Predication: short notes on a (meta)functional vie · Predication: short notes on a...

JOHN BATEMAN

Predication: short notes on a (meta)functional view In these notes I set out quite briefly an interpretation of ‘predication‘ within the perspective offered by functional linguistics and, more particularly, within the framework known as systemic-functional, or socio-semiotic, linguistics (cf. Halliday, 1978, 1994). I will argue that the phenomena that have come to be grouped under the term predication can be given a reasonably concise and systematic description, but only when certain terminological and conceptual confusions and simplifications have been cleared out of the way. The account of predication offered will seek to describe the most commonly discussed kinds of ‘predication’ found in the literature. It will do so in terms of combinations of particular functionally motivated grammatical constituents within the linguistic stratum of grammar and their use as strategies for the expression of particular semantic configurations within the stratum of semantics. I will point out along the way some of the similarities and differences with other accounts, trying to make clear what a functional perspective brings to the discussion. Predication has been a source of linguistic debate for a considerable period and, unfortunately, the predominant approach in modern times (i.e., over the last 50 years or so) appears to simplify beyond the point of reasonable simplification. This can have two kinds of consequence: first, presentation of predication can end up as lists of construction groupings which do little to bring out the regularities involved; and secondly (sometimes combined with the first), studies of predication can draw on more or less sophisticated notions of syntactic structure which are inherently unsuited for pulling apart the multifunctional nature of the kinds of phenomena investigated. This is, in part, to echo Napoli’s (1989) arguments against a purely configurational (in her case mostly X-bar) based approach to the phenomena of predication; as she begins: “I will argue ... below against any analysis of predication in terms of VP (verb phrase) versus the syntactic subject” (1989:9). In these notes, I will further augment her more semantic directions of analysis with detailed functional categories in order to provide a more differentiating view within the grammatical stratum also. Finally, although the examples used throughout the paper are drawn from English, I will also point out along the way the many places where the proposals have a natural wider application. The notes are structured as follows, 1. a brief review of predication and the troubled notions of Subjects and Predicates, 2. an overview of the simple clause types where multiple opportunities for (some kind

of) predication naturally occur—this will help set out some distracters that appear superficially similar to cases of multiple predication,

3. an introduction to the relation to semantics and the treatment of ‘secondary’ predications—this offers an example of a general relationship between grammar and semantics with a standard and well documented behaviour, namely under-specification in non-clausal and dependent clausal realisations.

4. a brief summing up.

24 John Bateman: Predication: short notes on a (meta)functional view

I will suggest, perhaps somewhat provocatively, that there is, in the end, little that is mysterious in ‘predication’.

Predication

Predication is nowadays considered mostly the properties of linguists and logicians. ‘Properties’ because these often have little to do with one another apart from a common origin in the investigations of Aristotle. It has been common since that time to divide sentences into two components, a Subject and a Predicate (linguistic), and to consider the corresponding attribution of properties to some entity as an example of Predication (logic). Seuren (1998:120), in his rather personal history of Western Linguistics, points to a basic problem with the early studies that appears to have left much room for confusion and debate in the years following: that is, while some of the function of the division of the sentence into two components was laid out by Aristotle, the particular piece of linguistic substance or structure or constituent that was to be identified as the ‘Subject’ was left vague. This most immediately gave rise to two possible interpretations, both of which well represented in the linguistic literature—the Subject as the piece of given, known, established information about which a speaker wants to give information, and the Subject as formally the entity about which information is given in a particular sentence. ‘Formally’, here, meaning sometimes the sentence element that can be recognised on formal grounds (e.g., by nominative case, agreement between that element and the finite verb, and others depending on language) and sometimes that revealed more on grounds drawn from formal logic (e.g., by logical analysis of the attribution of properties, etc.). The situation, and the possibilities considered, receive an early decisive characterisation from von der Gabelentz thus:

“What does one want to achieve when one speaks to another person? The answer is that one wants to arouse a thought in him. In my view this implies two aspects: first, one has to direct the interlocutor’s attention (his thinking) to something, and secondly, one makes him think this or that about it. I call that of or about which I want my addressee to think the psychological subject, and that which he should think about it the psychological predicate. In the sequel it will become clear how much these categories often deviate from their grammatical counterparts.” (Von der Gabelentz, 1869:378; cited in translation in Seuren, 1998)

In addition here, the logical subject takes on one role of Aristotle’s subject, and this may be generally expressed in the grammatical subject that shows itself in nominative case. This gives a three-way distinction: two ‘semantic’ (or at least not grammatical) in orientation, and the third squarely within the grammar. Opinions over whether THE subject should be the logical or the psychological varied subsequently until the grammatical subject finally won out. The logical subject then received a proper home amongst other thematic roles (as Agent, Actor, and similar), while the psychological subject was banned for a while to the oblivion of pragmatics or the ‘non-mainstream’ of the Prague School and other functional accounts.1

1 I write ‘for a while’ because nowadays the information status of elements in clauses is again a very respectable and hot topic within both semantics and mainstream grammar; therefore the psychological

Bremer Linguistik Workshop 25

Without further technical apparatus, it is in fact difficult even to express these various possibilities of interpretation in a succinct and sufficiently clearly differentiating fashion. It is then no wonder that the debate about which of the interpretations of subject was intended or correct continued throughout the rise of linguistics through the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The debate was particularly important during the early days of constituent structure because it was also assumed that the ‘first cut’ into immediate constituents should, of course, be at the ‘Subject-Predicate’ division; different assessments of what this meant would therefore give rise to very different looking linguistic structures. Here we have, for example, Hockett writing as late as 1958:

“The most general characterization of predicative constructions is suggested by the terms ‘topic’ and ‘comment’ for their [immediate constituents]: the speaker announces a topic and then says something about it. Thus John | ran away; That new book by Thomas Guernsey | I haven’t read yet. In English and the familiar languages of Europe, topics are usually also subjects, and comments are predicates: so in John | ran away. But this identification fails sometimes in colloquial English, regularly in certain special situations in formal English, and more generally in some non-European languages.” (Hockett, 1958:201)

We see here something of the problem: subject and predicate were well established on grammatical grounds, but there was still the further ‘psychological’ interpretation of a subject-predicate-like division of a clause to be given due account. Careful example selection (as in Bloomfield) could hide the problem by taking simple sentences where the accidental co-incidence of subject (grammar) and subject (psychological) remained unproblematised. Just how quickly the three kinds of meaning involved can reassert themselves in a somewhat tangled net of relationships is shown clearly in the following citation from Napoli:

“In sum, while the difference between [We painted the barn red] and [We painted the red barn] is one of difference between what is asserted and what is not asserted, it is also a difference between what is predicated and what is not predicated. ... Still the fact that red is asserted in [We painted the barn red] is worthy of note, since in general asserted information is significant new information, so it can be the focus of a clause and can be understood as a predicate.” (1989:21)

Here, in the space of a few sentences, Napoli manages to run all the available subject-predicate interpretations together in a manner which, I will suggest below, can only confuse: predication is here again being aligned centrally with the ‘psychological’ subject leading to analyses in some sense similar to Hockett’s. Examples taken from Napoli (1989:22) include: (1) BILL left town. (2) Some IDIOT must have suggested that to you. (3) I know SOME Spanish.

‘subject’—properly renamed as topic or given or known—is now firmly established even in non-functional traditions (cf., e.g., Vallduví, 1992 and the many references he gives).


for which it is claimed that the predicates are respectively BILL, IDIOT and SOME because they are the “significant new information”. The debate has in many respects been simpler in the world of logic: there there was no distracting psychological or grammatical considerations to hinder generalisation. In the final analysis predication could be seen as the relationship between some predicate and a set of arguments. Thus, the ‘eventuality’ of Aristotle chasing dogs in the park can be seen quite abstractly as a ‘three-placed’ predicate of ‘chasing’ which relates the chaser (Aristotle), the chased (the dogs) and the location where it all happens:

chase (Aristotle, dogs, park) Naturally other representations are possible (e.g., specifying when the chasing occurred and a more careful consideration of the related entities ‘Aristotle’, the dogs, etc.) but the general idea is sufficient: predication under this view is an abstract operation defined by the rules of predicate logic. This is a very general perspective which supports rather more possibilities than may be motivated linguistically. For example, it is straightforward to create new, more complex predicates via the mechanism of lambda abstraction: we can define a predicate such as ‘Aristotle chasing things in the park’ by writing:

λx . chase (Aristotle, x, park) This predicate can then be applied to various arguments and it can be decided whether the result describes a situation holding in the world or not. An equivalent to our first formula above—although now involving this more complex predicate, would therefore be:

{λx . chase (Aristotle, x, park)} (dogs)

Argument Predicate This flexibility in the creation of predicates helps support the arbitrary selection of predicates that is required when predication is asked to correspond with ‘psychological subject’ as above; especially if we allow the predicates themselves to be arguments. Sentence (1) above, for example, in which Bill was made the predicate (or more precisely, presumably, ‘Bill does something’) could be rendered (approximately) as:2

