one slice just may have fallen behind the stove ... For an analysis of inferential adverbs as a hedging device, see Prince (1979), who includes these in her analysis of 'plausibility shields'. Given this, it seems that obviously is indeed an LA marker, rather than a 'good' inference marker, despite the fact that it mat often modify 'go.od' inferences. The crucial point, I have argued, is not the 'derivationa! history' of a proposition, but rather, the current status the speaker is willing to grant it. For Dominant assertions not to be 'hedged' by an irifeten~iai adverb, speaker must be able to fuiiy comm;t h e l ~ l Lu its truth. For LA propositions, speaker must make sure she can assume the proposition to be true, given her assessment of her addressee's belief-set. I conclude therefore that obviously should be classified with other LA matkeJ=s, such as after all (and of course), rather than as an adverb patterning together with (non)truth-commitment adverbs, such as possibly and necessarily. As with the conclusions arrived at concerning harey words and after all, so here, I believe the point holds quite generally for all LA markers.
2.2.3. Of course Halliday and Hasan (1976) distinguish between a tonic and a non-tonic of course. I agree with their analyqis of tonic of course (henceforth OC), but I believe non-tonic OC actually consists of two types, one of which is an LA
M. .4riel / Retrieving prope.;iiuas from comext
585
marker. ~° The syntactic position commonly reserved for stressed OC is initial. It is hardly ever followed by a comma, and this punctuation goes very well with the fact that there is no break between the sen:ence and the OC. Note the following examples(29a) Of COURSE it's not traumatic for them. (The Descent of Woman, p. 74) (29b) Of COURSE I am terribly jealous of Granby and all of them. (Portrait of a Marriage, p. 97) These sentences, I suggest, exemplify a use defined by the OED as "emphatic affirmative reply'. In the two cases above, the writers indicate that they fully agree with their addressees. Non-tonic OC appears in all three syntactic positions (initial, medial and final). When it is separated by a pause from the other constituentg of the sentence (and this is usually the case), it marks the clause modified by it as being secondary in importance. It lowers the potential Dominance of a sentence. Note the following with an OC, as in the original and with the OC deleted: (3(/a) Things are gonna be bigger and better than ever, believe me, in this, *he greatest country in the world. Of course, /~ you have our unthinking people who would demonstrate our policy in Vietnam ... (Divi~io~ Street: America, p. 278) (30b) I remember the first contact I ever had with anything of this sort [Mafia], when I lived in Grand Rapids. Of course, /{~ half the people who live there make furniture, you know, and ... (Division Street: America, p. 212) (30c) ... A couple of times I was lucky to get a home run. Of course, /¢ everybody clapped on the back. (Division Street: gmerica, p. 267) As can be seen, the omission of OC in (30) does not create incoherence. Rather, the relative importance of the propositions changes (unless intonation takes the role of the OC instead). OC pragmatically embeds the clause it modifies. Thus, in (30a) without the 0 6 , the speaker would be expected to go on talking about 'the unthinking people'. The need for this downgrading effect is due, I suggest, to the fact that Dominant material is supposed not 10 The data used iv forming the above claims are as follows. Two texts are oral ~peech: The Presidential Transcripts, pp. 31-90, 216-255; and Division Street: America, pp. 21~-311. The written texts are a non-fiction, The Descent of Woman, pp. 1-100 and a novel, Pe;'trait of a Marriage. These constitute 77% of the examples. The rest are ~roni a m~;um~ article, Green~rg's 'Rethinking Linguistics Diachronically' (8.7%), and various other source:, (14.3%).
