CONCLUSION
This chapter aimed at presenting a grammatical sketch
Shupamem. I presented the synthesis of some grammatical aspects of Shupamem. In
the light of the previous studies made on the language, I presented the
consonants, the vowels and the tones of Shupamem. In the same line, Ipresented
the fifteen noun classes of Shupamem, the personal, the demonstrative and
possessive pronouns, the adjectives, and the articles. Furthermore, I discussed
verb tenses, aspects and moods. Finally, I discussed the basic sentence
structure of Shupamem.
CHAPTER TWO:
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
INTRODUCTION
The aim of the previous chapter was to present the grammatical
sketch of Shupamem, in order to familiarize the reader with the functioning of
the language under study. As for this chapter, it presents the frameworks
adopted for the study. These are the Minimalist Program of Chomsky (1993,
1995...) and the Cartography of Rizzi (1997). The main objective of this
chapter is to identify and highlight relevant aspects of MP and Cartography
which are adopted in the analysis of adverbs in Shupamem. Finally, I present
silent works done on adverbs on various perspectives.
2.1. THE MINIMALIST
PROGRAM
The Minimalist Program is a line of thought that has been
developing in generative grammar since the early 1990s. It was initiated by
Noam Chomsky and is presented by the latter as a program which aims at
minimizing the mechanism of description of language phenomena. In fact, MP
demands description and most importantly explanation, and it aims at achieving
descriptive and explanatory adequacies. It renders simple the linguistic
system, through economy both in derivation and representation.
Given that MP is dynamic and universal, it would really be
interesting and necessary to test its assumptions against the data from all
languages. In this perspective, I think that testing its assumption against the
data from Shupamem will be a contribution to the development of the theory.
Furthermore, besides some works done within the generative
approach, namely Ondoua (2004), Nchare (2005) and others, it is necessary to
extend the research frontier and broaden the syntactic research by undertaking
a minimalist study of the language.
As its name implies, the Minimalist Program is a linguistic
theory that minimizes the mechanism of language description as much as
possible. It seeks to achieve descriptive and explanatory adequacies and most
importantly, to ease the language learnability. It comes in as the solution to
the lapses of the previous theories that were used in linguistics. In fact,
these theories laid much emphasis on language description with very little
focus on the explanation of the language phenomena. In the same perspective,
previous frameworks displayed an uncountable number of rules that, instead of
easing the task, rather made language learnability much complicated. Therefore,
some rules in the previous frameworks (in particular, Government and Binding
Theory, the Principle and Parameters Theory) have undergone some reconstruction
alongside various linguistic phenomena.
MP is centered on the Principle of Economy. In fact, it
assumes that one should reduce unnecessary elements from the computational
process so as to make the mechanism easy and to ease learnability. This goes in
the same line with the Government and Binding Theory, from which it drew
inspiration, though a radical change exists between them. In fact, MP advocates
for Economy and Principle of Full Interpretation (PFI). The latter claims that
no redundant elements, whether semantic, phonological or syntactic, should be
included in a structure. Each element should be interpretable and play a given
role.
The difference between MP and GB is appraised at the levels of
grammatical representation that they display. In fact, GB has four different
levels of representation, which are Deep Structure (DS), Surface structure
(SS), Logical Form (LF) and Phonological Form (PF). At the level of DS,
positions should be filled only if they are semantically active. As for SS, it
is the level of representation in which the derivation splits, sending off one
copy to PF for phonological interpretation, and another copy to LF for semantic
interpretation.
As far as LF and PF are concerned, they are two interfaces
which the sentence should satisfy in order to be grammatical. In other words,
LF checks the grammaticality of the sentence at the semantic level, whereas PF
does that at the phonological level. Within MP, the levels of representation
have been reduced into two, (LF, PF), making easier the process of the
Computation of Human Language, (CHL).