{λP . P (Bill)} (left-town) Such ‘higher order’ predications begin to take the formalisation considerably further than straightforward predicate logic; logic of this kind can offer sufficient power to represent the various proposals for predication that have been put forward. But I will question below whether we need to go down this path at all. Logic is flexible because language is flexible: replacing one set of expressions with another does not necessarily lead to an increase in understanding. These preliminary considerations are necessary for us to begin to hold apart the factors that must contribute to any discussion of predication. We need to be very clear about which

2 More precisely, of course, we might want to take ‘left town’ apart as a complex predicate in its own right: λx. leave(x, town), but nothing changes here in principle once we have already opened up the logic to accept predicates as arguments.


aspects of predication are being discussed and which not. This is made all the more important by the fact that all of these considerations are simultaneously relevant: it is not possible to say too much about predication without giving each of these aspects due attention and an appropriate place in an overall account. The baseline functional description that I will adopt for the remainder of these notes uses all the four components introduced so far, although their affiliations are rearranged somewhat. The first move is made within grammar. Halliday (19851, 19942) draws attention to the three-way division of Subject established in the nineteenth century and proposes that it is necessary to adopt all three perspectives within the grammar. That is, there is no split between a logical subject existing on a semantic level of description and a grammatical subject on a grammatical level (or, as we shall refer to them, strata as used by Hjelmslev, 1953): rather, there are two separate grammatical relationships, or functions, one relating to a clause’s representation of the world in terms of ‘who did what to whom when where and how’, and the other recognised by the formal grammatical considerations mentioned above. These often do not align: for example, in any passive construction. We therefore find the following grammatical patterns: (4)

The duke gave my aunt these teapots Subject Actor

Process (active) Recipient Goal

(5) These teapots were given my aunt by the duke Subject Goal

Process (passive)

Recipient Actor

(6) My aunt was given these teapots by the duke Subject Recipient

Process (passive)

Goal Actor

The selection of Subject ranges quite freely (in English, less freely in German) over the various participants involved in this event of ‘giving’. When the Subject is not the Actor, however, we see that this fact is marked morphologically on the Process as a passive form. The roles Actor, Recipient, Goal, etc. are indicated directly in the grammar rather than being postponed to an interpretation within the stratum of semantics because they all have direct grammatical consequences in their own right. Also, as a further distinguishing feature from the perhaps similar looking notion of ‘thematic roles’, grammatical functions are introduced into clause structure only in particular combinations: thus a material clause (such as one involving ‘giving’ as here) is expressed through a particular selection of grammatical functions (here: Actor, Goal, Recipient) in combination. The individual functions are not taken to have any existence independently of the particular clause configuration in which they occur. They collectively provide a grammatical strategy for expressing clauses of this general type.


Individual grammatical functions are then identified solely on the basis of grammatical evidence. Recipients have grammatical reflexes such as being in the dative case or occurring with prepositional to-phrases, they can also become Subjects in English (but not German), etc.; Actors also can have a direct reflex in grammar, such as when occurring as a non-Subject in sentences like: (7) The university forbids talking by students during exams.

(example from Keenan and Timberlake, 1985) Cross-linguistically there are also languages which appear to have grammatical mechanisms that respond directly to this aspect of the grammatical organisation (cf., e.g., Martin’s (1996) discussion of Tagalog) just as in English mechanisms are frequently cited as responding to notions such as Subject, Direct Object, Indirect Object, etc. This provides one set of reasons for accepting these ‘semantic’-appearing relations directly into the grammar; we will see another set in a moment. There is similar evidence for including the notion of ‘psychological subject’ directly into the grammar. It has, just as Subject proper, straightforwardly stateable grammatical reflexes, such as, in English, occurring at the beginning of the clause. Hallidayan functional grammar follows Prague School terminology here and labels this constituent the grammatical Theme.3 The following clause patterns demonstrate that each of the three kinds of ‘subject’ discussed so far has an independent life within clause structure: sometimes they align and co-label a single constituent, sometimes not—contrary to Hockett above we will not argue that there is anything special about this latter state of affairs; the wider access that we nowadays have to corpora shows sufficiently clearly that we are not dealing with borderline phenomena here, but rather with central grammatical resources of the language. (8)

My aunt these teapots were given by the duke Theme Recipient

Subject Goal

Process (passive)

Actor

(9) By the duke these teapots were given my aunt Theme Actor

Subject Goal

Process (passive)

Recipient

(10) These teapots my aunt was given by the duke Theme Goal

Subject Recipient

Process (passive)

Actor

3 This terminological use does hide a significant difference in content, however. Halliday (1967) discusses two independent dimensions of information status: thematicity and news. Only the first is at issue here. The Prague school use of Theme generally conflates these two dimensions into one, sometimes arguing that only one is in fact needed. This has been argued not to be the case for English by, for example, Fries (1983) and has been questioned even for Czech by, for example, Kruijff-Korbayová, Bateman and Kruijff (forthcoming).


Some of these clauses require very strong contexts of contrast to be perceived as completely natural, but there is nothing grammatically out of place with them. The Subject proper is always recognisable by the usual grammatical reflexes of agreement with the finite verb and by the control of tag questions (These teapots my aunt was given by the duke, wasn’t she? vs. * These teapots my aunt was given by the duke, weren’t they?). The Theme is shown by the grammatical reflex of first position in the clause. The Actor is shown with the by-phrase (in passive clauses) and by co-occurrence with the Subject (in active clauses). This description argues that the structure of clauses is made up of three distinct lines of functional development. Both the logical subject and the psychological subject are seen to have directly stateable and standard consequences for grammatical structure and to occur in all combinations—singly, in pairs and, in probably the most misleading case of all, combined within a single constituent. It is probably this latter case that has done most to bring about or perpetuate the problems of analysis involving subjects mentioned above. The acceptance of three functionally distinct kinds of organisation in the clause shows the origins of Halliday’s model of grammar within Bühler’s (1934) organon model of language. Bühler’s three functions of Appell, Ausdruck and Darstellung find their places again within the three-line functional structures of Halliday. However, as Bühler himself notes, this kind of distinction has been around for a long time (he mentions Plato) and the precise use and motivation of the distinction has developed and changed considerably over time. Whereas Bühler’s conception was drawn on the basis of psychological considerations, Halliday’s has moved completely back within the linguistic system: thus the evidence and motivation admitted for the three-way functional description of clauses (and other grammatical units) is now drawn entirely on grammatical patterns such as the ‘reflexes’ mentioned so far and do not involve any assumption of psychological processing by either speaker/writer or hearer/reader. The strong functional motivation also prepares the ground for realising that even the so-called ‘grammatical’ subject should now be seen as serving a significant functional role in its clause: it is not a purely formal category that exists solely to provide a vehicle of expression for ‘deeper’ semantic or pragmatic roles (although it does this too—as all grammatical functions do). Current research is beginning to make the additional value of the choice of Subject clear; examining the choices of Subject across texts suggests a line of meaning additional to that covered by Theme and Actor. Martin (1992), for example, provides detailed examples of the role that Subject can play for signalling the point of modal responsibility in texts. This modal responsibility is essentially a way of positioning the text interpersonally, as an assessment by the speaker/writer of those entities that are to be allocated ‘responsibility’ in some respect. The consequences of this for typological considerations are just beginning to be researched; previous ‘universal’ assumptions of Subjecthood (cf. Keenan, 1976) may need some reworking. This assessment role of grammatical Subject is most clear in dialogue: for example, in an exchange among children of the form: you did! / I didn’t! Here there is little else involved apart from responsibility assessments and this is carried entirely by the selection of Subject, Finite verb, and immediately associated modal adjuncts (e.g., not).


This part of a clause is termed by Halliday the Mood element, following the traditional grammatical notions of sentence mood. Variation in the choices made in the Mood element are sufficient to vary a clause’s function across the three dialogue possibilities of assertion, question, and order.

Mood Element ‘Residue’ Finite Subject Imperative Do go to the park!

Interrogative

Subject

Are you going to the park? Assertion He went to the park.