586
M Ariel / Reteieving propositions from context
only to be New, but also to be unexpected and original. ~ OC marks the information os expected and non-orig/nal, hence of lower Relevance than addl~essee should normally expect. The functions of mentioning the information modified by this type of OC are varied, and will not be discussed here. ~2 Another non-tonic OC occurs with no separating pause. This type L a subcategory of the previous OC, and perhaps cannot be absolutely distinguished from it. It shares w~th it the marking of information as non-Dominant, but with a specific intonation the information is taken not only as expected but also as actually already accessible to the addressee. Since inferred information can also count as accessible information, Lowering OC can be distinguished from LA OC only in oral speech, with the help of intonation. Below are possible examples: (31a) Well, as you ofcours~ know, at the tinge of the Hill case ... (Presidential Transcripts, p. 48) (3~b) ... the 'covering law' model ... I, like man~ ~others find this a reasonable nation; of ;t ,,,-,nt~.aj,, o,,,,~; . ,.I g.J q...g i.~ ,o...,. ,~|~fll.W .... , , W l ~I.-..1. . . . . hm . . . . course . . a a s th,~ ~ . a a ' ~ h;~,hh, aa.a~Daaa,, ~ g, gaalLna~L q.lh, s x | | lll ... (Greenberg, p. 279] v
v
a
Thirteen percent of the data are cases where the info=mation is accessible, and the sentence is presumably intoned accordingly. The simplest way to analyze these is to say that they contain the Lowering OC + Accessibility intonation (see 2.3 below), but then, why is there no pause separating the OC from its ciause? I suggest that perhaps the source of this type of OC is a combinat':on of the Lowering OC and Accessibility intonation, but the fact that this OC is uttered without a pause (even though a comma may appear in writing) shows fit to be a distinct OC type now.
~ Giora (1983) also "ound that in many cases surprising, rather than New information is suih~ble as Dom/nant. -..2 Initial non-t•aic OC is most often used as a repair marker for implicatures/inferences unw ished for: 0) He lived a few years longer.., and when he died no one came after him [implicature: this is a one-time event]. [Repair:] Of course, this process took many more generations than this. (Tk.e Descent of Woman, p. 197. Medial OC, on the other hand, is very often used with specified inferences or implicatures. There, the speaker feels that she has to ass,~rt something which is self-evident, so the least she can do is mark it as such: (iia) They [some students] will barely learn what you put in front of them. This is, of course, not at all pleasing... (Division Street: America, p. 295). (iib) Whenever ~ ~ything alarming happened on the land-ward side... ,~he would ~,o back into the water... This meant, of course, that she had to walk uptight on her two hind legs (The Descent of Woman, p. 22).
M. Ariel / Retrieving propositions from context
587
2.3. Marking accessible utterances by intonation Translations to and from Hebrew, especially those in languag,s which have no lexical correlates to harey, are an interesting source for finding other linguistic markings viewed as synonymous to harey. Based on actual translations, I also attempted to elicit similar examples from various bilingual speakers, using a translation questionnaire. Indeed, speakers of languages without a hare), form spontaneously compensated for it in other ways, similar, though not as diverse as th,, techniques used in the written materials. The most common method was not to try to find literal translations, but rather, to 'omit' the harey, and preserve its function by use of intonation. Accessibility intonation certainly exists in many (all?) languages. By Accessibility intonation, however, I ,1o not mean what usually goes under the name of Givenness intonation. Reduced stress, often terrred Givenness intonation, turr~:~ out to correspond to nor.-Dominance, rather than to Accessibility (see Scbmerling (1976), Yule (1980)). The source of the confusion between the two is that in ~aany cases non-Dominant material is also accessible. However, some nonDominant information is not accessible, and so~ae accessible material is stressed for emphasis (see Yule (1980)). Hence, Aces. fibility intonation in this context will mean the whole contour of the sentence ~atonation, irrespective of where the stress falls. Laufer (1974: 64) specifies the intonation of ha~'ey sentences as follows: (Low pr.~-head) (high head) rising-falling ( + t a i l ) This intonation pattern "~hows that the fact expressed by the addressee ~s clear to the speaker" (translated from Hebrew, ibid.). However~ this intonation is not exclusive to harey utterances. Other utterances, provided they can be assumed to be accessible to the addressee, are also thus intoned. O her variations on this intonation can also be identified. Of these, the most importam one is, no doubt, the added critical or challenging tone as in (32B): (32) A- eyneni mexabev oto. , TI - U~^ i:~,,, him.' U - I I U_,,. L lll[~.~, B" hare), 1o dibarta ito meolam. (You did) not talk with-him .ever ~You nevei" talked with him.' In English, too. it seems that a few intonational patterns exist, depending on the discourse role played by the accessible information" In (33a) the speaker wishes to calm down the addressee, in (33b) the speaker is angrily saying the obvious: j j ~ (33a) Y o t know you're rolling in money. (A Certain Smile, a movie)
