budući da smatram da članak u vašem listu "izdavački skandal u škols n135_r04 9984 6 alo treće, i time će, vjeruju, oprati svoju savjest.
smatram da se bez osnivanja stalnog međunarodnog suda neće n131_14 21099 7 z obzira što grad zagreb ni od koga ništa ne traži. stoga smatram da je dosta tog licemjerja prema gradu zagrebu.
smatram da je još preuranjeno razgovarati o bregovićevu go n143_19 29676 9 vu, iako se i tu jako pretjeruje. ja, na primjer, i dalje smatram, kao što sam i prije smatrao, da hrvat nije naobra n149_10 19453 10 ojem se može sve svirati, mekša je od gitare i zapravo je smatram gitarom s plastičnim žicama.
extra: recit n146_24 15397 11
ja sam uvijek za umjerenost, pa tako i u izjavama. smatram da je svaka godina za hrvatsku teška dok se ne rij vj981227t 16739 12 ševila. nikada se ne bih odlučila za tako nešto, jer sebe smatram plesačem. osim toga, imam određeni otpor spram nje n129_k10 14998 13 ga mu čestitam, što sam već mnogo puta učinio osobno, jer smatram kako je on tu ispao mnogo veća žrtva od mene.
n138_23 15825 14 je i skinuti odgovornost i sa sebe, ali bit ću iskren jer smatram da se oko te emisije diže nepotrebna prašina. dok n160_17 9384 15 štetama za duševne boli mogla bi se napisati disertacija: smatram da bi ih se trebalo svesti na simboličnu jednu kun n160_04 21983 16 obrim književnim djelom popularnost se ne postiže. osobno smatram da je jedan od odličnih hrvatskih pisaca pavao pav vj981102k 17307 17 ku scenu u nas? mislite li da ima medijske slobode?
smatram, što se tiče tiskovina, da su medijske slobode čak vj990105t 13732 18 sti broj nastavnih tjedana kod pojedinih nastavnika.
smatram da je bila nemoralna i protuzakonita odluka g. pug vj990102i 4347 19 ah, već i zbog geografske blizine tog područja hrvatskoj. smatram da je problem herceg bosne nemoguće riješiti prije n147_12 18399 20 ojim te se svijete ii". ovaj film, bez obzira na nagrade, smatram svojim najvrednijim ostvarenjem", priznaje andrea. n137_22 15927 21 rodnu nagradu ondas za radijsku emisiju "zvižduća priča". smatram to značajnijim od emisije "ljudi smo". osvajanje t n145_25 16607 22 je nezahvalna zvijer. hrane joj treba sve više i više.
smatram da istinu ne bi trebalo uokvirivati, jer to stvara gk9647_20 5923 23 dvadeset i pet godina koliko radim u svijetu menagemanta, smatram se uspješnom poslovnom ženom.
• kakav je vaš i vj981202z 3919 24 lištu.
do pokrivanja troškova ekipe nije došlo, što smatram izuzetnom štetom. riječki teatar je umjetnički rel vj981215k 9865 25 no na koncert gorana bregovića ne namjeravam otići jer ga smatram antiglazbenikom —
kada je davor št n159_20 17494 26 je od jučer'. to znači da veoma poštujem prošlost u modi, smatram je velikom inspiracijom svih modnih kreatora na sv n152_19 5566 27 jivati ili navijati za ovu ili onu struju.
osobno ne smatram da je u takvom hdz-u moguće rasplesti krizu na dem n150_01 15843 28 am reći jednu veliku istinu, možda će se neki iznenaditi. smatram da je jedan od najvećih hrvatskih ljudi, intelektu vj981231t 5020 29 eg se u hrvatskoj dodirnete čezne za razvojem. dakako, ne smatram kako je hrvatska totalitarna država, već društvo n n139_01 15341 30 e ući u koaliciju s vidom bogdanovićem i ostalom oporbom. smatram da se nitko neće usuditi sam vladati u dubrovniku n145_05 13231 31 teru. »ne, to nije to. mrzim se klanjati na pozornici. to smatram najsramotnijom tradicijom na svijetu. nije potrebn somen 56737 32 spunjena očekivanja i opravdane prigovore organizatorima, smatram da interliber ima smisla i da mu mi nakladnici svo vj981114k 7754 33 određenog pravnog isustva, kao i povjesničarskog znanja, smatram da mogu procijeniti kakvi su dokazi koje imam prot n138_06 6472 34 se nikada ovdje nije ni pojavio. i što to najamnik želi? smatram da je papa dovoljno mudar i dovoljno mlad da sam, n159_09 19163 35 boraviti. rekao mi je zabrinuto kako ima loš predosjećaj. smatram da su najkvalitetniji hrvatski igrači pružili manj n148_16 17705 36 anak i dobro su im poznate teme o kojima smo razgovarali. smatram potrebnim još jednom naglasiti da izaslanstvo u či n146_r04 17633 37 upina teška, čekaju na teške utakmice s jugoslavijom, ali smatram da te utakmice treba shvatiti samo kao dvoboje koj vj981220s 13867 38 o je došlo "svježeg zraka" je drugo pitanje i trebalo bi, smatram, problematizirati što mislimo pod "svježim zrakom" me981223_v06 1929 39 an film, napokon održan je, eto, nekoliko godina kasnije. smatram da je za sve potrebno najmanje dvoje da bi se nešt n154_20 12419 40 e, pa i policiju i redovite organe gonjenja. kako sebe ne smatram tajkunom, nisam shvatio da se primjedba gospodina n154_11 22441 41 2">u svezi s aktualnim raspravama o pravosuđu u hrvatskoj smatram potrebnim istaknuti da bi eventualno ustrojavanje vj981203i 3732 42 ćom povlasticom u zadnjih deset godina, i u tom se smislu smatram čistim ratnim profiterom. — politiku smatram otrovom i loše je to što su političari postali ono n155_14 12809 49 mislim da je najteže živjeti u laži i prikrivanju istine. smatram da smo i mi ljudi kao i svi ostali. upravo zbog to n141_16 15025 50 irate li osnovati udrugu homoseksualaca?
da, jer smatram da je vrijeme da i ti ljudi budu prihvaćeni od zaj n141_16 19890 51 e 4-5 u opasnosti je postignuti ugled hrvatskog nogometa. smatram da je mikša dobar predsjednik hns-a, i ne vidim ra n153_12 20753 52 18 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 17 [2004] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol17/iss1/5 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/2e02-q527 functional domain of the croatian complementizer da 19 appendix c 30m corpus of contemporary croatian language (test version) 01.10.2002 19:06:56 corpus: 30m_test results of query: da click the source name to see the wider context ---------------------------------------------------------------------------> obodnijem prijevodu, protekcija...â«
⻞eliš kazati da se saulus-paulus, time, i po drugi put zaplotnjački oko f91lausic0 82406 1 le, a zrinski se să˘m sebi učini kao da je od stakla, kao da mu se udovi uleđeno pokreću, ohladnjeli do smrtne obamr f92stahuljak 505487 2 an zagreba već su ušle u službenu proceduru. ekštajn kaže da u razgovorima s ministrima matešom i šeparovićem nije s vj981227p 19342 3 skoči u pomoć u akciji suzbijanja ovih štetnika, pomislim da će i nas početi noću žderati, poput scena u filmovima s me980819_v01 2074 4 je odgovornosti predsjednika«.
mnogi će se prisjetiti da su u rujnu 1993. godine šestorica hrvatskih intelektual vj981120o 7515 5 određena psihoza, ako se zna da su tamo ubacivali bombe, da su prijetili, da su svećenike fizički maltretirali, da gk9634_23 2976 6 toga sjeđenja spremaju za nju. u svakom slučaju očito je da su jedno u drugo zaljubljeni, što se vidi i po gorljivi delorko 110843 7 anu. mi, dakako, tu situaciju želimo promijeniti. ne zato da bismo i mi došli u situaciju da imamo prednosti kao i c vj981113s 12200 8 , a 1990. za podsekretara za državnu sigurnost. zato kaže da ga, doduše, nije proganjao bivši režim, ali da 'nije bi vj9811171 15351 9 dovoljan i sretan, ali nastavi nešto mrmljati, tek toliko da ne iznevjeri svoju prirodu: -ohladit će se ručak... brucic 5175 10 ) te desetak bolesničkih kolica. danas bi ih, zbog sumnje da kreveti nisu tamo gdje im je mjesto (?), želio prebroji me980819_v02 3451 11 as je i do sada u niz navrata prevario svojim prijetnjama da će napustiti izbornički posao. ali što će biti s hrvats n136_01 18679 12 natog vaterpolista vjeke kobeščaka, optužila je ivu radić da je pobijedila zahvaljujući namještanju rezultata. praši n145_24 4795 13 znih stranačkih činovnika. a znao sam kroz dosta indicija da je predsjednik donio tu odluku. on je čak jednom od vis n153_01 31185 14 anstvom hrvati u bih stimuliraju se da napuštaju bih tako da prijeti opasnost da sami sebe pobijede, da ostanu bez s n141_k09 7374 15 rihvatili demokratska pravila: zato su i dobili mogućnost da postave svog premijera
nije pljaš f92stahuljak 563644 19 a« dosta toga ponavlja. ipak, organizatoru treba priznati da, za razliku od ugostitelja, svaki njihov godišnji skup vj981102o 12750 20 ticu. zadovoljstvo mu se prelije licem. rekao sam da dobro gađaš, samo ti konj ne valja reče frankopan i p f92stahuljak 187719 21 jeme tražio pravu osobu. tako su prošla već tri tjedna, a da odgovor nije stigao u županiju. no i kad stigne, hoćemo me960612_v04 2608 22 onda mi on pozivno mahne rukom i meni se odjednom objavi da ja, samo li se priberem, umijem i mogu po vodi hodati, f91lausic0 52112 23 -šapućem sebi, a vidim jasno da se ta svinjska glava ne da: ta, u meni tako jasno živi to sneno oko, oko prazno i segedin 352459 24 omažu. cijela moja obitelj zahvaljuje." bog nas poziva da u tijeku došašća budemo blagovjesnici ubogima, da iscje gk9650_k01 4738 25 arstvo, naša književnost sve što nam je dalo puno pravo da i u minulim stoljećima, kao i sada, zahtijevamo da bude gotovac 230600 26 u glasova, ili se radi o nečem drugom? više je nego čudno da ni račan ni gotovac, niti drugi stranački čelnici, nisu n130_05 11702 27 u srijedu, s jednim glasom protiv takve odluke. to znači da bi oko 150 tisuća umirovljenika kojima je obustavljena vj981217p 17401 28 ve reći... ali kad sam ti već ovo rekel... bilo je i toga da sam imal drogu za prodaju. znal sam si uzeti 10-15 gram me980826_c02 9247 29 dstavnicima međunarodne zajednice neprestano objašnjavati da se bez kažnjavanja glavnih zločinaca i svih zločinaca, n138_k09 9292 30 i poviješću, pokušavamo, i na to imamo pravo, učiniti sve da, potpuno ravnopravno, bez ikakve majorizacije ili bilo n151_09 21690 31 a i sam obred vjenčanja bude jednostavan i dostojanstven, da se u nj razborito unose drevni svadbeni običaji različi gk9623_07 2323 32 e/blueball.gif" width=12 height=12> kakvu terapiju?! znaš da to košta, a toliko novaca mama i ja nemamo. a da si hod me980826_c02 10916 33 osrće. šute. nitko ne plače. ni djeca. samo pate. osjećam da me peku tabani. krvare mi stopala. bole i žare, ali pod stojsav_dnev 81197 34 a gumeni čep na stolu. pustite čeličnu kuglicu kroz cijev da padne na čep i odskoči. izračunajte stupanj korisnosti fizika 22390 35 ne strane, među nizom vila na obroncima jurjevske, gotovo da zrači svojom mondrijanskom strukturom pročelja vila mei maroevic_zg 142538 36 pture. na tom putu, u toj radnji ima toliko raznolikosti, da se konfiguracija mora »čitati« kao da je misao ili misa dragojevic_c 22051 37 su ti dječaci i djevojčice nekoliko sati bili zatvoreni i da se u toj navali možda iskazala stiješnjenost, stegnuti dragojevic_c 100738 38 ogim indoeuropskim jezicima) znači bilo kakav prijem ili, da kažemo, koktel -na malo višoj razini. u australiji, m nick_diploma 83348 39 adore čiji engleski često nije bio bolji od njegova, tako da nije imao komplekse prema njima. na večere koje je rije nick_diploma 191103 40 nama ne škodi. njegov je sadržaj u pozitivnome značenju: da se čini dobro, a ne samo da se izbjegava zlo. očito, po pozaic_cuvar 148581 41 telefonirati njoj, reći kako je uljanicu konačno upalio i da je sve kako treba, i da joj se ništa nije dogodilo. odu rehak_preobr 55672 42 ljudima dan kako bi mogli prikriti svoje misli; tvrdio je da je richelieu varao, ali nikada nije lagao, dok metterni nick_diploma 258213 43 gnuća -prema tome i transplantacija, trebala ići za tim da čovjeku omoguće ljudskije, čovjeka dostojnije postojanj pozaic_cuvar 208545 44 pa da ga je neka granata, neki geler usmrtio, čini mi se da bih lakše prihvatio --, nastavi marijan, -ali ovako.. rehak_preobr 184827 45 iz društva otići tada kada je najugodnije. nije potrebno da odlazak gostiju izgleda kao stampedo, dopušten je i čak nick_diploma 367966 46 ljučuje prva dva sadržaja i dodaje novi: ubojstvo čovjeka da bi ga se konačno oslobodilo od svake boli, patnje i nei pozaic_cuvar 287357 47 h razaranja, otišao je u luku kako bi definitivno utvrdio da je jedrilica izgorjela. i zaista, na mjestu gdje je bil rehak_preobr 125936 48 u svom obmanjivanju i pokazivanju nestida ide tako daleko da svoje zalaganje za jugoslaviju '90. uspoređuje s tuđman me970430_m01 9120 53 oja nemaju potporu u realnoj sferi, gospodarstvu, ukazati da nešto može biti drugačije. stvari imaju svoju dinamiku vj981227t 9188 54 19 grivic?ic?: functional domain of the croatian complementizer da published by cu scholar, 2004 colorado research in linguistics, volume 17 (2004) 20 i jednog 20-godišnjaka. nadamo se da će naše pisanje i pisanje akademika babića biti doprino gk9630_57 3544 69 pobjeđujem! pobjeđujem i ovo »in medias res«. vi mislite da se varam! ne, ne, moj slatki gosparu, ja bih i danas bi segedin 380576 70 vnoga zbora, slovenskoga parlamenta, što je bilo osnovano da bi se ispitale i ustanovile sve okolnosti i posljedice vj981106p 15542 71 o snimio fotoreporter jednoga tamošnjeg tjednika. čini se da je i ovoga puta zakazala vlast, jer je ona (a ne netko vj981202g 19096 72 al: kako komentirate vojni dio sporazuma? da bi se netko mogao služiti metodom hagioterapije, potreb gk9627_f01 1532 77 sredne priprave na svetu godina 2000. stoga bi bilo dobro da se na prvu nedjelju došašća u svim našim crkvama navije gk9648_22 9507 78 i vrhovnom sudu, a vrhovni sud ovaj put nije donio odluku da obrvan nema pravo žalbe nego da je njegova žalba neosno n132_07 8850 79 istri su ocijenili kao neutemeljen, jednako kao i tvrdnju da njemačka izvozi više na tržište eu-a nego ostale članic vj981209t 14196 80 ržavali od kritike dok se eu stvarao, i to sve u interesu da ideja europskog ujedinjenja uspije. međutim, sada, nako vj990115g 10577 81 vnodušno prema životinjama, a da je papa nedavno izjavio " da kršćani moraju promijeniti svoj odnos prema životinjama gk9652_k02 4864 82 i, koji su u jutarnjim izdanjima dnevnih novina pročitali da su brena i boba u zagrebu, čekali već od 10 sati ujutro n134_05 5934 83 nskom dvojbom: komu od dvojice svojih najbližih suradnika da vjeruje u aferi oko dubrovačke banke, hrvoju šariniću i n128_07 14239 84 ništvu sfrj prevladao optimizam, pa se razmišljalo i tome da se tita na daljnji oporavak prebaci u njegovu rezidenci n133_04 21454 85 za osmišljavanje suvremene »duhovne igre«, već i težnjom da se suptilnost modernih književnih postupaka približi ko zmegac_b 228001 86 era. 'pričekaj malo, da ipak tu stanemo', poče on i onda upita marijana: 'rekao f90ivin0 134955 99 edan problem muči predsjednika tuđmana. on, naime, smatra da granić i valentić ne podupiru dovoljno iskreno njegovu n129_10 21570 100 mir šoljić pokušao u den haagu nagovoriti zatočene hrvate da javno podupru hdz bih na rujanskim izborima i ograde se n146_r04 11372 101 tv-a, stidljivo progovorilo tek iza prognoze vremena. kao da ksenija urličić s time nema baš nikakve veze i da su za n153_04 14326 102 je u ponedeljak čelnik kluba hdz-a vladimir šeks dodavši da su razgovori s dr. tuđmanom zasad samo u sferi špekulac vj9812221 12197 103 amjenika, a u ono doba nije ni ispitivao, jer se smatralo da za te poslove još nije spreman. uglavnom je odlazio u i f90ivin0 67545 104 nog trga sa željom, zapravo potrebom da bar malo prošeće, da i stvarno doživi prestanak zatvorske skučenosti. usput f90ivin0 198911 105 to »zovete«, ali već je bilo kasno: riječ je odletjela... da, a ipak sam bio svjestan kako postoji razlog zašto sam segedin 28648 106 20 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 17 [2004] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol17/iss1/5 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/2e02-q527 functional domain of the croatian complementizer da 21 references bibovic�, ljiljana. 1984. ‘the structural possibilities of serbo-croatian related to the english structure-adjective + prepositional sentential compliment.’ linguistica 24, 369-382. bibovic�, ljiljana. 1976. ‘the infinitive as subject in english and serbo-croatian.’ yugoslav-serbo-croatian-english-contrastive-project-reports 10, 3-19. craig, colette. 1975. ‘on serbo-croatian complement sentences.’ yugoslav-serbocroatian-english-contrastive-project-studies 6, 148-164. croatian national corpus. url: http://www.hnk.ffzg.hr/cnc.htm, december 2002. darden, bill j. 1997. ‘on the prehistory of the slavic nonindicative.’ balkanistica 10, 8194. frajzyngier, zygmunt. 1996. grammaticalization of the complex sentences: a case study in chadic. amsterdam: benjamins. frajzyngier, zygmunt. 1995. ‘a functional theory of complementizers.’ in joan bybee and suzanne fleischman eds., modality in grammar and discourse. amsterdam: benjamins, 475-502. frajzyngier, zygmunt. 1991. ‘the de dicto domain in language.’ approaches to grammaticalization. ed. by elizabeth c. traugott and bernd heine. volume i amsterdam & philadelphia: benjamins, 219-251. frajzyngier, zygmunt and robert jasperson. 1991. ‘that clauses and other complements.’ lingua.83.133-153. frajzyngier, zygmunt and erin shay (m.s.). systems interaction in language. jakab, edit. 1999. ‘is pro really necessary? a minimalist approach to infinitival and subjunctive(-like) constructions in serbo-croatian and hungarian.’ in dziwirek, coats &vakareliyska, eds., formal approaches to slavic linguistics: the seattle meeting 1998, 205-224. ann arbor: michigan slavic publications. krapova, i. and v. petkov. 1999. ‘subjunctive complements, null subjects, and case checking in bulgarian.’ in dziwirek, coats, & vakareliyska, eds., formal approaches to slavic linguistics: the seattle meeting 1998, 265-287. ann arbor: michigan slavic publications. maldzhieve, vyara. 1990. ‘characterization of the da-construction in bulgarian regarding its functional equivalents in slavic languages.’ contrastive-linguistics vol. 14, no. 4-5, 213-217. mihaljevic�, milan. 1997. ‘yes-no questions in croatian church slavonic.’ suvremena lingvisitka 23, 1-2(43-44), 191-209. nazor, anica. 1973. ‘slavic syntax. selected works from slavic studies.’ slovo 23, 222225. penchev, iordan. 1982. ‘the conjunctions da and za da ‘in order to’ in standard bulgarian.’ international journal of slavic linguistics and poetics: studies for edward stankiewicz on his 60th birthday 17 november 1980, 347-353. progovac, ljiljana. 1993. ‘locality of subjunctive-like complements in serbo-croatian.’ journal of slavic linguistics 1, 116-144. 21 grivic?ic?: functional domain of the croatian complementizer da published by cu scholar, 2004 colorado research in linguistics, volume 17 (2004) 22 vrzic�, zvjezdana. 1996. ‘categorical status of the serbo-croatian “modal” da.’ in j. toman, ed., annual workshop on formal approaches to slavic linguistics: the college park meeting 1994, 291-312. ann arbor: michigan slavic publications. 22 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 17 [2004] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol17/iss1/5 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/2e02-q527 colorado research in linguistics 6-2004 functional domain of the croatian complementizer da tamara grivičić recommended citation microsoft word paper_grivicic.doc approaches to "context" within conversation analysis colorado research in linguistics. june 2009. vol. 22. boulder: university of colorado. © 2009 by [author full names as they appear in the author line]. approaches to "context" within conversation analysis joshua raclaw university of colorado this paper examines the use of "context" as both a participant’s and an analyst’s resource with conversation analytic (ca) research. the discussion focuses on the production and definition of context within two branches of ca, "traditional ca" and "institutional ca". the discussion argues against a single, monolithic understanding of "context" as the term is often used within the ca literature, instead highlighting the various ways that the term is used and understood by analysts working across the different branches of ca. the paper ultimately calls for further reflexive discussions of analytic practice among analysts, similar to those seen in other areas of sociocultural linguistic research. 1. introduction the concept of context has been a critical one within sociocultural linguistics. the varied approaches to the study of language and social interaction – linguistic, anthropological, sociological, and otherwise – each entail the particulars for how the analyst defines the context in which language is produced. goodwin and duranti (1992) note the import of the term within the field of pragmatics (citing morris 1938; carnap 1942; bar-hillel 1954; gazdar 1979; ochs 1979; levinson 1983; and leech 1983), anthropological and ethnographic studies of language use (citing malinowski 1923, 1934; jakobson 1960; gumperz and hymes 1972; hymes 1972, 1974; and bauman and sherzer 1974), and quantitative and variationist sociolinguistics (citing labov 1966, 1972a, and 1972b). 1 to this list we can add a number of frameworks for doing socially-oriented discourse analysis, including conversation analysis (ca), critical discourse analysis (cda), and discursive psychology (dp). these last three frameworks served as the focus for a critical dialogue on the nature of context in socially-oriented discourse analysis (billig 1999a, 1999b; schegloff 1997, 1998, 1999a, 1999b; wetherell 1998). as the papers by billig, schegloff, and wetherell exemplify, the conversation analytic understanding of context is often framed as contentious (and a "methodological limitation") outside of scholarship in the ca tradition. such criticisms have emerged within pragmatics (e.g. searle 1986), linguistic anthropology (e.g. blommaert 2001, 2006; briggs 1997; bucholtz 2003), sociology (e.g. cicourel 1981; lynch 1985), 1 ervin-tripp (1996) further unpacks the varied approaches to "context" seen in sociolinguistics. 1 raclaw: approaches to "context" within conversation analysis published by cu scholar, 2010 colorado research in linguistics, volume 22 (2009) 2 and a range of scholarship in other traditions of socially-oriented discourse analysis. these critical discussions highlight a widespread understanding of ca's view of context as monolithic. in this paper i argue that it is not, however, enough to refer simply to a "conversation analytic" approach to context. rather, it is necessary to refer instead to the numerous approaches to context seen across the different branches of ca that have emerged over the past two decades. 2 the issue of context in ca is compounded by the fact that there are many varied aspects of an interaction that analysts understand as being elements of its context: the sequential organization of a singular utterance, the social milieu of the larger interaction (e.g. its institutional setting), and the membership categories and identities ascribed moment-by-moment to participants and others are all potentially relevant to the interactants (and thus, to the analyst). though allowing for the relevance of each of these elements to an interaction, the majority of work within "traditional" sequential ca has focused primarily on only the first, the organization of an utterance in relation to the elements of talk occurring immediately prior. however, other branches of ca – those conducting analyses of interactions within both institutional and cross-cultural settings, work that examines the interactional aspects of social organization in children's peer groups, and conversation analytic research informed and motivated by a feminist politic – have adopted an analytic focus that also demonstrates the relevance of such contextual elements as cultural practices and epistemology, or sociological categories like gender or race. common among each of these branches of conversation analytic research is the analyst's understanding of each as a local, demonstrably relevant participant's resource rather than an a priori construct. it is not only the scope of the contextual elements that varies across these branches of ca, however. analysts working in branches other than "traditional" ca often frame both their data and findings as sensitive to ethnographic issues and/or to discipline-specific epistemologies (such as the knowledge that dominant gender and sexual identities operate hegemonically, and are thus not oriented to by participants in quite the same way as other sociological categories and identities). as i have argued elsewhere (raclaw 2010), traditional ca may also 2 scholarship over the past two decades has increasingly made space for variations in analytic practice and scope within ca, with two named varieties in particular emerging as distinct enterprises: "institutional ca" and "feminist ca". i use the not-entirely satisfactory term "traditional ca" to refer to work in sequential ca that is more often referred to simply as "ca" (given its broad association with the framework as a whole), of the kind that heritage (1997) contrasts with institutional ca. this branch of ca has elsewhere been referred to as "core," "classic," or even "schegloffian" ca (e.g. blommaert 2001; mcilvenny 2002; speer 2001). to these "branches" i also consider what i term "cross-cultural ca" and "peer organizational ca", though work within these two areas is not generally organized as distinct, named varieties of ca (though see moerman 1988). while not discussed within this paper, it is also worth noting the existence of what might be termed a sixth branch of ca, conversation analytic work falling under the purview of interactional linguistics (e.g. ochs, schegloff & thompson 1996). i delineate the five fields under discussion here largely to highlight the differences in scope, and in the reflexive treatment of context, seen across the larger field of ca. 2 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 22 [2010] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol22/iss1/1 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/qbrs-0970 approaches to "context" within conversation analysis 3 make use of what we might alternately refer to as "ethnographic," "member," or "common-sense" knowledge as an analyst's resource, though this practice has yet to receive the same reflexive discussion it has in other branches of ca. 3 the use of these forms of knowledge is highly visible in institutional, cross-cultural, and peer organizational ca in large part because they emerge from settings outside of the analyst's own; while the use of discipline-specific epistemologies is highly visible in feminist ca due to the influence of feminist theory and methodology. it may be that the similar forms of knowledge deployed in traditional ca is far less marked a resource simply because it stems from a mundane source, and because the move to reflexivity seen elsewhere in sociology (even within em) has yet to reach conversation analysis as a whole. one aim of this paper is to work towards clarifying exactly what is meant by the concept of "context" within conversation analytic research; in particular, how analyst approaches to context may vary in some ways, while remaining constant in others, across the different branches of ca outlined above. a secondary goal is to contribute to the dialogue concerning those ways that context is analyzed and invoked – and how the analyst's understanding of context is informed – across these separate branches of conversation analytic research. due to the relatively limited space allotted to this article, the discussion that follows is limited to the two largest branches of conversation analysis: traditional ca and institutional ca. the present discussion is not the first to suggest that context may be approached differently by the analyst working within these different branches of ca. hammersley (2003, p. 774) notes that "the question of the role of ‘ethnographic context’ has arisen in a particularly sharp form in debates about the study of ‘institutional talk’ and about the relationship between ca and feminism. on the first, see boden and zimmerman (1991), drew and heritage (1992), hak (1995) and psathas (1995); on the second, see edley (2001), kitzinger (2000), speer (1999, 2001a, 2001b) and stokoe and smithson (2001)." other work, such as maynard (2003) and arminen (2005), devote entire chapters to discussing the necessity for institutional ca to engage with ethnographic practices normally seen as beyond the purview of traditional ca. 3 two points of terminological clarification: what is understood in the ca and em literature as constituting "common sense knowledge" (for example, knowledge of membership categories and their predicates) is not always clearly analogous with other forms of what has been termed "member knowledge," and i do not wish to conflate these terms. however, as smithson and stokoe (2001) have noted, the forms of natively gleaned member knowledge drawn upon by conversation analysts are often referred to by either term within the literature without clear distinctions made between them. additionally, in keeping with the use of the term "ethnographic knowledge" by conversation analysts such as maynard (2003) and schegloff (1987, 1992, 2006) to refer to this same arena of knowledge, i do not wish to conflate ethnographic knowledge with ethnographic methods (e.g. fieldwork, participant observation). rather, i hope to point out the similarities in the epistemological foundations of work done in institutional, cross-cultural, and peer organizational ca (which may well involve ethnographic fieldwork) and traditional ca (which almost universally does not). 