The Mood element is also where other interpersonal assessments, hedges, etc. will typically be placed since the Mood element represents the ‘interactional’ centre of the clause. This is then the main reason why Subject was picked out originally by Aristotle in order to begin his systematisations of both logic and rhetoric. Until a clause has been ‘interpersonally charged’ by including the choices that determine the Mood element, it is not possible to assign it a truth-value, to deny it, to argue about it, to answer it, etc. Without a grammatical subject, there is no predication in the dialogic sense of having said something that can be disagreed with or challenged. Other grammatical units, and clauses which do not take up any Mood-choices, such as “his going to the park” (nominal group) or “going to the park” (non-finite clause) do not carry interaction further. It is precisely the Subject-Finite configuration of the Mood element that packages information in such as way as to enact dialogue and to make propositions arguable. We can see that this is also the basis of the predication-in-dialogue perspective that has shaped many linguistic discussions about the nature of sentences—particular their proposed relation to ‘complete thoughts’ and the like. The foundational nature of the phenomenon for dialogue is picked out there as definitional for ‘sentences’ as such. An example of this in cross-linguistic investigations is the study of Sasse (1991), who sets out the range of ‘sentence constitution’ mechanisms used by the languages of the world. For Sasse, the mechanisms outlined are necessary to turn a predication in the logical, semantic sense into a ‘sentence’—i.e., a unit which asserts some properties of an entity and which can participate in dialogue; he argues that,

“In the languages we are familiar with, sentence constitution is mainly expressed by the relation of subject and predicate. In the Classical Languages, in English, German, etc., subject and predicate make up the relational fabric defining the sentence as a formal unit of these languages. ... Only a small minority of the languages of the world, however, construct their sentences according to this pattern. ... This certainly does not mean that the others do not have sentences, but only that these are constructed by some other mechanisms rather than that of the combination of subject and predicate.” (1991:78)


Sasse’s motivation for this is that the speakers of a language regard some constructions in that language as ‘complete’ in some sense, and others not. With the addition of the function of the Mood element considered here, we make this intuition about completeness and just why speakers would feel that some form is ‘complete’ and others not much tighter. And, of course, the precise syntactic mechanisms that carry this dialogic component can and will vary across languages as Sasse argues. The three kinds of functions discussed so far—represented by Actor, Theme and Subject—are drawn from three distinct lines of meaning which come together in the clause. Moreover, because these three functions are always present in any clause—no grammatical clause can fail to make choices concerning its representation of the world, its social enactment, and textual position—Halliday terms them metafunctions. This indicates that we are not concerned with particular functions, like persuading some one to have a cup of tea, or stating that the world is round, but instead with generalised functions that classify all communicative situations. This is natural when considering grammar: while any particular sentence must be concerned with a particular collection of information, a grammar as a whole cannot be specific. The grammar must serve as a general tool for all language use situations: hence its meanings can only be of a very general kind. The three metafunctions describe these most general areas of meaning and provide both an organising framework for them and an indication of their possible linguistic consequences in terms of their grammatical reflexes. This is the significant leap made beyond broad notions of functionalism in language study in which the connection between form and function is highly interpretative (if present at all) and not tied to specifiable and particular grammatical patterns.

Metafunction Nineteenth-century Subject Definition

Ideational: Actor Logical Subject

The function of the clause as a representation of ‘reality’: the logical subject is the logical actor or agent in some event or activity.

Interpersonal: Subject Grammatical Subject

The function of the clause as an enactment of interpersonal relations –asking questions, making statements, negotiating commitments and evalua-tions: the grammatical subject is the dialogically ‘responsible’ participant.

Textual: Theme Psychological Subject

The function of the clause as contributing to an ongoing, developing textual product: the psychological subject is where the speaker/writer chooses to begin their message, their ‘point of departure’ for what they wish to communicate.

Table 1: Correspondence between metafunctions and nineteenth century views of ‘subject’


In summary, we then have the three functional dimensions, present simultaneously in every clause, and corresponding to the nineteenth century notions of subject, that are shown in Table 1. From now on, I shall use only the leftmost terms in this table; the three strands formerly run together in discussions of Subject will be kept strictly apart. All are maintained within grammatical descriptions. In the section following I will turn to illustrate some of the most common configurations within the ideational metafunction that have been discussed in terms of ‘predication’. First, however, we must return to the logico-semantic view of predication. Although this is most clearly echoed within the grammar, as we shall see, in the ideational perspective, we need nevertheless to keep the two levels, or strata, distinct. The mapping between the two strata is not always straightforward because adult language does not simply echo semantic configurations in grammatical ones—it if did, there would be no need to maintain two levels of description. This area of linguistic variability is termed grammatical metaphor by Halliday (1985, 1994). It is shown most clearly in sentences such as the following: (11) The third day saw them at the summit. Here we have what would superficially appear to be a mental process of perception; but the participants of the clause naturally problematise such an interpretation. ‘The third day’ is a poor entity to be selected as a senser or perceiver. A slightly deeper probing of the clause’s grammatical properties also show clearly that a straightforward mental interpretation is not going to work here (e.g., ?? The third day saw that they were not going to reach the summit). Halliday suggests that such clauses are the result of a strategy of ‘re-coding’ whereby a particular semantic configuration is re-expressed using a non-typical grammatical configuration for some definite functionally motivated reason. We can ‘unpack’ the metaphor to arrive at a clause presumably nearer the ‘congruent’ semantics intended with (11), i.e., (12) On the third day they arrived at the summit. Here the participants and circumstances of the clause have more typical representatives. To find a functional motivation for the re-coding, we ask what it is that the former sentence achieves that the latter one does not. The discussion above of the three strands of meaning represented in functional clause structure already gives an answer. While the temporal specification concerning the ‘third day’ is in Theme position in both (11) and (12), the (congruent) expression strategy of (12) only allows this by use of a marked theme (Halliday, 1967; Fries, 1983): this is any Theme that is not also Subject of its clause. Text studies have shown that marked themes play a significant role in extended text structuring over and above the more local thematic development carried by Themes generally. This gives a clear motivation for selecting (11) rather than (12): the former manages to allow a temporal theme (which would then normally fit into a general temporal development in the text at that point) without signalling this overly strongly as the possible point of change of direction in thematic development that a marked theme would suggest. It is, on this account, not necessary to consider possible non-grammatical metaphors such as the writer/speaker wanting at that point in the discourse to suggest time as some omniscient onlooker or observer of events; the need to ensure that appropriate meanings are ‘thread through’ necessary functionally charged


locations of clause structure in order to achieve textual coherence and development is already sufficient in many cases and any further ‘explanation’ in terms of language-external constructs would need to justify the additional mechanisms assumed. This ‘noncongruence’ between semantic and grammatical configurations is a pervasive phenomenon in all but the simplest language use. We will see it in use below for certain kinds of ‘multiple’ predication as discussed in the literature. There I will suggest that some quite usual properties of non-congruent expression strategies go a considerable way towards accounting for problematic cases and properties of ‘predication’.

Common Clause Configurations

In this section I set out some of the most common configurations of grammatical functions that have been considered in terms of ‘predication’—particularly ‘secondary predication’. The prototypical example of a ‘predication’ is a full independent clause, although precisely what constitutes the predicate semantically is still a matter of some debate as the examples driven by intonational prominence mentioned above in (1)-(3) indicate. To begin, we will state that a semantic predication finds grammatical expression through some configuration of ideational functions: this configuration is determined by the clause type, which means in turn that I am suggesting that particular semantic configurations find grammatical expression in particular clause types. The congruent cases would have, as we have just seen, some semantic type (e.g., a physical event) being expressed via a particular type of grammatical clause (e.g., a ‘material’ clause with Actor, Goal, etc.). Non-congruent cases have some semantic type (e.g., again a physical event) being expressed via a non-typical grammatical clause type (e.g., a ‘mental’ process with Senser, Phenomenon, etc.). Even in congruent cases there need not be a one-to-one relationship between elements of the semantic configuration and elements of the grammatical configuration; here Napoli’s (1989) arguments for the necessity of maintaining as distinct the notion of semantic predicate and lexical item are very apposite. Some clauses are also considered as sites of a second semantic predication. Debate then follows concerning the syntactic structure that this requires and the constraints on possible interpretation: i.e., how do the available arguments of the predicates distributed around the clause find their ways to the intended predicates. A lot of the fuel for this debate came originally from the over-close relationship assumed between semantic predication and grammatical clauses: for example, does the secondary (semantic) predication then require its own corresponding piece of clause structure (the so-called ‘small clause’ analysis)? As suggested above, I will address this here from the perspective of configurations of functional elements instead. Classic examples of ‘secondary’ predication include sentences such as the following: (13) He painted the door green. (14) He wiped the tray clean. In these sentences there appear to be at least two ‘predications’ taking place: the initial, or primary, predication of the main clause, and the secondary one of attributing some property


to the direct object of the clause (green:door, clean:tray). A ‘small clause’ analysis might suggest that there is some kind of reduced, copula-less clause present which carries the attribution of the property to the object. Such analyses are difficult to motivate in these cases because the strings ‘ball red’, ‘door green’, etc. do not seem to have any unity as a constituent and, furthermore, the apparent direct object of the clause really is the direct object as it can participate in the usual grammatical processes; e.g.: (15) The door was painted green (by him) (16) The tray was wiped clean. Choosing a small clause analysis for such cases therefore already commits the analyst to a more or less complex derivational account whereby syntactic units at one level of description become dissolved at ‘later’ levels of description. A functional analysis faces rather different issues. To describe such sentences functionally, I first draw attention to a rather general grammatical process of English, that is of forming analytic causation constructions as in (17)-(19): (17) The cat ran. (18) He made the cat run. (19) She made him make the cat run. In each case we have the addition of a further Agent constituent who is the stated causer of the action expressed in the rest of the clause. The functional analysis does not, then, posit necessarily more complex structural configurations here, but prefers a flatter analysis that shares work between the structural and functional modes of description. What is less often realised in non-functional accounts is that we have precisely the same possibility of analytic clause expansion in the grammar for relational clauses such as the ball is red or the door is green: (20) The ball is red. (21) He made the ball red. (22) The door is green. (23) He made the door green. All of the sentences (18-19; 21; 23) therefore share the fact that an additional Agent has been added into their clause structure to indicate that the event/state described had an ‘external’ causer who brought the event/state about. Since this is a rather common state of affairs, it is to be expected that many languages will provide some grammatical strategy for expressing this kind of proportionality. Precisely which method that is taken will depend on the resources available in the grammatical system overall. Then, to reach the original examples of secondary predication given as (13)-(14), we can note that there is a further rather general grammatical process of clauses in English (and many other languages) whereby lexical processes are selected on the basis of a combination of semantic activity and some ‘circumstantial’ aspect of that activity. Different languages favour different groupings of Circumstances and Process and probably each language allows some degree of variation internally (cf. Talmy, 1985). A well-known and much discussed example of this is the preference for Germanic languages to express motion as a combination of


