3rd International LABLITA Workshop in Corpus Linguistics Semantic Variation of the Verb "Essere" in Spoken Italian Corpus Driven Research vs Generative Taxonomy of Copular Sentences Florence 2008, June 4-5th Alessandro Panunzi LABLITA Agenda Primary data from corpus Theoretical frameworks Corpus analysis Comparison with generative grammar Variation structure Conclusions Objectives To provide a description of real uses that is able to: account for the semantic variation of the verb “essere” be observational adequate extract from corpus analysis evidences for linguistic theory (corpus based and corpus driven perspectives) PRIMARY DATA Primary data: occurrences and corpus design Inform. Inform. Formal dial. monol. dialog. tokens 102564 Formal monol. Media Teleph. TOTAL 50721 24383 42944 60466 15776 296854 essere 5101 2352 1101 1854 2742 681 13831 % 4.97% 4.64% 4.52% 4.32% 4.53% 4.32% 4.66% General structure of the taxonomy Verbal uses: fixed structure subject + “essere” + complement Uses and percentages Incidence on the verbal utterances in spoken Italian Variation over the copus design 100,00% 90,00% 80,00% 44,86% 36,82% 27,71% 19,18% 70,00% 34,36% 60,00% 40,19% 50,00% 40,00% 34,21% 30,00% 20,00% 10,00% 36,90% 4,82% 5,25% 3,89% 41,64% 3,60% 17,32% 0,00% informaledialogico 22,39% 26,85% formaledialogico informalemonologico formalemonologico non verbali altri - verbali + esserci essere THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKS Paradigms of analisys Classical studies Aristotles, Boethius, Abelard, Port Royal Grammar Logical tadition Frege, Russel, Strawson, Donnellan Cognitive semantics Gruber, Jackendoff Generative grammar Akmajan, Higgins, Heggie, Moro The copula Definitions of the functional and semantic value of the verb “essere” in classical studies: the “sign of the time” within the predication structure (Aristotle) the predicational “link” within the judgment act (Scholasticism, Port Royal) The verb “essere” is seen as the lexical element corresponding to the concept of copula Frege and the identity Focus on the polysemous nature of the verb “essere” (Frege 1892a, b): Copula The morning star is a planet Identity predicate The morning star is Venus / the evening star Two kind of relations Distinction of two completely different kind of relations: The “falling of an object under a concept” (extensional relation) An “equivalence” between two distinct ways to identify the same object (intensional relation) The post-copular NP The kind of relation can be detected though the semantic value of the post-copular NP: predicative (x is “a planet”) Æ “essere” = copula referential (x is “Venus” / “the evening star”) Æ “essere” = identity predicate Gruber hypothesis Semantic basis for the verb “to be”: LOCATIVE RELATION (Gruber 1976) Jackendoff (1983) adopts this proposal and uses it to explain the whole semantic variation of the verb Presence of the same thematic structure in all the semantic fields of “to be” Basic semantic value The same relational core-meaning is extended over different semantic domains, on the basis of theta-role assignment In its whole semantic variation, the verb “to be” enstablish a thematic relation on the locative basis Jackendoff extension - 1 Semantic Domain Spatial Temporal Possessive Theme Object Event or State Object Object of Reference Relation type (to be) Example Place Localization of the theme in the place of reference John is in the room Time Localization of the event/state expressed by the theme in the time of reference The meeting is at 6.00 PM Object Possessive relation between the theme and the object of reference (as a localization) The doll is yours Jackendoff extension - 2 Semantic Domain Identificational Theme Object Object of Relation type Reference (to be) Type / Property the relations “to be a case” of a class or “to have a property” play the role of the localization Example Elise is a pianist The light is red The value of essere as a copula is considered as a case of the semantic variation of the verb within the cognitive space of the “identification” Specificity of the copular value The complement within the copular uses is a type (or a property) it lacks of referentiality, therefore it cannot be an “object of reference” As a consequence, it is not possible to assign a θ role to the copular complement by definition, theta roles are assigned to [+referential] elements Specificity of the identity predicate The complement of the identity predicate is obviously referential, but it lacks of an explicit theta role cfr. agent/experient, theme/patient, location, possessor, goal, source, instrumental… Its role within the identity predication is to provide the second term of reference (in terms of Sinn) within the specific intensional relation established by the verb “essere” this not foresees any thematic role assignment CORPUS ANALYSIS Semantic