Within MP, CHL calls in a lexicon (lexical array)
from which elements are selected to build the numeration. These elements merge
externally the ones with the others to build the syntax, within which another
merge operation, internal merge is applied. Internal merge is concerned with
movements (copying, raising). From the syntax, we spell out the previously
merged elements to the interfaces (LF, PF) for interpretation. This process is
presented in the diagram below:
LOGICAL FORM
LEXICON NUMERATION SYNTAX (Spell out)
(Select) External Merge (Internal
merge)
PHONOLOGICAL FORM
Fig5, the Computation of Human Language within MP
Out of the above listed changes, much has been brought into
the linguistic analysis of the language by MP. Among others are the following
principles:
a) Least Effort: also known as Last Resort principle, it
stipulates that one should avoid movement throughout the computation. That is,
there should be as few movements as possible.
b) Procrastinate: it stipulates that one should not move
overtly, unless movement is imposed by some principle of Universal Grammar,
(UG).
c) Greed: (do not move X unless X bears a feature that
satisfies this movement). This strengthens the significance of Agreement within
MP. In fact, for an element to undergo movement, its features should be
checked, matched, valued and deleted.
d) Minimize chain movement: movement should be as shorter as
possible. Here, long distance movements are to be avoided.
e) Relativized Minimality, RIZZI
(1990: 7).
X á governs Y iff there is no Z such that:
(i) Z is a typical potential á governor for Y and
(ii) Z C-Commands Y and does not C-Command X.
Here, movement should be the nearest one to the landing site
of the moved element; no identical element should be found between the probe
and the goal, in order to avoid obstruction.
Other innovations brought in by MP concern representation. In
fact, as mentioned earlier, the Principle of Economy is the guideline followed
by MP. Thus, unlike the preceding frameworks wherein one could include traces
in the structures, MP advocates for their exclusion. Given that traces are not
present in the numeration, their presence in the syntax violates the
Inclusiveness Condition.
Furthermore, within MP, phrase markers are binary branching,
whereas the X-bar Theory could make use of unary branching or have as many
branches as possible. In the same perspective, the privilege is given to the
bottom-top merging fashion than to the top-bottom fashion, as was the case
within the X-bar Theory.
In brief, the Minimalist Program has brought some amelioration
to the previous frameworks, and seeks to achieve descriptive and explanatory
adequacies. Most importantly, it aims at easing the learning process of human
languages since it discards non-relevant elements and keeps only those that are
relevant to the machinery of language analysis.
2.2. THE CARTOGRAPHIC
APPROACH
Cinque and Rizzi (2008) argue that «The cartography
of syntactic structures is the line of research which addresses this topic: it
is the attempt to draw maps as precise and detailed as possible of syntactic
configurations. Broadly construed in this way, cartography is not an approach
or a hypothesis: it is a research topic asking the question: what are the right
structural maps for natural language syntax?»
According to them, this approach aims mostly at bringing out
the right map of the syntactic elements in natural languages.
2.2.1. The view of the
Cartographic Approach
Quoting Shlongsky (2010), aspects of Cartography have been
perceived in the works of Bernicaì (1988), Pollock (1989) with the
split-IP Hypothesis, and Cinque (1990). But what can be considered as the first
explicitly cartographic study is Rizzi (1997).
In fact, Rizzi (1997) studies the mapping of the elements
above TP, that is, the elements of the left periphery. He proposes that fronted
topics and foci are articulated as projections of Topic and Focus heads, as
contrary to the traditional view wherein all fronted elements should be hosted
by CP. Here, instead of allowing recursive CPs in multiple raising situations,
the Cartographic approach advocates for the splitting of CP into many
functional heads. The resulting functional projections are ForceP, FocP, TopP,
AgrP, etc...
Out of the above listed works on Cartography, many other works
have been done within the same approach. Among others are Cinque (1999, 2002),
Beletti (2004), Rizzi (2004), Benincaì (2001, 2006), Benincaì and
Poletto (2004) Cinque and Rizzi (2008), Biloa (2010) and others. The work of
Cinque (1999) is mostly the one that concerns adverbs.