movement and manner of movement (e.g., ‘swim across the river’) and for Romance languages to express motion as a combination of movement and directionality (e.g., ‘cross the river by swimming’). This gives the final, further option of conflating a particular semantic circumstance—in the case of (13) and (14) both Manner—with the Process in order to obtain a particular lexicalisation—i.e., to make (Process) green by painting (Manner): to paint (Process/Manner); to make (Process) clean by wiping (Manner): to wipe (Process/Manner). We can see, then, that the non-causal relational attribution of a property, which has a functional description of the form (24)

The ball is red Subject Finite Predicator Theme Rheme

Carrier Process Attribute can be regularly extended to form the functional configuration shown in (25). This applies for all of the secondary predicate constructions we have considered so far. Given the organisation of the grammar, it would be most surprising if such grammatical configurations were not to appear. Fortunately, however, we are not faced with this mystery since regularly occur they do.4 (25)

He coloured the ball red He painted the door green He wiped the tray clean

Subject Finite Predicator Complement Adjunct Theme Rheme Agent Process Carrier Attribute

The behaviour of the direct object Complement is captured by the interpersonal functional line running through the clause: Complements in English are characterised by their ability to become Subjects in passive sentences. In addition, and as we shall see more of below, the conflation of the Manner with Process also brings with it other commitments: for example, ‘colouring’, ‘painting’, etc. are also standard activities that have a description in terms of Actors, Goals, etc. The complete functional description therefore has to consider all of these functional contributions to structure. Whether or not the secondary predication is considered a ‘predication’ in a grammatical sense is really a terminological issue, as nothing seems to turn on it in terms of explanation. It can contribute to the formation of a Mood element by virtue of the Complement function (15-16) inherited from the agentive/material configuration, so in

4 Note that it is not being suggested here that there is any developmental/historical relationship between these clause configurations—nor that one form is actually derived from another.


this sense the attribution of the property can be made negotiable in dialogue. The Attribute can also be pulled out in cleft constructions such as: (26) It was green that he painted the door. but only when the Attribute is drawn from an open-ended set of possibilities that support the use of such a strong focusing strategy. There are not many states that a tray, for example, could be ‘wiped into’ and so the focusing construction: (27) ?? It was clean that he wiped the tray. is barely, if at all, acceptable; it is also virtually impossible to give ‘clean’ contrastive stress in the original sentence (14), which would have indicated that it is informationally ‘new’ (Halliday, 1967). In this case, then, the Attribute is beginning to function more like an extension of the lexical process, reminiscent of Napoli’s (e.g., 1989:14 and 58) discontinuous predicates. The logical semantic representation could then be more along the lines of:

{λx,y. wipe-clean(x, y)} (He, tray) This is similar to discussions in the literature that suggest that in some cases the secondary predicate may be ‘lexically bound’ (cf., mentioned in, e.g., Aarts,1995:95, although not accepted, and proposed in Carrier and Randall, 1992). As is often the case, the grammar provides many ready-built forms for constructing grammatical expressions for the semantics—but that semantics does not always need to fit the form provided exactly. There is then a cline, or continuum, across examples that clearly require full and separate predication and those that are more likely to be discontinuous single predications expanded by a semi-fixed adjunct; as in for example: he hammered the metal flat, he hammered the metal into a contorted mass of loops and spirals. The former behaves more like the ‘wipe clean’ example, but not with respect to tests such as clefting and stress: it seems easier somehow to accept ‘it was flat that he hammered the metal’, while ‘it was into a contorted mass of loops and spirals that he hammered the metal’ is, of course, unproblematic. This can only be due to the information load carried by the particular ‘secondary’ predication—relating the notion of ‘predication’ again to textual considerations. Before going on to more problematic cases, I should note in passing here that there is also much discussion in the literature of an important distinction between constructions which assert that a property holds and constructions which use a property as part of a referential item. This is shown in the contrasting uses of ‘red’ in: (28) The ball is red. (29) He kicked the red ball. The latter example is commonly excluded from discussions of predication proper. Napoli (1989), for example, even goes so far as to suggest that a completely different relationship holds semantically, one of modification rather than predication. This is sometimes motivated further by considerations of assertion—only in the former is the colour asserted, in the latter the colour is presupposed as a property of the ball necessary for the hearer/reader to identify which particular ball is meant. However, while it is clear that some kind of distinction needs to be drawn between these cases, the precise nature of the


distinction is still problematic. It is not possible to link this simply to the grammatical structure of noun phrases. A simple change of (29) to use an indefinite expression: (30) He kicked a red ball. is sufficient to destroy the superficial clarity of the original examples. Now ‘red’ cannot be seen as presupposed information that aids reference; it is instead additional descriptive information that fills out the story being told. But that is also what (28) achieved. This can be made considerably stronger in examples such as: (31) The Vikings invaded Britain in the years following. These tough and fearless

warriors soon overran most of the eastern coast. (32) This piece was made by Glasgow-born painter and sculptor Fred McDonald. The properties being ascribed to the Vikings and Fred McDonald respectively are all new to the discourse, and cannot therefore be taken as aiding reference. What they are doing is ‘smuggling’ new information into the discourse without asserting it in negotiable predications. This is a very common strategy in written texts; restricting the channel of information-flow to main assertive clauses would in fact make for extremely dull texts—it is just not necessary. Information can be, and is, provided much more densely; just how dense the presentation becomes varies according to the register of the text. It is typically the case, then, that some subset of these additional informational property-ascriptions are discussed in the literature under the heading of ‘secondary predications’ and some not. In the terms being used here, the situation becomes somewhat clearer. The claims that have been made for or against considering ‘predication’ to be involved appear again to lie primarily in the textual metafunction. When information is given or presupposed, then it is claimed to be predicated, when it is new, then it is part of the predicate. This is also supported by the citation concerning intonationally prominent phrases from Napoli given above as well as by the variable acceptability judgements in the hammering metal examples. But grammatically, only the clause can participate in dialogue as only a clause has a Mood element. The contrasting functional structure for the nominal phrase in (29) is as set out in (33). (33)

the red ball Deictic Epithet Thing

Head The clause structure of (28) shown in (24) has a Mood element (shown shaded) and can thereby participate in dialogue. The nominal phrase in (29), in contrast, has its own, completely different set of functional configurations and does not include any possibility of a Mood element. Although both (28) and (29) may well have some semantic configuration in common, the uses being made of that configuration by the grammar (and hence by the speaker/writer) are completely different regardless of whether the nominal group includes new information or not.


The simple secondary predication examples seen so far are normally passed over in discussion relatively quickly on the way to the more interesting cases illustrated in (34)-(37): (34) He ate the meat raw. (35) He ate the meat nude. (36) She gave the picture to her brother fully clothed. (37) She gave the picture to her brother in an envelope. Such cases are considered more interesting because the attribute that is added in the ‘secondary predication’ can be associated with more than just the direct object. When there is no clear semantic constraint (such as meat not being nude, or a person not being raw), the association is fully ambiguous. In the examples here I have combined several aspects of the discussion: for example, the property secondarily predicated can be both an adjectival-like phrase and other property expressing forms such as ‘in an envelope’ and, more significantly, the possible ‘antecedent’ of the property can be at least Subject, Direct Object, and Indirect Object (cf. Napoli, 1989:146).5 In terms of functional configurations within the grammar, we can note that these constructions are very different to the cases discussed above. It is not the case that the property attributed is ‘caused’ in any sense by the process; this is a more genuine attribution of additional information. The intonational prominence selected for these clauses can very naturally fall on the last constituent, the one giving the additional information. Moving the attribute out of the final position, the unmarked position for New information in English, is often enough to destroy the acceptability of the clause and, at best, changes the meaning of the clause. Thus, in (38), the modifying prepositional phrase becomes part of the nominal phrase concerning the picture and so falls under functional descriptions similar to (33) above. (38) She gave the picture in an envelope to her brother. The clause becomes acceptable again in a secondary predication reading when the prepositional phrase ‘in an envelope’ is preposed—using another, marked strategy for presenting New information in English.

