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4 Not all
patients are marked with -lay; however, its distribution is not, as might appear, an
instance of the widely-reported pattern in which all and only patients high on the EH are marked
for accusative case. Rather, the -lay postposition is used generally with definite patients (Watters
1973:199-202).
6 Even in the
loose sense of fn. 1.
7Nepali cannot easily be describedas requiringagreementto be with subject-since, in dative
subjectconstructions,agreementis NOTwith subject (examplefrom Abadie 1974):
ma-lai hachuw a-io.
I-ACCsneeze come-PAsT/3rd'I sneezed.'
This shows that, in termsof the analysisto be presentedbelow, Nepaliagreementis with semantic
Source ratherthan with starting-point.This seems to be a fairly unusualpattern.
Comparing this pattern with the data presented in Giv6n 1976 we find another point of contact
between viewpoint and topicalization phenomena.
9 It
is, of course, quite common for 3rd person 'agreement' to be 'realized' by zero-i.e., for
the verb to carry an agreement-marker when subject or agent is an SAP, but not when it is 3rd
person. It is debatable whether we should speak of 3rd person agreement in such a language: in
Tangut, at any rate, where person rather than role or grammatical function is the primary deter-
minant of agreement-marking, it is clear that the category of agreement applies only to SAP's.
3.1. The explanation which I propose for the patterns described above is
based on two ultimately psychological notions, ATTENTIONFLOW (hereafter AF)
and VIEWPOINT. These notions are invoked within a view of semantics which
takes a significantpart of the semantic structureof a languageto be a list of
prototypescenes, each specifiedfor a canonicalset of participants(cf. Fillmore
1977a,b). A sentence describes a real or imagined event by invoking the
prototype scene of which it counts as an instance, and by identifying the
participantroles in the prototype with entities which exist in the universe of
discourse. In actual communication,not all aspects of the prototypeevent are
of equal interest, and all languageshave mechanismsfor markingthe relative
communicativeimportanceof the various entities and events in a sentence or
discourse. Viewpoint and AF are fundamentallyparameterswhich contribute
to determiningthe relative interest of various entities involved in an actual
witnessed event; but the terms are also applicable to linguistic mechanisms
which indicate values for these parametersin a sentence, thus allowing it to
be interpretedin a manneranalogousto that of an actualevent. I will distinguish
these two uses of the terms, where necessary, as NATURAL VS. LINGUISTIC AF
and viewpoint-the former referringto perceptualstrategies, the latter to lin-
guistic mechanisms. As we will see, case-marking,verb-agreementand voice-
marking, and constituent order (the mechanisms involved in SE, voice, and
other alternation patterns) are the chief markersof linguistic viewpoint and
AF.
3.2. ATTENTION
FLOWdetermines the linear order of NP's. The NP's in a
sentence are presented in the order in which the speaker wishes the hearerto
attend to them. Alternate NP orderings, as found in voice alternationsand
topicalizing shifts, are mechanismsfor managingAF.
Events have an inherent naturalAF, which recreates the flow of attention
involved in actually witnessing the event. The basis of this naturalAF is the
'o Mistry argues that agreement is dependent on case-marking; but without an explanatory
account of the case-marking pattern, this cannot be considered an explanation for either. Mistry's
evidence suggests that, in fact, case-marking and agreement are independently governed by aspect,
rather than one being contingent on the other (cf. fn. 11, below).
" Gujarati has a 'split accusative' case-marking pattern (cf. fn. 4), with the result that, in perfect
clauses with animate patients, both agent and patient are marked for case. In such clauses, agree-
ment is still with patient, which suggests that agreement and case-marking are independent of one
another, though subject to some of the same governing factors (in particular, aspect).
12
The terms Source, Goal, and Theme are taken from the work of Gruber (e.g. 1976): in a
motion event, they refer to the onset point, the terminal point, and the moving entity,
respectively.
In other words, the prototype motion event involves a Theme which moves from Source to Goal.
'3 The term 'subject-forming language' is from Anderson 1979; like Li & Thompson's (1976)
'subject-prominent language' and Hale & Watters' (1973) 'subject-object language', this term im-
plies the claim that 'subject' is not a relevant category in all languages.
14 I owe these
examples to Lon Diehl.