classes of variation: the matrix “essere” class of variation COPULA [referentiality] Semantic features of the [thematic complement role] PREDIC. IDENTIF. * (locative) - + + - - - + + Heuristic consequences The matrix makes possible to decide to what class a single instance of the corpus belongs by analyzing the semantic features of the complement (equivalent and positive features) The classification of the uses in the corpus allows extracting from the data significant grammatical features, in order to properly describe the verbal variation of “essere” General structure of the taxonomy (revised) Percentages of verbal uses Quantitative results Reduced percentage of marked variation marked variation is estimated to cover more than 50% of the high frequency action verbs (Panunzi & Moneglia 2004) High percentage of identificative uses consistency of such a use Quantitative prominence of copular uses with respect to predicative/locative ones COMPARISON WITH GENERATIVE GRAMMAR Copular clauses taxonomy in Generative Grammar Main distinction among two different types of copular sentences (Akmajan 1970) predicational clauses, in which the post-copular NP is not referential, and it constitutes a proper predicate Carl is bald specificational clauses, in which the post-copular NP is properly referential, referential and it specifies an individual entity my best friend is Carl Higgins referential taxonomy (simplified) NP1 NP2 predicational Referential Predicational specificational Superscriptional Specificational In the proposed taxonomy, a specific class is then contituted by identity statements (“The Slim” is Carl), that roughly corresponds to the ones discussed by Frege; in this case, both the NPs have a referential value identity statement Referential Referential Criticism Ad hoc referential values es. superscriptional The taxonomy criteria take into account both the referential value of the subject and the one of the complement referential type of the subject has no correspondence to the semantic value of the predicate Inverse copular sentences These proposal led to the hypotesis that specificational structures are copular clauses in which the NP1 (in subject position) is the actual predicate, and the NP2 (in complement position) is the actual subject: [John]subj is [the teacher]pred [the teacher]pred is [John]subj In brief, specificational clauses are considered as inverse copular sentences (Blom & Daalder 1977; Verheudg 1990; Moro 1997, Mikkelsen 2005) Copular clauses: shared deep structure (Heggie 1988) Predicational clauses: shallow structure Specificational clauses: shallow structure (Moro 1997) Theoretical consequences Counter-evidence against the common assumption that the relation between the NP and the VP that are bound in the clause structure determines the grammatical functions of Subject and Predicate (Moro) it deals with the general theory of clause syntax Further interpretations place these facts at the level of the information structure (cfr. Mikkelsen 2005) Heuristic consequences Crucial role of the NP in the “subject” position in determining the type of the copular clause This perspective gets rid of the identified semantic distintions Identificational uses Predicative-locative uses VARIATION STRUCTURE Lines of variation Type of use Semantic value of essere Line of variation Copular Property attribution (extensional relation) Type of the property Identificative Identificative relation between different referential expressions (intensional relation) ontological class of the entity to which the expressions refer Predicative Locative relation (locative basis) (relazione tematica) cognitive domain within which the relation between the theme and the object of reference is set up Predicative uses (locative basis) Spatial localization *IAS: qui / siamo alla foce del fiume // [here / we are at the mouth of the river] Temporal localization *NON: sì / la [/] la fiera / l' è il secondo martedì di luglio // [yes / the fair is on the second tuesday of July] Possess relation (as localization) *LID: questi / erano della mamma // [these ones / belonged to my mother] Other uses (corpus-driven) Benefactive relation *ANT: è per la gente che si deve divertire // [It is for the people who want to have fun //] Causative relation *CLA: non so se è per questione di soldi / di interessi / per questione di culture forse diverse // [I don’t know if it is because of money / of profit / because of different cultures //] “Co-localizzation”: *ROS: eravamo sempre con Adriana / e il suo bambino // [we always were with Adriana and her child] Sematic variation of copular uses PROPERTY TYPE EXAMPLE Quality 'un è mica brutto // [he isn’t ugly at all] Class [...] gl'era un falegname / gl'era un artigiano // [he was a joiner / he was a craftsman ] Quantity gli arcani minori e quelli maggiori / sono 52 / [the minor arcana and