5 Napoli’s description crucially invokes theta-theory of Government and Binding (GB) and claims that only constituents that are allocated theta-roles can be associated with secondary predicates. This appears to be one of the standard assumptions concerning ‘secondary predication’ in the structural literature; e.g., Aarts writes similarly that the secondary predicates are “phrases which are predicated of a constituent which stands in a thematic relation to the main verb of the sentence in which the secondary predicate occurs.” (1995:75) This is an interesting direction to follow up further in order to compare and contrast with the functional account: theta-assignment is most closely related to the allocation of particular ideational roles within the grammar (e.g., Actor, Goal, etc.) whereas the interpersonal functions (e.g., Subject, Complement, etc.) appear most closely related to GB’s case theory. Whether the conflation in secondary predication operates via conflation with interpersonal functions or with ideational functions is a descriptive choice within the functional perspective: both are possible. Napoli’s proposal appears very promising however, and provides a convenient constraint on what kinds of secondary predications are possible. Whenever grammatical constituents are introduced as part of ideationally non-participant phrases, therefore, they appear not to be available for conflation with the Carrier of Attributes.


These constructions are also different to the earlier cases in that the additional information attributed can be omitted without effecting the acceptability of their respective clauses; thus the following are both, of course, acceptable: (39) He ate the meat. (40) She gave the picture to her brother. I can use these, therefore, as the starting point for the functional description of the secondary predication versions. (39) and (40) are straightforward material clauses of the kind illustrated above. English (and many other languages) allows the additional presentation of an attribute in the same clause construction. This gives the following functional structure: (41)

He ate the meat raw He ate the meat naked She gave the picture to her brother in an envelope She gave the picture to her brother fully clothed

Subject Finite Predi-cator Complement Complement Adjunct

Actor Process Goal Recipient ?Carrier ?Carrier ?Carrier Attribute

This can be seen as a kind of construction-blending that has established itself in the language. We then have contrasting functional descriptions that motivate some of the differences in behaviour observed. The often used classification of the grammatical function of secondary predicates by Halliday (1967) along the two dimensions, resultative vs. depictive and subject-related vs. object-related, can now also be described in the terms shown here: the resultative cases involve the Agent-Carrier-Attribute configurations seen above, while the depictive cases are those with which we are concerned at present—i.e., those with only an additional Carrier-Attribute line running through the structure and without the Agent necessary for ‘external’ causation. The functional configurations also tell us why subject-related secondary predicates cannot be resultative: the only configuration that allows conflation between Carrier and Subject/Actor is that involving this additional Carrier-Attribute line. As with the causal examples above, we also have here a situation where the grammatical system of the language provides a ready form for occupation by the required semantics. In the present case, the grammatical pattern Subject-Predicator-Complement-Adjunct provides the scaffold; how a required semantic configuration is then distributed around that scaffold is strongly constrained by the individual grammars of particular languages. Moreover, the Carrier which receives the Attribute can only be identified given a particular interpretation, the grammatical structure itself does not deliver that


interpretation.6,7 Below, in the summing up, we will return to the question of why a single clause should be selected for the expression of information that could well involve enough material for more than one clause (as implied by the very term ‘secondary predication’). The account so far already gives us a basis for describing some further diverging properties of constructions that appear superficially similar. Consider, for example, the following sentences: (42) She ran her Nikes thin. (43) He ate himself sick. These are similar to the first examples of secondary predication that we saw in that the clause describes some event/activity which brings about the attribution of the property to the direct object. Thus, after running, she had caused her Nikes to become thin: i.e., she made her Nikes thin by running; similarly, he ate (and ate) and as a consequence caused himself to become sick. But, in contrast to those earlier cases, we cannot now omit the direct object; we have the contrasting states of affairs: (44) He painted the room green. – He painted the room. (45) He wiped the tray clean. – He wiped the tray. (46) She ran her Nikes thin – * She ran her Nikes (47) He ate himself sick – * He ate himself. This is because the functional descriptions of these sentence types are, in fact, completely different. In (44) and (45), we have a blend of the Agent-Carrier-Attribute construction with the simple Actor-Goal construction of the second of each pair. In (46) and (47), we do not have an Actor-Goal construction at hand: ‘running’ and ‘eating’ are non-directed activities and only have the grammatical description: Actor-Process. Blending with the Attribution thus gives the functional description: (48)

She ran her Nikes thin He ate himself sick

Subject Finite Predicator Complement Adjunct Agent Process Carrier AttributeActor Process

6 Although the current examples are clustered mostly around material clauses, this is not the only kind of blend that occurs. For example, we have exactly the same kind of structuring with mental clauses such as She preferred her meat cooked or I like Pepsi cold. This has the Carrier conflating with the Phenomenon of the mental process of liking prefer. A detailed overview of the use of these blends across different process types and transitivity structures is beyond the scope of these notes. 7 There may also be an interesting analogy to be drawn out here between such grammatical blends and Jackendoff’s (1990) analyses in terms of distinct ‘tiers’—although, as often occurs, what other accounts would place in the semantics, a functional account already considers in the grammar.


The Attribute cannot be omitted from an Agent-Carrier-Attribute construction since there is no grammatical pattern in the language Agent-Carrier; it is not then possible to omit the Attribute here. Similarly, there is no grammatical pattern in the language Agent-Attribute, so the Carrier must also be present; thus the ‘himself’ in the second example is also obligatory when this kind of causal construction is to be used. There is also no functional ‘uncertainty’ in these cases: it is not possible that the Carrier be found with the Subject since we have a relatively fixed Agent-Carrier-Attribute construction. The only way of bringing the Carrier together with the Subject is to passivise, but this also moves the Actor away so that there is still no possibility of confusion. The Agent-Carrier-Attribute line of meaning is not present in the cases where there is flexibility of possible Carrier assignment.8 We have similar functional blends in cases of intransitive clauses used with attributes such as: (49) He arrived drunk. (50) The ambassador arrived naked. The only difference between this and the examples (34)-(37) is that the event described involves only an Actor-Process configuration. The only available association for the Carrier is then the Actor: (51)

He arrived drunk The

ambassador arrived naked

Subject Finite Predi-cator

Adjunct

Actor Process Goal Carrier Carrier Attribute

Slightly more interesting are passive cases such as: (52) She was arrested drunk. (53) She was arrested willingly. It is sometimes suggested that here the Attribute can also be associated with the unexpressed Actor of the event: i.e., that in (52) it could also be the people carrying out the arresting that were drunk. Keenan and Timberlake (1985:332) argue that this possibility depends on the precise semantics of the attribute—for example claiming that although (54) has two logical structures, these structures are also logically equivalent and so there is only one reading. (54) Bill was baptised naked.

8 There is, as always—and particularly in short notes—more to be said. The sentences (46) and (47) do differ in other, significant ways. The expected passivisation for a Complement is, for example, unproblematic in (46)—Her Nikes had been run thin by the second day—but is not possible in (47). A closer analysis would be more sparing of its attributions of Complement-status.


I am not particularly convinced that the interpretation facts are so clear in these cases as is claimed, nor that the explanation here is an explanation; after all, if someone’s interpretation differs then it can always be claimed that their semantics for the modifier is different. The most general situation appears to be that under certain circumstance it may be possible to associate the Attribute with an unexpressed Actor: but since the existence of such a participant is in any case given straightforwardly by the voice of the clause (active/passive), this situation is in functional terms no more or less complicated than the case when the Actor is present. It is also sometimes suggested (cf. the discussion in: Napoli, 1989:134) that the agentive by-phrase in a passive construction cannot serve as the constituent to be associated with the Attribute. Here, again, I find the empirical basis rather difficult to ascertain without considerably more study. Questions of the effects of emphatic stress and their influence on acceptability have also not been dealt with sufficiently. Many of the examples given in the literature as unacceptable or ungrammatical I find acceptable—are the following really so clearly to be rejected as Napoli, for example, claims?: She was failed by Max as a husband. I was shocked by Bill nude. But that should not really be the point. Systematic and thorough corpus studies are going to be necessary to provide us with a suitably stable basis upon which to start theorising. To bring this section to a close, I will just remark briefly on one aspect of these constructions that will lead us directly to the main topic of the next section. One active area of the debate on secondary predications centres around the fact that the kinds of structures described do not always give sentences of equal acceptability. Further constraints of some kind must therefore be operating. Contrasts such as the following show the phenomenon very clearly: (55) He ate the meat raw. (56) ??? He ate the meat tasty. (57) Mary walked the dog hungry. (58) ??? Mary walked the dog small. Sentence (55) is an example of the Actor-Process-Goal/Carrier-Attribute type; sentence (57) is an example of the Agent-Carrier-Attribute type. The former involves description, the latter causation (as shown by the Agent grammatical function). It appears clear that the constraint cannot be structural in nature, since there are minimal structural differences between the clauses.9 It is therefore relatively common to draw attention to the varying kinds of relationship between the attribute and the entity carrying the attribute and to use this as a constraint on possible secondary predication. Napoli presents us with: (59) I’m fond of John naked. (60) *I’m fond of John intelligent. 9 Although it is always possible, of course, to invent finer structural differences corresponding to supposed semantic differences, I will not follow this path any further here; but see, for example, Bowers (1993) for many structural arguments and examples of such an approach.