3 raclaw: approaches to "context" within conversation analysis published by cu scholar, 2010 colorado research in linguistics, volume 22 (2009) 4 my discussion will begin with a look at the foundations for the development of ca-specific understandings of context within traditional ca, which provides a basis for many of the methodological similarities seen among other branches. 2. foundational research: ca and the ethnomethodological project one starting point for these foundations is in the sociological framework of ethnomethodology (em) developed by harold garfinkel, which had a profound influence on the early work of harvey sacks. 4 while ca and em comprise separate research programs that have increasingly diverged since sacks' passing in 1975, the ethnomethodological influence on the development of ca (heritage 1984), and on the contemporary "social theory" of ca (heritage 2008), is well cited. hammersley (2003) frames one particular aspect of ca's approach to context as one of its "basic methodological commitments … a refusal to attribute to particular categories of actor distinctive, substantive psychosocial features – ones that are relatively stable across time and/or social context – as a basis for explaining their behaviour," and traces this commitment back to an influence of the ethnomethodological framework. hammersley sees garfinkel's insistence that em employ rigorous, scientifically-sound analytic methods as being a clear influence on ca's understanding of context as a locally established rather than static or a priori aspect of an interaction (seen, for example, in the ubiquitous analyst's question in ca, "why that now" (schegloff and sacks 1973, 299)). this priority to establish scientific rigor within sociology is echoed in sacks' own writings on ca methodology, particularly in how he advocates that analysts approach their data "without bringing any problems to it" and engage in the practice of "unmotivated looking" (1984). (we see this too in more recent conversation analytic practices, such as investigating talk for evidence of the "next-turn proof procedure" or the strict avoidance of "theoretical imperialism" within the analysis itself.) schegloff (1992a) also argues that this shared stance between em and ca on analytic rigor influenced conversation analytic understandings of context. however, schegloff additionally notes a divergence reflected in the explicitly "anti-positivist and anti-science" stance that garfinkel set forth for ethnomethodology, while "sacks sought to ground the undertaking in which he was engaging in the very fact of the existence of science" (p. xxxii). hammersley (2003) also argues that the phenomenological influence on ethnomethodology helped to shape conversation analytic understandings of context. this is a point taken up most clearly by arminen (2005), who notes that 4 there are, of course, other potential influences on sacks' early work that may have contributed to the development of ca's distinct understanding of context, such as the symbolic interactionism pioneered by goffman (e.g. 1959). however, a full review of these earlier influences (those external to "ca proper") is outside the scope of the present paper. 4 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 22 [2010] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol22/iss1/1 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/qbrs-0970 approaches to "context" within conversation analysis 5 the phenomenological concept of "bracketing" – "where the question of what the world ‘really’ is is closed off and the inquiry instead concerns the appearance of the world and how it is constructed as it appears to us" – contributed to how "ca inquiries suspend knowledge about the external context of interaction, and study the way participants make the context relevant for themselves in the course of an ongoing interaction. in this way, ca studies the endogenous construction of context … unselective and unmotivated data exploration allows the analyst to notice features and possible phenomena without a theory-drive pre-selection of the focus" (9). 3. foundational research: sacks and membership categorization analysis similar to the distinctions made between ca and em, lines are also often drawn between the analytic frameworks of membership categorization analysis (mca) and sequential ca (despite both emerging from the writings and lectures of harvey sacks). the present discussion largely maintains this division as set forth in schegloff (1992a, 2007), lerner and kitzinger (2007), and elsewhere in the literature. however, arminen's (2005) dissenting view is also worth noting in light of its relevance to understandings of context within ca: "this strict division and the whole notion of ‘pure’ ca (as distinct from mca) is misleading and inadvisable. moreover, separating talk from its context goes against all the basic ideas of ca, according to which the context-renewing properties of talk amount to the endogenous construction of context, as parties orient to the ‘context’ through the management of talk-in-interaction as an observable part of doing social actions in the context" (5). for arminen, then, membership categories (and their corresponding devices and predicates) are (perhaps necessarily) part of the context of an interaction as experienced by the participants; to work within the framework of sequential ca while excluding the analysis of these categories is thus a contradictory effort. the tenets of mca also have much to do with how context has been approached in institutional ca, since institutional identities like doctor/patient or teacher/student can have a significant bearing on the sequential organization of interaction. the division between mca and sequential ca has much of its roots in schegloff's (1992a) concern with the "culturalist tenor" (p. xliv) of sacks' spring 1966 lectures (sacks 1992), from which the groundwork on mca first emerged, and his argument that sacks abandoned the study of "category-bound activities" in his later work because of their "promiscuous" (p. xlii) analytic use. however, sacks' understanding of membership categories as emergent aspects of the context of an interaction is still a vital one within ca, particularly in work on (primarily institutional) settings where the demonstrable relevance of these 5 raclaw: approaches to "context" within conversation analysis published by cu scholar, 2010 colorado research in linguistics, volume 22 (2009) 6 categories is itself a tool for creating and establishing context. 5 for example, watson (1997) notes that speaker categories such as "caller" and "called" are made relevant throughout the course of an interaction, and that membership within one of these categories entails specific category-bound rights and obligations (e.g. called speaks first, caller is category-bound to initiate a preclosing). watson takes this argument so far as to argue that mca is truly inseparable from ca, as "categorical organization is intrinsic to...turn ordering" (p. 16), and "the procedural apparatus sacks formulated in his early work concerning mcds (membership category devices) can work to explicate the operation of turn-generated categories" (p. 30). in watson's view, then, the tenets of mca necessarily inform conversation analytic understandings of context. 4. understanding context within ca beyond sacks' solely-authored work, numerous other early writings within the ca canon contributed to the core understandings of context within the framework. of these ideas, one of the most profound and influential has been the understanding that the organization of talk is both "context-sensitive" and "context-free." these terms convey the view that a particular spate of talk is necessarily shaped by its local, immediately surrounding context, yet the practices employed within that spate of talk can be investigated across different social and interactional contexts. schegloff (1972) provides perhaps the first published description of talk-in-interaction as context-sensitive, noting that "to say that interaction is context-sensitive is to say that interactants are context-sensitive" (emphasis in original). here, as in much of his future work, schegloff argues that context is as much of a sense-making tool for participants as it is for analysts, and that ca must therefore investigate "how participants analyze context and use the product of their analysis in producing their interaction" (p. 115). the understanding that interaction also exhibits a context-free operation emerged later in sacks, schegloff, and jefferson (1974), which describes the turntaking mechanism of talk-in-interaction as both "context-free and capable of extraordinary context-sensitivity" (p. 699). the authors expand on the situatedness of talk within a locally-determined context, describing how "conversation is always 'situated' – it always comes out of, and is part of, some 5 it should be noted the "promiscuous" nature of mca has been challenged by a number of analyst's who support its use alongside sequential ca. silverman's (1998) review of mca research argues that this promiscuity and risk is not "inevitable," especially when mca is combined with conversation analytic work on sequential organization. additionally, watson (1997) argues against schegloff's claim that sacks' later work shifted away from membership categorization in favor of sequence organization, claiming that this view "shows an overly-selective attention [to] the empirical topics of sacks' work rather than its general conceptual commitments" (2). 6 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 22 [2010] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol22/iss1/1 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/qbrs-0970 approaches to "context" within conversation analysis 7 real sets of circumstances of its participants." however, they also highlight the import of the context-free operation of interaction in noting how "it is undesirable to have to know or characterize such situations for particular conversations in order to investigate them" (p. 699). though a crucially important aspect of the conversation analytic framework, this "context-free" characterization of talk is also frequently misread by critics of ca, who cite it as evidence that the framework pointedly ignores the context of an interaction (especially what is often described as "macro" levels of context, e.g. the relevance of gender or the operation of power). 6 however, as arminen (2005) notes, "every subsequent conversational move renews our understanding of the prior move so that each turn both orients to a preceding context but also recreates the context anew. therefore, a purely formal context-free description of a conversation remains impossible. instead, conversation analysis amounts to discerning the participants’ intersubjective understandings of the course of conversation as it evolves moment by moment, as the participants orient themselves to the social action" (2). arminen’s discussion also argues for the critical import of context for doing ca, as we saw above. this argument leads to yet another aspect of conversation analytic understandings of context, that talk-in-interaction is both shaped by the context of an interaction, and ultimately works to (re)produce the context of the interaction. in this sense, talk is what heritage (1984) describes as "doubly contextual" in being both "context-shaped" and "context-renewing" (p. 242). heritage later expands on these descriptions by noting that "it is context-shaped because its contribution to an ongoing sequence of actions cannot be adequately understood except by reference to the context in which it participates … this contextual aspect of utterances is significant both because speakers routinely draw upon it as a resource in designing their utterance and also because, correspondingly, hearers must also draw upon the local contexts of utterances in order to make adequate sense of what is said. … communication action is also context-renewing. since every current utterance will itself form the immediate context for some next action in a sequence, it will inevitably contribute to the contextual framework in terms of which the next action will be understood. in this sense, the context of a next action is inevitably renewed with each current action. moreover each current action will, by the same token, function to renew (i.e. maintain, adjust or alter) any broader or more generally prevailing sense of context which is the object of the participants’ orientations and actions" (1989, 22-23, emphasis in original). within these early descriptions, heritage formally defines "context" both in a "micro" sense, insofar as it consists of the localized environment in which the 6 see the series of papers by billig, schegloff, and wetherell described above for a comprehensive discussion of this critique. 7 raclaw: approaches to "context" within conversation analysis published by cu scholar, 2010 colorado research in linguistics, volume 22 (2009) 8 interaction occurs, as well as at a more "macro" level, what he describes as "the ‘larger’ environment of activity within which that configuration analysably occurs" (p. 22-23). in later work, heritage (1997) does away with these two levels of distinction to provide a definition of context that is far more reliant on the sequential organization of an interaction: "sequences of actions are a major part of what we mean by context, that the meaning of an action is heavily shaped by the sequence of previous actions from which it emerges, and that social context is a dynamically created thing that is expressed in and through the sequential organization of interaction" (p. 223). across all branches of ca, context is seen as encompassing those immediately local aspects of an interaction that are produced within it (rather than as an external influence to it). in this sense, context is a constantly renewable and alterable resource for participants. 5. relevance and orientation because context is a participant's resource, its relevance to the talk underway – and speaker orientations to this relevance – should be demonstrable within an analysis. schegloff has made this point clear in much of his writing, though three papers in particular (1987, 1991, 1992b) are often cited as explicitly laying out a "program" for how to analyze aspects of context within sequential ca. 7 as he notes in the first of these, it is only through close attention to these orientations and displays of relevance that the analyst determines what aspects of the interaction hold meaning for the participants themselves, and it is these aspects of the interaction that are of particular interest to ca: "this form of analysis takes seriously the relevance of the fact that the interactions we are examining were produced by the parties for one another and were designed, at least in part, by reference to a set of features of the interlocutors, the setting, and so on, that are relevant for the participants. the fact that these interactions are structured and progressively restructured by the participants’ orientations does not serve…to make "objective" analysis irrelevant or impossible; it is precisely the parties’ relevances, orientations, and thereby-informed action which it is our interest to describe…under the control of the details of the interaction in which they are realized. it is what the action, interaction, field of action are to the parties that poses our task of analysis" (3, emphasis in original). this type of demonstrable relevance is what schegloff (1991) terms "procedural relevance." schegloff notes in this paper that everything said within a particular context does not necessarily attend to identities potentially mobilized by 7 this is not to say that schegloff's other work doesn't explicitly touch upon the issue of context within ca, of course. schegloff (1988), for example, lays out some of the finer points of ca's approach throughout most of its conclusion, and more recently, schegloff (2009) does much of the same in presenting a critical review of some of two chapters from sidnell (2009). 8 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 22 [2010] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol22/iss1/1 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/qbrs-0970 approaches to "context" within conversation analysis 9 that context in a procedurally relevant way. for example, the institutional identity of a police officer who has self-identified as such to a caller, while talking to them on a police line, may not be relevant to a caller solely by virtue of either their selfidentification or the institutional setting of the call. rather, the identity is made relevant through the activity of the talk itself. schegloff introduces the "paradox of proximateness" as a means for guiding analysts to procedurally relevant aspects of the talk: "if it is to be argued that some legal, organizational or social environment underlies the participants’ organizing some occasion of talk-ininteraction in some particular way, then either one can show the details in the talk which that argument allows us to notice, and which in return supply the demonstrable warrant for the claim by showing the relevant presence of the sociolegal context in the talk; or one cannot point to such detail" (64, emphasis in original). schegloff (1992b) also draws on the paradox of proximateness in comparing conversation analytic understandings of context to those understandings seen throughout much of the social sciences. in the latter case, context is often divided into what he terms "external" (or "distal") forms and "intra-interactional" (or "proximate") forms. outside of ca, such "macro-level" sociological categories as gender, sexuality, social class, race, and ethnicity are generally seen as "external" aspects of context, as are the various "institutional matrices within which interaction occurs (the legal order, economic or market order, etc.) as well as its ecological, regional, national, and cultural settings" (1992b, p. 195). all of these contextual features then "shape" the course of an interaction from outside of it. within ca, however, all relevant context can be termed "intra-interactional," given speakers' demonstrable orientation to it within the course of the interaction itself. the paradox of proximateness problematizes the above microand macro-level distinctions, as what we generally think of as "external" context must be shown to be "intra-interactionally" relevant in order to analyze it, at which point (due to being "intra-interactionally" relevant) its "external" status is moot. similarly, if a potential aspect of context cannot be shown to be "intra-interactionally" relevant, then it should be seen as "external" to the interaction (i.e. no longer worth the analyst's consideration). schegloff's discussion also reinforces the need for analysts to attend to procedural relevance, as it allows ca to "show from the details of the talk or other conduct in the materials that we are analyzing that those aspects of the scene are what the parties are oriented to" (p. 110). reiterating the idea that context is ultimately a participant's resource, schegloff (1992b) argues that for an outside party – like the analyst – to make sense of this context, they must attend only to that which participants may be shown to attend to. that participants demonstrably orient to relevant aspects of the talk can be seen in a "next-turn proof procedure" (hutchby and wooffitt 1998) by which a next turn at talk is seen to show a speaker's orientation to a prior turn as accomplishing a particular action. within a question-answer sequence, for example, that a question receives an answer is evidence of the second speaker's 9 raclaw: approaches to "context" within conversation analysis published by cu scholar, 2010 colorado research in linguistics, volume 22 (2009) 10 orientation to the action of the first as being a question. within a "traditional" understanding of ca, then, speakers will similarly orient to the relevance of aspects of the talk such as its institutional character, or the relevance of gender to a particular sequence or spate of talk. however, the methods used by members to display orientation to contextual elements outside of sequential organization are not all recognizable through the next-turn proof procedure, nor has the traditional ca literature made clear what types of interactional practices signal orientations to other elements of context. the other branches of ca have thus made the identification of such practices a necessary analytic focus. 6. traditional ca and institutional ca ca has, since its beginning, noted that interaction within institutional settings differs in significant ways from everyday conversation. sacks frequently made reference to this fact in his lectures, while papers such as sacks, schegloff and jefferson (1974) and schegloff, jefferson and sacks (1977) note the existence of different systems of both turn-taking and repair within institutional forms of talk. it was not until atkinson and drew’s (1979) order in court that this variation was explored in detail rather than being simply mentioned in passing, however, with drew and heritage's (1992) talk at work following as one of the first books to entirely showcase key studies of institutional interaction from a conversation analytic perspective. heritage (1997) notes that the difference between institutional ca and traditional ca goes beyond a difference in the setting of the interactions being investigated, however: "there are, therefore, at least two kinds of conversation analytic research going on today, and though they overlap in various ways, they are distinct in focus. the first examines the social institution of interaction as an entity in its own right; the second studies the management of social institutions in interaction" (p. 223). in heritage's view, then, traditional ca is primarily concerned with goffman's (1983) concept of the "institutional order of interaction," and the way that talk-in-interaction both reflects and constitutes this order. institutional ca, on the other hand, finds itself more concerned with how particular institutions – medical, educational, legal, or otherwise – exist as relevant entities that shape and inform social interaction, and are both constructed and renewed by the talk itself. for example, ten have's (1991) institutional ca study of doctor-patient interaction was concerned far less with the individual and context-free practices for turn-taking employed by the participants, instead focusing on how the "asymmetry" in turn-taking that so frequently occurred between doctor and patient could be shown to be constituted in the interaction itself (by way of its institutional tenor) rather than as some pre-existing "social fact." 7. the invocation of institutionality 10 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 22 [2010] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol22/iss1/1 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/qbrs-0970 approaches to "context" within conversation analysis 11 both traditional and institutional ca rely on the concept of procedural relevance as a means for determining the context of an interaction. the question of how to show the institutional character of an interaction to be demonstrably relevant to it has thus been a decades-long endeavor among analysts. drew and heritage (1992) note that given the "constraints" of a framework that treats context as locally and intra-interactionally produced, "analysts who wish to depict the distinctively 'institutional' character of some stretch of talk cannot be satisfied with showing that institutional talk exhibits aggregates and/or distributions of actions that are distinctive from ordinary conversation. they must rather demonstrate that the participants constructed their conduct over its course – turn by responsive turn – so as progressively to constitute … the occasion of their talk, together with their own social roles in it, as having some distinctively institutional character" (21). the avoidance of some a priori, assumed "institutionality" of an interaction is thus a priority for analysts working within institutional ca, who maynard and clayman (1991) claim carry this commitment so far as to be "concerned that using terms such as 'doctor's office', 'courtroom', 'police department', 'school room', and the like, to characterize settings ... can obscure much of what occurs within those settings" (p. 406-407). maynard and clayman argue here that this is the reason why conversation analysts interested in institutional interaction avoid relying on ethnographic knowledge about an institutional setting, and rely instead on participant orientations to these aspects of the context. (however, the avoidance of ethnographic data is a constraint that much work in institutional ca has adhered to less and less over the years). 8 yet the question remains as to what practices are used by participants to demonstrably orient to the institutional context of an interaction; and as schegloff (1992b) asks, "how does the fact that the talk is being conducted in some setting (e.g. 