'5 There is considerable evidence for considering that Agent and giver are subcategories of a
fundamental case-category which also includes Source, and that Patient and receiver constitute
a single category with Goal (see Anderson 1971, 1977, Diehl 1975, Fillmore 1977a). I will use
Source and Goal to refer to these broader categories (as in fn. 7), as well as in their narrower
spatial sense.
17
As suggested in fn. 3, there are grounds for supposing that the complex of factors called
topicality or thematicity may be analysable in terms of the viewpoint category.
l' This is perhaps in part because linguists have become accustomed to analysing artificial
sentences having no pragmatic connection to any actual event or discourse context. It is interesting
that linguists' examples very seldom involve 1st or 2nd person participants.
'9 Cf. the discussion by Tesniere 1959 of valence, and of causativization as an increase in
valence-in which it is pointed out that all three-place verbs can be considered, at least seman-
tically, as causative versions of two-place verbs; thus give is equivalent to cause to have.
20
A few languageshave no specific mechanismfor indicatingviewpointwith verbs of motion;
Russianis a well-knownexample.
21 This is
etymologically a grammaticalized verb 'come'. F. K. Lehman (p.c.) points out that
ex. 31 can also mean 'He will come and give it.'
22
Goal and Source are here used in the extended sense of fn. 15.
23
The vagueness of sentences like 34b, with regard to whether the Source was actually a willing
giver, is irrelevant here-though it is relevant to a complete discussion of the choice of give or
get as natural or inverted AF. I suspect that get sentences in which Source is not mentioned are,
like the analogous agentless passives, far more common than sentences like 34b in which AF is
aztually reversed.
24
This has sometimes been claimed to be a difference in grammaticality, but it certainly is not
(see Kato 1979).
25
The interaction between these and other factors in determining linguistic starting point in
English is discussed in illuminating detail in MacWhinney 1977.
is also the agent, i.e. the natural starting-point.When it is also an SAP, i.e.
a natural viewpoint locus, it is so marked by being in the nominative case.
Otherwise,it must be markedfor ergativecase, which identifiesit as the natural
starting-point.
Since the Kham verb agrees with two NP's, agreementcannot be associated
with viewpoint in the same straightforwardmanneras in English or Gujarati
(cf. ?6.1). Nevertheless the Khamagreementpatternreflects naturalviewpoint,
and in a particularlyinterestingway. SAP patient-markers(glossed 1P, 2P) are
suffixed directly to the verb root; there is no 3rd person patient-marker.SAP
agent-markers(IA, 2A) are prefixed (as in exx. 1-3). The 3rd person agent-
marker,however, occurs to the rightof all other suffixes (includingthe patient
suffixes), as in 4. Thus unmarkedconstituent order places natural starting-
point first,27regardlessof naturalviewpoint;but the orderof agreementaffixes
places naturalviewpoint first, regardlessof naturalAF. Note that this analysis
requires that 1st and 2nd persons count as equally naturalviewpoint loci, as
no rankingis reflected in affix order. This is what is predictedby the Viewpoint
Hypothesis, since both SAP's are prototypicallylocated at the deictic center
of the speech act.28Note that no rankingof the SAP's is indicatedby the case-
markingpattern either; exx. 1-2 show that either SAP, when it is the natural
starting-point,is markedas naturalviewpoint (by lack of case-marking),even
when the other SAP is present. The same patternis reflectedin the distribution
of Sizang/Tiddim(h)ong-, which can occur whenever there is an SAP Goal,
even when Source is the other SAP. These facts are amongthe data indicating
that the most natural situation is one in which viewpoint and starting-point
coincide.
The explanationgiven above for the Kham affixation patternreceives con-
firmationfrom an alteration of the pattern which occurs in the passive con-
struction. Here constituent order is reversed,29and the verb is marked with
an -o passive suffix (examples from Watters 1973):
(39) nga: ao zihmld nga-li-ke.
I this house lA-stay-PERF
'I stayed in this house.'
(40) ao zihmld nga: nga-li-o.
this house I lA-stay-PAss
'This house was lived in by me.'