Sentence (59) is appropriate for a secondary predication according to Napoli because, the PP ‘of John’ notwithstanding, ‘fond’ assigns ‘John’ a theta-role (see footnote 5 above); from our functional perspective the analysis would be more along the lines that the clause is attributing a property to ‘I’ (similar to I am scared of dogs and dissimilar to I am scared by dogs: the former is a relational clause, the latter a mental) and that we blend a further Carrier-Attribute configuration in with this primary configuration as in the case of (55). As to why (60) is not then acceptable, Napoli writes that this sentence

“...is bad because it makes no sense to talk of John as sometimes being intelligent and sometimes not being intelligent.” (1989:103)

The sudden appeal to a semantic motivation on the grounds of ‘what makes sense’ is curious and presupposes that a necessary condition of secondary predication is that there is some kind of temporal constraint. While this may be motivated on functional grounds—and I will return to this in a moment—it certainly needs to be argued rather more closely and incorporated within a proper definition of secondary predication.

Semantic configurations and their combination

While the previous section focused on configurations within the grammar from a functional perspective, I now turn to the semantic configurations that need to motivate the use of such grammatical configurations. I will restrict attention to secondary predication, but this time within the stratum of semantics. I have suggested that a congruent semantics for a simple clause can be described in terms of a semantic configuration. For simplicity, I will write this as a straightforward logical predication as illustrated in the introduction to predication above. Thus, the semantics for ‘He ate the meat’ will be sketched as:

eat (he, meat) Investigations of secondary predication then readily assume that the semantics corresponding to secondary predication grammatical constructions will involve, logically enough, two or more semantic predications. What they do not consider particularly, however, is what the semantic relationship between the two predications might be. The possibilities provided by logic are (usefully) limited. If there are two semantic configurations, m1 and m2, then they can be grouped together in some unstructured set which are combined in some unspecified way by the grammar, or they can be combined in a logical conjunction, m1 & m2, or, for the logically more sophisticated, they can be combined by ‘functional application’ as we saw above in the case of higher-order predicate logic and lambda abstraction. This latter is typical of categorial-style semantics and the logical treatments pursued by Montague and others: rather than a simple conjunction, propositions are instead combined by being passed from one to the other as arguments of complex predications—i.e., of the lambda abstractions shown above. These options are probably the most common options followed in logical approaches to semantics. A further, in many respects simpler relationship between logical propositions can be followed, however, by ‘reifying’ the relationship itself—that is, we can describe the relationship of combining two logical predications by making the relationship explicit as a theoretical entity in its own right. Thus, for our two semantic configurations m1 and m2, we investigate the properties of a further set of predicates ranging over propositions:


relation (m1 , m2) The linguistic advantage of this is that we can ask questions as to whether there are different kinds of relationships between propositions and whether they have differing consequences for linguistic expression. This approach has been following probably in most linguistic detail by Martin (1992) under the area of conjunctive relations. Martin sets out a rich classification hierarchy of various types of semantic relations between propositions—or, as he terms them, messages—along with examples of their often quite varied linguistic realisation. It is the varied nature of these linguistic realisations that I will now build on in the discussion of secondary predication. It appears that certain common properties of this area of variation can further usefully describe phenomena discussed as problematic in the secondary predication literature. As a simple first example, we can consider a semantic relation drawn from the conjunctive temporal relations: simple overlapping temporal extent. This semantic relationship can be expressed in English in ways such as the following: (61) The boy stood on the burning deck. At the same time, the ship was sinking. (62) The boy stood on the burning deck, while the ship sank. (63) The boy’s standing on the deck was at the same time as the ship’s sinking. Each conjunctive relation usually allows a range of differing linguistic expressions but that range is not arbitrary. First, there is a congruent linguistic expression of the semantic conjunction in terms of two separate clauses combined by the grammatical resources of clause combining (taxis: hypotaxis, parataxis, subordination); this is the case in sentence (62). Then, there is a non-congruent expression form that uses the non-structural resources of cohesion (cf. Halliday and Hasan, 1976) rather than the structural resources of grammar (cf. (61)). And, finally, there are a further set of possibilities involving combinations of grammatical units drawn from lower grammatical ranks: e.g., from clauses to nominal groups to words. A good indication of the flexibility of expression is given in Table 2 below; the lexicogrammatical expression of the semantic conjunctive relation is in each case shown in bold type.

Class of linguistic realisation Example realisation Cohesion She didn't know the rules. Consequently, she died. Parataxis She didn't know the rules; so she died. Hypotaxis-finite She died because she didn't know the rules. Hypotaxis-non-finite She died through not knowing the rules.

Process as Circumstance Her death/That she died resulted from her ignorance of the rules.

Process as Relation within clause-attributive Her death was due to ignorance of the rules.

Process as Relation within clause-identifying as participant Her ignorance of the rules was the cause of her death

Process as Relation within group Her death resulting from her ignorance of the rules. Table 2: Examples of diverse kinds of linguistic realisation

for a single conjunctive semantic relation (Martin, 1992:170).


The various possibilities for grammatical expression are classified in the left-hand column. Here we see that there are systematic possibilities. These generally fall again under Halliday’s notion of grammatical metaphor, whereby varied areas of grammatical potential are ‘re-used’ for semantics of quite different kinds. The expression of a semantic eventuality as a nominal group—i.e., nominalisation—is a classic case of grammatical metaphor; the expression of a conjunctively related pair of semantic configurations as a single clause with the process selected in order to express the conjunctive relation and two nominal groups selected in order to express the related propositions (e.g., Her death resulted from her ignorance of the rules) is another. Whereas within any one language some of these ‘theoretical’ possibilities might be taken up very much more often than others, precisely which possibilities are used is highly language dependent (cf. Bateman, 1992). In the limiting case, moreover, some possibilities might not be supported by a language at all; these limits define the ‘usual’ encoding strategies for various semantic configurations frequently discussed in the typological literature. For example, while one language might use similar grammatical strategies for property ascriptions and class identifications, another might use similar strategies for property ascriptions and events (cf. Stassen, 1997): all of these semantic configurations can be seen as predications, but the grammatical forms employed by differing grammatical systems for their expression might place them in rather different groupings. Where a configuration involving a conjunctive relation admits flexible expression, the expressions possible share the following property. The ‘lower’ the grammatical rank selected for expressing the conjunctive relation, the less explicitly is the ‘event-like’ nature of the related propositions expressed. This is an automatic consequence of grammatical metaphor. When an event is re-expressed as a nominal phrase, for example, it takes on more of the typical features of semantic entities expressed through nominal phrases—such as a more stable temporal profile, the necessity (and possibility) of expressing identifiability status in the discourse (e.g., the sinking of the Titanic), the possibility of counting (e.g., the second sighting of the Loch Ness monster), and the potential of almost indefinite subclassification (e.g., an amateur sighting; an amateur Loch Ness sighting, an amateur winter Loch Ness sighting; a naked-eye amateur winter Loch Ness sighting, etc.). All of these changes have highly significant consequences for the possibilities for text construction used in a language—consequences stretching in English to include the very possibility of technical discourse at all (cf. Halliday, 1993). From the perspective, then, of the semantic message as an event, the increasingly ‘metaphorical’ grammatical realisations of the message appear to become increasingly underspecified. That is, they include less of the information that is typically associated with events and semantic predications. And this leads directly to the concern of treatments of secondary predicates as to just how much ‘clause structure’ it is necessary to assume in dealing with secondary predicate constructions. Consider (64), a continuation of the sequence given in (61)-(63) above. From the standpoint of secondary predication, we have a complex situation in which, in addition to the primary predication (the ship sinking), we also have a further predication the boy standing on the deck. But what is the structure of this additional predication? (64) With the boy standing on the burning deck, the ship sank.


Considering such sentences in isolation, there are several possibilities. The line of argument followed by Napoli, drawing on several previous accounts, is in terms of an ‘absolutive’ preposition with which

“takes two kinds of complement structures. One has a clause and employs the Accusative-ING construction ... The other takes two (or more) complements, where the first is an NP which is predicated by the second...” (1989:125).