'the hospital') issue in any consequence for the shape, form, trajectory, content, or character of the interaction that the parties conduct? and what is the mechanism by which the context-so-understood has determinate consequences for the talk?" (111). drew and heritage (1992) answer this question in noting three ways that talk becomes "institutional" in the course of an interaction, each of which are procedurally relevant to participants. the first of these entails an orientation by the participants (or at least one participant) to some goal, task, or identity related to the particular institution being relevantly invoked. this "goal orientation" is, as heritage (1997) notes, a means for displaying not only the relevant institutionality of the interaction but also the "institutionally relevant identities" of the participants, e.g. doctor and patient (p. 163). the second means for introducing the institutionality of an interaction involves special constraints on the types of 8 this is especially true of maynard's work (e.g. 1984, 2003), despite the prior quote hinting at the contrary 11 raclaw: approaches to "context" within conversation analysis published by cu scholar, 2010 colorado research in linguistics, volume 22 (2009) 12 contributions that are allowable to each participant over the course of the interaction, which may change from institutional task to institutional task. for example, in formal institutional settings (atkinson 1982) such as the courtroom or classroom, "there are specific reductions in the range of options and opportunities for action that are characteristic in conversation and they often involve specializations and respecifications of the interactional activities that remain (drew and heritage 1992: p. 26). the third marker of institutionality is the establishment of an institutionally-specific interpretive framework for the interaction, what drew and heritage refer to as "inferential frameworks and procedures" (p. 22). for example, the embodiment of a "professional" identity such as "doctor" or "judge" also entails the avoidance of expressing surprise, sympathy, agreement, or affiliation (the typically preferred responses in mundane conversational interaction) in response to the talk of "lay participants." the interpretation of these typically-disaligning actions as appropriate, unmarked responses for a participant embodying an institutional identity works to make relevant the institutional character of both the identity and the interaction itself. heritage (1997) notes that these three characteristics of institutional talk are most fruitfully probed for by the analyst in six arenas of interaction: "turn-taking organization, overall structural organization of the interaction, sequence organization, turn design, lexical choices, epistemological and other forms of symmetry" (p. 164). as these three criteria for institutionality show, then, the institutional context of an interaction is not something that exists prior to it, but is rather what heritage (1984) refers to as "ultimately and accountably talked into being" (p. 290). this idea of talking context into being is therefore much the same in institutional ca as it is in traditional ca, with heritage (1997) contrasting the approach to context in institutional ca with the aforementioned "bucket approach." as he notes, "it is fundamentally through interaction that context is built, invoked and managed, and that it is through interaction that institutional imperatives originating from outside the interaction are evidenced and made real and enforceable for the participants" (p. 163). heritage here gives an institution-specific example of this approach to context by way of an emergency call to the police, and describes the management of context as visible in the ways that participants "are managing their interaction as an ‘emergency call’ on a ‘policeable matter’. we want to see how the participants co-construct it as an emergency call, incrementally advance it turn by turn as an emergency call, and finally bring it off as having been an emergency call" (p. 163). as the discussion above shows, there is considerable variation between speaker practices across institutional and everyday forms of talk-in-interaction (for example, the constraints on what types of contributions are allowable to each participant within an interaction, or the institution-specific frames for interpretation utilized by the interactants). this variation is what heritage and greatbatch (1991) refer to as "contributing to a unique 'fingerprint' for each institutional form of interaction – the 'fingerprint' being comprised of a set of 12 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 22 [2010] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol22/iss1/1 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/qbrs-0970 approaches to "context" within conversation analysis 13 interactional practices differentiating each form both from other institutional forms and from the baseline of mundane conversational interaction itself" (p. 9596). it is thus participant orientations to the practices that comprise these "fingerprints" that make relevant an institutional context for the participants. however, an understanding of what comprises these fingerprints to begin with is something that may entail the acquisition of specialized forms of knowledge particular to an institutional setting. likewise, the ability of the analyst to recognize these practices as talking institutions into being would also require such expanded arenas of knowledge. there are numerous ways that participants talk institutional contexts into being that require access to these types of knowledge, as well as to particular "common-sense" understandings of the lifeworld of the participants. for example, heritage and sefi (1992) highlight the relevance of the next-turn proof procedure in showing how an utterance that may appear to be a casual observation – "he’s enjoying that isn’t he" – may elicit responses that reflect both the institutional tenor of the interaction and the division of labor among the responding participants. within this particular example, the observation is delivered by a health visitor to the parents of the baby that she is evaluating. the father of the child orients to the observational character of the health visitor's turn at talk and provides an aligning response ("yes, he certainly is"). the mother’s response, however, shows a notably different orientation ("he’s not hungry cus he’s just had ‘iz bottle"), and displays what the authors describe as a notable "defensiveness" as it rejects an unstated inference of the health visitor's remark: that the baby is chewing on something because he is hungry. the mother's turn at talk thus displays an orientation to one of the institutionally-ascribed goals of the health worker, to evaluate whether the needs of the child (e.g. being adequately fed) are being met. given the notably distinct orientations to the health worker's talk by the mother and father, the analysts conclude that yet another relevant aspect of the interaction (for analyst and participant alike) is the division of labor within the family, "in which the mother is treated as having the primary responsibility for her baby (reflected in her defensiveness), while the father, with less responsibility, can take a more relaxed and ‘innocent’ view of things" (heritage 1997: p. 232). notably, both the institutional task of the health worker and an awareness of the expectations of mothers within the familial division of labor – each of which contribute to the context of the interaction – make use of ethnographicallyoriented forms of knowledge and insights that are acknowledged far more frequently within institutional ca than traditional ca. this is not to say that traditional ca doesn't make similar use of the category predicates associated with other types of identities: orientations to familial roles can show up in dinner 13 raclaw: approaches to "context" within conversation analysis published by cu scholar, 2010 colorado research in linguistics, volume 22 (2009) 14 conversations, for example, where "mom" might have cooked the meal and may respond "defensively" to a criticism of the food. 9 in such a case, both the institutional task of the mother/cook and an awareness of the expectations of mothers within the familial division of labor can potentially contribute to the context of the interaction, just as in the example of the health worker described above. the use of ethnographically-oriented forms of knowledge and insights may thus be crucial to understanding the context-sensitive practices in operation even in traditional ca, particularly in single-case analyses where descriptions of context-free practices may be heavily reliant upon the analyst's understanding of context-sensitive practices. as mentioned earlier, however, traditional ca's general avoidance of framing either data or findings as sensitive to ethnographic issues leads to a perceivable difference between the analytic practices across traditional and institutional ca. another fruitful site for how the forms of knowledge discussed above may invoke an institutional context is a speaker's lexical choices. institution-specific uses of lexical items within institutional contexts were noticed early on by sacks, who notes the relevance of how the term "cop" is used to describe police officers in everyday conversation while the term ‘police officer’ is used while giving evidence in court (1979), or how members of organizations refer to themselves as "we" rather than "i" (1992). heritage (1997) echoes these findings by noting that "a clear way in which speakers orient to institutional tasks and contexts is through their selection of descriptive terms" (p. 173-174). to illustrate this point, he shows how the self-identification of a school employee in the opening sequence of a telephone call with a student's mother (by using a "last name + organizational identification" format rather than a more mundane "first + last name") allows the mother to "identify the phone call as a 'business call' and, specifically, a 'call about school business'" (p. 175). schegloff (1987) and (1992b) also draw upon the import of lexical choice in discussing how the "pointed use of a technical or vernacular idiom" (such as the use of "hematoma" rather than the lay term "bruise") makes relevant a form of knowledge or state of expertise specific to an institutional identity. such practices thus potentially display the relevance of that identity to the participants within a particular interaction. he here draws on cicourel (1987), who argues that technical medical terms "anchor within the interaction the relevance for the participants of the medical cast of the setting and of the participants...and invokes it within the interaction" (schegloff 1992b, p. 197). while schegloff notes that the analyst working in institutional ca would not simply claim the relevance of the institutional tenor of such an interaction based on "extrinsic ethnographic 9 of course, if we treat the family as an institution (a common understanding across the social sciences) then we see how "institutional identities" may become just as relevant to interactions at the dinner table as they are to interactions in the courtroom. 14 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 22 [2010] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol22/iss1/1 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/qbrs-0970 approaches to "context" within conversation analysis 15 grounds," he does note in a footnote within the 1992b paper that "ethnographic research may, of course, [be] necessary to enable the analyst to recognize the sense and import of such terms as display[ing] the relevance of some aspect of context, or to recognize that seemingly ordinary words have such an import, but the relevance of whatever has been learned through fieldwork (or in any other manner) must be warranted as relevant to the participants by reference to details of the conduct of the interaction" (223). that ca may need to be "informed" by the analyst's ethnographic practices, then, is something discussed far more openly within institutional ca than traditional ca. this lack of acknowledgement within traditional ca has contributed to the common understanding of traditional ca as being non-reliant on ethnographic (or "member's") forms of knowledge, as seen in arminen's (2005) claim that "ca studies do not generally rely on ethnographic knowledge, but the analysis of some institutional settings may require contextual knowledge in order to make sense of realms distinct from everyday life" (p. 1). maynard (2003) makes a contrasting point to this observation, however, arguing instead that traditional ca draws upon this same range of ethnographic information; the difference between traditional ca and institutional ca is only that the latter openly admits to the practice. as he argues, "ethnographic knowledge – an insider's understanding of terms, phrases, and courses of action – is something that ca regularly draws upon when displaying and analyzing a particular excerpt" (p. 74). these are points that throw into sharp relief one of the perceived distinctions between traditional ca and institutional ca: the acknowledgment that distinct forms of knowledge are employed by both participant and analyst in navigating and formulating the context of an interaction. arminen (2005), for example, notes that the traditional understanding of context as a demonstrably oriented-to feature of interaction "trades on the analyst’s taken-for-granted competence in presupposing an argument that formulates the context-relevant features of interaction to the object of scrutiny" (35). arminen claims that within sequential ca, there is the assumption that "an analyst is automatically competent to identify the context-relevant features of an interaction. … if one cannot point to the relevant presence of the ... context in the interaction, the problem may either be that the context is irrelevant for the accomplishment of that action or that the analyst’s argument has been inadequate and has not allowed us to notice the relevance of context" (p. 35-36, emphasis in original). arminen goes so far as to suggest that "if we are to study institutional interaction in its own right we have to revise schegloff's methodological policy" (p. 37). he supports this claim by drawing on an example of one of schegloff's (1991) critiques of zimmerman's (1984) study of emergency calls as overestimating the institutional relevance of the practices studied therein (the calltaker's use of an "interrogative series" of insertion sequences), thereby missing "the potentially general relevance of insertions to sequences of this type" (1991: 59). however, as arminen notes, schegloff's critique is couched in what heritage 15 raclaw: approaches to "context" within conversation analysis published by cu scholar, 2010 colorado research in linguistics, volume 22 (2009) 16 (1997) refers to as the different goals of traditional and institutional ca: "the social institution of interaction as an entity in its own right," and "the management of social institutions in interaction," respectively. as arminen states, "when the task of the analysis is not only to describe sequential patterns of interaction, but to identify and explicate the ways in which interactional activities contribute to the accomplishment of institutional tasks, then the analyst's ability to connect the interactional patterns to the institutional activities becomes essential and makes relevant the analyst's context-sensitive understanding of the institutional tasks" (2005, 37). whereas the earlier sacks, schegloff, and jefferson (1974) placed a priority on the context-free practices of talk (in their previously mentioned claim that "it is undesirable to have to know or characterize such situations for particular conversations in order to investigate them"), arminen here suggests that attention to those context-sensitive aspects of an interaction may be far more heavily weighted within institutional ca. however, if we return to the earlier example of a dinner conversation in which the family-institutional role "mom" is made relevant to the ongoing tasks and actions of the interaction, we can see how context-sensitive aspects of an interaction may be similarly relevant to work within traditional ca. 10 in addition to the traditional-institutional differences mentioned above, arminen also argues that particular institutional fields and professions may have their own sets of beliefs and theories of social interaction (what peräkylä and vehviläinen 2003 refer to as "interaction ideologies" or "stocks of professional knowledge,") and that these too form potential aspects of context that analysts need to be aware of to paint a full picture of the context of an interaction. arminen thus leaves open the potential that similar types of ideologies exist in contextually relevant ways to participants in non-institutional settings, an argument that has been frequently seen elsewhere within sociocultural linguistics, though has yet to be a relevant aspect of traditional ca. 8. concluding remarks though recent scholarship in ca has recognized the existence of such named "sub-varieties" as institutional ca and feminist ca, relatively little work has explored the variation in analytic practice and scope seen across these branches in any detail. as the discussion above illustrates, the notion of "context" within ca provides one fruitful area for comparison. though focused here on comparing only traditional ca and institutional ca, work within each of the branches 10 from this, it might be suggested that "everyday life" is treatable as a kind of institution, or perhaps even a variety of them. 16 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 22 [2010] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol22/iss1/1 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/qbrs-0970 approaches to "context" within conversation analysis 17 outside of traditional ca – in engaging with a broader understanding of context that still seeks to align with the participants' own, endogenous understandings of their everyday interactions – problematizes the lack of concern within traditional ca to consider the analyst's own ethnographic or member's epistemologies as potentially relevant to the analysis. one direction for the future of the field may thus lie in bridging this gap between the analytic approaches adopted across the different branches of ca. as this paper also illustrates, there is (and should not be) no single means for doing ca or for approaching the concept of "context" within it, despite the occasional use of such intimidating modifiers as "schegloffian" to refer to the "traditional" branch of the framework. rather, ca may be best understood as a methodological approach with core tenets, such as the understanding that context is produced locally and intersubjectively as an interactional resource that is procedurally relevant to the surrounding talk. 17 raclaw: approaches to "context" within conversation analysis published by cu scholar, 2010 colorado research in linguistics, volume 22 (2009) 18 references arminen, ilkka. 2005. institutional interaction: studies of talk at work. aldershot: ashgate. atkinson, j. maxwell and paul drew. 1979. order in court: the organisation of verbal interaction in judicial settings. london: macmillan. bar-hillel, yehoshua. 1954. "indexical expressions." mind 63: 359–379. bauman, richard and joel sherzer. 1974. explorations in the ethnography of speaking. cambridge: cambridge university press. billig, michael. 1999. "whose terms? whose ordinariness? rhetoric and ideology in conversation analysis." discourse & society 10: 543-58. billig, michael. 1999. "conversation analysis and the claims of naivety." discourse & society 10: 572-76. blommaert, jan. 2001. "context is/as critique." critique of anthropology 21(1): 13–32 boden, d. and zimmerman, d.h. (eds.) .1991. talk and social structure. cambridge: polity press. briggs, charles. 1997. "notes on a 'confession': on the construction of gender, sexuality, and violence in an infanticide case." pragmatics 7(4): 519–46. bucholtz, mary. 2003. "theories of discourse as theories of gender: discourse analysis in language and gender studies." in janet holmes and miriam meyerhoff (eds.) the handbook of language and gender. oxford, blackwell: 43-68. carnap, rudolf. 1942. introduction to semantics. cambridge, mass: harvard university press. cicourel, aaron v. 1981. "notes on the integration of microand macro-levels of analysis." in karin knorr-cetina and aaron v. cicourel (eds.) advances in social theory and methodology: toward an integration of microand macrosociologies. routledge, boston: 51-80. cicourel, aaron v. 1987. "the interpenetration of communicative contexts: examples from medical encounters." social psychology quarterly 50: 217226. (revised version in a. duranti and c. goodwin (eds.) (1992) rethinking context: language as an interactive phenomenon, cambridge university press: 291-310. drew, paul and john heritage. 1992. "analyzing talk at work: an introduction." in paul drew and john heritage (eds.), talk at work, cambridge, cambridge university press: 3-65. edley, nigel. 2001. "conversation analysis, discursive psychology and the study of ideology: a response to susan speer." feminism and psychology 11(1): 136–40. 18 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 22 [2010] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol22/iss1/1 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/qbrs-0970 approaches to "context" within conversation analysis 19 garfinkel, harold, harvey sacks. 1970. "on formal structures of practical action." in john c mckinney & e.a. tiryakian (eds.) theoretical sociology: perspectives and developments. new york, appleton-century-crofts: 338-66 gazdar, gerald. 1979. pragmatics: implicature, presupposition, and logical form. london: academic press. goffman, erving. 1959. the presentation of self in everyday life. new york, doubleday, anchor books. goffman, erving. 1983. "the interaction order." american sociological review 48: 1-17. goodwin, marjorie harness. 1990. he-said-she-said: talk as social organization among black children. bloomington, in: indiana university press. gumperz, john j. and dell hymes. 1972. directions in sociolinguistics: the ethnography of communication. new york: holt, rinehard and winston. hak, tony. 1995. "ethnomethodology and the institutional context." human studies 18: 109–37. hammersley, martin. 2003. "conversation analysis and discourse analysis: methods or paradigms?" discourse & society 14(6): 751-781. have, paul ten. 1990. "methodological issues in conversation analysis." bulletin de méthodologie sociologique 27 (june): 23-51 have, paul ten. 1991. "talk and institution: a reconsideration of the 'asymmetry' of doctor patient interaction." in deirdre boden & don h. zimmerman (eds.) talk and social structure: studies in ethnomethodology and conversation analysis. cambridge, polity press: 138-63. retrieved from http://www.paultenhave.nl/mica.htm heritage, john. 1984. garfinkel and ethnomethodology. cambridge: polity press heritage, john. 1997. "conversation analysis and institutional talk: analysing data." in david silverman (ed.) qualitative research: theory, method and practice. london, sage: 161-82. heritage, john. 2008. "conversation analysis as social theory." in bryan turner (ed.) the new blackwell companion to social theory. oxford, blackwell: 300-320. heritage, john and david greatbatch. 1991. "on the institutional character of institutional talk: the case of news interviews." in deirdre boden, don h. zimmerman (eds.) talk and social structure: studies in ethnomethodology and conversation analysis. cambridge, polity press: 93-137 heritage, john, sue sefi. 1992. "dilemmas of advice: aspects of the delivery and reception of advice in interactions between health visitors and first time mothers." in paul drew and john heritage (eds.) talk at work. cambridge, cambridge university press: 359-419. hutchby, ian and robin wooffitt. 1998. conversation analysis: principles, practices and applications. blackwell publishers inc. hymes, dell. 1972. "models of the interaction of language and social life." in gumperz and hymes (eds.) directions in sociolinguistics: the ethnography of communication. new york, holt, rinehart and winston: 35-71 19 raclaw: approaches to "context" within conversation analysis published by cu scholar, 2010 colorado research in linguistics, volume 22 (2009) 20 hymes, dell. 1974. foundations in sociolinguistics: an ethnographic approach. philadelphia: university of pennsylvania press. jakobson, roman. 1960. "concluding statements: linguistics and poetics." in style in language (ed.) thomas a. sebeok. cambridge, mit press: 350-377. kitzinger, celia. 2000. "doing feminist conversation analysis." feminism and psychology 10(2): 163–93. labov, william. 1966. the social stratification of english in new york city. washington, d.c., center for applied linguistics. labov, william. 1972a. language in the inner city: studies in the black english vernacular. philadelphia, university of pennsylvania press. labov, william. 1972b. sociolinguistic patterns. philadelphia, university of pennsylvania press. leech, geoffrey n. 1983. principles of pragmatics. london: longman. levinson, stephen. 1983. pragmatics. cambridge: cambridge university press. lerner, gene h., celia kitzinger. 2007. "introduction: person-reference in conversation analytic research." discourse studies 9: 427-432. lynch, michael. 1985. art and artifact in laboratory science: a study of shop work and shop talk. london: routledge & kegan paul malinowski, bronislaw. 1923. "the problem of meaning in primitive languages, in the meaning of meaning." in c.k. ogden and i.a. richards (eds.) new york, harcourt, brace and world, inc.: 296-336 malinowski, bronislaw. 1935. coral gardens and their magic, 2 vols. london: allen and unwin. maynard, douglas w. 2003. bad news, good news: conversational order in everyday talk and clinical settings. chicago, university of chicago press maynard, douglas w. and steven e. clayman. 1991. "the diversity of ethnomethodology." annual review of sociology 17: 385-418. moerman, michael. 1988. talking culture: ethnography and conversational analysis. philadelphia: university of pennsylvania press morris, c.w. 1938. "foundations of the theory of signs." in o. neuerath, r. carnap, and c. morris (eds.) international encyclopedia of unified science. chicago: university of chicago press: 77-138. ochs, elinor. 1979. "what child language can contribute to pragmatics." in e. ochs & b. schieffelin (eds.) developmental pragmatics. new york: academic press: 1-17. ochs, elinor, emanuel schegloff, and sandy thompson. 1996. interaction and grammar. cambridge: cambridge university press. peräkylä anssi, sanna vehviläinen. 2003. "conversation analysis and the professional stocks of interactional knowledge." discourse & society 14(6): 727-50 psathas, george. 1995. "'talk and social structure' and 'studies at work'." human studies 18: 139–55. 20 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 22 [2010] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol22/iss1/1 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/qbrs-0970 approaches to "context" within conversation analysis 21 raclaw, joshua. 2010. "member knowledge and ethnographic insight: the relevance of analyst knowledge in doing conversation analysis." clic conference, ucla: may 8, 2010. sacks, harvey. 1979. "hotrodder: a revolutionary category." in george psathas (ed.) everyday language: studies in ethnomethodology. new york, irvington: 7-14 sacks, harvey. 1992. lectures on conversation. 2 vols. edited by gail jefferson with introductions by emanuel a. schegloff. oxford, basil blackwell. sacks, harvey, emanuel a. schegloff, and gail jefferson. 