27 The criticalreaderwill have noted alreadythat my remarkson Englishin ?4.1 do not consider
topicalizationphenomenasuch as those termed 'secondary'by Fillmore 1968or 'sentence-level'
by Foley & Van Valin 1977. In sentences like Him I won't listen to, the leftmost NP is marked
for case and does not controlagreement.Similarexceptionalinstancesoccur in Khamand in most,
if not all, of the other languagesdiscussed in this paper. The relationshipof such phenomenato
the primarytopicalizationphenomena(e.g. passivization)in termsof the frameworkproposedhere
remainsto be elucidated(see fn. 3).
28 There are
languageswhich rankthe SAP's in one or the other order(Silverstein 1976,Dixon
1979,and see ?4.3 below). I assume such rankingsto be arbitrary.
29The passive verb form also has several uses in which naturalconstituentorder is retained
(see Watters 1973, 1975).
34
On my analysis, Jyarong also has a direct morpheme, but it does not occur in the examples
cited here, and its explication would be irrelevant. It is described in DeLancey 1980.
35 The 2nd-,1st
configuration also has a separate mark. the substitution of kd- for ta-. One of
these occurs in every configuration, transitive or intransitive, which involves a 2nd person. This
series is discussed at greater length in Bauman 1975 and DeLancey 1980.
36
An earlier version of this paper, circulated by the Indiana University Linguistics Club, cited
Blackfoot forms from Uhlenbeck 1938 which were not correct. I am grateful to Allan Taylor for
pointing this out to me and furnishing the correct paradigm.
ing clearly that any rankingof the two SAP's is of a differentorder than the
rankingof SAP's over other NP's. Of particularinterestto the presentargument
is the Blackfoot system, which marks2nd-> st as inverse, so that the direction
system reflects a Ist>2nd ranking,ratherthan the 2nd> st rankingsuggested
by the order of agreementprefixes. Blackfoot thus presents evidence that the
rankingof 2nd>lst not only lacks universal validity (as suggested by Silver-
stein), but also lacks strongmotivationeven in those languageswhich manifest
it. We may conclude that both 2nd>lst and lst>2nd are possible variations
on the universal SAP>3rd theme.
4.4. VIEWPOINT ANDTHEEH. I have so far accounted for only the high end
of the EH-the distinctionbetween SAP's and all other NP's, which is equiv-
alent to the distinctionbetween the spatialdeictic center and everywhere else.
The EH also encompasses a ranking of various types of full NP's. A full
statement of the hierarchy, incorporatingall the widely-attested distinctions
with which I am familiar,is:
SAP's > 3rd pronouns > human > animate > naturalforces > inanimate
Only the two highest splits-SAP's over everything else and pronouns over
full NP's-are widely-attestedas governingSE marking;and so far as I khow,
only the SAP>3rd split ever governs direction-marking.Nevertheless, a num-
ber of other apparentlyviewpoint-relatedphenomenaare governed by the rest
of the EH. Consider, for example, the account given by Hawkinson& Hyman
1974of agreement in Shona, a Bantu languageof Zimbabwe. In Shona, as in
many African languages, the verb is markedwith a prefix reflectingthe noun
class of the subject. If the subject is a conjoined NP includingnouns of two
different classes, agreement will be plural, but noun-class agreementis with
the noun which is higher on the EH:
(52) murlumene imbwa va-ka-famba.
man and dog NC-PAST-walk
'The man and the dog walked.'
(53) *murume ne imbwa dza'-ka-fJmba.
man and dog NC-PAST-walk
The conjoined NP 'man and dog' can be cross-referencedonly by the plural
human prefix va, not by the animate plural prefix dza. Moreover, in such a
conjoinedNP, the noun higheron the EH mustbe the starting-pointof linguistic
AF:
(54) *imbwa ne murutmeva-ka-fdmbd.
Kuno & Kaburakiprovide a numberof examples of patternsin English which
reflect the EH; particularlyrelevant to my present concerns is its reflection
in the English voice alternation.Consider the following pairs of sentences:
(55) a. Many terroristsare motivated by patriotism.
b. Patriotismmotivates many terrorists.
(56) a. A woman was struck by lightning.
b. Lightningstruck a woman.
(57) a. My father was crippled by arthritis.
b. Arthritiscrippled my father.
