LING 318: Grammar and Meaning in a Multilingual, Typological Perspective  

Contents

• Lectures
• Lecturer
• Readings
• Web sites
• Objectives
• Assessment
• Outline

Lectures

Tuesdays, 2-5 PM
W6B  315

Lecturer

Christian Matthiessen, C5A 527; phone: x 7756; e-mail: cmatthie@ling.mq.edu.au

Note: if you would like to leave messages, ask questions outside of class, make appointments etc. the best method is by e-mail.

Readings

Readings will be selected from different sources, including readings concerned with systems within particular languages and readings concerned with generalization across languages and language typology. They are listed below in the outline, topic by topic.

General books to refer to on multilingual topics:

• Comrie, Bernard. 1981. Language Universals and Linguistic Typology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Croft, William. 1990. Typology and universals. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Greenberg, J. (ed). 1978, Universals of human language. [4 volumes] Stanford: Stanford University Press.
• Harris, Alice C. & Lyle Campbell. 1995. Historical syntax in cross-linguistic perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Hopper, Paul & Elizabeth Closs Traugott. 1993. Grammaticalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Ladefoged, Peter & Ian Maddieson. The sounds of the world’s languages. 1996. London: Blackwell.
• Nichols, J. 1992. Linguistic diversity in space and time. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
• Shopen, Timothy. (ed.) 1985. Language typology and syntactic description. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

General books to refer to on the description of English:

• Halliday, M.A.K. 1994. An introduction to functional grammar. London: Edward Arnold. [The course book of LING 211.]
• Matthiessen, C. & M.A.K. Halliday. 1997. Systemic functional grammar: a first step into the theory. [With references to languages other than English. You can access this document by clicking on its title.]
• Matthiessen, C. 1995. Lexicogrammatical cartography: English systems. Tokyo: International Language Sciences Publishers. [With references to languages other than English towards the end of Chapters 3, 4, 5 and 6; this book is familiar to those of you who have done LING 319.]

If you have difficulties with terms, you can consult our online glossary of systemic functional terms.

Accounts of languages other than English:

See the week by week outline.  Short surveys can be found in a series of books edited by Bernard Comrie and published by Routledge, The Major Languages:

• The Major Languages of Western Europe
• The Major Languages of Eastern Europe
• The Major Languages of East and South-East Asia
• The Major Languages of The Middle East, South Asia and Africa

Book-length treatments can be found in the Cambridge Language Surveys series (CUP):

• The Languages of Japan, M. Shibatani
• The Languages of Australia, R.M.W. Dixon
• The Languages of the Soviet Union, Bernard Comrie
• The Mesoamerican Indian Languages Jorge A. Suárez
• The Papuan Languages of New Guinea, William A. Foley
• Chinese, Jerry Norman
• etc., etc.

For accounts of particular languages, see also separate Multilingual Bibliography, which will be distributed once we have established the range of languages among the participants.

Web sites

You will find various useful materials at the web site of the Systemic Meaning Modelling Group at Macquarie. The home page is:

You should familiarize yourselves with what is provided here. In particular, information relevant to LING 318 will be included under the "Virtual Classroom" link:

From our home page you can also reach, among other things, our "Virtual Library", which includes a glossary of systemic functional terms that you will meet in the course, a systemic functional bibliography:

There is also link to Network, the systemic functional newsletter:

This newsletter includes a list of upcoming conferences and other events ? systemic functional, but also other linguistics conferences:

Linguistics conferences in general are listed at:

The home page of Functions of Language, a journal that publishes papers by systemic functional linguists and other functional linguists is:

For information about corpus-based research on various languages, you can go to a web page maintained by Michael Barlow at Rice University:

This web site contains information about parallel corpora:

"The term parallel corpora covers a variety of corpora types, but in general it refers to texts that are translations of each other (or are at least on the same topic). The corpora may be aligned in some way. (And in fact many researchers are investigating methods of automatically aligning texts.)

The following page gives sources of information concerning tools, texts, and research related to parallel corpora."

ParaConc [http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~barlow/parac.html] is a bilingual/ multilingual con-cordance program (in different formats) designed to be used for contrastive corpus-based language research. "The original parallel concordancer (programmed in HyperTalk) runs on a Mac and can be downloaded from here. Please send an email message (barlow@ruf.rice.edu) when you do this. The program is for individual, research use only and cannot be loaded onto a network without purchasing a site licence agreement."