the major ones / are 52] Measure era 95 chili / quando ci si sposò / i mi marito // [my husband was 95 kilos / when we married] Comparison mio fratello è così // [my brother is this way] Judgment è giusto e corretto / che parli l’Istituto Superiore di Sanità / […] // [it is right and correct / that the ISS…] Internal variation of copular uses Different uses correspond to a single and primary semantic core Internal line of variation: type of the property assigned by the copular relation Identificative uses subj – essere – NP[+definite] *ANN: che lui è il presidente del Sunia // [that he is the president of Sunia] *ZIA: l' abbraccia gli fa / Attilio / sono io il fiorentino // [he hugs him he say / Attilio / I am the Florentine] *CUC: il mercato è questo // [the market is this] *VAL: cioè / la mia sede definitiva / è Piombino // [I mean / my final location / is Piombino] Ontological types of the entities in equivalence relation Places *LIA: e qui è San_Gottardo / eh // [and here is San Gottardo / eh] Times *MAX: perché qui è il ‘59 // [because it was 1959] Events *ELA: che / era la volta che tu cantavi / … [that / it was the time that you were singing / …] Equivalence between entities of the Event ontological level Nominalizations *GUI: l' occasione è stata che / […] sono andato a fare i' camionista // [the occasion was that / […] I became a truck driver] Pseudo-clefts *ANT: quello che non accetti / è che ti giudichi un deficiente // [what you don’t accept / is that an idiot judges you] *LOR: la cosa che ha fatto incazzare è stata questa // [the thing that made me angry was this one] CONCLUSIONS Semantic classification of corpus instances Possibility to produce a corpus-based classification of the semantic values of the verb essere: extensional relation (copula) intensional relation (identification) thematic relation (localization) Predictability of semantic values The different semantic values of the verb essere are predictable on the basis of equivalent and positive features of the complement: copular “essere”: lack of referentiality in the complement identificative “essere”: referentiality of the complement, without association with a thematic role predicative-locative “essere”: referentiality of the complement, in association with an explicit thematic role Taxonomy consistency Descriptive criterion the variation perspective assures the identification of types which mirror real uses Consistency of the taxonomy productivity of the classes and quantitative (external) consistency of the classification internal consistency of the classes of variation, identified by specific lines of variation Comparison with Generative Grammar taxonomy Lack of semantic representation autonomy of each semantic field of variation Lack of observational adequacy it makes impossible to explain the lines of variation found by means of the corpus driven analysis References Akmajan, A. 1970. Aspects of the grammar of focus in English. Ph.D. dissertation, MIT. Published by New York : Garland Press, 1979. Blom, A., Daalder, S., 1977. Syntaktische theorie en taalbeschrijving. Muiderberg : Coutinho. Cresti E. Moneglia M. (eds.) 2005. C-ORAL-ROM. Integrated Reference Corpora for Spoken Romance Languages, Vol. I + DVD. Amsterdam : Benjamins. Donnellan, K. S. 1966. Reference and definite descriptions. Philosophical review 77, 281-304. Frege, G. 1892a. Über Sinn und Bedeutung. In Zeitschrift für Philosophie und philosophische Kritik, 100. Frege, G. 1892b. Über Begriff und Gegenstand. Vierteljahrsschrift für wissenchaftliche Philosophie 16, 192-205. Gruber, J. 1976. Lexical structures in syntax and semantics. Amsterdam : North Holland. Heggie, L. 1988. The Syntax of Copular Structures. Ph. D. dissertation, USC. Higgins, F. R. 1973. The Pseudo-Cleft Construction in English. Ph.D. dissertation, MIT. Published by New York : Garland Press, 1979. References Jackendoff, R. 1983. Semantics and cognition. Cambridge MA : The MIT Press. Mikkelsen, L. 2005. Copular Clauses. Specification, predication and equation. Amsterdam : Benjamins. Moro, A. 1997. The Raising of Predicates: Predicative Nouns Phrases and the Theory of Clause Structure. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press. Panunzi, A., Moneglia, M., 2004. La Variazione Primaria del verbo nel lessico dei corpora di parlato. In Atti del Convegno "Il Parlato Italiano", Napoli, 13-15 febbraio 2003. Napoli : D'Aura Edizioni, C4. pp. 1-24. Panunzi, A. 2007. Il verbo essere nella lingua italiana: analisi della variazione d'uso in un corpus di parlato spontaneo. PhD Thesis, University of Turin. Russell, B. 1905. On denoting. Mind 14, 479-493. Strawson, P. F. 1950. On referring. Mind 59, 320-344. Verheugd, E., 1990. Subject arguments and predicate nominals: A study of French copular sentences with two NPs. Amsterdam : Rodopi.
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