functions in the same language. When the highly marked function is the object, this situation can be described as 'patient prominence' (see Gil, 1982,
1984, for a justification of this notion in Austronesian languages). Pawley and Reid (1980) attributed this kind of prominence to Proto Oceanic grammar,
Head-final order also has important implications in terms of nominal co- reference within the predication. Participants, or topics, are listed - put as it were in a queue - at the beginning of the predication, before the verbal indices can give us any clue (via person/number marking) as to their grammatical functions and semantic roles in the process or event being described. But, as it happens, such clues are rarely unambiguous (this is discussed in Chapters 7 and 8). Many Mekeo predications preserve an irreducible residue of indeterminacy as regards co-reference between the free nominal topics and the bound role-markers. This indeterminacy extends to the actual 'voice' of the verb (i.e. whether a given verb is functioning causatively, transitively or intransitively, or reflexively).
Another consequence of the head-final structure of the Mekeo predication is that the head (as the summation of the entire message, the core) will often be in
competition with the focus (as the
crux
of the message) for the attention of the hearer. The verb, as head, has a vital syntactic role to play in distributing functions. It is indeed the only indispensable constituent of the predication. But it also provides information about the physical nature of the discourse-pragmatic scene, in the context of which the message has relevance and importance. Underpinning all of this dynamic tension between non-coincident structures is the unvarying discourse level formula: THEME + PREDICATE. All four layers of unmarked structure (for a transitive predication) can now be displayed in parallel:discourse structure syntactic structure information structure logical structure THEME: PREDICATE:
TOPICn FOCUS CORE
S (+ I O ) ( + O B L N ) O s V o
GIVEN (NEW --- )
(Dependent N o m in a ls t + (AdjunctsN) Verbal HEAD
FIGURE 15: FOUR LEVELS OF VERBAL PREDICATIONAL STRUCTURE The layers or levels described above are analytic grids but it is claimed that they also exist, in some sense, in the minds of native speakers when they construct their
where an 'object focus system' prevailed, "roughly parallel to the '(subject) focus system' of Philippine type languages" (Pawley and Reid, 1980: 53).
own utterances. The analysis is motivated and necessary to fully explain the data, which constitute language behaviour.
The functioning of topics will be discussed at length in Chapters 7 and 8. Meanwhile we pass on to a discussion of optionality, an examination o f the prosodic definition of segments, and then to a consideration of rankshift and its implications.
1.3.3.2.4 OPTIONALITY OF TOPICS
A central question for the grammar of a head-marking language is the optionality of non-head constituents of predications, all of which are here called topics. As Van Valin puts it: "In an endocentric construction all the dependents are optional" (Van Valin, 1985: 398). This statement applies to nominals in apposition to incorporated arguments, but it says nothing about other non-verbal constituents of a predication, such as adsentential adjuncts (time deictics, locative expressions, postpositional groups, etc.). Moreover, it says nothing about the factors that influence a speaker either to include or exclude such potential topics from mention. As none of these elements are syntactically required - the head constituting a complete clause - they are all to some degree optional. For an item to appear in a predication I will say that it must be 'licensed'. An item may be licensed in one of three ways. It may be
a. Morphosyntactically licensed, through being indexed by an affixal marker on a marked head Such items are the subject and/or the object of a verb, the subject of a nominal predicate, and the object of a relational predicate.
b.
Semantically licensed, through being implicated by the semantics of a verb, especially a derived verb. These include the third argument of a ditransitive verb (the semantic object), the object of a causativised transitive verb, and the locative goal of certain verbs of putting/placing. c. Pragmatically licensed, through being pragmatically required by a verballyindexed scene, in the context of situation and of culture. For example, a knife or a shell or an axe is pragmatically implicated in a sentence about cutting, thanks to our knowledge of the world and of the culture. It is not explicitly encoded on the verb, nor is it implicated semantically.
Morphosyntactically licensed topics are semantically required, although not syntactically required, and may be deleted if recoverable (which they often are, especially subjects and/or main topics). Semantically licensed topics are also semantically required and are not so frequently deleted, since they are less often recoverable (i.e. they are less likely to be continuing discourse topics). Pragmatically licensed topics represent peripheral participants and circumstances, and if any of these are considered relevant by the speaker they cannot usually be deleted, since knowledge as to which ones the speaker considers relevant is least easily recovered.