588
M. Ariel / Retrieving propositions from context
(33b) We're not going to give him a present now! (Love American Style, TV series, 27 1980) The intonation of (33b) is actually the one described by Liberman and Sag (1974) as a contradiction intonation:
(34) Elephantitis isn't incurable! I suggest that this intonation requires another condition in addition co the one Liberman and Sag reco/~ized. In other words, though this intonation is certainly used when speaker is contradicting someone, it also requires that the information it presents be accessible. Compare (34) with (35), where the originality of the information prevents an intonation such as in (34), even though (35) could be used to contradict a previous speaker: 13 (35) ?? iI think the French Revolution broke out because the king really wanted it to. Or, to use an example of theirs: (36) Mark: Hey Ivan, how about on your way to school this morning you drop off my pet whale at the aquarium! Ivan: (a) iYou don't have a pet whale! (b) iI'm not going to school today! Note that (36a) represents accessible information, but in order to see that this is necessarily the case in (36b) as well, compare (36b) with the inappropriate (36e) version: (36) Ivan: (c). ?? i I ' m , ot going to school today! I've just decided that now. Ain't I lucky? The second sentenc~ ...~,,(3c,,q.~.clarifies that the first speaker (Mark) could not have known that the second speaker (Ivan) is not going to school. This is why (3~) is uncoeperative, blaming speaker 1 for ,lot knowing something there is no way he could have known. It is not surprising that languages may have a special intonation for contradicting information which is also accessible to the addressee. After all, it is just when one is in disagreement with another that ~a Liberman and Sag use i in front of the sentence to signal the contradiction intonation. I will do the same.
M. Ariel / gctrieving propositions from context
589
one can rea:~: bcnefi: from using accessible, and, therefore, acceptable info~-marion i~ ~~e~ :o ~apport one's claim. Another specific A~:c~sibility intonation is reserved for explanatory clauses, where again, the need for relying on noncontroversial information is obvious. This intonation is easy to retrieve when an after all accompanies the sentence, but in fact, the same intonation can be used for the same purpose when the after all is missing: (37) She had to help Joe out.
(After all) she WAS his only living relative. PestalozzJ-Schfirli (no year given, cited in Schubiger (1965)), who studied German doch, found that only in 25% of her data of German translations into English was doch actually transqated. Schubiger (i965) argues that English intonation is parallel to German particles such as dock. She too refers to a few intonation patterns, depending on how the doch utterance is used in context. Thus, in English, she claims, "both the prenuclear tone and nucleus can express this connotation [the doch connotation], the former mainly by avoiding the neutral stepping head, the latter by a preference for a rise-fall, ix some cases a rise, instead of the more neutral fall" (p. 82). Similar parallels. between intonation and particles (in general) were made by Arndt (i960), Bublitz and von Roncador (1975), Rath (1975) and others. Gstman (1979) makes this point also about -han, the Finnish harey form. Thus, Accessibility intonations certainly exist. Probably they quite frequently mark other discourse functions in addition to Accessibility, for accessible information is never mentioned for its own sake. It always serves a specific discourse function. I have exemplified mostly the intonation used for contradictory purposes, simply because it has been described already (by Laufer (1974) and by Liberman and Sag (1974)). Future research with the appropriate machinery will surely be able to detect additional Accessibility intonations. In this paper, I shall have to content myself with noting that intuitively, one can hear that a marked intonation accompanies accessible utterances, though, depending on its discourse function this intonation may vary. Section 2 has been particularly long and detailed. This is due to the fact that specific analyses of the various forms had to be presented, even though the primary aim was an examination of the discourse functions of LowAccessibility utterances. These, I claim, are common to all of the markers on the whole. They are all non-Dominant, their Relevance dependent on another proposition, normally the one expressed by the preceding utterance. The bulk 3f this section was devoted to Hebrew particles and English adverbials, but, as
590
M. Ariel / Regrieving propositions fiom context
was repeatedly mentioned, the arguments, or zather, the general principles of the analysis, should be applicable to all natural ~anguages. It is probably true for many languages that Accessibility markers have been classified as anything but Accessibility markers, due to the fact that they normally carry other functions in addition to marking Low Accessibility. The next section is a brief attempt to handle two types of apparent counter-examples to the suggestion that all the above markers are Low Accessibility markers.
