Frank Brisard

Grounding : the epistemic footing of deixis and reference

This compilation of invited contributions, gathering an international collection of cognitive and functional linguists, offers an outline of original empirical work carried out in grounding theory. Grounding is a central notion in cognitive grammar that addresses the linking of semantic content to contextual factors that constitute the subjective ground (or situation of speech). The volume illustrates a growing concern with the application of cognitive grammar to constructions establishing deixis and reference. It proposes a double focus on nominal and clausal grounding, as well as on ways of integrating analyses across these domains.

Be going to : an exercise in grounding

This paper investigates the semantics of be going to, starting from a schematic definition which interprets temporal meanings in terms of referential and epistemological attributes. The analysis is framed within the model of cognitive grammar, taking deictic syntactical constructions as instances of grounding predications and dierences between them as triggered by aspects of construal and profiling. On the basis of corpus material from American and British English texts, it is concluded that be going to features a paradoxical but pragmatically plausible interpretation of the future as non-given yet present, with a pending event’s being signaled or announced at the time of speaking. 1 .I ntroduction It was argued in Brisard (1997) that a thoroughly semantic characterization of will, one of the grammatical markers of futurity in the English verb paradigm, needs to be done in terms of a schematic definition that is not exclusively based on temporal features. Instead, it was investigated how the notional category of the future came to have so much in common in English with the class, denoted by will, comprising states of aairs that do indeed refer to the future, but also to epistemic predications about the present and even the past (with have), to modal predications of volition and willingness, to evaluative and}or predictive predications in the realm of so-called general validity statements, and, as a final case of grammatical conventionalization, to the apodosis of open conditionals. The answer to this conceptual salad bowl, it was suggested, lies in the compatibility of epistemological features originally ascribed to the verb will by virtue of its historical meanings on one hand, and a commonplace interpretation of the notional future as following from premises that are already given in the world as we know it, on the other. Thus, by using the schematic definition given below, it is possible to reduce the often arbitrarily connected aspects of will’s semantic range, usually classified into denotations and a non-essential residue of connotations, to one, fully motivated meaning for the whole of the category. This schematic [1] The research for this paper was carried out in the context of a research program supported by the Fonds voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek, contract number G.0246‐97. Thanks are due to Michael Meeuwis for commenting on earlier versions of the paper, as well as to two JL referees.

A Cognitive Grammar account of the semantics of the English present progressive

In this paper, we propose a unified account of the semantics of the English present progressive in the form of a semantic network, basing ourselves on the theoretical principles and analytical tools offered by the theory of Cognitive Grammar, as laid out by Langacker ( 1987 , 1991 ). The core meaning of the English present progressive, we claim, is to indicate epistemic contingency in the speakers immediate reality. It thus contrasts with the simple present, which is associated with situations that are construed as structurally belonging to reality. On the basis of a study of the Santa Barbara Corpus of spoken American English, an inventory has been made of the more specific uses of the present progressive, temporal as well as modal. It is shown that each of these uses can be derived from this basic meaning of contingency in immediate reality via a set of conceptual branching principles, in interaction with elements in the context.

Present and perfect in Bantu: the case of Lingála

Abstract In the study of tense-aspect systems in the Bantu languages, there appears to be a lack of agreement over basic issues in analyzing different inflectional classes. In this paper, we address forms of temporal predication in Lingálas present-time verbal paradigm. Presenting an analysis along the lines of Cognitive Grammar, we challenge the received interpretation of a verb form with -í in Lingála, as well as of its cognates in other Bantu languages, traditionally taken to mark past tense, notably with dynamic verbs. We claim that the perfect/anterior meaning of this -í form with dynamic verbs should be treated in terms of the cognitive strategies speakers have available for dealing with the “epistemic problem” inherent in observing and reporting nonstative events simultaneously. Accordingly, dynamic verbs taking the -í form should be analyzed together with its use with statives, instead of seeing both types as semantically unrelated. We therefore argue for, and develop, an integrated analysis, which can single-handedly account for both dynamic verbs and stative ones. In schematic terms, we propose that the temporal reference of the -í form, whose aspect is perfect, is present rather than past, even if notions of pastness may be involved in the background conceptualization.

Periphrastic progressive constructions in Dutch and Afrikaans: a contrastive analysis

Given the common ancestry of Dutch and Afrikaans, it is not surprising that they use similar periphrastic constructions to express progressive meaning: aan het (Dutch) and aan die/’t (Afrikaans) lit. ‘at the’; bezig met/(om) te (Dutch) lit. ‘busy with/to’ and besig om te lit. ‘busy to’ (Afrikaans); and so-called cardinal posture verb constructions (zitten/sit ‘sit’, staan ‘stand’, liggen/lê ‘lie’ and lopen/loop ‘walk’), CPV te (‘to’ Dutch) and CPV en (‘and’ Afrikaans). However, these cognate constructions have grammaticalized to different extents. To assess the exact nature of these differences, we analyzed the constructions with respect to overall frequency, collocational range, and transitivity (compatibility with transitive predicates and passivizability). We used two corpora that are equal in size (both about 57 million words) and contain roughly the same types of written text. It turns out that the use of periphrastic progressives is generally more widespread in Afrikaans than in Dutch. As far as grammaticalization is concerned, we found that the Afrikaans aan dieand CPV-constructions, as well as the Dutch bezigand CPV-constructions, are semantically restricted. In addition, only the Afrikaans besigand CPV en-constructions allow passivization, which is remarkable for such periphrastic expressions.*

Flexible Semantic Processing of Spatial Prepositions

This article presents two experiments investigating whether language users spontaneously apply semantic extension principles to novel usages, or whether they treat word meanings as discrete, rigidly defined entities. In Experiment I, readers made a timed decision on the correctness of a sentence. Rejecting a cognitively plausible yet unattested extension of a preposition (*Peter is standing by the county) took longer and lead to more errors than rejecting a plainly incorrect usage of that preposition (*Peter is standing by the subtitle). This result was obtained for two novel extensions of two different prepositions. Experiment 2 included a preceding context in order to fix the referent of the target word and to exclude singular interpretations. The results were consistent with those of Experiment I, although the overall number of errors dropped considerably. Taken together, these experiments indicate that, even in a task discouraging the use of flexible processing, subjects are not able to suppress the application of extension principles. We conclude that interpreting the meanings of words in a flexible way is an inherent property of a semantic processing system