1974. "a simplest systematics for the organization of turn taking for conversation." language 50: 696-735. schegloff, emanuel a. 1972. "notes on a conversational practice: formulating place." in david sudnow (ed.). studies in social interaction. new york, free press: 75-119. schegloff, emanuel a. 1987. "between macro and micro: contexts and other connections." in j. alexander, et al. (eds.) the micro-macro link. berkeley and los angeles, university of california press: 207-34. schegloff, emanuel a. 1988. "discourse as an interactional achievement ii: an exercise in conversation analysis." in: d. tannen (ed.) linguistics in context: connecting observation and understanding. norwood, n.j., ablex. schegloff, emanuel a. 1991. "reflections on talk and social structure." in: boden, deirdre, don h. zimmerman, eds. talk and social structure: studies in ethnomethodology and conversation analysis. cambridge: polity press: 4470. schegloff, emanuel a. 1992a. "introduction." in h. sacks, lectures on conversation. 2 vols. edited by gail jefferson with introductions by emanuel a. schegloff. oxford: basil blackwell. schegloff, emanuel a. 1992b. "in another context." in a. duranti and c. goodwin (eds.) rethinking context: language as an interactive phenomenon. cambridge, cambridge university press: 193-227 schegloff, emanuel a. 1997. "whose text? whose context?" discourse & society 8: 165-87. schegloff, emanuel a. 1998. "reply to wetherell." discourse & society 9: 41316. schegloff, emanuel a. 1999. "'schegloff’s texts' as 'billig’s data': a critical reply." discourse & society 10: 558-72 schegloff, emanuel a. 1999. "naivety vs. sophistication or discipline vs. selfindulgence: a rejoinder to billig." discourse & society 10: 577-82. schegloff, emanuel a. 2002. "conversation analysis, then and now." plenary address for the inaugural session of the section-in-formation on ethnomethodology and conversation analysis of the american sociological association, chicago, august 19, 2002. schegloff, emanuel a. 2007. "a tutorial on membership categorization." journal of pragmatics 39: 462-82 21 raclaw: approaches to "context" within conversation analysis published by cu scholar, 2010 colorado research in linguistics, volume 22 (2009) 22 schegloff, emanuel a. 2009. "one perspective on conversation analysis: comparative perspectives." in jack sidnell (ed.) conversation analysis: comparative perspectives. cambridge: cambridge university press: 357-406 schegloff, emanuel a. and harvey sacks. 1973. "opening up closings." semiotica 8: 289-327. schegloff, emanuel a., gail jefferson, harvey sacks. 1977. "the preference for self-correction in the organization of repair in conversation." language 53: 361-82. searle, john. 1986. "introductory essay; notes on conversation." in d. ellis and w. donahue (eds.) contemporary issues in language and discourse processes. hillsdale, nj, lawrence erlbaum associates: 7-19. silverman, david. 1998. harvey sacks: social science and conversation analysis. oxford: oxford university press. speer, susan. 1999. "feminism and conversation analysis: an oxymoron?" feminism and psychology 9(4): 471–478. speer, susan. 2001a. "reconsidering the concept of hegemonic masculinity: discursive psychology, conversation analysis and participants’ orientations." feminism and psychology 11(1): 107–35. speer, susan. 2001b. "participants’ orientations, ideology and the ontological status of hegemonic masculinity: a rejoinder to nigel edley." feminism and psychology 11(1): 141–4. stokoe, elizabeth h. and janet smithson. 2001. "making gender relevant: conversation analysis and gender categories in interaction." discourse & society 12: 217–44. watson, rod. 1997. "some general reflections on ‘categorization’ and ‘sequence’ in the analysis of conversation." in hester, s., peter eglin (eds.) culture in action: studies in membership categorization analysis. washington, d.c., university press of america: 49-76. wetherell, m. 1998. "positioning and interpretative repertoires: conversation analysis and poststructuralism in dialogue." discourse & society 9: 387-412 zimmerman, don h. 1984 "talk and its occasion: the case of calling the police." in d. shiffren (ed.) meaning, form and use in context: linguistic applications. washington, d.c., georgetown university press: 210-28 22 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 22 [2010] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol22/iss1/1 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/qbrs-0970 colorado research in linguistics 6-2009 approaches to "context" within conversation analysis joshua raclaw recommended citation cril style sheet “code switching” in sociocultural linguistics colorado research in linguistics. june 2006. vol. 19. boulder: university of colorado. © 2006 by chad nilep. “code switching” in sociocultural linguistics chad nilep university of colorado, boulder this paper reviews a brief portion of the literature on code switching in sociology, linguistic anthropology, and sociolinguistics, and suggests a definition of the term for sociocultural analysis. code switching is defined as the practice of selecting or altering linguistic elements so as to contextualize talk in interaction. this contextualization may relate to local discourse practices, such as turn selection or various forms of bracketing, or it may make relevant information beyond the current exchange, including knowledge of society and diverse identities. introduction the term code switching (or, as it is sometimes written, code-switching or codeswitching)1 is broadly discussed and used in linguistics and a variety of related fields. a search of the linguistics and language behavior abstracts database in 2005 shows more than 1,800 articles on the subject published in virtually every branch of linguistics. however, despite this ubiquity – or perhaps in part because of it – scholars do not seem to share a definition of the term. this is perhaps inevitable, given the different concerns of formal linguists, psycholinguists, sociolinguists, philosophers, anthropologists, etc. this paper will attempt to survey the use of the term code switching in sociocultural linguistics and suggest useful definitions for sociocultural work. since code switching is studied from so many perspectives, this paper will necessarily seem to omit important elements of the literature. much of the work labeled “code switching” is interested in syntactic or morphosyntactic constraints on language alternation (e.g. poplack 1980; sankoff and poplack 1981; joshi 1985; di sciullo and williams 1987; belazi et al. 1994; halmari 1997 inter alia). alternately, studies of language acquisition, second language acquisition, and language learning use the term code switching to describe either bilingual speakers’ or language learners’ cognitive linguistic abilities, or to describe classroom or learner practices involving the use of more than one language (e.g. romaine 1989; cenoz and genesee 2001; fotos 2001, inter alia). these and other studies seem to use code as a synonym for language variety. alvarez-cáccamo 1 my personal preference is to spell code switching as two words, with white space between them, a practice i will generally follow throughout this paper. original spelling will be preserved in quotations and when paraphrasing scholars who routinely use an alternate form. 1 nilep: “code switching” in sociocultural linguistics published by cu scholar, 2006 colorado research in linguistics, volume 19 (2006) 2 (2000) argues that this equation may obscure certain interactional functions of such alternation. practically all work on “code-switching,” or changing codes, has been based on a strict identification between the notions of “code” and “linguistic variety,” be that a language, dialect, style, or prosodic register. however, this structural focus fails to convincingly explain certain conversational phenomena relative to the relevance or significance (or lack of relevance) of alternations between contrasting varieties. [alvarez-cáccamo 2000:112; my translation] certainly, the study of language alternation has been fruitful over the past several decades. the identification of various constraints, though sometimes controversial, has inspired a great deal of work in syntax, morphology, and phonology. a structural focus has been similarly constructive for production models (e.g. azuma 1991) or as evidence for grammatical theory (e.g. macswann 2000; jake, myers-scotton and gross 2002). by ignoring questions of function or meaning, though, this structural focus fails to answer basic questions of why switching occurs.2 auer (1984) warns, “grammatical restrictions on codeswitching are but necessary conditions” (2); they are not sufficient to describe the reason for or effect of a particular switch. if linguists regard code switching simply as a product of a grammatical system, and not as a practice of individual speakers, they may produce esoteric analyses that have little importance outside the study of linguistics per se, what sapir called “a tradition that threatens to become scholastic when not vitalized by interests which lie beyond the formal interest in language itself” (1929:213). this paper is thus positioned within the discipline of sociocultural linguistics, an emerging (or one might say, revitalized) approach to linguistics that looks beyond formal interests, to the social and cultural functions and meanings of language use. periodically over the last century, linguists have proposed to bring their own studies closer to other fields of social inquiry. in 1929, edward sapir urged linguists to move beyond diachronic and formal analyses for their own sake and to “become aware of what their science may mean for the interpretation of human conduct in general” (1929:207). he suggested that anthropology, sociology, psychology, philosophy and social science generally would be enriched by drawing on the methodologies as well as the findings of linguistic research. he also exhorted linguists to consider language within its broader social setting. 2 woolard (2004) suggests that the basic question should be not why speakers make use of the various forms available to them, but why speakers would not make use of all available forms. thus she suggests, “it could be argued that linguists, with their focus on constraints against rather than motivations for codeswitching, do ask this alternative question” (91). 2 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 19 [2006] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol19/iss1/1 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/hnq4-jv62 “code switching” in sociocultural linguistics 3 it is peculiarly important that linguists, who are often accused, and accused justly, of failure to look beyond the pretty patterns of their subject matter, should become aware of what their science may mean for the interpretation of human conduct in general. whether they like it or not, they must become increasingly concerned with the many anthropological, sociological, and psychological problems which invade the field of language. [sapir 1929:214] sapir was not alone in his hopes for a more socially engaged linguistics. indeed the development of sociolinguistics and psycholinguistics during the 1930s-1950s suggests that, at least for some linguists, social interaction and human cognition were as important as the forms and structures of language itself. nonetheless, by the 1960s some scholars once again felt the need to argue for a more socially engaged linguistics. in a special issue of american anthropologist, hymes (1964) lamented that the socially integrated linguistics sapir had called for was disappearing. hymes and others worried that new formal approaches, as well as the push for linguistics as an autonomous field, threatened to once again isolate linguists. at the same time, though, the growth of ethnolinguistics and sociolinguistics offered a venue for the socially engaged linguistics sapir had called for four decades earlier. four more decades have passed, and once again scholars are calling for a revitalization of socially and culturally oriented linguistic analysis. bucholtz and hall (2005) position their own work on language and identity as what they call sociocultural linguistics, “the broad interdisciplinary field concerned with the intersection of language, culture, and society” (5). just as hymes (1964) worried that linguistics had been bleached of its association with the study of human interaction in the wake of formalist studies, bucholtz and hall point out that sociolinguistics has in turn been narrowed to denote only specific types of study. sociocultural linguistics is thus suggested as a broader term, to include sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, discourse analysis, and sociology of language, as well as certain streams of social psychology, folklore studies, media studies, literary theory, and the philosophy of language. what follows is a brief survey of work on the topic of code switching within sociocultural linguistics, followed by my own suggested definition for the term. i hope this definition will serve as a basis and context for sociocultural discussions of the contextualizing functions of language alternation and modulation. 1. foundational studies 1.1. early studies: the emergence of code switching the history of code switching research in sociocultural linguistics is often dated from blom and gumperz’s (1972) “social meaning in linguistic structures” (e.g. myers-scotton 1993; rampton 1995; benson 2001). this work is certainly 3 nilep: “code switching” in sociocultural linguistics published by cu scholar, 2006 colorado research in linguistics, volume 19 (2006) 4 important and influential, not least for introducing the terms situational and metaphorical switching (see below). however, by 1972 the term “code switching” was well attested in the literature, and several studies in linguistic anthropology and sociolinguistics prefigured later code switching research in sociocultural linguistics. below, i survey some important early work. one of the earliest american studies in linguistic anthropology to deal with issues of language choice and code switching was george barker’s (1947) description of language use among mexican americans in tucson, arizona. in addition to his analysis of the economic relations, social networks, and social geography of tucson residents, barker sought to answer the question, “how does it happen, for example, that among bilinguals, the ancestral language will be used on one occasion and english on another, and that on certain occasions bilinguals will alternate, without apparent cause, from one language to another?” (1947:18586). barker suggested that interactions among family members or other intimates were most likely to be conducted in spanish, while formal talk with angloamericans was most likely to use the medium of english (even when all parties in the interaction were able to understand spanish). in less clearly defined situations, language choice was less fixed, and elements from each language could occur. further, barker proposed that younger people were more apt to use multiple languages in a single interaction than were their elders, and that the use of multiple varieties was constitutive of a local tucson identity. an important base for code switching research in the field of linguistics is uriel weinreich’s (1953) languages in contact. one of those inspired by weinreich’s book was hans vogt, whose “language contacts” (1954) is cited as the first article to use the term “code-switching” in the field of linguistics (alvarez-cáccamo 1998; benson 2001). weinreich was interested to describe the effect of language contact on languages, in addition to describing the activities of bilingual speech communities. he suggested that barker’s (1947) description of tucson was insufficient, since it listed only four speech situations: intimate, informal, formal, and inter-group discourse. weinreich argued that barker’s taxonomy was “insufficiently articulated” (87) to describe all potential organizations of bilingual speech events. he contended that anthropology should look to linguistics – particularly to structuralism – in order to properly describe the practice of bilingual speech, and the language acquisition/socialization process that takes place in bilingual communities. 4 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 19 [2006] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol19/iss1/1 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/hnq4-jv62 “code switching” in sociocultural linguistics 5 weinreich’s description of switching codes3 suggested that bilingual individuals possess two separate linguistic varieties, which (ideally) they employ on separate occasions. he suggested that frequent alternation, such as that barker described among tucson youth, was a product of poor parenting. regular code switchers, weinreich speculated, “in early childhood, were addressed by the same familiar interlocutors indiscriminately in both languages” (74).4 this indiscriminate use differed from the ideal bilingual of weinreich’s imagination. vogt’s (1954) article, though very much inspired by weinreich (1953), is much less apprehensive about bilingual code switching. code-switching in itself is perhaps not a linguistic phenomenon, but rather a psychological one, and its causes are obviously extralinguistic. but bilingualism is of great interest to the linguist because it is the condition of what has been called interference between languages. [vogt 1954:368] vogt assumes that code switching is not only natural, but common. he suggests that all languages – if not all language users – experience language contact, and that contact phenomena, including language alternation, are an important element of language change. the phenomenon of diglossia, first described by ferguson (1959), and later refined by fishman (1967), is another precursor to linguistic analyses of code switching. ferguson defined diglossia as the existence of a “divergent, highly codified” (1959:336) variety of language, which is used only in particular situations. although ferguson limited diglossia to varieties of the same language, fishman (1967) described similar functional divisions between unrelated languages. neither ferguson nor fishman cite examples of alternation between varieties within a single interaction or discourse. however, their descriptions of diglossia bear on the notion of situational switching. furthermore, fishman, citing an unpublished paper by blom and gumperz, mentions that varieties may be employed for humor or emphasis in a process of metaphorical switching (fishman 1967:36). thus, fishman’s account of diglossia at least seems to have been 3 the notion of “switching codes” appears to have been borrowed from information theory. weinreich refers to fano 1950, a paper also referenced by jakobson (1971a [1953], 1971b [1961]; jakobson and halle 1956) in his discussions of code switching. fuller exploration of these links is unfortunately beyond the scope of the present paper. see alvarez-cáccamo (1998, 2000) for more detail. 4 for discussion of the one-person-one-language ideology in language acquisition see romaine (1989). 5 nilep: “code switching” in sociocultural linguistics published by cu scholar, 2006 colorado research in linguistics, volume 19 (2006) 6 inspired by the nascent theory of situational and metaphorical switching (blom and gumperz 1972; see below).5 erving goffman (1979, 1981) described footing as a process in interaction similar to some functional descriptions of code switching. indeed, goffman cites several of gumperz’s descriptions of code switching as examples of footing. the difference he draws between his own theory of footing and gumperz’s and others’ descriptions of code switching is a formal one. whereas code switching (at least for goffman) necessarily includes a shift from one language to another,6 footing shifts may also be indicated in a variety of ways. even so, goffman writes, “for speakers, code switching is usually involved” in footing shifts, “and if not this then at least the sound markers that linguists study: pitch, volume, rhythm, stress, [or] tonal quality” (goffman 1981:128). for goffman, footing is the stance or positioning that an individual takes within an interaction. within a single interaction – even within a short span of talk – an individual can highlight any number of different roles. goffman suggests that changes in purpose, context, and participant role are common in interaction, and offers footing as a useful theory of the multiple positions taken by parties to talk in interaction. during the course of an interaction, an individual is likely to display a number of different stances; much of goffman’s discussion of footing is thus dedicated to switches in footing. alternating languages, among other linguistic markers, can serve to mark these shifts in context or role. 1.2. gumperz: code switching and contextualization perhaps no sociocultural linguist has been more influential in the study of code switching than john j. gumperz. his work on code switching and contextualization has been influential in the fields of sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, and the sociology of language. much of gumperz’s early work was carried out in northern india (gumperz 1958, 1961, 1964a, 1964b), focused on hindi and its range of dialects. gumperz 1958 describes three levels – village dialects, regional dialects, and standard hindi – each of which may be comprised of numerous varieties, and which serve different functions. gumperz writes, “most male residents, especially those who travel considerably, speak both the village and the regional dialect. the former is used at home and with other local 5 fishman also credits gumperz for expanding the notion of diglossia to include multilingual societies. however, studies fishman cites as diglossia were labeled by gumperz as code switching. 6 it is far from clear that early code switching research assumed such strict separation of languages. blom and gumperz 1972, for example, focus on two dialects of spoken norwegian. similarly, fishman states explicitly, “a theory [of diglossia] which tends to minimize the distinction between languages and varieties is desirable for several reasons” (1967:33). 6 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 19 [2006] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol19/iss1/1 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/hnq4-jv62 “code switching” in sociocultural linguistics 7 residents; the latter is employed with people from the outside” (1958:669). thus the relationship between speakers affects the choice of language variety. the idea that linguistic form is affected by setting and participants as well as topic was influenced in part by ervin-tripp (1964). her definitions of setting, topic, and function provide an important base for the work of gumperz and others. her study of bilingual japanese-born women living in the united states observed considerable correlation between language choice and discourse content, providing an example of “semantic” analysis of language choice that, while influential (e.g. myers-scotton 1993), would be criticized as only partial and approximate (e.g. auer 1984, 1995). in 1963, while working with the institute of sociology at oslo university, gumperz met jan-petter blom (dil 1971). together, blom and gumperz undertook a study of verbal behavior in hemnesberget, a small settlement of about 1,300 people in northern norway. gumperz (1964b) compared the use of two dialects, standard literary bokmål and local ranamål, in hemnesberget to the use of standard and local dialects of hindi in northern india. in each population, the local dialect appeared more frequently in interaction with neighbors, while the standard dialect was reserved for communication across “ritual barriers” (148) – barriers of caste, class, and village groupings in india, and of academic, administrative, or religious setting in norway. on the basis of these comparisons, gumperz argued that verbal repertoire is definable in social as well as linguistic terms. distinct repertoires are identified in terms of participants, setting, and topic, and then described in terms of phonological and morphological characteristics. blom and gumperz (1972) expanded the analysis of the functions of bokmål and ranamål in hemnesberget in what has come to be a touchstone in code switching research. they described bokmål and ranamål as distinct codes, though not distinct languages. the codes are distinguished by extensive though slight phonological, morphological and lexical differences, as well as native speakers’ belief that the two varieties are separate, and tendency to maintain that separation of form. blom and gumperz asked why, despite their substantial similarities, and the fact that most speakers commanded both varieties, bokmål and ranamål were largely maintained as separate. “the most reasonable assumption,” they argued, “is that the linguistic separateness between dialect and standard… is conditioned by social factors” (417). thus, each variety was seen as having low level differences in form, as well as somewhat distinct social functions. blom and gumperz posited that social events, defined in terms of participants, setting, and topic, “restrict the selection of linguistic variables” (421) in a manner that is somewhat analogous to syntactic or semantic restrictions. that is, in particular social situations, some linguistic forms may be more appropriate than others. among groups of men greeting each other in workshops along the fjord, the variety of language used differed from that used by teachers presenting text material in the public school, for example. it is important to recognize that 7 nilep: “code switching” in sociocultural linguistics published by cu scholar, 2006 colorado research in linguistics, volume 19 (2006) 8 different social events may, for example, involve the same participants in the same setting when the topic shifts. thus, teachers reported that they treated lecture versus discussion within a class as different events. while lectures were (according to teachers’ reports) delivered in the standard bokmål, a shift to the regional ranamål was used to encourage open debate. blom and gumperz call this type of shift, wherein a change in linguistic form represents a changed social setting, situational switching (424). the definition of metaphorical switching relies on the use of two language varieties within a single social setting. blom and gumperz describe interactions between clerks and residents in the community administration office wherein greetings take place in the local dialect, but business is transacted in the standard. in neither of these cases is there any significant change in definition of participants’ mutual rights and obligations. … the choice of either (r) or (b)… generates meanings which are quite similar to those conveyed by the alternation between ty and vy in the examples from russian literature cited by friedrich [1972]. we will use the term metaphorical switching for this phenomenon. [blom and gumperz 1972:425] blom and gumperz suggest that the use of local (r) phrases in a standard (b) conversation allude to other social events in which the participants may have been involved. this allusion lends some connotative meaning, such as confidentiality, to the current event, without changing the topic or goal. the notions of situational and metaphorical switching were taken up by a great many sociolinguists, linguistic anthropologists, etc. whereas blom and gumperz identified ranamål and bokmål as “codes in a repertoire” (414) and went to some pains to describe the formal differences between the two, many subsequent scholars have been content to equate code with language, and focus their analyses on either functional distributions, or the definition of situations. critics have pointed out that blom and gumperz (1972) provide scant detail of actual language use in their description of the verbal repertoire of hemnesberget. maehlum (1996) is particularly critical of the suggestion that bokmål and ranamål comprise separate codes. she argues that, in other rural areas of norway, local and standard dialects are not nearly as discrete as blom and gumperz suggest. thus, any suggestion that the verbal repertoire of norwegian speakers is comprised by two distinct codes is flawed. maehlum suggests that “local” and “standard” exist not as empirically identifiable, discrete codes, but “as idealized entities: it is their existence as norms which is important” (1996:753, original italics). further, certain phonological or lexical/morphological variables are particularly salient as indicators of particular dialects. this suggests that sociolinguistic variants are available as indexes of various social meanings, but that attempts to define particular codes and the situations in which they occur are problematic. it is perhaps preferable, then, to identify the formal signals of situation or identity available to a group of speakers, and the uses made of these 8 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 19 [2006] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol19/iss1/1 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/hnq4-jv62 “code switching” in sociocultural linguistics 9 signals, rather than to assume a priori that dialects, varieties, or languages will be equally salient across groups. more than many subsequent scholars, gumperz seems to have recognized the imperfection of the description of switching as either situational or metaphorical. by 1982, gumperz’s preferred terminology was conversational code switching. (the description and definition of conversational code switching was, however, largely in terms of metaphorical switching.) gumperz acknowledged that it is generally difficult for analysts to identify particular language choices as situational or metaphorical, and that native speakers generally have few intuitions about or recognition of their own conversational code switches. except in cases of diglossia, the association between linguistic form and settings, activities, or participants is highly variable, and rarely definable by static models. since conversational code switching is not amenable to intuitive methods7, and not strictly relatable to macro-sociological categories, gumperz (1982) argued that close analysis of brief spoken exchanges is necessary to identify and describe the function of code switching. on the basis of his analyses of several speech communities, gumperz suggested a list of six code switching functions which “holds across language situations” (75), but is “by no means exhaustive” (81). gumperz suggested quotation marking, addressee specification, interjection, reiteration, message qualification, and “personalization versus objectivization”8 (80) as common functions of conversational code switching. it is noteworthy that the functions of code switching that gumperz identifies are quite similar to the contextualization cues he describes elsewhere in the volume.9 code switching signals contextual information equivalent to what in monolingual settings is conveyed through prosody or other syntactic or lexical processes. it generates the presuppositions in terms of which the content of what is said is decoded. [gumperz 1982:98] like other contextualization cues, language alternation may provide a means for speakers to signal how utterances are to be interpreted—i.e. provide information beyond referential content. 