3. S~cia| uses of Low Accessibility proposition m~rkers Experiments show that we actually tend not to check information presented as already Accessible to us. More so in situations where we believe the speaker has mGre knowledge than we do. For example, Just and Clark (!973) asked subjects to answer questions or verify statements about the posi'.ive or negative components nr a sentence they h~a just r,~:.: ~,a th,~,, m~o,,,.,~a th,, latencies of their responses. Results showed that 'presuppositions' took longer to interrogate than implications. Similarly, Hornby (1974) checked addressees' ability to verify assertions and 'presuppositions'. Subjects were shown pictures for a very short interval. They then heard a sentence, which, they had to determine, war true or fahe with respect to the picture. Error percent.ages were rather high, for the pictures were presented for too short a time for the subjects to really study them. In any case, almost twice as many subjects did n•: notice that the information was false when it was marked as accessible to them (the sentences were clefts). I~oftus (J974) demonstrates a parallel phenomenon with definite descriptions. Given the above findings on other Accessibility marked structures, we should not bc surprised that speakers sometimes take advantage of addressees' ~s~oppiness', in contexts wherc they have something important at stake. Advertisements, political statements, and 'ordinary' utterances were found, where the information presented as accessible to the addre~Qee was net in fact accessible to him. This, moreover, was not always due to mere human error, a misca!calation el" the addressee's assumptions. Leech (1974: 61) for example, briefly discusses cases where speaker presents "one's position tc the reader as if it is a matter of common knowledge, which no one in his right mind would question", again, bringing as examples a manipulative use of a "presupposing" definite description ("the certain, documented, real influence Communism exercises in Washington", from a report pubF~shed by the John Birch Society (1964)). Note ~he following ads with LA propusitions: (38a) GETTING MARRIED? Naturally you'll be thinking about WEDDING STATIONERY (Daily Local News, ! July 1980)
M. Ariel / Retrieving propositions from context
591
(38b) After all, who knows more about the taste (38c) vaday kvar gamatem al ha + tocaot Of course already you-heard of the-results
of beef than Alpo? ha + nehedarot ge + wonderful that camid-pele ze maanik la+ondim oto... bracelet-wonder this gives to those who wear it ... 'Of course you've heard about the wonderful results this wondec-bracelet brings about to those who wear it ...' (Haaretz, various dates, 1979)
(39a) is a politician's statement, suggesting to close down Israel's only airline, using as an 'accessible' argument the idea that another airline is bound to emerge. In (39b), another politician is trying to sneak in an assumption that someone else's accusation against him is due to the accuser's 'distress'. (39c) was uttered by a representative of insurance c;mpanies which were being attacked precisely on what he assumes as noncontroversial in his harey utterance. (39d) is supposed to persuade us to be anti-feminist. Needless to say, ~one of the propositions marked as accessible below are perfectly legitimate uses, given the specific context they were uttered in: (39a)
harey tihiye
xevrat-teufa. (there) will be (an) airline. (Aridor, Israeli TV, 22 October i.982) (39b) salaxti le+ mar Erlix be+inyan h a + psixiater ... hu harey I-forgive (to) Mr. Erlich concerning the psychiatrist ... He diber mi + tox mecuka ... spoke out-if distress .o. (Maariv, z February 1979) (39c) xevrot-bituax, harey, erot ia + macav, ge + eyno Insurance companies are aware of-the situation, which is not kol-kax hoax la + lakoxot. so convenient for the customei~s. (Trebalos, Israeli TV, 3 April 1979) (39d) go.~.._im ~e,~k la-~ ~,a ... hareyhi crixa li + hiyot raka They-cause damage to weman ... she must be soft ve + adina; rov ha + nagim rocot ii + hiyot kaele ... and delicate; most women want to be so ... (Yediot Ahronot, 3 January 1979) But manipulations occur to 'good gays' too. The following are two manipulative examples from a 'naive' child. The first one was used by her when she was four, the second, when she was eight:
592
M. Ariel / Retrieving propositions from context
(40a) aval ax~av ani hare), roca la + cot. But now I want to go-out. (Ginat, 23 March 1979) (40b) ata ni~ar li + ~on hare),. You are staying to sleep. 'You are staying fo~"the night.' (Ginat, 7 December 1982) Another mGtivation to use an LA marker despite the Newness of the information is to 'save face'. For example, if the addressee should have known something, speaker might pretend to take it %r granted that he does, so that she does not have to expose his igno~-ance in public. Consider, for exampie, the following ~s an exchange between an advanced graduate student in linguistics and his professor: (41) Student" I would like to write on verbs such as know, regret, be surprised ... Professor: You have, of cc:~rse, read Kiparsky and Kiparsky. ~4 Similar cases can be found with dependent LA propositions (clefts, factives), which, for lack of space, were not discussed in this paper. The manipulative uses a:'e rather similar. Note the following example I found in a youth magazine in Hebrew. The doctor is trying to pretend that his argument is also acceptable for the youth, since in 1985 it is certainly the common, 'progressive' view. Asserting it, then, might embarrass the asker: (42~ (13 years old) I masturbate once a month, but I would like to put an end even to this habit. Can hypnosig help! Answer: From material on medical hypnosis I learn that indeed they have tried to use hypnosis to ease a hard masturbator's state ... This state, I hope, does not correspond to what you are undergoing. You RECOGNIZE that there is nothing to worry about your physical and mental health because you masturbate once a month. (Maariv Lanoar, 9 July 1985) Note that generally, i: is more convenient for speakers to present as already accessible to the addressee information they feel uncomfortable to impart. In this way, they seem to share the responsibility for the consequences with their addressee. This is another motivation to insert 'illegitimate' information into LA marked sentences:
~4 Note that the same exchang¢: would result from a completely different motivation were the student a first-year undergraduate. Under such circumstances, the speaker's intention is to embarrass the student, rather than save his face.
