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Article published In:
Studies in Language
Vol. 47:4 (2023) ► pp.830–869

Grammar (morphosyntax) and discourse

| National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics
The present work attempts to examine the relationship between grammar and discourse. (i) First, it compares Warrongo (an ergative language that has antipassives and an S/O pivot) and English (an accusative language that has passives and an S/A pivot). Despite these polar opposite morphosyntactic characteristics, Warrongo and English behave almost in the same way in discourse – in terms of new mentions, lexical mentions and topic continuity. There are, however, two differences in discourse. First, Warrongo antipassives and S/O pivot have much higher functional loads than English passives and S/A pivot. Second, Warrongo antipassives have a use that English passives do not have. (ii) Then, the present work shows that grammar and discourse are not independent of each other and that they share one principle. The hierarchy of “O > S > A” is attested in grammar and discourse crosslinguistically and irrespective of the morphosyntactic types of the languages concerned.
Keywords: morphosyntactic type, case marking pattern, voice, syntactic pivot, discourse, new/lexical mention, topic continuity, Warrongo, English
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Preliminaries and previous studies
  • 3.Comparison of Warrongo and English
    • 3.1Notes on Warrongo and English
      • 3.1.1Notes on Warrongo
      • 3.1.2Notes on English
      • 3.1.3Data employed for the present work
    • 3.2Methodological and theoretical preliminaries
      • [1] New mentions
      • [2] Lexical mentions
      • [3] Topic continuity
      • [4] A, S and O
    • 3.3New mentions
    • 3.4Lexical mentions
    • 3.5Topic continuity of new mentions
    • 3.6Warrongo antipassives and English passives
    • 3.7S/O pivot and S/A pivot
    • 3.8Warrongo data and English data: Summary and discussion
      • 3.8.1Summary
        • [1] Hierarchy of “O > S > A”
        • [2] The A is the highest on the hierarchies.
        • [3] Warrongo antipassives and S/O pivot have high functional loads, while English passives and S/A pivot have low, or almost no, functional loads.
        • [4] Voice switch
      • 3.8.2Discussion
        • [1] Topicality of the agent and morphosyntactic types
        • [2] Cooreman (1988) on Dyirbal discourse
        • [3] Antipassives, passives and syntactic pivots
        • [4] Is there a discourse basis of ergativity?
  • 4.Hierarchy of “O > S > A” in grammar and discourse
    • 4.1Introductory notes
    • 4.2“O > S > A” in discourse
      • 4.2.1O > S > A: New mentions and/or lexical mentions
      • 4.2.2O >S > A: Relative clauses of English
    • 4.3“O > S >A” in grammar (morphosyntax)
      • 4.3.1Compounding of a verb and a noun, and noun incorporation
        • [1] Compounding of a verb and a noun
        • [2] Noun incorporation
      • 4.3.2Resultative constructions
        • [1] Djaru of Western Australia
        • [2] Works in Nedjalkov (ed.) (1988)
      • 4.3.3Possessor ascension
      • 4.3.4Adverbial clause with -nagara ‘while’ of Japanese
      • 4.3.5Possessor respect of Japanese
      • 4.3.6“O > S > A” in grammar (morphosyntax): Summary
    • 4.4“O > S > A” in grammar (morphosyntax) and discourse: Discussion
  • 5.Concluding remarks
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
Published online: 13 January 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/sl.21064.tsu
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