A good source for work on various languages is the SIL (Summer Institute of Linguistics) home page:

One of the resources developed and maintained by SIL is the Ethnologue, described as follows: "The Ethnologue is a catalogue of more than 6,700 languages spoken in 228 countries. The Ethnologue Name Index lists over 39,000 language names, dialect names, and alternate names. The Ethnologue Language Family Index organizes languages according to language families." You can find the electronic version at:

Objectives

The main objectives are the following:

• to learn about work dealing with multilingual issues (in particular, typology but also translation): what is constant across languages, what is variable? what are the patterns of variation? what are the main areas of variation in the construal of human experience? &c&c
• to learn about a range of languages other than English: how is the flow of events construed in Kalam? how are the major ideational, interpersonal and textual systems of Japanese organized? what are the process types in Pitjantjatjara? &c&c
• and to develop the skills to work on a language other than English (or to work on English in a multilingual context) and to "profile" it from a typological point of view: how can you use parallel texts to explore a language you want to describe? how can you describe it by means of "transfer comparison"? how can you map out the resources of the language? &c&c

You will also become more familiar with the (genetic) language families of the world and with sources of information about different languages.

Assessment

1. One assignment due before the break in May;
2. and one final essay due in early June.

The first assignment will deal with some general knowledge of multilingual work (in order to highlight key issues in the readings) and it will take you one step towards an account of a language other than English. The second assignment — the final essay — is intended to be an account of some area of a language other than English, e.g. the basic mood types of the language [interpersonal], the primary process types (or more delicately, the transitivity of e.g. existence, location and possession) [ideational] or the thematic patterns of the clause as a message in unfolding text [textual].

The background readings on English that will help you are Halliday’s IFG, Matthiessen & Halliday (1997) and Matthiessen (1995). These provide an English-based model of a description of a language. In addition, you will find accounts in similar terms of a variety of languages — Chinese,  French, German, Gooniyandi, Japanese, Pitjantjatjara, Tagalog, Vietnamese. These will be helpful to you as models. You will not, of course, have to develop descriptions that cover as much of the lexicogrammar or that go into as much detail.

When you investigate the language of your choice, there are several strategies for exploring the area you are interested in:

• You can consult accounts of the particular language (e.g. the standard reference grammar[s] or articles dealing with some specific area) and also typological accounts dealing with the area you are interested in (e.g. accounts of mood systems across languages).
• You can study texts in the particular language — either monolingual or parallel texts with a translation into English. This method includes using a machine translation (MT) program to translate: the mistakes the program makes will reveal something about differences between the "source" language and the "target" language.
• You can construct examples yourselves or elicit examples from (other) native speakers by asking them for translation equivalents of English examples.

Outline
 

  I. Languages around the world and linguistic multilinguality (typology, comparison, translation)

Week 1: Languages around the world; different kinds of multilingual concerns [2/iii]

Lecture

This lecture will identify the main objectives of the course. It will provide a survey of different multilingual concerns ? description of particular languages, translation, comparison and typology ? and it will show how these relate to one another: the multilingual focus of translation is text ? "equivalences" between instances of the linguistic system; the multilingual focus of comparision is the system that lies behind textual instances ? comparison of a (small) number of linguistic systems; the multilingual focus of typology is also the system ? it is generalized comparison involving a large number of linguistic systems. The lecture will also raise the question of what can be assumed to be general properties of language ( theoretical "universals") and what must be treated as generalizations emerging from descriptions of particular languages.

This lecture will also identify the major families of languages around the world (genetic relationships) and their geographical distribution. The notion of linguistic areas will also be noted.

Tasks

Think about which type of multilingual concern you would like to focus on in your final assignment: you do not have to decide at this point, but try to locate your own interests in the field of multilingual activities. Would you like to describe (some aspect of) a language other than English? Would you like to analyse an original text and a translation of it into another language? Would you like to locate (aspects of) a language you are interested in typologically with respect to one or more systems? And so on. In addition, identify the languages you speak and/or are interested in and find out which language family each language belongs to. Start to collect key references to accounts of the language(s) you are interested in (using the series edited by Bernard Comrie [see under "Readings" above] as one starting point) and familiarize yourselves with the Ethnologue web site maintained by SIL.