The former analysis applies to (64); the latter to examples such as “With the bus drivers on strike...” to which I return in a moment. When we instead view the kind of construction in (64) in the light of the other possibilities for expressing pairs of messages connected by conjunctive relations in (61)-(63), however, Napoli’s proposal appears curiously complex. ‘With’ is regularly used in English not only as a preposition but also as clause combiner; many ‘prepositions’ have this dual role (how much of their meaning in their prepositional form can be taken over to the clause combining role is a matter of debate). Sentence (64) then appears to be very similar to the other clause combinations shown: the only difference is in the form of the clause that ‘with’ introduces. But the properties of this clause are also perfectly regular and do not need to involve stories about distinct “complement structures” for with. This can be seen clearly when we also examine the other secondary predications of this kind commonly discussed and for which Napoli’s two complement structures are intended to provide descriptions (cf. Napoli, 1989:126-128): (65) With Elena playing the flute so well, we better look for one with open holes

soon. (66) With the bus drivers on strike, we’ll have to ride our bicycles. (67) With the bus drivers on strike, how will we get to work? (68) With John always sick, I can’t visit him anymore. Sentence (65) is the same structure as (64); sentences (66)-(68) conform to the ‘second complementation pattern’ for absolutive with that Napoli describes. The form for the structure of these latter clauses is shown in tree form in (69). (69)

P

PP

VPNP

C´´

C´´

PP NP

While the somewhat odd prepositional phrase structure is no problem for an X-bar account, Napoli does have to expend quite some effort to ensure that incorrect objects of predication are not picked up by the secondary predicates—that is, Napoli has to provide principles that explicitly stipulate that, for example, the predicate ‘on strike’ in (66) and (67) does not apply to the ‘we’ who have to ride our bikes. In short, in order to guarantee that the final subconstituent of the PP (or NP or AP) is predicated of the NP before it and not some NP after it, it is necessary to invoke a complex story of external


theta-role assignment, subject carrying roles of predicates, and further formal apparatus—and that all for prepositional phrases. From the standpoint of grammatically metaphorical expressions of combinations of semantic configurations, however, it appears extremely unnatural to avoid a clause analysis even for examples (66-68). Moving down the scale in possible grammaticizations, the ‘next’ natural candidate to a full finite, tensed clause is a non-finite clause. The ‘finiteness’ of a clause is expressed, as we have seen, via the Finite constituent in the Mood element of the clause: if this part of the combined message is no longer to be presented as negotiable, then the finite element (in many cases the copula) no longer has a functional role to play and it is then predictable that it should not appear. The situations in which a copula must appear are highly language dependent in any case: certain languages, such as Russian and Chinese, do not need an explicit copula in clause structure in certain, very common, tense and aspect situations. But the non-presence of a finite element in structure has, in those cases, rather little import for a consideration of a clause as finite or non-finite: systemically the absence of a constituent can be just as clear a realisation of a grammatical alternative as its presence. In English, however, where finite clauses do demand the Finite, its absence is straightforwardly indicative of a non-finite clause. And the functional motivation for that absence is, as suggested, quite clear. A consequence of this is that the non-finite clause will take its point of primary temporal reference from the main clause with which it is used. If it were to take a different point, then this non-finite form would not be an appropriate grammatical form to choose. What the temporal point is for the non-finite form remains underspecified, as the following variations show: (70) With the bus drivers on strike last week, we had to ride our bicycles. (71) With the bus drivers on strike next week, we will have to ride our bicycles. (72) With the bus drivers on strike, we had to ride our bicycles. (73) With the bus drivers on strike, we will have to ride our bicycles next week. (74) With the bus drivers on strike, we have ridden our bicycles. The non-finite clause introduced by ‘with’ in all of the above cases is accordingly of precisely the same form as a corresponding finite clause, but without the copula:10 (75) With Elena playing the flute so well... : Elena is (was/will be) playing the flute (76) With the bus drivers on strike... : the bus drivers are (were/will be) on strike (77) With John always sick... : John is (was/will be) always sick

10 More properly, in terms of a motivating systemic-functional grammar that is being assumed throughout this discussion, we say that the grammatical system of PRIMARY TENSE is not used and clause construction passes on to SECONDARY TENSE: e.g., With the bus drivers being on strike next week, lets go by bus now, or with the bus drivers having been on strike so long, lets remove the bus stops. Thus other clause options that occur independently of PRIMARY TENSE are unaffected: e.g., passive constructions such as With more books then ever being sold, booksellers are ecstatic.


We would therefore expect this kind of non-finite clause to occur in other grammatical contexts where a clause is appropriate—i.e., most commonly, where a ‘proposition’, ‘proposal’ or ‘fact’ is required (cf. Halliday, 1994). Suitable grammatical frames would be: (78) This situation is bad. (79) That the clock was wrong was bad. And this is just what happens; examples from Napoli (discussed in different sections to the examples above however) include (Napoli, 1989:151): (80) Moses Malone an invalid is the last thing the Bullets need. (81) Workers angry about the pay does indeed seem to be just the sort of situation

that the ad campaign was designed to avoid. For these cases, interestingly, Napoli does appear to accept the need for a small clause analysis. But from the functional perspective we again have a completely motivated non-finite clause of a regular form selected to express the given semantic configuration; no further apparatus in addition to that involved in a reasonably extensive grammar of English in any case is motivated or required. All the above examples involve the non-congruent expression of a semantic configuration using a grammatical unit that is ‘less powerful’ than the potential represented by full independent finite clauses and so appear underspecified. Achieving such underspecification can often be a desired communicative goal in its own right, when particular information is not relevant to the concerns of the speaker/writer. With this story in place, we can return to the contrasting acceptability judgements for the examples (55)-(58) above, repeated here for convenience. (82) He ate the meat raw. (83) *He ate the meat tasty. The semantics for the sentences (82)-(83) again involve expressions of a temporal relationship between their respective messages in the way that has now been presented. The semantic representation can be sketched thus:

m1 : ate (he, meat) m2 : raw (meat)

temporal-coextent (m1 , m2) The force of (82) is then as is generally expected: while the meat was raw, he ate it or he ate the meat, while it was raw. When it does not ‘make sense’, as Napoli says, to describe one event as co-extending temporally with another, then the secondary predication of this type will not be appropriate. The variability in acceptability then depends on how a speaker/hearer judges the appropriateness of the semantic relationship expressed. For the other type of secondary predication—the causal predication repeated here as (84) and (85)—we first refer again to Martin’s overview of conjunctive relations. Temporal conjunctive relations are just one of four types: the others are additive, comparative,


and consequential. Causal relations are grouped under consequential and these provide the relevant semantics for this type of secondary predication. (84) Mary walked the dog hungry. (85) Mary walked the dog small. These both involve a causal relation and can receive a similar semantics to the previous case, differing only in the type of semantic connective assumed:

m1 : walk (Mary, dog) m2 : hungry (dog)

cause (m1 , m2) The non-acceptability of some secondary predications will then be due to the semantic inappropriateness of the expressed causal relation. A further type of secondary predication mentioned by Halliday (1967), that of conditionals as in ‘I can carry it empty’ also find a natural home here, since conditionals are a further example of conjunctive relations forming a substantial subtype of consequential. These four general types of semantic conjunctive relations have been developed on the basis of grammatical evidence and grammatical variation completely independently of any concern with predication, secondary or otherwise. It would, however, be surprising if these general semantic configurations did not find other possibilities for expression: and, given supporting interpersonal and textual motivations, the kinds of predications discussed here provide an example of this. Part of the general underspecification of information with grammatical metaphor extends to include the kind of semantic relation involved: thus it is not always clear from the linguistic form precisely which semantic relation type is intended. The underspecification is then resolved (as far as is necessary) on semantic and situational grounds. As examples of this we can consider again the sentences (70)-(74); the relationship here is also, most likely, causal, whereas the relationship intended in the grammatically very similar sentence (64) is, most likely, temporal. We can also, in examples such as he drinks his coffee hot see variations along the temporal-causal-conditional dimension: paraphrases of the semantics involved would be whenever he drinks coffee, it should be hot or if he drinks coffee, then it should be hot. This variability, it must be stressed, is not an idiosyncrasy of secondary predication; it is instead a general phenomenon which always applies in cases of grammatical metaphor when re-expressing semantic configurations through grammatical configurations that are ‘smaller’ than the grammatical configuration that a congruent expression would choose. The treatment proposed here also allows us to generalise across some further cases of secondary predication occasionally discussed. The examples so far have involved non-congruent expression by clauses. We can now move on, or rather further down the scale of possible non-congruent forms, to consider expression of semantic configurations involving conjunctive relations within nominal groups. Here again, underspecification plays an important role—within the nominal phrase, this stretches to involve even the particular participants that are at issue: i.e., participants can be left implicit as well known from nominalisations—the Barbarian’s destruction of Rome, the destruction of Rome, the destruction by the Barbarians, the destruction. This is used to good effect in


the following rather different predications within nominal groups, again discussed separately by Napoli (1989:134): (86) A trip sick is no fun. (87) An entrance smashed can embarrass one’s host. (88) A plane trip as an invalid isn’t much fun. The semantic representation here must sort out, for example in (86), that it is the person who is taking the trip that is sick and it is no fun for that person—whoever that person may be. The fact that the proposition being expressed is intended as generic, i.e., as applying at no particular time and to no particular person, is a good motivation for adopting linguistic forms that allow both the time and the participants to remain unstated. Nevertheless, the grammatical form selected is clearly a nominal group and not some kind of reduced clause as in the cases above; it is, in each of these sentences, the particular semantic entity of a ‘trip’, an ‘entrance’ and a ‘plane trip’ that is being talked of—not the fact of a trip sick, etc. It is difficult for a ‘fact’ in the abstract to be fun; and it is not the fact of the entrance smashed that embarrasses but rather the entrance itself. We therefore have a very different state of affairs to the superficially similar examples in (80) and (81) above where it was really the propositions that were at issue and not any of those propositions’ semantic participants. Despite the grammatical differences, however, the semantics involved is very similar. A semantics for the conjunctive relation component of (86) can be given thus:

m1 : take-a-trip-somewhere (someone) m2 : sick (someone)

temporal-coextent (m1 , m2) This semantics assumes that ‘trip’ is a kind of nominalisation of an event involving at least someone who takes the trip.11 The predicate here is complex and probably binds at least a destination for the trip and a time; these are not then available for semantic predication in the message m2. Within the semantics for the main clause, the message m1 is then picked up and asserted to be no fun. Similar semantics apply for the other sentences (although I will say more about forms such as that of (88) in a moment). Before leaving this area, I should also say something about the grammatical configurations in use here, since they are different from the clausal examples discussed above. In these cases, it is not an Adjunct slot in clause structure that is serving as a convenient parking place for the secondary predication but a functionally similar slot within the nominal group. Postmodification in a nominal group is regularly used for temporally (or otherwise) restricting information, ranging from full relative clauses, down through prepositional phrases, to single adjectival groups of the kind seen in (86).