M. Ariel / Retrieving propositions from context
593
(43a) We regret to inform you that ... (43b) i am forced to fire you. 6bviously, we don't get along. Up till now, we have given examples where the information presented as available to the addressee is not at all available to him. Such manipulations are not actually very common. Most of the manipulations I encountered were less radical. They were cases where even if the information presented as accegfible was indeed so, speaker was still trying (un)consciously to manipulate her addressee to accepting something he may be unwilling to accept. Recall that we have repeatedly shown that LA utterances are used to moavate other original speaker's assertions. In quite a few cases, however, the assertion the speaker is pushing lot does not really follow from the LA proposition. Most of these ,nay in fact be due to the differences among people with regard to argument validity, but some are clear manipulative cases. Note (8) again, repeated here as (44): (44) ... ka + avor gala kala huva ... After a while was-brought yexezkel, be.-,, ha~49, ke + xa~ud IzikieL 49 yrs. old, as (a) suspect znm. tguvat ha + xagud prostitvtion. The suspect's reaction
le + veyt ha-~ migpat ha + ba~al to the court-house the husband be + ~idul i~to li + in ~oliciting his wife to hayta: harey ani saba. was: I (am) (a) grandfather
Being a grandfather, the speaker is trying to fool the judge, precludes being a pimp. The judge, however, was not fooled. He immediately declares that the suspect's being a grandfather is totally irrelevant. Bu~ such examples, where the manipulation is immediately exposed and rejected are rather rare. in ~:d~t, laaguage hardly has a natural way of denying LA assumptions. Note :he awkwardness of the following (a real example, nonetheless): (45) Professor: Give examples. Student: (~'~urse it is impossible. Professor: Ii's not OF COURSE that it's impossible. (1 September 1980) ~~ It seems even less natural to negate an after all utterance. And the harey in LA propositions can never be denied directly. A perfect setting for manipulations. Another marked use is irony. Irony differs ~'rom the above case~ in that here, the addressee must be made to notice the discrepancy ~ t w e e ~ ~he ~s The example is originally in Hebrew, but there is no difference in the naturai ~e:~3oegree in Hebrew and English in this case.