References

Background readings relevant for the whole course:

The languages of the world ? genetic families:

• Crystal, David. 1987. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. § 49: The Origins of Language; § 50: Families of languages; § 51: The Indo-European family, § 52: Other families; § 53: Language Isolates. [Crystal’s encyclopedia is a convenient source of information about languages around the world. Use it to locate the languages you are interested in. For more detailed overviews, consult the books mentioned under "Readings" at the beginning of the outline — the series edited by Bernard Comrie and the Cambridge language survey books.]
• The Ethnologue, language families: http://www.sil.org/ethnologue/families/

Mainstream approach to typology and "universals":

[Both these books will provide you with a general introduction to one of the major multilingual concerns  — linguistic typology.]

Comparison and typology ? early discussion by M.A.K. Halliday:

Week 2: Multilingual concerns: translation; parallel and comparable texts [9/iii]

Lecture

The first multilingual concern we will consider is translation: the reading for this is Matthiessen (1999). This will allow us to build up an account of multilingual issues by using particular texts. We will consider the different "environments" of translation and we will discuss different types of translation (including the traditional contrast between "free translation" and "literal translation" in relation to these environments. One central goal is to locate both differences between languages and similarities between languages in translation within the general theory of language. We will also discuss how parallel sets of texts — original plus translation(s) — can be used as a source of examples for developing generalizations about differences and similarities across linguistic systems.

Tasks

For the languages you know, identify sources of parallel texts — sources such as guide books, instructional manuals, information about musicians from CD jackets, fiction published in original together with translation (e.g. Penguin’s parallel texts). (Alternatively, you can do the translation yourselves, noting where you find constructions that are difficult to translate.) Try to track some construction in the English text to see what its equivalents are in the non-English text (as is done in Matthiessen, 1999, for English theme predication clauses and existential clauses for English and German). For example, you can track existential clauses in English, passive clauses, negative clauses, or emotive clauses. The result will be an indication of how these constructions are translated; but it can also serve as the way into an investigation of how two (or more) linguistic systems resemble one another and differ from one another. You will often find that while the construction in one language is systemically similar to that of another (e.g. a passive construction, contrasting with the active construction), they are fairly — or even quite — different in structural realization.

References

• Johansson, S. to appear. On the role of corpora in cross-linguistic research. In S. Johansson S. Oknefjell, Corpora and cross-linguistic research. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
• Matthiessen, Christian M.I.M. 1999. The environments of translation. In C. Yallop & E. Steiner (eds.), forthcoming. Berlin: de Gruyter.

II. Multilingual concerns: typology — system and structure

Week 3: Systemic patterns [16/iii]

Lecture

Based on what we found in our exploration of translation of texts, we will now move to the general comparison the linguistic systems that lie behind these texts — typology. We will begin by looking at patterns across languages in terms of axis (Matthiessen & Halliday, 1997): we will investigate similarities and differences across languages in terms of systemic organization (the paradigmatic axis) and in terms of patterns of (structural) realizations of systemic options (the syntagmatic axis). We begin by looking at systemic organization this week. >From IFG, you are already familiar with many aspects of the systemic organization of English. For example, you have encountered systems such as POLARITY (the contrast between ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ — IFG p. 88), MOOD (the contrast between ‘indicative’ and ‘imperative’ and the more delicate contrasts within ‘indicative’: ‘declarative’ vs. ‘interrogative’ — IFG Ch. 4), PROCESS TYPE (the opposition ‘material’ / ‘behavioural’ / ‘mental’ / ‘verbal’ / ‘relational’ / ‘existential’ — IFG Ch. 4 and the front cover of the book!), VOICE (set out as a network of systems on p. 169 of IFG), TENSE (‘past’ / ‘present’ / ‘future’), and MODALITY (set out as a network of related systems on p. 360 of IFG). We will ask what generalizations can be made across languages about the nature of such systems. We will see that patterns of systemic marking are very general across languages. For example, in many (very possibly all) languages, ‘negative’ is the marked term in the systemic contrast in polarity between ‘positive’ and ‘negative’. This means (among other things) that it is the ‘negative’ rather than the ‘positive’ option that realized by an explicit item (an affix or a word). We will also see that there are very clear tendencies in how languages elaborate networks of systems.

Tasks

Select some system that has a clear ‘unmarked’ vs. ‘marked’ opposition in English — POLARITY is a good candidate; the VOICE contrast between ‘active’ and ‘passive’ is another — and check if the contrast in marking is the same in the languages you know (or which you can look up). You can do this by translating a pair of English clauses showing the relevant systemic contrast into the language you are investigating. For example, if you are looking at POLARITY, you will translate a ‘positive’ and the agnate (related) ‘negative’ variant (e.g. it’s raining vs. it’s not raining).