11 This corresponds to Napoli and others’ claims that such nominals are ‘theta-assigners’. Just as is the case in main clauses, the non-theta assigned constituents—functionally, these are the Circumstantial elements, locations, times, manners, etc. The possible arguments of the semantic secondary predication appear very much more restricted in these nominalisations than when they are expressed as full clauses. But it is also a regular feature of nominalisations that the possibilities for the arguments of the semantic eventuality have only limited (and underspecified) possibilities of expression generally.


The functional slot is therefore available in structure, and it is up to the grammar and the mappings between grammar and semantics to decide how it is to be used. The typical cases of postmodification by a further semantic event (i.e., restrictive relative clauses) without secondary predication also allow forms that differ in their degree of explicitness: (89) The ball that was rolling down the hill. (90) The ball rolling down the hill. The fact that the ball provides the agent/actor of the event of rolling is made explicit in (89) but left implicit in (90). However in both cases (and with all cases involving prepositional phrase postmodification and the like), there is no doubt that it is the object serving as the head of the nominal phrase (the ‘ball’ in these examples) that is involved in the postmodifying event. This was not the case of course in the secondary predications of the form ‘a trip sick’ that we have just seen: it is not the trip which is sick, but the person who is undertaking the trip. We see here then that the form ‘a trip sick’ is not a reduced version of ‘a trip which is sick’. It is also possible to have a secondary predicate reading where the head of the nominal group is not a nominalisation; as shown in the following examples gathered from various sources (including Napoli, 1989:259): (91) Have I ever shown you these pictures of my grandfather nude? (92) A bull angry is a dangerous beast. (93) These are the only rivers navigable. (94) These are the rivers navigable at the present time. (95) *These are the rivers navigable. In examples (91)-(94) we do have examples where the argument of the secondary predication is the head of the nominal group (i.e., my grandfather, a bull, and the rivers), but it is not the case that these are abbreviated forms of relative clauses such as: (96) Have I ever shown you these pictures of my grandfather who was nude? (97) A bull which is angry is a dangerous beast. (98) These are the only rivers which are navigable. Such an analysis would miss both the grammatical and semantic force of the secondary predication versions. The more appropriate analysis is given by our semantic configurations involving conjunctive relations above, paraphrasable here loosely as: (99) Have I ever shown you these pictures of my grandfather, when he was in the

nude? (100) A bull is a dangerous beast, when it is angry. (101) These are the rivers, the only ones which are navigable at the current time. Again there is some uncertainty here, thus the temporal force of (91) and (92) appears stronger than that of (93), and so the latter may find a straightforward reduced relative clause reading. But the sharp contrast between the acceptable These are the navigable rivers and the unacceptable (?) sentence (95) does suggest something of the difference. In short, we have exactly the same situation of non-congruent semantic expression strategies in the clause reoccurring here within the nominal group’s postmodification.


Finally, I should, for completeness, ask whether there are also examples of secondary predication involving the other semantic conjunctive relation types that Martin discusses: i.e., comparatives and additives (temporal and causal we have already seen). It would be strange, or at least require motivation, if it were found that only some particular subset of the theoretically possible range of semantic conjunctive relationships were expressed in constructions labelled as secondary predications. However, as I wrote at the outset, the status of this text is more a collection of notes, and there has been no pretence of completeness hitherto, so I will not start now. More focused and detailed studies must wait for another day. I will simply note that one class of secondary predicates that is pointed to as an exception to the above observation concerning the copula (or lack of it) are cases that use the marker as: (102) We threw a party for Mary as the newcomer. (103) Sue’s gift to John as her best friend (104) Sue’s gift to John as his best friend (105) Joe strikes me as quite hostile. (106) the thought of John as a teenager

None of these can find a direct paraphrase involving clauses with a copula be. Considering just what semantic configurations are being combined here, we can contemplate semantics such as the following for (102)-(104): m1 : throw-a-party (we, Mary)

m2 : newcomer (Mary) R? (m1 , m2)

m1 : give (Sue, gift, John) m2 : best-friend (Sue, John)

R? (m1 , m2)

m1 : give (Sue, gift, John) m2 : best-friend (John, Sue)

R? (m1 , m2)

The second semantic configuration in each case, the m2, is a configuration that would normally require expression in which the Attribute is expressed not with an adjectival phrase but with a nominal group. Could this be a simple additive relation? –i.e., a textually, interpersonally and ideationally restructured form of: we threw a party for Mary and Mary was the newcomer. Although (102) may have a tinge of causality about it, this is certainly not present in (103) and (104).

Summing up

I have tried in these notes to give an indication of a functional approach to some phenomena that have been described as predication, primary and secondary. The main planks of this approach involve a decomposition of the phenomena along several dimensions of description: primarily those of the three metafunctions within the grammar, and of the stratal split into grammar and semantics. It is further assumed that the relationship between semantics and grammar is natural: that is, semantic configurations re-iterate grammatical ones. I have tried to suggest that such a decomposition allows us to take the phenomena apart in a way that is straightforward, without great investment of theoretical apparatus created specifically for the task at hand. Particularly with the later examples above, where we have moved from the clause to predications expressed within nominal groups and non-finite clauses, it should be clear that the notion of semantic predication that can be appealed to has very little to do with the Subject-Predicate notion rooted in dialogue that is relevant for finite clauses.


The notion of ‘psychological subject’—or, its more modern equivalents, involving questions of informational status captured by Given, New, etc.—may in some cases provide more useful motivations, but only in some cases. There are clear cases where some kind of notion of textual organisation plays a decisive role, even for acceptability; thus, whereas (107) is quite bad, both (108) and (109) are unproblematic (Napoli, 1989:158): (107) John loaded the wagon with the hay full. (108) John loaded the wagon with the hay full to the brim. (109) John loaded the wagon with the hay as full as he could. If we can relate the traditional linguistic notions of ‘heavy NP shift’ to textual weight and information distribution (as is often attempted), then these would be cases where textual considerations are decisive. In such cases, neutral information status distribution does not, apparently, give sufficient clues of interpretation for the hearer/reader to be convinced that a temporally or causally restricted subset of a total set of possible situations is being given. Most generally, however, it appears that we are just as often simply dealing with the ways that grammars make available for expressing combinations of semantic configurations. There is no requirement that semantic configurations appear neatly parcelled out into clauses, and single clauses, nominal groups, and other units are fully able to combine semantic configurations should the functional circumstances call for it. This is not a special, or strange, area of grammar—it is, instead, something that grammars do all the time, and do very well. The final consideration, then, for the functional perspective is why a speaker/writer selects grammatical forms that combine the particular semantic messages within single clause, nominal group, and other configurations rather than leaving them in separate grammatical units with an explicit grammatical expression of their interrelationship. We have already touched on a number of reasons why this would be the case—for example, the ability to weave particular meanings through particular grammatical positions has been pointed to as a very significant and powerful organising feature of texts as coherent and cohesive wholes; this includes, but is not restricted to, issues of information structure and packaging. The functional account, however, already provides considerable motivation to assume as starting point the observation of Aarts that secondary predication is acceptable:

“if a semantic/pragmatic relation can be established between [the secondary predication] and the predication expressing by its containing VP” (1995:89)

That is to say, it is not a random reflex that some related messages appear as secondary predicates. But this is, in the end, what the functional view of a clause or any other grammatical unit requires: the decision to present material, or to construct material, as having a structural unity is the most clear grammatical reflex of the discourse semantic decision to present that material as semantically related. In cases where there is no reason standardly available (i.e., supported by the language-culture) for presenting information together, the secondary predicates produced on purely formal grounds will accordingly, and without any great mystery, be of suspect acceptability.


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JOHN A. BATEMAN Universität Bremen Fachbereich 10 Postfach 330440 28334 Bremen [email protected]

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