7 gumperz (1982) points out that both subjects in hemnesberget and spanish-english bilinguals in the united states denied any alternation of linguistic form, but even after listening to recordings of themselves and “promising” to refrain from switching, persisted in code switching. 8 the category of “personalization versus objectivization” is somewhat fuzzy, but relates to illocutionary force, evidentiality, and speaker positioning. 9 gumperz, it may be said, makes the comparison in reverse. his discussion of contextualization conventions (gumperz 1982, chapter 6) says that they are “meaningful in the same sense that… the metaphorical code switching of chapter 4 [is] meaningful” (139). 9 nilep: “code switching” in sociocultural linguistics published by cu scholar, 2006 colorado research in linguistics, volume 19 (2006) 10 gumperz’s list of code switching functions inspired many subsequent scholars to refine or propose their own lists of functions (e.g. mcclure and mcclure 1988; romaine 1989; nishimura 1997; zentella 1997). however, as auer (1995) suggests, the functions suggested by such lists are often ill defined. the oft-cited category of reiteration, for example, fails to define exactly what is repeated, or why. lists also tend to combine linguistic structures (such as interjection) and pragmatic or conversational functions (message qualification, addressee specification) without attempting to trace the relationship between forms and functions. although such lists may provide a useful step in the understanding of conversational code switching, they are far from a satisfactory answer to the questions of why switching occurs as it does and what functions it serves in conversation. noting a number of studies that have, following gumperz (1982) suggested similar taxonomies of functions, bailey (2002) notes, “the ease with which such categories can be created – and discrepancies between the code switching taxonomies at which researchers have arrived – hint at the epistemological problems of such taxonomies” (77). code switching may serve any of a number of functions in a particular interaction, and a single turn at talk will likely have multiple effects. therefore, any finite list of functions will be more or less arbitrary. again, the suggestion is that it will be preferable to observe actual interaction, rather than starting from assumptions about the general effects of code switching. 2. sociocultural studies of code switching code switching scholarship within sociocultural linguistics may be divided into several (sometimes overlapping) streams. for the purposes of this paper, three broad areas will be discussed: the social psychological approach of myers-scotton’s markedness model (1983, 1993, 1998) and related work; analyses of identity and code choice; and studies of the effect of code switching on talk in interaction. this last category, largely based on conversation analysis, tends to view code switching behavior both as a method of organizing conversational exchange and as a way to make knowledge of the wider context in which conversation takes place relevant to an ongoing interaction. since this wider knowledge is usually analyzable at least partially in terms of identity, the separation between what i here call “interaction and code switching” versus “identity and code switching” is neither absolute nor unambiguous. indeed, the three-part division suggested here should be seen as one of analytic convenience, rather than significant theoretical import. 10 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 19 [2006] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol19/iss1/1 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/hnq4-jv62 “code switching” in sociocultural linguistics 11 2.1. myers-scotton’s markedness carol myers-scotton described her markedness model in the book social motivations for codeswitching: evidence from africa (1993).10 according to myers-scotton, each language in a multilingual community is associated with particular social roles, which she calls rights-and-obligations (ro) sets (84). by speaking a particular language, a participant signals her understanding of the current situation, and particularly her relevant role within the context. by using more than one language, speakers may initiate negotiation over relevant social roles. myers-scotton assumes that speakers must share, at least to some extent, an understanding of the social meanings of each available code. if no such norms existed, interlocutors would have no basis for understanding the significance of particular code choices. the markedness model is stated in the form of a principle and three maxims. the negotiation principle, modeled on grice’s (1975) cooperative principle, presents the theory’s central claim. choose the form of your conversational contribution such that it indexes the set of rights and obligations which you wish to be in force between the speaker and addressee for the current exchange. [myers-scotton 1993:113, original italics] three maxims follow from this principle. the unmarked choice maxim directs, “make your code choice the unmarked index of the unmarked ro set in talk exchanges when you wish to establish or affirm that ro set” (114). the marked choice maxim directs, “make a marked code choice…when you wish to establish a new ro set as unmarked for the current exchange” (131). the exploratory choice maxim states, “when an unmarked choice is not clear, use cs [code switching] to make alternate exploratory choices as candidates for an unmarked choice and thereby as an index of an ro set which you favor” (142). thus, the social meanings of language (code) choice, as well as the causes of alternation, are defined entirely in terms of participant rights and obligations. some critics of the markedness model argue that it relies too heavily on external knowledge, including assumptions about what speakers understand and believe. auer (1998) argues that it is possible to account for code switching behavior without appeal to the “conversation-external knowledge about language use” (10) required by the markedness model. of course, it is possible for the 10 myers-scotton discussed similar issues and developed the markedness model in code choice prior to the publication of this book (e.g. myers-scotton 1972, 1976, 1983). myers-scotton 1983 actually laid out the negotiation principle and six maxims, including the unmarked choice and exploratory choice maxims that figure in the refined model. however, as the fullest expression of the model, it is myers-scotton 1993 that has influenced much subsequent work. 11 nilep: “code switching” in sociocultural linguistics published by cu scholar, 2006 colorado research in linguistics, volume 19 (2006) 12 analyst to learn which languages are typically used in particular situations via, for example, ethnographic observation. furthermore, one can argue that speakers learn these norms as part of the language socialization process. a stronger criticism remains, however: the markedness model requires the analyst to make assumptions about each individual speaker’s knowledge and understanding of the speech situation. code switching is then explained on the basis of the analyst’s assumptions about speakers’ internal states (including shared judgments about rights and obligations) rather than its effects on the conversation at hand. further, auer (1995) points out that empirical studies have failed to reveal the strong correlations between particular languages and speech activities that the markedness model predicts. nevertheless, the markedness model is probably the most influential and most fully developed model of code switching motivations. myers-scotton continues to refine the model in ways that are consistent with current research on contact linguistics (myers-scotton 1998; myers-scotton and bolonyai 2001) and the so-called standard theory (chomsky 1965) of linguistics (myers-scotton and jake 2001; jake, myers-scotton and gross 2002). 2.2. identity and code switching whereas the markedness model and subsequent work seeks to provide a systematic and generalizable account of the process of code switching, much work in linguistic anthropology, sociolinguistics, and other areas of sociocultural linguistics provide interpretive and interactional understandings of code switching in particular contexts. although this school of sociocultural linguistics has produced its share of broad theoretical work (e.g. milroy and muysken 1995; alvarez-cáccamo 1998, 2000; woolard 2004), it is generally more closely tied to the observation of behavior in particular settings than to generally applicable explanations of linguistic capability. such studies stand as illustrations of the place of code switching in particular social and historical settings, rather than as models for a universal practice or potential (heller 1992). monica heller’s ethnographic observations and sociolinguistic study in quebec and ontario have led her to consider the economics of bilingualism11, and to view code switching as a political strategy (heller 1988b, 1992, 1995, 1999). since languages tend to become associated with idealized situations and groups of speakers, the use of multiple languages “permits people to say and do, indeed to be two or more things where normally a choice is expected” (heller 1988b:93). this strategic ambiguity allows anglophones in quebec, for example, to achieve a position in francophone controlled corporate culture, while still laying claim to an 11 nor is heller unique in brining such an economic perspective to discourse strategies. compare gal (1979, 1988), woolard (1985), hill (1985), et alia. 12 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 19 [2006] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol19/iss1/1 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/hnq4-jv62 “code switching” in sociocultural linguistics 13 anglophone identity, with its associated value on the international market. by uniting bourdieu’s (1977) concept of symbolic capital with gumperz’s (1982) discussion of verbal repertoires, heller (1992, 1995) argues that dominant groups rely on norms of language choice to maintain symbolic domination, while subordinate groups may use code switching to resist or redefine the value of symbolic resources in the linguistic marketplace. while heller and others describe the relationship between language and identity in economic or class terms, many scholars have focused on social categories such as ethnicity. rampton’s (1995) work on crossing, a type of code switching practiced by speakers across boundaries of ethnicity, race, or language ‘community,’12 examines the language behavior of asian, afro-caribbean, and anglo adolescents in ‘ashmead,’ uk. language varieties – creole, panjabi, and stylized asian english – typically associated with an ethnic group, are used by non-members to accomplish complex functions. while rampton does find some of the language-crossing-as-mockery discussed in earlier accounts, crossing in various directions also serves to forge a common adolescent group, to dissociate from parents or elders, and to resist endemic stereotypes. rampton defines crossing in terms of metaphorical switching (blom & gumperz 1972), but in so doing he complicates the notions of situational and metaphorical switching, and of contextualization, considerably. he defines situational switching as language alternation (auer 1984) which accomplishes contextualization (gumperz 1982). rampton reminds us that the boundaries of metaphor are not clear cut (cf. lakoff & johnson 1980); similarly, metaphorical and situational switching cannot be easily delimited. his primary interest, though, is in “figurative” code alternation, a category which, for rampton, is identical to double voicing (bakhtin 1981). unlike situational switching, which rampton argues simply replaces the current situational frame with a new one, crossing adds additional contexts through which an interaction must be interpreted. issues of race, ethnicity, and crossing, as well as economic issues of class and domination are prominent in bailey’s (2001, 2002) work on language and identity among dominican americans. bailey’s work focuses on dominican american youth – young people born in the united states to parents from the dominican republic – living in providence, rhode island. dominican americans, according to bailey (2001, 2002) define their ethnic affiliation as at once nonwhite and non-black. that is to say, while, like their african-american peers, bailey’s subjects view themselves as outside the dominant racial category “white,” they also reject identification with african americans based on 12 code switching or crossing as a means to negotiate or comment on ethnic or racial identities is also seen in the work of nishimura (1992), bucholtz (1999), lo (1999), jaffee (2000), torras and gafaranga (2002), et alia. 13 nilep: “code switching” in sociocultural linguistics published by cu scholar, 2006 colorado research in linguistics, volume 19 (2006) 14 phenotype or ancestry. in discourse, this complex identity is indexed by shifting uses of nonstandard dominican spanish, caribbean spanish, african american vernacular english, and other nonstandard english varieties. studies of identity and code switching show that close observation of discourse can yield both empirically and theoretically rich understandings of the functions of language variation in social interaction. by tying observations to particular speakers and social actors, rather than moving too readily to discussions of cultural or linguistic norms, scholars can come to detailed, reliable understandings of the place of language in the construction and transmission of social traditions. 2.3. interaction and code switching close observation of discourse is also a hallmark of interactional linguistics, which seeks to understand “the way in which language figures in everyday interaction and cognition” (ochs, schegloff and thompson 1996:2). these studies tend to be greatly inspired by conversation analysis, as well as functional linguistics and linguistic anthropology. a number of studies under this broad umbrella describe both the place of code switching in the language of turn and sequence and the ways that language alternations, like other contextualization cues, make broader contextual knowledge relevant to an ongoing discourse. auer’s 1984 bilingual conversation presented a pioneering study of interaction and code switching. auer argued that gumperz’s conception of situation is problematic, in that it is defined externally, and from the perspective of the analyst. while auer acknowledged that gumperz’s own uses of situational and metaphorical are less clear-cut that some scholars have taken them to be, he nonetheless disapproved of the distinction. [based on blom & gumperz 1972] one would either have to conclude that (in the situational case) code-switching is without social meaning because it is a necessary consequence of certain situational parameters, or that (in the metaphorical case) it is dependent on an (almost) one-to-one-relationship between language choice and situational parameters which can be purposefully violated. [auer 1984:4] far from pre-existing and determining language choice, auer argues that situation is created by talk in interaction. the form of each speaker’s utterances helps to define the unfolding situation. further, this negotiation itself has social meaning. auer’s analyses of italian migrant children in germany did not find significant correlation between topic and language use. he suggests that code switching is not essentially ‘semantic’ in nature, not derived from the ‘meanings’ of the available languages, but rather is “embedded in the sequential development of the conversation” (1984:93). auer found a great preference for subsequent speakers to maintain the language of the previous turn. language alternation was then available to mark contrast, either to bracket a sequence from the preceding 14 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 19 [2006] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol19/iss1/1 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/hnq4-jv62 “code switching” in sociocultural linguistics 15 discourse or to negotiate a common language. auer recommended this procedural analysis of language alternation over individualistic analyses based on introspection, or macro-sociological approaches that define the meaning of potential language choices outside of actual language use. several subsequent studies have examined sequential or interactional functions of language alternation. conversation analysts have suggested that code switching may serve to enhance turn selection (li wei 1998; cromdal 2001) or soften refusals (bani-shoraka 2005; li wei 2005), and is a possible resource to accomplish repair (auer 1995; sebba and wooten 1998) or mark dispreferred13 responses (li wei 1998; bani-shoraka 2005). in addition to these interactional functions, empirical studies have examined how switches in language variety make particular elements of situation, speaker identities, or background relevant to ongoing talk (e.g. li wei 1998, 2002; gafaranga 2001). stroud (1998) criticizes approaches to code switching based too strictly in conversation analysis. he suggests that ca, by proscribing argument from ethnographic or macro-sociological evidence, cannot provide satisfactory analysis of language behavior in non-western settings. stroud observes, “[l]anguage use and patterns of code-switching both structure and are structured by indigenous cultural practices” (1998:322), a suggestion that many sociocultural linguists would probably tend to accept. if analysts then ignore cultural information not visible (to them) within discourse data, their analyses risk missing important elements of function and meaning. stroud maintains, “my argument is that conversational code-switching is so heavily implicated in social life that it cannot really be understood apart from an understanding of social phenomena” (1998:322). this vital understanding is often provided by analysts’ focus on populations that they are themselves a part of; however, it may also be desirable to undertake some broader examination of the social context within which discourse takes place. it seems clear that, in order for observations about the contextualizing functions of language use to have validity and reliability, they should be based on close observation of discourse. at the same time, it should not be assumed that all elements relevant to discourse and social interaction are visible to the analyst, particularly when the analyst is not embedded in the particular social structures he or she is studying. we should remember stroud’s (1998) suggestion that discourse analysis be grounded in an understanding of the society within which communication takes place. the optimal approach to understanding these phenomena would thus seem to include ethnographic observation with close 13 in conversation analysis terms, responses which serve to accomplish the projected action of a previous turn are generally considered preferred, while those that work against such accomplishment are dispreferred. for further explanation, see sacks, schegloff and jefferson 1974 and hutchby and woofit 1998. 15 nilep: “code switching” in sociocultural linguistics published by cu scholar, 2006 colorado research in linguistics, volume 19 (2006) 16 analysis of discourse, providing an empirical warrant for any theory of discourse interaction. 3. integrated definitions a great many scholars in sociocultural linguistics use a definition of code switching similar to heller’s: “the use of more than one language in the course of a single communicative episode” (1988a:1). auer and myers-scotton, who largely disagree on how or why code switching occurs, nonetheless sound quite similar in their definitions of the phenomenon. auer (1984:1) refers to “the alternating use of more than one language,” while myers-scotton (1993:vii) mentions “the use of two or more languages in the same conversation.” romaine (1989) cites gumperz as the source of this definition. however, these definitions introduce an element not strictly present in gumperz’s definition: “conversational code switching can be defined as the juxtaposition within the same speech exchange of passages of speech belonging to two different grammatical systems or subsystems” (gumperz 1982:59). note that gumperz’s original definition refers to “grammatical systems or subsystems,” while the subsequent restatements refer to languages. while the former is scarcely more concrete or less ambiguous than the latter, it need not be assumed that the two terms are identical. the plural languages seems to suggest discrete varieties (as english, spanish, kiswahili, etc.), while the more equivocal “systems or subsystems” might equally imply languages or elements of a language, such as lexical items, syntactic constructions, and prosodic phenomena. this list of grammatical subsystems is very similar to goffman’s (1979) list of footing cues and virtually identical to gumperz’s (1982) preliminary list of contextualization cues. the attempt to define language and languages is a perennial controversy in linguistics. by defining code simply as a language (or variety of language) without first defining these basic terms, scholars have essentially put off what should be a foundational question. alvarez-cáccamo (1990, 1998, 2000) provides exceptional attempts to define code and code switching. his discussion relies in turn on work by jakobson (1971b; jakobson, fant and halle 1952, inter alia) and gumperz (1982, 1992, inter alia). alvarez-cáccamo (1998) points out that for jakobson, an early adopter of the term code switching who was influenced by information theory, languages have codes; they do not comprise codes. a language user thus makes use of a code or codes when speaking, listening, etc. the precise nature of any language user’s codes cannot be ascertained by an analyst nor by fellow speakers. internal individual codes (senders’ and receivers’) must necessarily differ, as they belong to different minds. but all human minds are also uniquely alike: they produce language and communication, which are formidably universal. therefore, the question whether each person possesses “different”... codes is parallel to the question 16 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 19 [2006] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol19/iss1/1 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/hnq4-jv62 “code switching” in sociocultural linguistics 17 whether speakers of the “same” language share a grammar, or whether culture, ideology, etc., is also shared. there are no absolute answers to this, only a pragmatic one: does communication between two persons sufficiently work? [alvarezcáccamo, personal communication] speakers use communicative codes in their attempts (linguistic or paralinguistic) to communicate with other language users. listeners use their own codes to make sense of the communicative contributions of those they interact with. listeners may need to shift their expectations to come to a useful understanding of speakers’ intentions. similarly, speakers may switch the form of their contributions in order to signal a change in situation, shifting relevance of social roles, or alternate ways of understanding a conversational contribution. in other words, switching codes is a means by which language users may contextualize communication. a useful definition of code switching for sociocultural linguistic analysis should recognize it as an alternation in the form of communication that signals a context in which the linguistic contribution can be understood. the ‘context’ so signaled may be very local (such as the end of a turn at talk), very general (such as positioning vis-à-vis some macro-sociological category), or anywhere in between. furthermore, it is important to recognize that this signaling is accomplished by the action of participants in a particular interaction. that is to say, it is not necessary or desirable to spell out the meaning of particular code switching behavior a priori. rather, code switching is accomplished by parties in interaction, and the meaning of their behavior emerges from the interaction. this is not to say that the use of particular linguistic forms has no meaning, and that speakers “make it up as they go.” individuals remember and can call on past experiences of discourse. these memories form part of a language user’s understanding of discourse functions. therefore, within a particular setting certain forms may come to recur frequently. nonetheless, it is less interesting (for the current author at least, and probably for the ends of sociocultural linguistic analysis) to track the frequency or regularity of particular recurrences than to understand the effect of linguistic form on discourse practice and emergent social meanings. to recapitulate, then, code switching is a practice of parties in discourse to signal changes in context by using alternate grammatical systems or subsystems, or codes. the mental representation of these codes cannot be directly observed, either by analysts or by parties in interaction. rather, the analyst must observe discourse itself, and recover the salience of a linguistic form as code from its effect on discourse interaction. the approach described here understands code switching as the practice of individuals in particular discourse settings. therefore, it cannot specify broad functions of language alternation, nor define the exact nature of any code prior to interaction. codes emerge from interaction, and become relevant when parties to discourse treat them as such. 17 nilep: “code switching” in sociocultural linguistics published by cu scholar, 2006 colorado research in linguistics, volume 19 (2006) 18 references alvarez-cáccamo, celso. 