594
M. A.iel / Retrieving propositions from context
Accessibility assumption and his (current) belief system in fact. In the unmarked case, i should indicate, propositions of Low Accessibility actually correspond to one's belief-set {see Ariel (1985) and (to appear)). Without noticing this discrepancy, no ironical effect will be created. Note the following examples: (46a) She [woman in general] is tolerated as a working person only if she is ambitionless ... After all, who likes a won an who is not 'feminine'? (Psychoanalysis and Women, p. 326) (46b) These ideas still persist in rural districts, wh~re every cook knows that a mayonnaise will not be successful if a menstruating woman is about. (The Second Sex, p. 1~ 1) Sperber and Wilson (1986) rightly point out tha~ an ironic interpretation is dependent on tl~e proposition ~ing an echo utter- ~:ce,i.e. an utterance which is an interpretation c~f a proposi':ion not originatir~:~ with the speaker. This by itself seems to be a sufficient 'warning' to the ~ddressee that a different procedure should be employed in the interpretatio~ of the utterance when it is a Dominant, or rather, a non-LA proposition. ~ : ~ever, for an LA proposition to be inte;preted as ironic the recognition of the echoing involved is far from being enough. Whereas unmarked Dominant propositions are not supposed to be echo utterances, LA propositions are all echoic, repeating what is already available to the addressee. Hence, the identification of the non-originality ~nvolved is not particularly indicative of irony when LA propositions are concerned. It is the necessary assumption of rejecting the LA proposition which is crucial. Indeed, that this is so can be seen if we alter the context of (46) somewhat. If ins:ead of feminist speakers we assume the accessible propositions to be uttered by male chauvinists, ti,e irony immediately disappe~rs~ though the LA utterances are still viewed as non-original. Similarly, if we imagine that (39d), mentioned above as an example of a manipulative use by a male chauvinist, is uttered by a feminist, we are bound to conclude that she is being ironical. Note that since the only poir~t of uttering an LA proposition is its Relevance for the Dominant proposition it attaches to, in ironical readings too, the main point is probably the ridiculing of ti~e Dominant proposition, rather than (only) the accessible a,.;sumption. In (~!~6),then, the speakers are mainly interested in rejecting the opinions expres~=ed in the Dominant assertions prior to the LA propositions.
4. The discourse status of Low Accessibility propositions Sections 2 and 3 have been very much data-bound discussions. Their main goal was to provide evidence for the claim that natural languages have at their
M. Ariel / Retrieving propositions from context
595
disposal a marking system which is best defined as a l,ow Accessibility marking system for independent propositions. In order to motivate this claim two types of arguments had to be produced. First, a positive argume~t, proving that the correct use of these markers is indeed dependent on the Accessibility of the information modified by it. Second, other potential characterizations of these linguistic devices had to be refuted. Thus, with regard to harey words (2.1) and of course (2.2.3), the question of nonDominance const:,tuted the main point of departure. We mentioned the nonrestrictive nature of the inference derived from the LA proposition when discussing after all (2.2.1). The relation between Low Acce:oibility on the one hand and truth and/or being inferred, on the other hand, were discussed in reference to obviously (2.2.2). The important role of propositions retrieved from Encyclopedic knowledge (hence 'true') in argumentative contexts came out most clearly in the discussion on Accessibility intonations (2.3). Last, we have al~o shown that marked uses can be created, relying on the Accessibility Marking system (section 3). However, the various points just mentioned with reference to individual LA markers are actually crucial for all the LA propositions. Since I wanted to avoid too many repetitions, I did not argue each of them sep~,~ately for every marker, though it could certainly be done. This section, then, will be an attempt to integrate all the separate conclusions reached in sections 2 and 3 into a more complete picture of hey: ~ vie~v all propositions marked by Low Accessibility markers. Propositions of Low Accessibility are normally ~.hose stored in, or else inferable by, the long-term memory store - our Encyclopedic knowledge. Though generally speaking, this type of information is relatively inaccessible to addressees, certain types of information are much more easily accessible ~han others, given the current state of the discourse. In section 1 above, we me,nfior~¢d, following Sperber and Wilson (1982,1986), how (stereotypic) assumptions are automatically accessed by the content of the assertions in order to view certain utterances as Relevant. Section 2 examined cases where automatic retrieval cannot be taken for granted. It might require too much processing effort from the addressee, and hence, speaker explicitly signals to him that a certain piece of information needs to be accessed and used in the processing procedure. The underlined propositions in (47) are typical examples: (47a) She had to help Sam. (After all/sent, particle) she was his only friend. (47b) Garp was wise enough to keep a sa~e distance from Fat Stew - an outraged father was still a father after all, ... (The World According to Garp, p. 110) The first question that should come to mind with regard to LA propositions is why bother communicate them, when all they express is information which is already part of the addressee's Encyclopedic knowledge. Since LA proposi-
596
M. Ariel / Retrieving propositions from context