2.2.2. The Cinquean Approach
to the study of adverbs
In Adverbs and Functional Heads: A Cross-linguistic
Perspective, Cinque (1999) posits that adverbs occur in a fixed order in
all the languages. He proposes that each adverb should occur at the specifier
position of the various functional projections. These functional projections
are the Mood (Mood-), the Modality, (Mod-), the Tense (T-), and the Aspect
(Asp-). He proposes the following scheme for English adverbs to account for
his view:
Frankly Mood-speech
act>FortunatelyMood-evaluative>Allegedly
Mood-evidential>Probably Mod-epistemic>Once T (Past)
[Then T (Future)>Perhaps Mood-irrealis>Necessarily
Mod-necessity>Possibly Mod-habitual>Again
Asp-repetitive>Often Asp-frequentative>Intentionally
Mod-volitional>Quickly Asp-celerative>Already T
(anterior)>No longer Asp-terminative>Still
Asp-continuative>Always Aspect-habitual>Just
Asp-retrospective>Soon Asp-proximative>Briefly
Asp-durative>Characteristically
As-generic/progressive>Almost
Asp-prospective>Completely Asp-Sg.Completive (I)>Tutto
Asp P1Completive>Well Voice>Fast/early Asp-celerative
(II)>Often Asp-frequentative (II)>Completely
Asp-Sg.Completive (II)
Source: Cinque (1999:106)
Though the structure above is not systematically the same in
all languages, Cinque's view is that all the languages have somehow a fixed
hierarchy in which adverbs should appear.
2.2.3. MP and the
Cartographic Approach
There is tendency to consider the Cartographic Approach as a
contradiction to the Minimalist Program. In fact, while MP seeks to minimize
the language mechanism, the Cartographic Approach seeks to draw the maps of
structures of the natural languages. It should be noted that this does not make
Cartography an opposition or an alternative to Minimalism. On the contrary, as
posited by Shlonsky (2010), the feature-driven approach to syntax, the reliance
on simple operations such as Merge, Project and Search pave the way to the
Cartographic enterprise whose goal is to draw up a precise inventory of
features and discover their structural relations. In that same view, Cinque and
Rizzi (2008) clearly argue:
«We believe that there is no contradiction between
these two directions of research, and the tension, where real, is the sign of a
fruitful division of labor. Minimalism focuses on the elementary mechanisms
which are involved in syntactic computations (...) and cartography focuses on
the fine details of the generated structures, two research topics which can be
pursued in parallel in a fully consistent manner, and along lines which can
fruitfully interact.»
According to them, MP is centered mostly on language
computation which it seeks to make easier. As for the Cartographic enterprise,
its aim is to draw the details of the structures of the languages. In clear,
they apply to different domains.
2.3. SALIENT WORKS ON ADVERBS
Quoting Tabe (2015), adverbs have been treated as the least
homogenous category to define in language because their analysis as a
grammatical category remains peripheral to the basic argument structure of the
sentence. Adverbs have been analysed as predicates (Roberts 1985; Rochette
1990), as arguments (McConell-Ginet 1982; Larson 1985), as modifiers
(Sportiche 1988), and as operators. Several reasons account for this lack
of clarification.
The first is attributed to the fact that adverbs do
not present a homogeneous class. Givón (1993:71) sees adverbs as
least homogeneous and the hardest to define. According to Payne (1997:69) any
word with semantic content (other than grammatical particles) that is not
clearly a noun, a verb, or an adjective is often put into the class
of adverbs. In the same light, McCawley (1996:664) observes that the
diversity of things that adverb has been applied to is in keeping
with traditional definitions of it as modifier of a verb, an
adjective, or another adverb, which in effect class as adverbs all
modifiers other than adjectives. Adverbs cannot be declined and they are
often grouped with prepositions and conjunctions as a subgroup of
particles. This explains why they form a very heterogeneous group
containing numerous overlapping with other grammatical categories.