37 The argument in this section is given in more detail and with further exemplification in
DeLancey 1979.
of Kemal's arrival, but has not yet seen Kemal himself; but it could also be
used if the speaker opens the front door to Kemal's knock and sees Kemal
standingthere, providingthat Kemal's visit comes as a surprise-i.e. if, until
he opened the door, the speaker had no idea that Kemal might be coming.
Syuwa, a Tibetan language of Nepal, has a similar semantic category, in
which an inferential construction 'is also used when the speaker reports an
event whose temporalorigin is inaccessible to him' (Hoehlig 1978:21):
(64) dang kongmu nuphela singha durbar nangla mei chii-du.
yesterday night midnight (place name) inside fire burn-PERF
'Yesterday evening in the middle of the night a fire broke out in
Singha Durbar[it seems].'
This is spoken by someone who had gone to watch the fire, and thus had first-
hand knowledgethat a fire had brokenout, but hadn'tbeen there to see it start.
VIEWPOINT, ATTENTION FLOW, AND AGENTIVITY
ANDINADVERTENCE.
6.1. INTENTION The Sinhala language (Gair 1976) has
a 'passive' construction,41the most common interpretationof which is that the
precipitatingof the event by the agent was inadvertent:42
(65) mam pingaan binda.
I(NOM) plate broke
'I broke the plate [on purpose].'
(66) man-atin pingaan binduna.
I(OBL)-byplate broke(P)
'I broke the plate [accidentally].'
There is an obvious analogy here with an inferential construction used when
only the terminal point of an event is directly perceived by the speaker: the
difference between an accidental and a purposefulact is precisely in whether
the actor is aware of all phases or only of the act's termination.In a deliberate
act, all phases, from inception to completion, are present to the consciousness
of the agent; but in an inadvertentoccurrence, only the terminationis present
(even though an objective phase-by-phase description of the two events might
be identical: the fingers relax, the plate falls ...) The pattern of case-marking
in the Sinhalaalternationcan thus be considered analogousto the SE patterns
discussed above: unmarked viewpoint is the onset point of the event; the
assignment of linguistic viewpoint to the terminalpoint is indicated morpho-
logically by markingthe naturalstarting-pointfor case. The interpretationof
the sentence as reportingan inadvertentevent, like the inferentialinterpretation
of a perfect, results from a constraint on reversed AF; the terminalphase of
41
The characterization of this verb form as 'passive' is quite misleading, as pointed out by Gair
1970. What Gair calls the 'P' form of the verb can occur with intransitive as well as transitive
verbs, with the same reading of inadvertence. This alternation of verb form in Sinhala is thus
functionally equivalent to the case-marking alternation in the 'active' languages discussed in ?6.3.
42
There is also a capabilitive interpretation, reminiscent of the use of the Ilocano passive
described by Schwartz 1976, the reading of which is that the agent is capable of or good at the act
described.
the event can be taken as the viewpointonly if earlierphases took place outside
the actor's awareness.
6.2. ATTENTION
FLOWANDCONTROL.
We noted in ?3.3 that considerable
cross-linguisticevidence exists for an association between agentivity and left-
most position. This association is predicted by the interpretationof agent as
the first mover in a transitive event, i.e. the startingpoint of naturalAF. In
?6.1, I have suggested an interpretationof the stricter sense of the notion of
agentivity, based on the AF concept. We find a most interestingconfirmation
of this latter interpretationin an EH-based constrainton word order in Navajo
transitive sentences.
Navajo has a now-famous alternation,in transitive sentences with full NP
actors, between a construction in which transitiveagent precedes patient and
a 'passive' in which patient precedes agent. The roles of the two NP's are not
markedon the NP's themselves, but are reflected in the choice of agent agree-
ment prefix on the verb; the 3rd person agent prefix yi- indicates that agent
precedes patient, bi- that patient precedes agent. The choice of order is fac-
ultative only when agent and patient are of the same rank on the Navajo
version of the EH (see, among others, K. Hale 1973, Creamer 1974,
Witherspoon 1977, Saville-Troike& McCreedy 1979). Otherwise it must op-
erate so as to place whichever NP is higher on the EH in leftmost position,
regardlessof semantic role:
(67) a. ti? dzaanez yi-ztat.
horse mule 3rd-kickedit
'The horse kicked the mule.'
b. dzaaneez t1i bi-ztal
mule horse 3rd-kickedit
'The mule got kicked by the horse.'43
(68) a. hastiin 1tf? yi-ztat
man horse 3rd-kickedit
'The man kicked the horse.'
b. *tii2 hastiin bi-ztal.