tions contain no New information, their processin~ ~ai!.~ :u combine New information with old/context derived information. Thus, according to Relevance theory, they seem to violate the precondition on Relevance establisI'.merit. Relevance theory 'rescues' such utterances by claiming that an utterance is also Relevant provided it strengthens another belief the addressee is entertaining. It should ~ noted, however, that this 'special ~ behaviour of I A propositions is not limited to a Relevance theory account. In Gricean terms It seems like a violation of the maxim of quantity, which specifies that one should supply an adequate amount of infommtion: neither too much, nor too little. LA propositions are prima facie 'too little'. Under Giora's (1985,1986 and this issue) account for reipvance, dictating that all discourse propGsitions be about a specific discourse t,~,ic, LA propositions seem an exception too. They are easily seen as being ~bout their adjacent clauses, but it is often the case that they cannot be construed as being d~r~:~dy about the global discourse topic. Indeed, the answer for this puzzle, which I gave in Ariel (1985a,b), i.s that the LA proposition is not presented as an independent discourse propc~sition, where by independent proposition I mean one which is assessed for Relevance on its own. LA propositions, I suggesL are taken as pragmatically dependent propositions, communicated in relation to other, more Dominant propogi:i~ns (in a sense derived from Erteschik-ghir and Lappin (1979)). Thus, th6ugh they seen, inappropriate on their own, they are justified when paired with the right proposition. In the unmarked case, the Dominant utterances that LA propositions relate to immediately precede them, as in (47) above. The LA's in (47) motivate the assertions adiacent to them, though not necessarily ~y producing a causal relation. By supporting the original information in this way, speaker wishes to strengthen her claim, and thus zncourag¢ the addressee to incorporate her 'original' proposition onto his belief-system as 'true'. This task is the mare discourse function of LA propositions (but, as we have seen, not the oni~y one). Note that other types of non-Dominant material may be presented in the discourse, seemingly for the same purpose. However, I should like to emphasize that LA status is to be distinguished from mere non-Dominance. LA propositions are more than simply nonoDominant. The italicized sentences in (48) are examples of non-Dominant propositions which are not LA propositions"
(48a) Jane is really wonderful.
I m e a n it.
(48b) Jane is really fantastic. Even Mary says so (did you know that?). Though the italicized propositions in (48) are non-Dominant propositions whose goal it is to strengthen the original speaker's assertions, they are by no means LA propositions. LA propositions, as I have argued seg:arately for each
M. Ariel / Retrieving propositions from context
597
LA ma~kzr above, are only those deemed by the speaker as accessible to the addressee. The italicized propositions above do not satisfy this condition. They might very well be New to the addressee. This difference is important to0 keep, for it is my claim that natural language distinguishes between original ,mpporting material, as in (48) above and nonoriginal supporting material as in (47) above (see fn. 5 again). The motive behind this distinction is cbvious enough. If an original proposition is presented as being support~M by information adhered to by tN, addressee himself (='true'), independently of the current assertion, chances are higher that be will be persuaded tc~ accept it. The addressee's own belief system is the s~aker's best source of ,-redibility. Indeed, many of the LA proposition markers are characteristic of argumentative contexts, where speaker is very much interested in per~uad ng her addressee. Harey, the Hebrew particle often used to mark LA propositions, shows up in newspaper editorials much more frequently than in the other, reportive pages, for example. Although backu ~ H l o u v ~ prose as w~u, it ~ n u t ground info~ation '- "- '-the LA particle which is chosen: 9 descriptive pages revealed only 2 harey's, and even those two were actually quotations. On the other hand, in 3 editorial pages I found 5 harey's, l° This argumentative "one of LA proposition markers is probably typical of
all the mart-~-~ r~'o,-red too Note ~.he bizarreness of (49~. ~l,~w: (49) .~. We are going to spend the next semes~.er studying presuppositions. After all/harey hundreds of articles have been written on the subject. The after all/harey proposition in (49) seems inappropriate since a university professor does not need such a strong support for an academic choice on course content. Because seems strong enough under such circumstances. If, however, the professor had to justify this choice against a colleague raising objections, then (49) seems perfectly acceptable. Hence, LA propositions are a strong tool, but one to be t~sed sparingly. However, as we have seen in section 3, speakers are sometimes not as careful as they 'ought' to be. LA propositions are then used as manipulating devices, presenting as support a 'nonofact' or else a premise which does not necessarily lead to the intended conclusion. A different type of a marked use is the ironical reading LA propositions sometimes have. In order to gel an ironical interpretation, I claimed, addressee must assume that the speaker and he himself are not endorsing the LA proposition in question (or else that they do not view it as le#timatel~, supporting the Dominant proposition it relates to). The result is again more crucial for the Dominant proposition related to
1o Data are based on Haaretz, December !2~ 14, 16, 21, 23, 27 of 1954
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M. Ariel / Retrie¢ing propositions from context
the LA proposition, rather than to the LA preposition itself. The important. point is that th~ Dominant prop¢~ifion be rejected.