References

• Croft, W. 1990. Typology and universals. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chapter 3: Implicational universals. Chapter 4: Markedness in typology. Chapter 5: Grammatical hierarchies.
• Hopper, Paul. & Sandra A. Thompson. 1980. Transitivity in grammar and discourse. Language 56: pp. 251-99.

Week 4: Structural patterns [23/iii]

Lecture

In this lecture, we will continue the topic from last week, but we will move from systemic organization to the structural organization of grammatical units (clauses, phrases, groups and words). In particular, we will explore generalizations about structural patterns that obtain in more than one kind of grammatical unit: in linguistic typology, "word order" has received special attention. "Word order" really means the sequence of elements within a grammatical unit. Thus linguists have found that sequences of elements come in two patterns and that these patterns are manifested across grammatical units (clauses, phrases, groups, words). For example, in languages where the Predicator comes before the Complement in the clause, phrases are prepositional (as in English, Arabic); but in languages where the Complement comes before the Predicator in clause, phrases are postpositional (as in Hindi, Japanese).

Tasks

For the language(s) you are interested in, try to identify the (basic) sequence of elements for clauses (Predicator [verbal group] and Complement [nominal group, but non-pronominal, i.e. full lexical nominal groups]), phrases (minor Predicator [preposition / postposition] and minor Complement), groups (nominal: different kinds of Modifier [Deictic, Numerative, Epithet; Qualifier] in relation to Head; verbal: Finite and Auxiliaries in relation to Event), and perhaps also words (prefixes, suffixes; infixes). Check to see to what extent the sequences within different units are "harmonious" with one another (as discussed in the lecture; see the handout).

References

III. Multilingual concerns: typology — The major ideational, interpersonal and textual resources across languages

In the last two weeks we have considered systemic and structural patterns that are pervasive in grammatical systems: they are the basis of organization across the metafunctions (ideational, interpersonal and textual) and at all ranks. In the next few weeks, we will look at the major systems within each metafunction — interpersonal: MOOD; ideational: TRANSITIVITY; textual: THEME and INFORMATION (and VOICE). A central aim is to find out where languages tend to be similar and where they tend to differ from one another.

Weeks 5: Interpersonal resources across languages; the system of MOOD [30/iii]

Lecture

The interpersonal metafunction is the resource for enacting social roles and relationships. In this lecture, we will consider the organization of the basic grammatical resources for engaging in dialogic interaction — the grammar of MOOD. We will look at different ways in which mood options may be realized (by the relative sequence of Subject and Finite, by interpersonal particles, by pitch, etc.), but we will also consider tendencies in the organization of the systemic organization of the mood options (for example, do all languages have ‘wh-interrogative’ clauses?). In addition, we will discuss related interpersonal systems, the resources of modal assessment  — in particular, POLARITY and MODALITY / EVIDENTIALITY. (We will also note other interpersonal systems that languages may be concerned with ? in particular, systems of honorificity and politeness.)

Tasks

Try to establish what the major mood options of "your" language(s) are. For example, is there more than one type of ‘polarity-interrogative’ ("yes/no") clause? Specify how these options are realized. Set out MOOD and POLARITY as a paradigm so that you can check interactions between these two systems (they may be independently variable; but in some languages the form of the ‘negative’ varies with the mood type, in particular ‘imperative’ clauses may have a distinct negative).

References

• Palmer, F.R. 1986. Mood and modality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Payne, T. 1986. Negation. In T. Shopen (ed), Language typology and syntactic description. Clause structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 197-243.
• Sadock, J. & A. Zwicky. 1986. Speech act distinctions in syntax. In T. Shopen (ed), Language typology and syntactic description. Clause structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 155-197.
• Ultan, R. 1978. Some general characteristics of interrogative systems. In J. Greenberg (ed), Universals of human language. Volume 4: Syntax. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Easter break

Weeks 6: Ideational resources across languages; the system of TRANSITIVITY (1) [13/iv]

Lecture

The ideational metafunction is the resource for construing human experience ? our experience of the world around us and inside us. In this lecture and the next lecture, we will explore how languages vary in how they construe human experience. We will consider discuss how languages divide the labour between the two basic modes of construing experience — the logical and the experiential. Depending on the division of labour, languages will be found to differ in what they construe as a "quantum of experience". The grammatical unit for construing one quantum of experience is the clause; and the basic resource of the clause for construing one quantum of experience is that of TRANSITIVITY. We will consider different models of transitivity found in languages around the world (such as ergative vs. transitive models); and we will also explore how languages grammaticalize the various process types.