(69) a. */((? hastiinyi-ztat.
horse man 3rd-kickedhim
b. hastiinlti bi-ztal.
man horse 3rd-kickedhim
'The man got kicked by the horse.'
Now, it is clear from 67 that Navajo does not requirelinguistic AF to follow
naturalAF; a patientcan in some circumstancesprecedean agentin a sentence.
Thus the unacceptabilityof 68b must be connected with the higherrankingof
men than of horses on the EH. This conclusion is confirmed by the unac-
ceptabilityof agent-patient order in 69a; in both 68 and 69, the higher-ranking
NP must precede.
43 The 'passive' examples might well be glossed 'got himself V-ed', in order to approximate the
actual force of the Navajo sentences; cf. below and Witherspoon.
becoming real, and the terminal point its culmination in reality. In these lan-
guages, viewpoint placed at the starting-point indicates that the event is tracked
from its inception; terminal viewpoint indicates that the event enters conscious
awareness only when it is realized. The difference between the marking of
inference vs. first-hand knowledge and inadvertence vs. volition is that the
first distinction represents the point of view of an external observer-the
speaker-while the second represents a point of view associated with the actor
in the event. (In this connection, it is interesting that the marking of volitionality
in Batsbi is applicable only to SAP's; in other words, one does not make
insupportable inferences about the awareness of 3rd persons.)
Thus the framework suggested here allows a unitary account of several
apparently disparate phenomena. It should be noted that the basic concepts
invoked here, viz. viewpoint and AF, do not have to be taken as given in the
sense of the 'primes' of Relational Grammar, or of the 'core semantico-syn-
tactic relations' named by Dixon (1979:61): transitive subject, transitive object,
and intransitive subject. They are, rather, hypotheses about human cognitive
and perceptual structure; as such, they are subject to empirical investigation
by methods other than those of theoretical linguistics.48
REFERENCES
ABADIE, PEGGY. 1974. Nepali as an ergative language. Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman
Area 1.156-77.
ANDERSON, JOHN M. 1971. The grammar of case: Towards a localistic theory. Cam-
bridge: University Press.
- . 1977. On case grammar:Prolegomenato a theory of grammaticalrelations. Lon-
don: Croom Helm.
. 1979. On being without a subject. Bloomington:IndianaUniversity Linguistics
Club.
BANDHU, CHURAMANI. 1973. Clause patterns in Nepali. In A. Hale, 2:1-80.
BAUMAN, JAMES. 1975. Pronouns and pronominal morphology in Tibeto-Burman. Berke-
ley: University of Californiadissertation.
BENVENISTE, EMILE. 1946. Les relations de personne dans le verbe. BSLP 43.1-12.
[Englishtranslationin Benveniste 1971:195-204.]
-- . 1956. La naturedes pronoms. For RomanJakobson, ed. by MorrisHalle et al.,
34-7. The Hague: Mouton. [Englishtranslationin Benveniste 1971:217-22.]
1971. Problems in general linguistics. Coral Gables: University of Miami Press.
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BOEDER, WILFRIED. 1967. Uber die Versionen des georgischen Verbs. Folia Linguistica
2.32-152.
CAUGHLEY, Ross. 1978. Participant rank and verbal cross-reference in Chepang. In
Grimes, 163-78.
COMRIE, BERNARD. 1976a. Review of Klimov 1973. Lingua 39.511-60.
- . 1976b. Aspect: An introduction to the study of verbal aspect and related problems.
Cambridge: University Press.
lished work by Lon Diehl. Note, for example, the use of forms meaning'via' as agent-markers,
as in English. Uhlenbeckapparentlycame to a similaranalysis, based in part on examinationof
'active' languages,but consideredit characteristiconly of the primitivemind.The relevantpassage
is cited in Sapir 1917.
48 Workin this directionhas been undertaken;see MacWhinney1977,Zubin1979,andreferences
cited by them.