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~ . A;;,e? / Retrieving propositions from context
Beauvoir, S. de., 1953. The second sex. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Berlov~ch, Yaffa, 1984. Sipurey Nashim. Israel Tarm/l. Brecht, Bertolt, 1978. Galut ha-Meshorerm. Translated and edited (into Hebrew) by H. Benjam/n. Te|-Aviv: Ha-Kibbutz ha-Meuchad. Daf le-Tarbut Yehudit, 1979, issue no. 93. Fantasia 2000, December 1978, issue no. 1. Flaubert, Gustave, 1921. Madame Bovary. Paris: Librairie de France. Flaubert, Gustave, 1968. Madame Bovary. Translated into Hebrew by Dvora Baron, Merchavia: Ha-Kibbutz ha-Haartsi. Greenberg, Joseph H., 1974. Rethinking linguistics diachronically. Language 55(2): 275-290. Haaretz. A daffy paper. Haolam Haze. A weekly mag~zine. Hat-Even, Shulamit, 1982. 'Loneliness'. In: Loneliness. Tel-Aviv: Am-Oved. pp. 9-38. Ha-Urea, December 1978, issue no. 56. Introduction to DSM-I 1. 1979. Distributed by SMS Company. |tying, John W., 1976. The world according to Garp. New York: Simon & Schuster. Jong, Erca, 1977. Pachad Gvahim. Translated into Hebrew by Idit Zertal. Tel-Aviv, Zmora, Bitan, Modan. Keenan, E.L. and .~.u. . . . . . . .nuu, . . . . . . 1~,1o. ~n¢ Io cal presuppositions of quesuons and answers. (Unpublished ms.) Koteret Rashit. A weekly magazine. Kramarae, Chefs, 1975. Sex-celated differences in address systems. Anthropological Linguistics 17: 198-207. Laisha. A woman's weekly magazine. Maariv. A daily paper. Mada, 1979, Vol. 23"1. Mahfuz, Nagib, 1981. Bayit be-Kahir. Translated into Hebrew by Sam/ Michael. Tel-Aviv: sifryat ha-.Poalim. Mann, Katia, 1979. Zichronot sh¢-lo Nichtevu. Translated into Hebrew by I. Zmora. Tel-Aviv: Zmora Bitan Modan. Morgan, Elaine, 1972. The descent of woman. New York: Bantam. Nicholson, Nigel, 1973. A portrait of a marriage. London: Futura. Pdetzur, Reuben, 1983. The weakness of the strong man. Haaretz, July 1, 1983. Peretz~ ~aac, !961. Ivrit ka-Halacha. Tel-Aviv: Y. Shravrak. Rubinstein, Eliezer, 1968. Ha-Mishpat ha-Shemani: Iyunim be-Tachbir Yameynu. Tel-Aviv: HaKibbutz ha-Meuchad. Sadka, I., 1978. Tachbir ha-Mishpat le-or Toot/or Chadashot. Jerusalem: Akademon. Siach-Locham/m, 1967. Published by a young group of the Kitbbutz movement. Tel-Aviv. Solzhenitsyn, Alexander, 1974. Archipeleg Gulag 1918-1956. Translated into Hebrew by Y. Saarorfi. Tel-Aviv: Shocken. Terkel, Studs, 1967. Division street: America. New York" Avon. The Knesset Transcripts, December 19, 1978. The Presidential Transcripts, 1974. With commentary by the staff of the Washington Post. New York: Dell. Uris, Leon, 1972, QBVII. New York: Doubleday. Uris, Leon, 1972. Mishpat Diba QBVII. Tel-Aviv: Weidenfeld and Nicholson. Yadi~, Yigal, 1971. Bar-Kokhba. Jerusalem" Weidenfeld and Nicholson and Maariv. Yediot Achronot. A daily paper. Yehoshua, A.B., 1977. tlameahev. Jerusalem: Shocken. Yehoshua, A.B., 1982. Gerushim Meucharim. Israel: Ha-Kibbutz ha-Meuchad.