Secondly, because adverbs demonstrate a correlation
between syntactic and semantic structures, the behavior of adverbs has
been analysed as inextricably bound to both syntactic and semantic
phenomena (Tenny 2000:285-6). However, the analysis of what constitutes a
syntactic or semantic underlying representation of adverbs in a
sentence structure is unclear. In order to understand the nature of
the interface between them, there is need to identify the syntactic
or semantic elements necessary in explaining the distribution and
properties of adverbs. Different approaches have been adopted for the
classification of adverbs. One approach identifies them into distinct groups
constrained by their syntactic and semantic properties.
Advocates of this line of thought (Jackendoff 1972;
Travis 1988, etc.) posit that various types of adverbs may select for
propositions, speech acts or events, each of which interacts with
syntactic principles to produce different adverbial behaviours. The
analysis supposes that the nature of the syntactic constituent that
licenses the adverb determines its semantic interpretation. The latter is
obtained given the semantic features associated with the adverb. In
Jackendoff's (1972) analysis, adverbs are semantically classified into four
groups. These comprise the speaker-oriented adverbs; subject-oriented
adverbs; event-related adverbs and focus adverbs.
The speaker-oriented adverbs such as frankly,
unfortunately among others carry information relating to the
speaker. Subject-oriented adverbs (including clumsily,
carefully...) introduce material relating to the subject of
the clause. Event-oriented adverbs comprising manner, time and degree
adverbs (like completely, frequently and
eloquently...) introduce material relating to the event
structure. Lastly, focus adverbs (including almost,
merely, utterly...) introduce material which is
discourse-oriented for scope purposes. The syntactic distribution of these
adverbs relative to the hierarchical constituent structure shows that
subject-oriented and speaker-oriented adverbs are sentence-level adverbs,
while the event-related adverbs are verb phrase-level adverbs. Focus
adverbs, in contrast, are hosted by the Aux. Head, a position dominated by the
Aux. node. Travis (1988) fine-tunes the nature of the mapping between the
semantic and syntactic composition of Jackedoff's adverbs by suggesting
that the speaker-oriented adverbs take scope over CP, the sentence
adverbs take scope over IP, the subject-oriented adverbs take scope
over INFL, and the event-oriented adverbs take scope over the verb.
Another approach put forward to capture the cross-linguistic
generalization on the distributional properties of adverbs is that of
Cinque (1999). Given Cinque, there is no direct one-to-one correlation
between the syntactic and the semantic composition of the adverbs. Thus
the relation between the syntactic position occupied by an adverb and
the semantic role discharged by the latter remains essentially
non-compositional.Rather, emphasis is on teasing out the distinguishing
syntactic properties of each adverb by showing associated positions of
each with respect to a distinct functional projection. Recourse to the
semantic contribution of adverbs on the syntax is captured indirectly. The
adverbs types and their semantic properties are mirrored from an inventory into
the various functional projections in the syntax.
Tenny (2000:290) adopts an approach that treads a
middle ground between the views that have been projected above (that
is, whether there is a direct mapping between semantic/syntactic
composition or just a syntactic projection of functional heads with an
indirect link to its semantic properties) in determining the
distribution of adverbs. Tenny maintains that the semantic composition
of the event is mediated in the syntax by a relatively small
inventory of functional projections mirroring that composition. If one's
observation is right, Tenny's treatment of adverbs is in consonant with
that projected by Jackendoff (1972) and Travis (1988) earlier
indicated. However, Tenny focuses more on elements lower down in the
semantic composition of the clause. In particular, the event structure
closer to the verb and internal to the event, rather than issues
that appear at the higher level of the clause structure like speech
acts, propositions, among others. As for the phrasal projection of adverbs,
the literature supposes that adverbs can occupy adjoined positions
(Ernst 1997), specifier positions (Laenzlinger 1993; Cinque 1999), can
self-project into a maximal projection (Pollock 1989), and as being
defective categories without a maximal projection (Travis 1988).
| 