An entity may then be licensed, but may still not be mentioned, should
pragmatic or discourse-pragmatic considerations render such mention unnecessary (i.e. if its reference is either exophorically or anaphorically recoverable), or should its mention be socio-pragmatically inappropriate. These discourse-pragmatic and pragmatic
considerations can be conceptualised as a filter, which blocks the passage of linguistic items that are easily recoverable. This whole system can be displayed as a diagram:
a . Morphosyntactically licensed nominals b. Semantically licensed nominals/obliques c . Pragmatically licensed nominals/obliques
THE
> > > PRAGMATIC/ > > > > DISCOURSE- > > > > > PRAGMATIC > > >
FILTER
Relative degrees of optionality are shown by the number of arrows exiting from the filter, as compared with the number entering it. The filter itself operates according to such parameters as referential distance, and takes into account the things that a speaker may assume are in the hearer's consciousness or are a part of the hearer's background knowledge (what is referred to above as KNOW N).1
I will also argue below that in certain kinds of discourse (e.g. narrative) the filter dysfunctionally blocks nominal topics that are not easily recoverable, and indeed sometimes blocks items that are not recoverable at all.
1 See Givön (1983) for an account of this based on text counts. See Lichtenberk (1988) for an account of referential distance in To'aba'ita.
1.3.3.3 SUPRASEGMENTAL STRUCTURE OF UTTERANCES
M ekeo is a stress-timed language oriented to a system of predetermined word stresses (with the main stress on the penultimate syllable and a secondary stress on every second syllable leftward from that). Mekeo is usually characterised by a slow rate of delivery,1 under several intonation contours. This is precisely what Givön predicts for a language dominated by 'the pragmatic mode' (1979: 98). It is, moreover, what one might expect o f a head-final head-marking language where syntactic bonds are based on coreference restrictions rather than on bilateral dependence and government.
In Section 1.3.3.2 it was stated that in a typical predication a single nominal (or verbal) topic, or a series of such topics, will set the scene and constrain our
expectations, and that this/these will be followed by a nominal or a verbal predicate which constitutes the crux of the message. The complete message may constitute an assertion or a question or a command, and it may be a marked or an unmarked realisation of the particular function. The mood and markedness of such a message is determined by the pattem of pitch contours. Complex utterances realise complex patterns of pitch contours. I refer to these patterns as intonation patterns (IP).
There are seven fundamental pitch contours in Mekeo (abbreviated to PCs) that I shall want to refer to both here and later in this dissertation by the following numbers: P C I. Low-Falling PC2. Low-Rising PC3. Falling-Rising PC4 High-Rising PC5 Rising-Falling
PC6 Very Low Level
PC7 Very High Level
Transitional contours can be realised as graduated movements or as stepped transitions. PCI and PC2 have quite specific and invariable functions in Mekeo
grammar: PC2 signals an unmarked topic or topics (normally unquestioned information) while PCI signals the predicate, and within that the focus. The combination of PC2 and PCI in a single utterance is what adds typical message structure to a linear sequence of elements, and this theme-rheme/topic-predicate construction, which I call a predication.
1 However, certain villages (e.g. Inautsina) are renowned for a rapid-fire delivery.
remains the basic discourse-pragmatic parameter of the grammar. In its simplest form the theme will contain a single topic and the rheme will consist of a simple predicate:
PC2: TOPIC + PCI: PREDICATE = Predication
The low-rising tone of the topic indicates that the speaker is about to make an assertion, and that he requires the hearer to attend to the old information and to await the new or predicated information. The following falling tone on the predicate tells us that the utterance is now being completed and that any variation on this fall will very likely constitute the beginnings of a new message, leading up to another predicate. It is the pattem that is meaningful, as PCI and PC2 also occur in other contexts.
PC 3 represents a marked pitch contour that, on a topic, can be understood as a request for confirmation from the hearer that the information represented is indeed familiar, or acceptable as the basis of the message. On the focus, it signals that the new information is felt by the speaker to be surprising, amazing, or at least is contrary to one's expectations in some way (i.e. it is contrastive).
As regards verbal predications, a number of topics (representing, as we saw above, various kinds of actants and circumstants) can precede a verbal predicate. Each unmarked topic takes the same pitch contour: (low-)rising (PC2). Each topic is followed by a potential (and very often an actual) pause. An unmarked focus (and, by the same token, predicate) takes a falling pitch contour (PCI). Oblique topics in initial position often take a high level tone (PC7) or a high-pitched version of PC3. Adverbial topics (such as time deictics) in initial position are often pitched very low (PC6).
A verbal predicate may have internal structure o f its own, which occurs when some non-verbal word is prosodically incorporated into the pause group constituted by the verb word. The unmarked candidate for such inclusion is the NP corresponding to the object of the verb. However, any argument of the verb and even an adverbial word may, as the situation arises, be incorporated into the predicate. The predicate is thus not to be equated with a traditionally constituted VP, made up of a verb and its object. (Argument incorporation is a pragmatically motivated process that nonetheless obeys a single argument constraint.1)
1 It is interesting to compare Kidima’s (1990) analysis of Kiyaka, and recent