Croft (1991: 220) states that “since experiencer and stimulus are both simultaneously initiator and endpoint, they are identical in causal structure”. This observation is not quite true. It is true that both the perceiver and the percept are simultaneously the beginning and the end of a path, but it is not true that they are both the beginning and the end of a causal chain. Croft (1991: 220) points out that see and he visible, as in (36), are converses. The examples and judgements are Croft’s.
(36) a. The peak is visible for hundreds of miles b. ?1 can see the peak for hundreds of miles
c. John can see the peak from here, but my eyes aren’t, good enough d. ?The peak is visible to John from here, but my eyes aren’t good enough
Croft states that the expression be visible to is preferred “when the perceptual relation is attributed to some property o f the stimulus, for example the height of the peak, as is implied by the phrase for hundreds o f miles."' These data, however, are no evidence that the percept and the perceiver are both equally causally responsible. First, I dispute Croft’s judgement about (36d). This is perfectly acceptable. Secondly, Croft wants to assert that the force-dynamic relations of see and be visible in (36) are dyadic. I think that this cannot be the case and what he has observed is that the
subjects of see and be visible are both archagonists in the sense o f Rosta (1992, 1995). It is quite impossible for the referent o f the subject in (36a) to be an agonist: there is not an antagonist for it to be in an oppositional relationship to. Hence, if there is a force-dynamic relationship, it is clear that the referent of the subject is primarily responsible for a viewing situation,that is, it is the archagonist.
(36b) is weird because the object of see is not appropriate as the subject o f fo r hundreds o f miles. A string like fo r hundreds o f miles needs to be predicated o f an entity that has a degree of physical extent: I can see the trees fo r hundreds o f miles is fine. Alternatively, ybr hundreds o f miles could modify the whole seeing situation. Croft appears to claim that his doubts about the acceptability of this example concern the facts that fo r hundreds o f miles is object related and the archagonist of see is the referent of its subject. Therefore, hundreds o f miles cannot relate to the seeing. I think, however, that the unacceptability of (36b) has more to do with fo r hundreds o f miles needing to be predicated o f a quality o f the peak, and there is no appropriate quality in this example.
For hundreds o f miles does not behave like to the wall in (37).
(37) a. *Peter can see Jane to the wall b. Peter can see to the wall
(Examples like this were discussed in section 3.3.2.2.) There is no modification that can be made to the object of saw in (37^ that would make to the wall acceptable. All o f the examples in (38) are unacceptable.
(38) a. * Peter can see broken glass to the wall b. * Peter can see grass to the wall
c. * Peter can see trees to the horizon
And yet Jane can see trees fo r hundreds o f miles is fine. The conclusion must be that fo r hundreds o f miles is in a different grammatical relationship to see from to the
walÛ^
(36d) presents the most problematic case. If we accepted Croft’s judgement there would be no problem: from the point of view o f the grammar, the referent o f the subject is the archagonist o f the situation. Therefore, the experiencer’s physical abilities should be irrelevant. However, I find (36d) fine. I think that the reason is that we construe physical perception as involving two physical constraints. The first is the perceiver’s ability to see, the second is the percept’s ability to be seen. The percept’s ability to be seen is relevant to the interpretation of event percepts. IJane saw Peter think in Latin is nonsense; such an event cannot be perceived in that way. Clearly, is visible to prioritises the percept’s ability to be seen, but this does not mean that the perceiver’s ability to see is immaterial. Either the perceiver’s ability to see, or the percept’s ability to be seen can affect the outcome of a perceptual situation. The difference between the is visible examples and the can see examples is that the archagonist of the first is the percept, and the archagonist of the second is the perceiver. In fact, the example in (39) is fine, too:
(39) Jane could see the peak but it was too covered in cloud for Peter to be able to discern it
In (39) Peter’s inability to see the peak is ascribed to a property o f the peak.
Given the claim about diathetic SEE in Chapter 1 and the discussion above about the nature of to phrases and the bounding of a ‘seel’ situation, I assume that to phrases are xcompiements and for miles is an adjunct which is predicated of the whole situation.
Paradoxically, what Croft seems to be claiming is not that there is a two way agonist/antagonist pairing between the perceiver and the percept but that there is a strange case where both the perceiver and the percept have some of the properties of an archagonist. In this case, what happens is that the entity which is the subject o f see or is visible in the examples in (36) is construed as the archagonist. As Rosta (1995) points out, the property o f being an archagonist is a subject related property, although not all subjects are archagonists.
It is possible to recast this observation. Given the gestalt nature o f Talmy’s original conception of force-dynamics (where the agonist is the figure) I would expect there to be a coercion whereby subjects were identified as being more force-
dynamically responsible than objects because, in Talmy’s account, subjects are figures. The examples in (39), each of which foregrounds a different participant in the situation, make this observation. However, Croft has made an important second observation, which is that there is nothing inherent about percept and perceiver that ensures that one or other of them is more or less likely to be force-dynamically responsible. Furthermore, the example in (39) shows that objects can be force- dynamically responsible, too.
3.3.3 3 Langacker’s perspective
Langacker’s (1991: 304) account claims that instances of SEE complemented by a direct object are extensions of the transitive verb prototype (exemplified by Jane hit Peter) which include situations where there is no transmission of force from the subject to the object. In the case of visual perception, Langacker (1991: 304) believes that “the object’s semantic role is zero”.
We have already seen that the object o f an instance of SEE cannot have a “zero” semantic role because, quite apart from its being percept, there is also the perceptual trace that we noted in section 3.3.2. Furthermore, Croft’s observations about whether a percept can be force-dynamically responsible or not show that it can, and example (39) shows that the object of see can be force-dynamically responsible, too.
In Talmy’s (1985b, 1988) system the force-dynamics of the sense o f a verb are established in terms of an agonist and an antagonist. These notions correspond to Cognitive Grammar’s familiar notions of figure and ground. The agonist, or figure, which is typically realised as the subject, is involved in a force opposition against the antagonist, or ground, which is typically realised as the object. Talmy (1988: 53) states that he views agonist and antagonist as semantic roles related to agency. Talmy’s system is developed in terms of prototypical transitivity. Langacker’s view is also structured in terms o f prototypical transitivity, and consequently, given that there is no transmission o f force from subject to object, it is easy to see why Langacker claims that ‘s e e l’ is force-dynamically neutral.
However, for Talmy force-dynamic relations are not just relevant to
prototypical agency, they also apply to, for example, to modality and Sweetser (1990) develops a force-dynamic model of modal verbs, which analyses both epistemic and deontic modality as involving force-dynamic transactions. Langacker’s insistence on a model of prototypical transitivity means that he misses a number of relevant
observations about the force-dynamic structure o f ‘se el’.