1990. “rethinking conversational code-switching: codes, speech varieties, and contextualization.” in kira hall, jean-pierre koenig, michael meacham, sondra reinman and laurel sutton (eds.) proceedings of the sixteenth annual meeting of the berkeley linguistics society, 3-16. berkeley: berkeley linguistics society. --. 1998. “from ‘switching code’ to ‘code-switching’: towards a reconceptualization of communicative codes.” in peter auer (ed.) codeswitching in conversation: language, interaction, and identity, 29-48. london: routledge. --. 2000. “para um modelo do ‘code-switching’ e a alternancia de variedades como fenomenos distintos: dados do discurso galego-portuges/espanhol na galiza” (toward a model of ‘code-switching’ and the alternation of varieties as distinct phenomena: data from galician portuguese/spanish discourse in galicia). estudios de sociolinguistica 1(1): 111-128. auer, peter. 1984. bilingual conversation. amsterdam: john benjamins. --. 1995. “the pragmatics of code-switching: a sequential approach.” in lesley milroy and pieter muysken (eds.) one speaker, two languages: crossdisciplinary perspectives on code-switching, 115-135. cambridge: cambridge university press. --. 1998. code-switching in conversation: language, interaction, and identity. london: routledge. azuma, shoji. 1991. “two level processing hypothesis in speech production: evidence from intrasentential code-switching.” papers from the regional meetings, chicago linguistic society, 27(1): 16-30. bailey, benjamin. 2001. “the language of multiple identities among dominican americans.” journal of linguistic anthropology 10(2): 190-22 --. 2002. language, race, and negotiation of identity: a study of dominican americans. new york: lfb scholarly publishing. bakhtin, mikhail. 1981. the dialogic imagination. caryl emerson and michael holquist (trans.). austin: university of texas press. bani-shoraka, helena. 2005. language choice and code-switching in the azerbaijani community in tehran: a conversation analytic approach to bilingual practices. uppsala, sweden: acta universitatis upsaliensis. barker, george. 1947. “social functions of language in a mexican-american community.” acta americana 5: 185-202. belazi, heidi, edward rubin, and almeida jacqueline toribio. 1994. “code switching and x-bar theory: the functional head constraint.” linguistic inquiry 25(2): 221-237. benson, erica. 2001. “the neglected early history of codeswitching research in the united states.” language & communication 21: 23-36. blom, jan-petter, and john gumperz. 1972. “social meaning in linguistic structures: code switching in northern norway.” in: john gumperz and del 18 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 19 [2006] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol19/iss1/1 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/hnq4-jv62 “code switching” in sociocultural linguistics 19 hymes (eds.): directions in sociolinguistics: the ethnography of communication, 407-434. new york: holt, rinehart, and winston. bordieu, pierre. 1977. “the economics of linguistic exhanges.” social science information 16, 645-668. bucholtz, mary. 1999. “you da man: narrating the racial other in the production of white masculinity.” journal of sociolinguistics 3(4): 443-460. bucholtz, mary, and kira hall. 2005. “identity and interaction: a sociocultural linguistic approach.” discourse studies 7(4-5). cenoz, jasone and fred genesee. 2001. trends in bilingual acquisition. amsterdam: john benjamins. chomsky, noam. 1965. aspects of the theory of syntax. cambridge, ma: mit press. cromdal, jakob. 2001. “overlap in bilingual play: some implications of codeswitching for overlap resolution.” research on language and social interaction 34(4): 421-451. dil, anwar s. 1971. “introduction.” in john j. gumperz, language in social groups: essays by john j. gumperz. stanford: stanford university press. disciullo, anna-maria, and edwin williams. 1987. on the definition of a word. cambridge, ma: mit press. ervin-tripp, susan. 1964. “an analysis of the interaction of language, topic and listener.” american anthropologist 66(6): part 2, 86-102. fano, robert m. 1950. “the information theory point of view in speech communication.” journal of the acoustical society of america 22, 691-696. ferguson, charles. 1959. “diglossia.” word 15, 325-340. fishman, joshua. 1967. “bilingualism with and without diglossia; diglossia with and without bilingualism.” journal of social issues 23(2): 29-38. fotos, sandra. 2001. “codeswitching by japan’s unrecognized bilinguals: japanese university students’ use of their native language as a learning strategy.” in mary goebel noguchi and sandra fotos (eds.) studies in japanese bilingualism. clevedon: multilingual matters. friedrich, paul. 1972. “social context and semantic feature: the russian pronominal usage.” in john gumperz and dell hymes (eds.) directions in sociolinguistics: the ethnography of communication, 270-300. new york: holt, rinehart and winston. gafaranga, joseph. 2001. “linguistic identities in talk-in-interaction: order in bilingual conversation.” journal of pragmatics 33(12): 1901-1925. gal, susan. 1979. language shift: social determinants of linguistic change in bilingual austria. new york: academic press. --. 1988. “the political economy of code choice.” in monica heller (ed.) codeswitching: anthropological and sociolinguistic perspectives, 243-261. berlin: mouton de gruyter. grice, h. paul. 1975. “logic and conversation.” in peter cole and jerry l. morgan (eds.): speech acts, 41-55. new york: academic press. goffman, erving. 1979. “footing.” semiotica 25, 1-29. 19 nilep: “code switching” in sociocultural linguistics published by cu scholar, 2006 colorado research in linguistics, volume 19 (2006) 20 --. 1981. forms of talk. philadelphia: university of pennsylvania press. gumperz, john. 1958. “dialect differences and social stratification in a north indian village.” american anthropologist 60, 668-681. --. 1961. “speech variation and the study of indian civilization.” american anthropologist 63, 976-988. --. 1964a. “hindi-punjabi code-switching in delhi.” in h. hunt (ed.): proceedings of the ninth international congress of linguistics, 1115-1124. the hague: mouton. --. 1964b. “linguistic and social interaction in two communities.” american anthropologist 66(6): part 2, 137-153. --. 1982. discourse strategies. cambridge: cambridge university press. --. 1992. “contextualization revisisted.” in peter auer and aldo di luzo (eds.) the contextualization of language, 39-53. amsterdam: john benjamins. halmari, helena. 1997. government and codeswitching: explaining american finnish. amsterdam: john benjamins. heller, monica. 1988a. codeswitching: anthropological and sociolinguistic perspectives. berlin: mouton de gruyter. --. 1988b. “strategic ambiguity: code-switching in the mangagement of conflict.” in monica heller (ed.) codeswitching: anthropological and sociolinguistic perspectives, 77-96. berlin: mouton de gruyter. --. 1992. “the politics of codeswitching and language choice.” in carol eastman (ed.) codeswitching, 123-142. clevedon: multilingual matters. --. 1995. “code-switching and the politics of language.” in lesley milroy and pieter muysken (eds.) one speaker, two languages: cross-disciplinary perspectives on code-switching. cambridge: cambridge university press. --. 1999. linguistic minorities and modernity: a sociolinguistic ethnography. london: longman. hill, jane. 1985. “the grammar of consciousness and the consciousness of grammar.” american ethnologist 12(4): 725-737. hutchby, ian and robin woofit. 1998. conversation analysis: principles, practices, and applications. malden, ma: polity press. hymes, dell. 1964. “introduction: toward ethnographies of communication.” american anthropologist 66(6): part 2, 1-34. jaffe, alexandra. 2000. “comic performance and the articulation of hybrid identity.” pragmatics 10(1): 39-59. jake, janice, carol myers-scotton and steven gross. 2002. “making a minimalist approach to codeswitching work: adding the matrix language.” bilingualism: language and cognition 5(1): 69-91. jakobson, roman. 1971a. “results of a joint conference of anthropologists and linguists.” in selected writings, volume ii, 554-567. the hague: mouton. --. 1971b. “linguistics and communication theory.” in selected writings, volume ii, 570-579. the hague: mouton. 20 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 19 [2006] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol19/iss1/1 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/hnq4-jv62 “code switching” in sociocultural linguistics 21 jakobson, roman, gunnar fant and morris halle. 1952. preliminaries to speech analysis: the distinctive features and their corelates. cambridge, ma: mit press. jakobson, roman and morris halle. 1956. fundamentals of language. the hague: mouton. joshi, aravind. 1985. “how much context-sensitivity is necessary for assigning structural descriptions: tree adjoining grammars.” in d. dowty, l. karttunen, and a. zwicky (eds.) natural language parsing. cambridge: cambridge university press. lakoff, george and mark johnson. 1980. metaphors we live by. chicago: university of chicago press. li wei. 1998. “the ‘why’ and ‘how’ questions in the analysis of conversational code-switching.” in peter auer (ed.): code-switching in conversation: language, interaction and identity, 156-176. london: routledge. --. 2005. “‘how can you tell?’ toward a common sense explanation of conversational code-switching.” journal of pragmatics 37(3): 375-389. lo, adrienne. 1999. “codeswitching, speech community membership, and the construction of ethnic identity.” journal of sociolinguistics 3-4, 461-479. macswann, jeff. 2000. “the architecture of the bilingual language faculty: evidence from intrasentential code switching.” bilingualism: language and cognition 3(1): 37-54. maehlum, brit. 1996. “codeswitching in hemnesberget – myth or reality?” journal of pragmatics 25, 749-761. mcclure, erica and malcolm mcclure. 1988. “macroand micro-sociolinguistic dimensions of code-switching in vingard (romania).” in monica heller (ed.) codeswitching: anthropological and sociolinguistic perspectives, 25-51. berlin: walter de gruyter. milroy, lesley and pieter muysken. 1995. one speaker, two languages: crossdisciplinary perspectives on code-switching. cambridge: cambridge university press. myers-scotton, carol. 1972. choosing a lingua franca in an african capital. edmonton: linguistic research. --. 1976. “strategies of neutrality: language choice in uncertain situations.” language 52(4): 919-941. --. 1983. “the negotiation of identities in conversation: a theory of markedness and code choice.” international journal of the sociology of language 44, 115-136. --. 1993. social motivations for codeswitching: evidence from africa. oxford: clarendon press. --. 1998. codes and consequences: choosing linguistic varieties. new york: oxford university press. myers-scotton, carol and agnes bolonyai. 2001. “calculating speakers: codeswitching in a rational choice model.” language in society 30, 1-28. 21 nilep: “code switching” in sociocultural linguistics published by cu scholar, 2006 colorado research in linguistics, volume 19 (2006) 22 myers-scotton, carol and janice jake. 2001. “four types of morpheme: evidence from aphasia, code switching, and second-language acquisition.” linguistics 38(6): 1053-1100. nishimura, miwa. 1992. “language choice and in-group identity among canadian niseis.” journal of asian pacific communication 3(1): 97-113. --. 1997. japanese-english code-switching: syntax and pragmatics. new york: p. lang. ochs, elinor, emanuel schegloff and sandra thompson. 1996. interaction and grammar. cambridge: cambridge university press. poplack, shana. 1980. “sometimes i'll start a sentence in spanish y termino en espanol: toward a typology of code-switching.” linguistics 18(233-234): 581-618. rampton, ben. 1995. crossing: language and ethnicity among adolscents. london: longman. romaine, suzanne. 1989. bilingualism. oxford: basil blackwell. sacks, harvey, emanuel schegloff and gail jefferson. 1974. “a simplest systematics for the organization of turn taking for conversation.” language 50, 696-735. sankoff, david, and shana poplack. 1981. “a formal grammar for codeswitching.” papers in linguistics 14(1-4): 3-45. sapir, edward. 1929. “the status of linguistics as a science.” language 5(4): 207-214. sebba, mark and tony wooten. 1998. “we, they and identity: sequential versus identity-related explanation in code-switching.” in peter auer (ed.): codeswitching in conversation: language, interaction and identity, 262-286. london: routledge. stroud, christopher. 1998. “prespectives on cultural variability of discourse and some implications for code-switching.” in peter auer (ed.): code-switching in conversation: language, interaction and identity, 321-348. london: routledge. torras, maria-carme and joseph gafaranga. 2002. “social identities and language alternation in non-formal institutional bilingual talk: trilingual service encounters in barcelona.” language in society 31(4): 527-548. vogt, hans. 1954. “language contacts.” word 10(2-3): 365-374. weinreich, uriel. 1953. languages in contact. the hague: mouton. woolard, katherine. 1985. “language variation and cultural hegemony.” american ethnologist 12(4): 738-748. --. 2004. “codeswitching.” in alessandro duranti (ed.) a companion to linguistic anthropology, 73-94. malden, ma: blackwell. zentella, ana celia. 1997. growing up bilingual. malden, ma: blackwell. 22 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 19 [2006] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol19/iss1/1 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/hnq4-jv62 colorado research in linguistics 6-2006 “code switching” in sociocultural linguistics chad nilep recommended citation microsoft word !nilep_cril_2006_final.doc microsoft word olmsted-cril2021-proof_final.docx 1 how to do things with memes: creating community through the sociopragmatics of star wars prequel memes carolyn olmsted university of colorado boulder in the 1950s and 1960s, j. l. austin changed the face of pragmatic linguistic analysis with his work how to do things with words. famously claiming that language does not simply describe the world but also changes it, austin (1962) established the theory of speech acts. this paper builds on austin’s research by investigating internet memes as a kind of speech act; hence the title “how to do things with memes.” focusing in particular on a specific genre of memes that incorporates images and discourse from the american space epic media franchise star wars, the paper explores the following question: what are the sociopragmatic functions of memes used on the internet today by younger generations of internet users? the conversation analytic concept of adjacency pairs is used to understand the redistribution, recontextualization, and remediation of original media sources into memes, together with linguistic anthropological research that interrogates recontextualization as a kind of performance (baumann and briggs 1990). an investigation of the illocutionary forces behind select star wars memes exposes what exactly these memes are “doing” in their respective internet spheres. specifically, the paper outlines how these memes function to build community, as illustrated by sociocultural linguistic work on identity (bucholtz and hall 2004, 2005) and social semiotic concepts such as dual indexicality (hill 1995). through processes of memetic participation, digital users build community and draw closer together by expanding upon their existing communicative repertoires (rymes 2012, 2014). keywords: sociolinguistics, memes, internet linguistics, pragmatics 1. introduction in his famous work how to do things with words, j. l. austin (1962) changed the face of modern linguistic analysis. austin described language not simply as a tool to convey information, but as a way to change the world around us via speech acts. speech acts can accomplish many different things: canonical speech acts include a judge sentencing a man to death or a priest marrying a happy couple, but smaller speech acts can also be performed in everyday conversations. the speech act need not even be as direct; that is, saying “it’s stuffy in here” may prompt someone to open a window, thus changing the world. while these words are not expressed in a syntactic form that we normally associate with a request, their pragmatic meaning—or illocutionary force, as austin calls it—carries the potential to change the world. this paper suggests that everyday actions such as shaping a community can be accomplished with words and the illocutionary forces colorado research in linguistics, volume 25 (2021) 2 they carry. the analysis applies austin’s understanding of the world-changing role played by speech acts to the digital genre of memes, focusing in particular on a specific genre of memes that incorporates images and discourse from the american space epic media franchise star wars. using this genre of memes, known to star wars fans as “prequel memes”, i explore the following question: what are the sociopragmatic functions of memes used on the internet today? this paper is divided into two parts. in the first section, titled “the sociopragmatics of memes,” i explain how memes work through the processes of redistribution, recontextualization, and remediation. these concepts are taken from the linguistic field known as computer-mediated discourse (hereafter cmd). much early cmd research focused on text-based synchronous language used in formats such as chat rooms or text-based asynchronous language used in formats such as email. my paper, however, focuses on the multimodal genre of memes specifically. i apply the above concepts to understand the sociopragmatic work that memes are doing as they circulate across digital users, especially their community-building properties, rather than simply describing their form and distribution. in the second section, titled “star wars prequel fans as a community of practice,” i offer a case study on the star wars prequel meme community. star wars prequel fans, as i call them throughout this paper, make heavy use of memes to define who is and is not considered a part of the community. this type of identity work is discussed by mary bucholtz and kira hall (2004, 2005) as involving the processes of adequation and distinction, two concepts that figure prominently in my analysis. one of the most popular memes used in this community is what i refer to as the “general kenobi” meme, explained in section 3.1, which is based on an adjacency pair from the star wars prequel films. past research in the field of conversation analysis has tended to focus on universal aspects of adjacency pairs in conversational turn-taking, but i focus instead on how community members use them to display and participate in community building and belonging. i conclude with an analysis of how, exactly, star wars prequel fans are doing things with memes. my analysis is informed by sociolinguistic work on the ways that identity emerges through the telling of formulaic jokes (hall 2019), stancetaking (bucholtz, et al. 2011), adequation and distinction (bucholtz & hall 2004), and dual indexicality (hill 1995). in this sense, what takes place in meme-sharing among star wars prequel fans is closely aligned with the sociolinguistic processes associated with identity work more generally. my analysis uncovers these parallels, how to do things with memes 3 while also demonstrating some of the unique affordances offered by memes to the building of communities online. 2. the sociopragmatics of memes memes are one of the most widespread forms of communication on the internet today. the word meme has typically been applied to digital media to refer to “something that’s remade and recombined, spreading as an atom of internet culture” (mcculloch 2019); however, there is a general lack of consensus among users online about what exactly a meme is. stripped down to their basic parts, it seems that memes are jokes spread online, usually involving images, and almost always involving some type of language. when we look at traditional mediums of language through the lens of speech act theory, we can see, to borrow a phrase from austin, “how to do things with words”. similarly, if we look at computer-mediated discourse (hereafter cmd) through the same lens, we can see “how to do things with memes”. through processes known to cmd researchers as redistribution, recontextualization, and remediation, memes carry a kind of illocutionary force that builds and strengthens community. 2.1. redistribution the first and most important part of how a meme gains its illocutionary force is through redistribution. redistribution, which involves simply sending a message or form of media unaltered to someone else, is how a meme makes its way through and around communities. without redistribution, there would be no memes at all; memes take their meaning and illocutionary force only from being shared within communities. redistribution, being the most fundamental component of memes, is also a process central to non-digital forms of communication. what may be seen as the predecessors of memes, and are described as such by mcculloch (2019), belong to the pre-internet era and relied solely on physical circulation among people. one example is that of newspaper clippings; to share a newspaper article with another, one must cut it out and give it or send it to them physically. an early form of digital communication, still prominent today, that overtly relies on redistribution is that of chain emails, a genre continuous with earlier non-digital “chain letters” sent by mail. chain emails often have a similar format to that of the one in figure 1. colorado research in linguistics, volume 25 (2021) 4 figure 1. example of a chain email (hgrant 2012) chain emails like this one are designed to be sent, or redistributed, to a large group of people unaltered. the concept of redistribution is therefore inherently simple in that no part of the original message is changed; however, cmd theorists would argue that the act of sending this email into new contexts potentially invites a change of social meaning that is worthy of analysis. this is because of their reach and targeted audience. while redistribution has certainly been around for as long as people have been sharing information, cmd is a rather new way of accomplishing this. cmd allows vast amounts of information to be distributed among exponentially more people than ever before in very short amounts of time. because of this, memes can very quickly bring together a large community of people. additionally, redistribution can select the targeted audience for the redistributed content. in figure 1, the chain email is directed at those who both would be flattered by the compliment “beautiful” and who would like to share that compliment with others. the act of redistribution and those who perform it can have any kind of target audience in mind: family, friends, even star wars prequel fans. it is important to recognize that the concept of redistribution is foundational to the concepts of recontextualization and remediation, which more overtly focus on the ways texts take on new meanings as they undergo circulation. 2.2. recontextualization the concept of recontextualization relies heavily on the idea of a communicative repertoire. betsy rymes (2012:216) describes a communicative repertoire as “the collection of ways individuals use language and other means of communication… to function effectively in the how to do things with memes 5 multiple communities in which they participate” and as composed of “mass-mediated cultural elements, circulated, often, via viral internet sources”. to rymes, the most important observation is that the “repertoire elements are… catchy, memorable, or dramatic”, which makes them “highly recontextualizable bits”. to say that repertoire entries are recontextualizable means that they can easily be removed from their original context and placed in a different social context, a process linguistic anthropologists bauman and briggs (1990) identify as entextualization. recontextualization, which follows decontextualization, is an expansion of redistribution in that the text is likewise redistributed and entered into circulation; however, the concept focuses not so much on the act of redistribution but rather on the transformation that occurs when the text is removed from one context and placed into another. essentially, cmd researchers are interested in how and why a text may become highly quotable and easily recognized as it enters new contexts. this concept can be applied to many memes originating from various works of media such as star wars or lord of the rings as well as viral videos, as seen below. figure 2. “cedar rapids” meme (illusions 2018) figure 3. “farming” meme (edwards 2016) figure 2 is a still from a viral video featuring hillary clinton in which she says, “i’m just chillin’ here in cedar rapids”, and figure 3 is a quote from the star wars film rogue one. these images are often posted around the internet with no additional text or other images, which redistributes as well as recontextualizes them. because they are not simply the original work presented in an original context but rather an explicit reference to an earlier piece of media (a process i will discuss colorado research in linguistics, volume 25 (2021) 2 later as remediation), they have advanced from simply featuring redistribution to featuring recontextualization as well. additionally, the references’ widespread use among many digital users in a given community, such as clinton supporters or star wars prequel fans, shows that they have become part of the communicative repertoires of their respective communities. these types of memes are extremely typical in groups focused on a single franchise or piece of media. the memes seen above are only one example of the vast collection of recontextualizable quotes used in their respective internet domains. however, not all the memes circulating in these groups feature only recontextualization. as suggested earlier, they can also be combined with other repertoire elements in a phenomenon known as remediation. 