Tasks

The transitivity system of a language is extensive, so it may be difficult for you to survey the whole system of the language you are interested in. But you can select certain process types for special attention. For example, investigate how "your" language(s) construe meteorological processes, mental processes (cf. Viberg, 1984, on processes of perception; Johansson, nd, on hating and loving) and processes of existence, location and possession (cf. Clark, 1978). One way of investigating such ideational fields is by examining parallel texts (cf. Lecture 2).

References

• Barry, B. 1994. Case. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Clark, Eve V. 1978. Locationals: existential, locative and possessive constructions. In J. Greenberg (ed), Universals of human language. Volume 4: Syntax. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
• Dixon. R.W.M. 1994. Ergativity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Hopper, Paul. & Sandra A. Thompson. 1980. Transitivity in grammar and discourse. Language 56: pp. 251-99.
• Hopper, Paul. & Sandra A. Thompson. 1982. Introduction. In Hopper & Thompson (eds), Syntax & semantics 15: Studies in transitivity. New York Academic Press. pp. 1-7.
• Givón, Talmy. 1982. Syntax: a functional-typological introduction ? volume 1. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Chapter 4: Simple sentences: predications and case-roles.
• Johansson, S. nd. Loving and hating in English and Norwegian: a corpus-based contrastive study. MS.
• Martin, James R. 1996. Metalinguistic diversity: the case from case. Ruqaiya Hasan, Carmel Cloran & David Butt (eds), Functional descriptions: theory into practice. Amsterdam: Benjamins. pp. 323-375.
• Munro, Pamela. 1982. On the transitivity of 'say' verbs. In Paul Hopper & Sandra Thompson (eds.), Studies in transitivity. Syntax and semantics Vol. 15. New York: Academic Press. pp., 301-319.
• Palmer, F.R. 1994. Grammatical roles and relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Pawley, Andrew. 1987. Encoding events in Kalam and English: different logics for reporting experience. In R. Tomlin (ed.), Coherence and grounding in discourse. Amsterdam: Benjamins. pp. 329-61.
• Viberg, Åke. 1984. The verbs of perception in a typological study. In Brian Butterworth, Bernard Comrie & Östen Dahl (eds.), Explanations for Language Universals. The Hague: Mouton. pp. 123-163.

Realizational patterns:

Weeks 7: Ideational resources across languages; the system of TRANSITIVITY (2) [20/iv]

Lecture

As above

Tasks

As above

References

As above

Week 8: Textual resources across languages [27/iv]

Lecture

The textual metafunction is the resource for constituting ideational and interpersonal meanings as a "flow" of information in text (unfolding in context). It does this partly by assigning textual statuses such as thematicity, newsworthiness, contrastiveness and identifiability to linguistic elements. In this lecture we will explore how languages organize these resources. One area of variation across languages we will consider is voice: some languages (like English) make fairly extensive use of a voice system for "distributing" information in the clause, whereas as the voice systems of may other languages (such as Chinese) are much more restricted because they rely on other textual strategies.

Tasks

In order to examine textual patterns in "your" language, you will have to analyse passages of text. Select a few texts with clear methods of development (e.g. chronological, spatial or taxonomic) and investigate how the clauses that make up the text are organized. Do they reflect the method of development?

If you have access to parallel texts, select a long text in English, identify all the passive clauses and check the translation equivalents in the other language(s).

References

IV. Case studies: surveys of particular languages

The lectures in this area are intended to show you how different languages can be mapped out in terms of metafunction and rank and thus to give you a sense of what different grammatical systems look like.

Week 9: Language [4/v]

TBA BREAK (2 weeks): 8/v?24/v

Week 10: Japanese [25/v]

Lecture  —Guest Lecturer: Dr. Kazuhiro Teruya, UNSW

English and Japanese represent the outer limits of the Eurasian culture band; both have long histories as "island languages" that have been influenced from outside. In this lecture, you will be given an outline of the most salient feature of the resources of Japanese grammar. The lecture will also serve as a model of how a language can be "profiled" in terms of metafunction (and rank). The major ideational, interpersonal and textual systems will be discussed.

References

Week 11: Language [1/vi]

TBA

Week 12: The evolution of language; review [8/vi]

Lecture

In this lecture, we will take a step back to consider multilingual issues in an evolutionary perspective. We will explore the evolution of language in the human species, speculating about what may have been the major evolutionary stages and periods. We will also discuss attempts to push the investigation of genetic relationships further back in time (beyond the currently accepted major language families).

References