Dichotomy between private and public experience: A case of Polish wierzyć ‘believe‘

Małgorzata FabiszakAnna Hebda

Barbara KonatAdam Mickiewicz University, Poznan

Private vs public experience

1) COGNITION AS BRAIN metaphor: individual autistic brainCOGNITION AS ACTIVITY: body, context, other individuals and tools, accumulated knowledge [Bernardez 2007]

2) Intersubjectivity as the sharing of experiential content (e.g. feelings, perceptions, thoughts and linguistic meanings) among a plurality of subjects [Zlatev et al 2008]

Polish wierzyć ‘to believe’: dictionary senses

• wierzyć1) to consider sth true 2) to follow a religion

3) to consider what sb says true 4) to trust sb 5) to see sb’s potential and be convinced of their future success [SJP PWN online]

Cx1)+2) wierzyć w+ACC ‘to believe in...’; wierzyć,

że ‘to believe that’3) wierzyć komuś, że ‘to believe sb that...’4) wierzyć komuś ‘to believe sb’5) wierzyć w kogoś ‘to believe in sb’

Prefixed forms: uwierzyć, dowierzać, zawierzyć/ać

• u- in one of its image schemas the LM is construed as a collection of entities among which the selected TR is located; thus, the TR constitutes part of the LM (aspectual pair with senses 1) and 2))

• do- indicates an approximation to a goal or result; some effort; reaching the goal may involve encountering certain difficulties along the way, where the trajector (TR) makes every effort to achieve the goal despite any obstacles; (sense 3))

• za- can represent a construal of ‘excess’ with intransitive perfective verbs, being extended from the sense of ‘going beyond a boundary’

• (Dickey 2006, 2009, p.c.; Przybylska 2001, 2006; Piernikarski 1975; Śmiech 1986; Tabakowska 2003)

Hypotheses

1) Individual cognition co-occurs more frequently with 1st Person Sg Subjects

2) Social Cognition co-occurs more frequently with NP Objects

3) Individual Cognition co-occurs more frequently with that-Clausal Objects

4) Individual Cognition co-occurs more frequently with 1st Person Sg IObjects

Data• PWN Corpus• extracts from 386 books, 977 issues of

185 newspapers and magazines, 84 recorded conversations, 207 websites and several hundred promotional leaflets

• 40 million words; demo online version of the corpus used – 7.5 million words

• wierzyć: 384, uwierzyć: 466, dowierzać: 11, zawierzać: 7, zawierzyć: 6

Formal variables• Negation: Neg, Pos• V_Pers: V1, V2, V3 [impersonal forms

disregarded]• V_Number: VSg, VPl• Obj_Form: ObjNP, ObjClause, ObjPRO (w

siebie) [intransitive and other PRO disregarded]

• Obj_Case: ACC, w+ACC• IObjForm: IObjNP, IObjPRO• IObjNum: IObjSg, IObjPl• IObjPerson: IObj1, IObj2, IObj3

Semantic variables• Obj_NP_Sem: ObjCONCR, ObjHUM, ObjABSTR• Obj_Clause_Sem: ObjACCOM, ObjACH, ObjACT, ObjST,

ObjHYPO, e.g. Uwierzyłaś, że wszystko jest twoją winą [You believed that everything was your fault], Niech się pan stara aby uwierzyła że będzie zdrowa [Do whatever you can to make her believe she will get better]

• IObjSem: IObjHUM, IObjABSTR, IObjCONCR• Obj_Cog: Indiv, Soc, e.g. A ja mu uwierzyłem, że go

zrujnowałem [And I believed him that I ruined him], Zdaje mi się, że uwierzyłem w duchy [It seems to me I have started to believe in ghosts]

• Disc_Function: Disc, Lex

Hypothesis 1

Hypothesis 1• Indiv: dowierzać, uwierzyć, V2, VSg, e.g.

Wydawało się, że ciągle nie dowierza własnemu szczęściu [It seemed he still couldn’t believe his luck]

• Soc: zawierzać, zawierzyć, wierzyć, VPl, VSg, e.g. Wierzymy w dziennikarzy, ale w każdego z osobna [We believe in journalists, but in each of them separately]

Hypotheses 2 and 3

Hypothesis 2 and 3

• Soc cognition: ACC NP Objects

• Indiv: Object that clauses

Hypothesis 4

Hypothesis 4

• Indiv: ObjHUM, IObj1

• Soc: IObjABSTR, e.g. Nie, wy już i Bogu nie wierzycie [No, even God-DAT you do not believe any longer], Zawierzyli partii, a przestali wierzyć mnie [They started to believe the (political – AH) party-DAT, and stopped believing me]

Individual vs Social Cognition: Logistic Regression Analysis

Results• Indiv (-): VSg, SemObjHUM, e.g., Od razu

uwierzyłam w Felka i „nowy ustrój” [I believed in Felek and the „new political system” at once]

• Soc: ObjClauseSemHYPO, ObjClauseSemST, IObj3e.g., Dzięki panu uwierzyłam, że Rosjan można kochać [Thanks to you I believed that it’s possible to love Russians]; Chyba pierwszy raz uwierzyłem, że świat jest piękny [I guess for the first time I believed that the world was beutiful]; Mało kto mu wierzy [Hardly anyone believes him]

Summary• Only Hypothesis 1 has been partially

confirmed with a statistically significant result: Individual cognition co-occurs more frequently with Sg Subjects

• Hypotheses 2 and 3: there is a correspondence, but no statistically significant result

• Unpredicted results: 5) HYPO and ST semantics of object clauses co-

occur with Social Cognition6) IObj3 co-occurs with Social Cognition

Further research• Grammaticalization of Dative IObj into discourse

markers as a reflection of attempts to communicate one’s Individual Cognitive Experience to Other Minds and to change their Cognitive State

• Uwierz, że; uwierz w, e.g., Uwierz, że może być pozytywnym doświadczeniem [It can be a positive experience, believe it], Uwierz w nieskończoność [Believe in eternity]

• Uwierz mi, że, e.g. Uwierz mi, że kiedy ciebie nie ma, uwodzi twoich kumpli aż miło [Believe me (when I say) that when you are not here, she seduces your buddies all she wants]

• Uwierz mi (Disc), e.g. Mariola, uwierz mi, ja naprawdę nie robię niczego złego [Mariola, believe me, I am not doing anything wrong]

• Uwierz (Disc), e.g. Tak będzie lepiej, uwierz [It will be better that way, believe me]

• ...pragmatic meanings come to be reanalyzed as semantic polysemies [Traugott – Dasher 2005: 1)