2.3. remediation as described by bolter and grusin (1999), the term remediation refers to the way that digital media is constantly recalling or incorporating its media predecessors—most notably, “older” forms of media such as film, television, photography, or even handwriting. when analyzing memes, cmd theorists often use the term remediation to reference how one meme may incorporate several different works of media. these can be “older media” fictional works like television shows or movies, but they can also involve other repertoire elements known as meme templates. meme templates are images with blank slots for users to fill in their own text or images, as seen in figures 6 and 8; there are even “meme generator” websites that enable users to produce new memes based on popular, already circulating templates. these templates are thus extremely recontextualizable and widely circulated, perhaps even more so than other repertoire elements. in my research on memes, i have found that most examples of remediation can be classified in two ways: normative remediation between different works of media, and combinatorial remediations that alter and “remix” two media pieces into a novel form. this last form, in particular, is characterized by the heavy use of meme templates, often redesigned for use in a specialized knowledge space. the “form” of the meme is retained even though the material within it changes, similarly to how syntax functions in a sentence. the first type, remediation between different works of media, is probably the most easily identifiable type of remediation. it involves explicit references to multiple works, with several unaltered repertoire elements from each inserted into, or perhaps more accurately, on top of each other. the unaltered repertoire elements are a hallmark of this first type of remediation; if they how to do things with memes 3 were altered, they would be of the second type. the first type may be described as cutting and pasting, both digitally and physically. the content creator simply cuts a face, character, object, or other recognizable repertoire element out of one image and enters it into a scene, background, or context from another one. this type can be seen in the examples below. figure 4. example of remediation between star wars and the office (u/poopypants1234321 2017) figure 5. example of remediation between lord of the rings and monty python and the holy grail (u/futurarmy 2019) in these examples, figure 4 involves a remediation of a scene from star wars and a character from the office and figure 5 is a remediation of a scene from lord of the rings and a scene from monty python and the holy grail. to understand any of these memes, or find them funny, the reader must be familiar with both works of media referenced in the meme and have the characters, scenes, or other references in the meme in their own communicative repertoire. for example, if a reader were familiar with lord of the rings but did not have monty python and the holy grail in their communicative repertoire, they would be confused and not find the meme very funny, if at all. however, someone familiar with the references would understand that in the scene referenced, the man pictured (boromir of lord of the rings) is holding and almost succumbing to the evil of the colorado research in linguistics, volume 25 (2021) 2 one ring, a powerful object of world-destroying proportions. juxtaposing this serious scene with a reference from the very comedic film monty python and the holy grail turns the seriousness on its head for comedic effect. one unfamiliar with one of these references would not understand the juxtaposition in mood and therefore miss the humor. even though this type of remediation requires broader forms of specialized knowledge, it can be extremely popular if both references are something many people have in their communicative repertoires. the second type of remediation is the type i find the most interesting: remediation that goes even further than the first type and “remixes” the two original pieces into something distinctively new. this type relies heavily on communicative repertoire entries such as meme templates and creates new content by using an existing form as a vehicle for understanding. the “syntax” of the meme is retained, but the elements are replaced with scenes requiring specialized knowledge. instead of taking two separate images and cutting-and-pasting them together, as in the first two types, this type creates a new image from a blank template. of course, the new image is necessarily evocative of the element or elements appearing in the original template; otherwise, the reference would be unnoticeable. however, no elements in the original image, other than the template itself, appear in the new image. usually, this form manifests itself in the form of a new meme template made using only references to a single work of media. in the examples below, i include the original meme template as well as the remediated form. figure 6. “drake” meme template (n.a. 2019 “drake hotline bling meme generator”) figure 7. remediation of “drake” meme template and kermit the frog (w__a__c 2019) how to do things with memes 1 the meme in figure 7 is a remediated form of the “drake” meme seen in figure 6, in which drake, the man in the orange jacket, first expresses dislike for something (upper image), and then preference for something (lower image). meme creators fill the blank boxes next to these two images with texts or pictures representing their ideas or opinions. a remediated example of the drake meme can be seen in figure 7, which shows kermit the frog in stances that recall the original. in this meme, the creator expresses preference for using kermit’s picture instead of drake’s “because he is cute”. if a person viewing the meme is unfamiliar with the drake meme format, they will not understand the first panel’s intertextuality with the drake meme and might not understand the concept that the creator is trying to express. this type of remediation relies the heaviest on communicative repertoire, as shown by the fact that they are difficult to understand fully without knowledge of the meme template they are based on. since they are new, separate images, they often take more effort to create than the other types, due to their type of remediation. rather than simply cutting and pasting images together, these creators replace the original images in a meme template with another set of images that recall the sense of original meme even while advancing something new. because these memes are so much harder to create and understand, the question is raised: why create them at all? they are frequently well-received and rather popular, but only within the communities of practice they target; the people who understand the meme recognize the reward and effort put in. this observation is key to my argument regarding how these memes function to build community. i suggest that many of these memes are created and shared out of a desire to keep communities “pure”; that is, they incorporate characters or concepts from works viewed as central to the communities that exchange them. this ideology can be seen in the meme below, which is also based on the drake meme in figure 6. colorado research in linguistics, volume 25 (2021) 2 figure 8. remediation of “drake” meme template and the star wars prequels (u/avatyler 2017) this meme features a character from the star wars franchise as the replacement for drake in the meme from figure 6 and provides its reasoning for doing so, making it a sort of “meta-meme.” the creator of this meme, who is a member of the subreddit r/prequelmemes, displays a preference for keeping the community “pure” by encouraging members to use memes with content taken only from the star wars prequel films. the accompanying text indicates that community members should replace drake with the star wars character kit fisto (a fan-favorite film character beloved for his smile), shown in the left panels of the meme. this is how this particular type of remediation builds community: by appealing to an internally recognized communicative repertoire. 3. star wars prequel fans as a community of practice this section analyzes how the processes of redistribution, recontextualization, and remediation are deployed within a specific community of practice: digital users who create and exchange star wars prequel memes. prequel memes are a subcategory of star wars memes based on the franchise’s prequel films: the phantom menace, attack of the clones, and revenge of the sith. prequel memes are extremely popular among fans of these films. one of the main online spaces in which prequel memes are published is on the social media website reddit, as we saw above in the remediated drake meme. subreddits resemble forums and are a type of community dedicated to how to do things with memes 3 one topic. the subreddit r/prequelmemes, which is extremely popular with over 1.8 million subscribers, allows only posts with at least tangential relation to the star wars prequels. most prequel memes simply involve quotes from the films. sometimes they are recontextualized into a new joke based on the quote; sometimes the joke is simply the stating of the quote itself. the community is extremely aware of their frequent quoting practices, as seen in this meme of a scene from revenge of the sith. figure 9. an example of a star wars prequel meme that uses a quote with no captions (u/dhogan73 2018) the quote in the original scene from which this picture is taken is “you underestimate my power” (lucas 2005), said by anakin skywalker, the character in the picture, in the middle of the bitter duel at the film’s climax. the joke in this meme, then, is that when outsiders (represented by “them”) say that it is impossible to understand such memes if the quote from the film is not provided in the subtitles, those who are in the community can do just that. that is, for star wars prequel fans, the image alone recalls the quote “you underestimate my power”, providing a perfect response to outsiders who lack the specialized knowledge needed to interpret the image. 3.1. “general kenobi” memes and adjacency pairs an extremely popular and often-quoted prequel meme is what i refer to as the “general kenobi” meme. to understand the “general kenobi” meme, one must first understand the colorado research in linguistics, volume 25 (2021) 4 linguistic phenomenon known as adjacency pairs. adjacency pairs is a concept taken from conversation analysis and refers to a type of conversational turn-taking in which two speakers produce two utterances in succession. the first utterance (or first-pair part) elicits an utterance in response (or second-pair part). second-pair parts are discussed in conversation analytic literature as either preferred or dispreferred (see, e.g., kitzinger and frith 1999), meaning that the second speaker will either respond with the expected answer or type of answer, which would be preferred, or the unexpected answer or type of answer, which would be dispreferred. for example, if a firstpair part were an invitation, the second-pair part could either be an acceptance or a refusal; the acceptance would be preferred and the refusal would be dispreferred. while conversation analysts often discuss preference expectations as part of a general grammar shared by speakers of a language, my work focuses on how members of a particular community—in this case, star wars prequel fans—collaboratively participate in novel adjacency pairs as a display of communal belonging. the “general kenobi” meme is based on an exchange between two characters in the third prequel film, revenge of the sith, seen below in figure 10. figure 10. the “general kenobi” meme (lucas 2005) how to do things with memes 5 in this scene, obi-wan kenobi, the man with the beard, greets his long-time adversary, general grievous, the robot-looking alien. this scene is one of the most popular memes in the r/prequelmemes community; whenever someone on the forum says “hello there!”, there will be many responses of “general kenobi!” 3.2. examples from tinder exchanges the “general kenobi'' exchange is not a normative adjacency pair; however, it has many similarities to both the concept and execution of adjacency pairs. the exchange is often replicated among star wars prequel fans and acts as a gatekeeping device to signal membership in this ingroup. the first-pair part of this adjacency pair is the “hello there!”; the second-pair part preferred response, for these fans, is “general kenobi!”. the preferred response, if given, signals to the first speaker that the second speaker is part of the in-group of star wars prequel fans. however, if the second-pair part is a dispreferred response, the first speaker knows that the second speaker is not a star wars prequel fan, or at least not the kind that memorizes dialogue from the films. an example of a dispreferred response that leads to a joke can be seen in the exchange and accompanying meme in figure 11. figure 11. a dispreferred response to the “general kenobi” first-pair part (u/notfredrhodes 2018) colorado research in linguistics, volume 25 (2021) 6 in the exchange from the dating app tinder, seen on the left, the first messenger offers a “hello there!”, but the second messenger gives a dispreferred response of “heyhey hows your evening been?”, signaling to the first messenger that she does not know the context or expected response to the first-pair part. interestingly, this exchange was posted alongside a recontextualization of the “general kenobi!” meme seen above in the same image file. this recontextualized meme puts the text of the tinder conversation over two frames from the film. this example is illuminated by the social theoretical framework of adequation and distinction, two “tactics of intersubjectivity” described by mary bucholtz and kira hall (2004, 2005) as involved in identity production. according to these authors, adequation “involves the pursuit of socially recognized sameness. in this relation, potentially salient differences are set aside in favor of perceived or asserted similarities that are taken to be more situationally relevant” (2004:383). adequation is not very present in this example, but will clearly be seen in the second example. the second concept is that of distinction. bucholtz and hall write that distinction is “the mechanism whereby salient difference is produced. distinction is therefore the converse of adequation, in that in this relation difference is underscored rather than erased” (2004:384). distinction can very clearly be seen in figure 11. the woman in the tinder conversation gives a dispreferred response, and the first messenger creates a meme mocking her lack of star wars knowledge. by doing this, the meme creator is “establishing a dichotomy,” as hall and bucholtz put it, between himself1 and the woman. by defining her as “not a star wars fan” because she does not get the reference and give the preferred response, he conversely defines “star wars fans” as those who do get the reference and give the preferred response. this exchange provides a strong example of how community is created through distinction, but in figure 12, below, adequation is instead the primary process used. a woman named taylor messages the first-pair part “hello there” and her interlocutor responds with the second-pair part “general kenobi!”. how to do things with memes 7 figure 12. a preferred response to the “general kenobi” first-pair part (u/ashman508 2020) it is difficult to know the exact timing of the exchange due to the asynchronous nature of the image, but it appears that taylor responds while the messenger is typing his follow-up message, because his second message seems to be a post-expansion based on his second-pair part of “general kenobi”, and does not acknowledge taylor’s intervening message of “thank god”. after this brief misunderstanding, the messenger then gives another quote from the prequels “a surprise to be sure, but a welcome one!”, from the prequel film the phantom menace (lucas 1999). he captions his reddit post “this is where the fun begins!”, which is yet another quote from the same film. the more than 200 comments that respond to this post are also very interesting. most provide still more prequel quotes; others make approving statements like “marriage material”, indicating that taylor counts as part of the community. however, one comment says “be careful. there are fakers out there who only do it to snag our poor lads hearts without actually caring about star wars”. bucholtz and hall (2004:384) write that the tactic of distinction “has a tendency to reduce colorado research in linguistics, volume 25 (2021) 8 complex social variability to a single dimension: us versus them”. in this comment, the possibility of “fakers” creates a clear “them” for the community of “our poor lads” to be in opposition with. additionally, the “lads” comment suggests that the community is thought to be made up mostly, if not entirely, of men, which in turn implies that women are the ones most likely to be “fakers”. these “fakers” who do not “actually [care] about star wars” are apparently a menace to the community that need to be carefully surveilled, again showing the importance of adequation and distinction to star wars prequel fan identity construction. 4. conclusions i began this paper with the question: how does one do things with memes? although i have only scratched the surface with the research displayed here, i believe that the answer lies in a type of illocutionary force associated with all the memes i have discussed: community-building. when one person shows a meme to another, they are not simply redistributing it. sharing memes, like sharing any form of humor, brings people closer together. by laughing at a meme together, community members demonstrate that they get the “joke” and thereby foster a sense of belonging. hall (2019:507) describes a comparable phenomenon of formulaic jokes told by urban youth in new delhi, india: “formulaic jokes are massively distributed, yet […] also take on specialized meanings as they enter into localized interactions forged within specific communities”. this closely mirrors the “general kenobi” memes described in this paper; they have a specialized meaning of community-belonging in only the specific community of star wars prequel fans. to outsiders, the “general kenobi” adjacency pair would be seen simply as a movie quote. the specialized meaning only comes to exist through repeated localized interactions within the community. citing bucholtz et al.’s (2011:499) work on joke-telling, hall writes that “the taking of interactional stances toward [specialized] knowledge may shape distinct identity positions”. as we saw in section 3.2, when interlocutors use the “general kenobi” meme, they not only take the stance that they are “real” star wars fans, they also identify “fake” communal belonging through the stances taken by others. this works largely through the tactics of adequation and distinction (bucholtz & hall 2004), with which members build the identity of a “star wars prequel fan”. for community members, a prequel fan is someone who not only likes the star wars prequel films but can also recognize and participate in recitations of the films’ dialogue. as hall (2019:499) writes, “from an interactional how to do things with memes 9 standpoint, identity emerges within episodes of joke telling as speakers and hearers position themselves in relation to the specialized knowledge they display”. through the specialized knowledge of the scripts and stories of the star wars prequel films, a distinct identity of “star wars prequel fan” emerges, and a community is built through the specific communicative repertoire associated with this identity. this means of building community is well illustrated by the concept of dual indexicality as outlined by jane hill in her work on “mock spanish” (hill 1995). when a member of the star wars prequel meme community makes a joke using a quote from the communal communicative repertoire, they are not only mocking outsiders as “fake”, they are also indexing themselves as a particular kind of humor-loving star wars prequel fan. because the sharing and creating of these prequel memes involves such heavy social implications for community members, they make sure to invoke these references very often, displaying their expertise through their facility with the film scripts and their cleverness in deploying them appropriately. therefore, as seen in the tinder exchanges discussed in section 3.2, many post titles as well as comments on posts consist largely of even more repeated lines from the star wars prequels. here and elsewhere in these online digital communities, when an interlocutor does not understand the reference, they are indexed as “fake” star wars fans. meme creation, as demonstrated throughout this paper, expands upon already circulating communicative repertoires in ways that revitalize the community, modernize its reach, and keep it from “dying out”. for communities built around a specific work of media, memes can additionally foster love and excitement for their chosen work, especially in long-lived series like star wars. although memes have not yet been fully studied in terms of their illocutionary contributions to community-building, the examples analyzed in this paper provide a rich resource for understanding how memetic redistribution, recontextualization, and remediation may serve to create community. references austin, j. l. 1962. how to do things with words. j.o. urmson, & m. sbisà (ed.). cambridge, ma: harvard university press. bauman, richard, & briggs, charles l. 1990. poetics and performance as critical perspectives on language and social life. annual review of anthropology 19.59–88. bolter, jay david, & grusin, richard 1999. remediation: understanding new media. cambridge, ma: mit press. colorado research in linguistics, volume 25 (2021) 10 bucholtz, mary; skapoulli, elena; barnwell, brendan; and lee, jung-eun janie. 2011. entexualized humor in the formation of scientist identities among u.s. undergraduates. anthropology & education quarterly 42(3).177–192. bucholtz, mary, & hall, kira. 2004. language and identity. a. duranti (ed.). a companion to linguistic anthropology. 369-394. hoboken, nj: blackwell. bucholtz, mary, & hall, kira. 2005. identity and interaction: a sociocultural linguistic approach. discourse studies, 7(4-5).585-614. thousand oaks, ca: sage. [hgrant]. 2012. the 18 best chain e-mails you got in 2004. article, 25 january 2012. online: https://www.buzzfeed.com/hgrant/the-18-best-chain-e-mails-you-got-in-2004 hall, kira. 2019. middle class timelines: ethnic humor and sexual modernity in delhi. language in society 48.491–517. hill, jane h. 1995. mock spanish: a site for the indexical reproduction of racism in american english. language & culture. online: https://languageculture.binghamton.edu/symposia/2/part1/index.html [illusions]. 2018. i’m just chillin’ in cedar rapids. youtube video, 11 november 2018. online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nt3vsz2uxj4 iqbal, mansoor. 2021. tinder revenue and usage statistics. business of apps. online: https://www.businessofapps.com/data/tinder-statistics/ edwards, gareth. 2016. rogue one: a star wars story. lucasfilm. kitzinger, celia, and frith, hannah. just say no? the use of conversation analysis in developing a feminist perspective on sexual refusal. discourse & society. 10(3).293–316. lucas, george. 2005. star wars: episode i – the phantom menace. [film]. lucasfilm. lucas, george. 2005. star wars: episode iii – revenge of the sith. [film]. lucasfilm. mcculloch, gretchen. 2019. because internet: understanding the new rules of language. new york: riverhead books. n.a. 2019. drake hotline bling meme generator. online: https://imgflip.com/memetemplate/114388676/inhaling-seagull rymes, betsy. 2012. recontextualizing youtube: from macro-micro to mass-mediated communicative repertoires. anthropology & education quarterly 43(2).214–227. rymes, betsy. 2014. communicating beyond language: everyday encounters with diversity. journal of linguistic anthropology. 24(3)372–374. how to do things with memes 11 [u/ashman508]. 2020. this is where the fun begins! reddit post, 14 february 2020. online: https://www.reddit.com/r/prequelmemes/comments/f3wod6/this_is_where_the_fun_begi ns/ [u/avatyler]. 2017. just how i feel. reddit post, 13 september 2017. online: https://www.reddit.com/r/prequelmemes/comments/6zyac7/just_how_i_feel/ [u/d_feral12]. 2020. i thought she was a star wars fan, guess not. reddit post, 17 january 2020. online: https://www.reddit.com/r/tinder/comments/eqa1jc/i_thought_she_was_a_star_wars_fan_ guess_not/ [u/dhogan73]. 2018. don’t try it. reddit post, 23 january 2020. online: https://www.reddit.com/r/prequelmemes/comments/9bmvai/dont_try_it/ [u/futurarmy]. 2019. oh, it’s just a harmless little bunny, isn’t it boromir?. reddit post, 26 september 2019. online: https://www.reddit.com/r/lotrholygrailmemes/comments/d9ivnn/oh_its_just_a_harmle ss_little_bunny_isnt_it/ [u/notfredrhodes]. 2018. she can’t do that! shoot her…or something! reddit post, 26 june 2018. online: https://www.reddit.com/r/prequelmemes/comments/8u50ud/she_cant_do_that_shoot_her or_something/ [u/poopypants1234321]. 2017. bears, beets, battlestar galactica. reddit post, 25 november 2017. online: https://www.reddit.com/r/prequelmemes/comments/7fidvg/bears_beets_battlestar_galacti ca/ [w__a__c]. 2019. kermit the frog meme template. online: https://imgflip.com/i/3bkinm colorado research in linguistics, volume 25 (2021) 12 endnotes 1 since most digital users on tinder who send messages to women are men, i am using the male pronoun in this section for speakers addressing women. according to iqbal (2021), heterosexual users comprise 88%-99.9% of participants on tinder. microsoft word hodges_cipponeri-cril2021-proof-final.docx 1 how the “law and order” trope individualizes racism and inverts racial vulnerability adam hodges gianna cipponeri university of colorado boulder during the 1968 us presidential campaign, richard nixon infamously ran as the “law and order” candidate, invoking in his republican nomination acceptance speech the domestic protests against racial injustice and the vietnam war. in the 2020 presidential campaign, donald trump revived richard nixon’s “law and order” slogan as part of his response to the black lives matter protests after george floyd’s death in minneapolis on may 25th. in this paper, we examine how trump and his supporters use the “law and order” trope to move public discourse about racism away from critical understandings that view racism as embedded in institutionalized practices and policies, and toward the racial ideology encapsulated in what jane hill (2008) calls the “folk theory of race and racism.” whereas the racial justice movement attempts to center public discourse on systemic racism in policing, the “law and order” trope works to decenter that discourse by individualizing racism and thereby minimizing concerns about the system-wide pattern of racism. as it reinforces the dominant understanding of racism that underpins much us public discourse, the “law and order” trope inverts the racial vulnerability so that black bodies and racial justice protesters are seen as threats rather than victims of state-sanctioned violence. we illustrate these ideas by drawing from examples of public discourse in response to the summer 2020 racial justice protests, including excerpts from tucker carlson and laura ingraham’s shows on fox news in the days immediately following floyd’s killing through ingraham’s interview of trump at the end of the summer. our analysis explains how the discourse spawned by the “law and order” trope reinscribes key assumptions about racism, dismisses calls for racial justice, and perpetuates the racial status quo — thereby posing a substantial barrier to changing the policies and practices that lead to racial inequities in policing. keywords: racism, folk theory of racism, law and order slogan, racial ideology, coded racial appeals 1. the “law and order” trope during the 1968 us presidential campaign, richard nixon infamously ran as the “law and order” candidate, invoking in his republican nomination acceptance speech the domestic protests against racial injustice and the vietnam war (nixon 1968). he talked of “cities enveloped in smoke and flame” and a nation “plagued by unprecedented lawlessness,” juxtaposing those involved in protests with what he called “the forgotten americans — the non-shouters, the nondemonstrators.” nixon deflected accusations that his “law and order” slogan was a “code word for colorado research in linguistics, volume 25 (2021) 2 racism.” those “non-shouters” and “non-demonstrators,” he elaborated, “are not racists or sick; they are not guilty of the crime that plagues the land.” nevertheless, his call “to restore order and respect for law” came to be seen by many as restoring order for white america and respect for laws that continued to unjustly favor white americans at the expense of people of color. as political scientist julia azari remarks, “the question becomes whose order, for whom does the law work” (mcardle 2018). a 1968 cover story in time magazine noted how the phrase was seen as “a shorthand message promising repression of the black community” (waxman 2020). in nixon’s vision of the united states, the law works — and should work — for those non-shouters and non-demonstrators who do not agitate for change, who need not agitate for change because the racial hierarchy works in their favor. but those who do protest the inequities and injustices of a racist system, according to nixon’s logic, are to be considered part of “the criminal forces in this country” (nixon 1968). in the 2020 presidential campaign, donald trump revived nixon’s “law and order” slogan as part of his response to the black lives matter protests after george floyd’s death in minneapolis on may 25th. floyd represents yet another death in a long line of unarmed african americans whose lives have been disproportionately ended by police. the policing of black bodies in public spaces stretches back to the slave patrols of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the terror campaigns and lynchings of the early twentieth century, and continues today even in the more subtle forms of policing of what are implicitly presumed to be white public spaces, giving rise to the colloquial saying, doing x while black, such as driving while black, walking while black, or even birdwatching while black. numerous studies have demonstrated the racial inequities that continue to exist in the criminal justice system (balko 2019), such that black drivers are more likely than white drivers to be stopped and searched (pierson et al. 2020), a significant bias exists in “the killing of unarmed black americans relative to unarmed white americans” (ross 2015), and “young black men are 21 times as likely as their white peers to be killed by police” (gabrielson, jones, and sagara 2014). to ignore the presence of racism in today’s society requires suppressing the historical throughline from the slave patrols to the continued criminalization of black bodies in public spaces that results in the deaths of those like george floyd. it requires a willful ignorance of those histories and current realities that shape racism in contemporary us society (mills 2008). but how how the “law and order” trope individualizes racism and inverts racial vulnerability 3 is this discursively achieved and how is the “law and order” trope leveraged to dismiss calls for racial justice, as was done in the summer of 2020? we argue that the “law and order” trope operates by moving the focus away from critical understandings of racism as embedded in institutionalized practices and policies, and toward the racial ideology encapsulated in what jane hill (2008) calls the “folk theory of race and racism.” whereas the racial justice movement attempts to center public discourse on systemic racism in policing, the “law and order” trope works to decenter that discourse by individualizing racism and thereby minimizing concerns about the system-wide pattern of racism. as it reinforces the dominant understanding of racism that underpins much us public discourse, the “law and order” trope inverts the racial vulnerability so that black bodies and racial justice protesters are seen as threats rather than victims of state-sanctioned violence. we illustrate these ideas by drawing from examples of public discourse in response to the summer 2020 racial justice protests.1 2. the coded racial appeals of the “law and order” trope on the surface, overt appeals for “law and order” are couched as benign calls for social order; but the slippage between the dual senses of social order paves the way for a defense of the racial status quo. the first sense of the term social order refers to orderliness in contrast to unrest (social order1). in much of the “law and order” discourse, appeals to “law and order” are juxtaposed with images of street protests marked by descriptors such as “chaos” and “unrest.” for example, on may 29, days after george floyd was killed, fox news host tucker carlson opened his show with a focus on the protests, saying, “remarkable scenes of violence and destruction and chaos from across the country now and we’re going to spend much of the hour keeping you abreast of what’s happening” (see appendix a for the full excerpt). in the beginning of her interview with donald trump at the end of the summer, fox news host laura ingraham prefaced a question to trump by saying, “so when you see the unrest on the streets — and so much of it is driven by an antipathy toward law enforcement” (see appendix d for the full excerpt). in both examples, the descriptors “chaos” and “unrest” paint the protests for racial justice as the antithesis of social order in the first sense of the term. this allows the protests to be loosely glossed under the rubric of sowing disorder and lawlessness. colorado research in linguistics, volume 25 (2021) 4 the overwhelming emphasis placed on disorder in the streets necessitates a response that would restore orderliness (social order1). it does this by couching the appeal for “law and order” within a commonly accepted understanding and desire for social order — as opposed to social unrest. the discourse plays up incidents of violence that accompany the protests — positioning even the peaceful protests as inherently disorderly — and downplaying (or simply ignoring) the complaints about systemic racism that underpin the protests. but while the surface appeal to social order (social order1 in contrast to social unrest) may fall within the general moral order, making it easy to accept for uncritical listeners, the second sense of social order refers to a system of social structures, institutions, and practices. the us system is based on a racial order that organizes the differential distribution of justice according to the racial hierarchy. that racial order (social order2) represents the racial status quo that has become so problematic for many americans, leading people into the streets to protest the injustices it spawns. the coded racial appeal of the “law and order” trope arises from this slippage between the first sense of social order (as orderliness in contrast to unrest) and the second sense (as the system that represents the current racial order). discussants can use the “law and order” trope to ostensibly talk about countering social unrest while also implicitly defending the current racial order. this coded message enables people to take a pro “law and order” stance under the guise of supporting social orderliness while covertly signaling their support for the racial status quo. although the racial appeals are mostly covert, the dual senses of social order are frequently invoked so that the “law and order” discourse often becomes about more than simply restoring orderliness (social order1); it is also about protecting the system (social order2). for example, in the opening monologue to his may 29 show, tucker carlson declares, “what you're watching is the ancient battle between those who have a stake in society and would like to preserve it, and those who don't and seek to destroy it” (see appendix a for the full excerpt). in these remarks, carlson suggests that the threat involves not just disruptions to orderliness in the streets (social order1), but that society itself (social order2) is being threatened. in her show on june 1, a week after george floyd’s killing, laura ingraham likewise reframes the outrage over the injustice inflicted on george floyd to position the protesters as wanting to, in her words, “murder america.” she says, “all people of good faith agree that what happened to george floyd was heinous and depraved. it was murder. but that's not what we're seeing on our violent streets. we're not seeing outrage really expressed about that. and that's not what the how the “law and order” trope individualizes racism and inverts racial vulnerability 5 criminals and the domestic terrorists are perpetrating as they use mr. floyd's killing to try to murder america” (see appendix c for the full excerpt). as seen in these examples, the discourse associated with the “law and order” trope works to remove the motive of the protesters so that any societal-wide racial justice advocacy is seen as part and parcel of a movement of those who, in ingraham’s words, “try to murder america,” or in carlson’s words, “seek to destroy” society (social order2). by arguing that the motivation behind the demonstrations is disingenuous, they establish grounds to identify racial justice protesters as criminals. the appeal to “law and order” thereby becomes a defense of the racial order through the delegitimization of the racial justice protesters and their concerns, allowing those wielding the “law and order” slogan to dismiss those concerns without overtly negating the protest mantra that “black lives matter.” insofar as protesters and racial justice advocates want to change a racially unjust system, carlson and ingraham are right to see that system (social order2) as being challenged. but their presentation of the situation fails to acknowledge the reason for that challenge (systemic racism) and instead moves to an all-out defense of the system (racism and all). as discussed in the next section, this failure for those operating within the “law and order” discourse to recognize the protesters’ concerns stems from the dominant racial ideology that individualizes racism and ignores it as a systemic problem. 3. the racial ideology of the “law and order” discourse anthropologists widely recognize that race is a cultural construct. as audrey smedley (2007) explains, “race originated as a folk idea and ideology about human differences; it was a social invention, not a product of science” (2). but by the end of the eighteenth century, those folk ideas began to be propped up by scientific and pseudo-scientific techniques that “sought to affirm the differences between blacks and whites” (smedley 2007: 7). this cultural project helped justify and rationalize the enslavement of those racialized as black within the us context. folk ideas continue to underpin popular understandings of race and racism. jane hill (2008) encapsulates these ideas in what she terms the “folk theory of race and racism.” as the dominant racial ideology in us society, the folk theory provides “the racially based frameworks” that explain, justify, and defend “the racial status quo” (bonilla-silva 2006: 9). central to this dominant ideology is an incomplete recognition of racism, locating it merely in “individual beliefs, colorado research in linguistics, volume 25 (2021) 6 intentions, and actions” (hill 2008: 6) and erasing how it operates as a system of power to structure the social hierarchy and differentially distribute justice according to that hierarchy. drawing from this ideology, the “law and order” discourse works to dismiss the racial justice movement’s focus on systemic racism in policing by individualizing incidents like the killing of george floyd — positioning such incidents as one-off events perpetrated by individual outliers within a system otherwise untainted by racist policies and practices. the individualization of such events is accomplished through the ideological process of erasure. as judith irvine and sue gal (2000) explain, “erasure is the process in which ideology...renders some persons or activities...invisible. facts that are inconsistent with the ideological scheme either go unnoticed or get explained away” (38). erasure can be seen in practice in the interview fox news host laura ingraham conducted with president trump at the end of the summer of 2020 (see appendix d for the full excerpt). in the interview, ingraham asks trump about “the statistics that are cited over and over again” of more african americans being stopped by police. trump invokes the “law and order” trope in his response, stating, “what the black community wants in this country is they want police and they want law and order. [...] look, they want law and order. they want the police.” he goes on to say, “they've gotten along with the police, and the police have been very badly mistreated because you got one bad apple, and it becomes a story for weeks.” the bad apple metaphor invoked by trump is commonly used to individualize racist acts of police violence, positioning officers involved in the killing of unarmed african americans as outliers. this perspective accords with the folk theory’s ideology, which identifies “racists” as individual outliers who engage in isolated acts of bigotry. this distances the individual actions from society writ large, rendering invisible the way those individual actions are part of a broader pattern of discriminatory actions and policies that disproportionately impact african americans. as the interview continues, trump reiterates the bad apple metaphor as he compares the bad apple to a golfer who simply makes a mistake and misses a shot. he says, “the police are under siege because of things — they can do 10,000 great acts, which is what they do, and one bad apple, or a choker — you know a choker, they choke — shooting the guy in the back many times.” interestingly, trump’s reference to “one bad apple” remains unspecified in the conversation. he may be referring to the officer who killed george floyd or, more likely in the last reference about “shooting the guy in the back many times,” he probably has in mind the atlanta officer who how the “law and order” trope individualizes racism and inverts racial vulnerability 7 shot and killed rayshard brooks a few weeks after floyd was killed. the fact that the “one bad apple” could refer to any number of officer shootings of african americans within the months prior to his interview — for example, george floyd, rayshard brooks, breona taylor, daniel prude, jacob blake — underscores the very pattern that the individualization of those acts works to erase. speaking to fox news host tucker carlson a few days after george floyd’s death, sen. ted cruz starts by acknowledging the injustice (see appendix b for the full excerpt): “well, listen, it's horrific and it starts with a horrific act of police brutality.” a few moments later, he underscores that the incident was carried out by a single individual as he objects to those trying to focus on the larger societal pattern; they “want to use this incident of clear abuse by one police officer and they want to use it to paint every police officer as corrupt and racist,” cruz says. according to the ideology that supports the “law and order” discourse, cruz can recognize the injustice of a single incident of police brutality (as did ingraham in an earlier excerpt), but in doing so he needs to disconnect that incident from the larger pattern. the erasure of the system-wide pattern of statesanctioned violence against african americans is part of what eduardo bonilla-silva (2013) refers to as the minimization of racism, regarding “discrimination exclusively as all-out racist behavior” while insisting that a societal pattern of “discrimination is no longer a central factor affecting minorities’ life chances” (29). this allows observers to recognize the injustice inflicted upon george floyd while still negating that the incident fits a wider pattern. 4. the outcomes of the “law and order” discourse as the calls for racial justice during the summer of 2020 shined a spotlight on systemic patterns of state-sanctioned violence against african americans, much of the public discourse centered on trying to reckon with the societal problem of racial disparities within policing and the criminal justice system. that reckoning, however, posed a substantial challenge to those committed to the racial status quo. the response, animated by trump and many of his allies, was to recycle nixon’s “law and order” slogan. calls for “law and order” ostensibly sound as if they fall within the general moral order, somewhat similar to the idea that “black lives matter.” but beneath the vagueness of this simple slogan resides the pernicious logic of the dominant racial ideology. drawing from the folk ideology, the “law and order” discourse isolates incidents like the killing of george floyd as outliers having nothing to do with policing in general. this minimizes the colorado research in linguistics, volume 25 (2021) 8 system-wide problem of policies and practices that contribute to a pattern of incidents of which george floyd is but one example. discounting the problem of systemic racism in policing also works to remove the motive of the racial justice protesters. if, according to the “law and order” logic, there is no systemic racism; then the actions of the racial justice movement to focus attention on systemic issues have little or nothing to do with justice for george floyd. as tucker carlson says a few days after floyd’s death while pointing to incidents of burning and looting, “underneath it all, this violence doesn't have that much to do with the behavior of the minneapolis police department” (appendix a). the frequent representation of racial justice protesters through such images paints all street protests in a similar light of criminality. the criminalization of the protesters inverts the racial vulnerability felt by african americans at the hands of the police by positioning the police as the victims of racial justice protesters and the movement to affirm that black lives matter. this is illustrated in the ingraham-trump interview in which the two speakers co-construct a narrative where, in trump’s words, “police are under siege” (appendix d). the police are the ones said to be under threat, rather than recognizing the threat to black lives and bodies within a system that continues to operate as if black lives do not matter. the “law and order” slogan effectively counters the critical focus placed on racism in policing by inverting the threat and absolving the institution of policing and the wider social order as having nothing to do with each new incident of police brutality. the discourse spawned by the “law and order” trope thereby reinscribes key assumptions about racism, dismisses calls for racial justice, and perpetuates the racial status quo. the discourse, especially as it subtly works to defend the racial hierarchy, represents a substantial barrier to the types of systemic change needed to overcome the racist policies and practices entrenched in the system. references balko, radley. 2019, april 9. “21 more studies showing racial disparities in the criminal justice system.” the washington post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/04/09/more-studies-showing-racialdisparities-criminal-justice-system/ bonilla-silva, eduardo. 2006. racism without racists. rowman & littlefield. gabrielson, ryan, ryann grochowski jones, and eric sagara. 2014, october 10. “deadly force, in black and white.” propublica. https://www.propublica.org/article/deadly-force-inblack-and-white. how the “law and order” trope individualizes racism and inverts racial vulnerability 9 gal, susan and judith t. irvine. 2000. “language ideology and linguistic differentiation.” in p. kroskrity’s regimes of language: ideologies, polities, and identities, pgs. 35-83. santa fe, nm: school of american research. hill, jane. 2008. the everyday language of white racism. malden, ma: wiley-blackwell. mcardle, terence. 2018, november 5. “the 'law and order’ campaign that won richard nixon the white house 50 years ago.” the washington post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2018/11/05/law-order-campaign-that-wonrichard-nixon-white-house-years-ago/ mills, charles. 2008. “white ignorance.” in agnotology: the making and unmaking of ignorance, robert proctor and londa l. schiebinger (eds.), 230-249. stanford: stanford university press. nixon, richard. 1968, august 8. “address accepting the presidential nomination at the republican national convention in miami beach, florida.” the american presidency project, uc santa barbara. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/addressaccepting-the-presidential-nomination-the-republican-national-convention-miami pierson, emma; camelia simoiu; jan overgoor; sam corbett-davies; daniel jenson; amy shoemaker ; vignesh ramachandran; phoebe barghouty; cheryl phillips; ravi shroff; and sharad goe. 2020. “a large-scale analysis of racial disparities in police stops across the united states.” nature human behaviour 4: 736-745. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562020-0858-1 ross, cody t. 2015, november 5. "a multi-level bayesian analysis of racial bias in police shootings at the county-level in the united states, 2011–2014." plos one. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0141854 smedley, audrey. 2007, march 14-17. “the history of the idea of race...and why it matters.” paper presented at the conference, “race, human variation and disease: consensus and frontiers,” sponsored by the american anthropological association. warrenton, va. https://understandingrace.org/resources/pdf/disease/smedley.pdf waxman, olivia b. 2020, june 2. “trump declared himself the 'president of law and order.' here's what people get wrong about the origins of that idea.” time. https://time.com/5846321/nixon-trump-law-and-order-history/ colorado research in linguistics, volume 25 (2021) 10 endnotes 1 discourse excerpts come from cable news transcripts provided by lexisnexis. we used the search term “law and order” to search the lexisnexis database for transcripts from fox news and cnn between the dates april 1, 2020 and august 31, 2020. additional context for excerpts quoted in the paper can be found in the appendices where full transcript excerpts are provided. how the “law and order” trope individualizes racism and inverts racial vulnerability 11 appendix a “tucker carlson tonight” (fox news) may 29, 2020 carlson: mike tobin for us in minneapolis. thank you. remarkable scenes of violence and destruction and chaos from across the country now and we're going to spend much of the hour keeping you abreast of what's happening. but before we dive into that, we want to focus on one single thing that happened last night. a police station in a major american city was occupied and looted and burned. most of us assumed we would never live to see something like that happen here, but it did happen. so, the question is, has anyone been arrested for doing that? will anyone ever be arrested? no one in authority seems especially interested in apprehending the people who did it. all of it happened on camera, but the perpetrators just walked away, and it's possible maybe likely that most of them will never be punished for it. that's striking. it's a very different experience from the ones most americans have living here. as minneapolis burns and crowds grow in the streets of atlanta and many other cities, the rest of us are continuing on as we always do. dutifully following the rules. there are many of those. every year, there seems to be countless new rules to follow. they multiply like insects. we do our best to keep up. we get our permits, apply for our licenses, put on our reading glasses and check the latest regulations on the internet. we wear our little masks. we keep our dogs on leashes. we drive sober. we don't eat on the subway. we never litter. colorado research in linguistics, volume 25 (2021) 12 we make orderly lines and patiently wait our turn. in airports and government buildings, we remove our shoes and submit to body searches from strangers. we lose our dignity every time we do this, but they tell us we must, so we accept it without complaint. in public, we hide what we really think. we bury our natural instincts. we keep our deepest beliefs to ourselves. we know the boundaries. we understand we will be punished for telling the truth. this is the america the rest of us live in. for the privilege of citizenship in a country like this, we work as hard as we can. we never stopped sharing what we earn with others. we send money we would rather give to our own children to politicians in faraway cities. with that money, they make new rules. we follow those rules to the letter. that's what we were told to do as children. that's the deal we've struck, at least, we thought it was. now, we know that other people have somehow negotiated a far better deal than the one we have. they get to ignore the rules. they don't believe in order or fairness. they reject society itself. reason and process and precedent mean nothing to them. they use violence to get what they want, immediately. people like this don't bother to work. they don't volunteer or pay taxes to help other people. they live for themselves. they do exactly what they feel like doing. they say exactly what they feel like saying. they spray paint their opinions on buildings. how the “law and order” trope individualizes racism and inverts racial vulnerability 13 on television, hour by hour, watch these people, criminal mobs destroy what the rest of us have built. they have no right to do that. they don't contribute to the common good, they never have. yet, suddenly they seem to have all the power. this is hardly the first time something like this has happened in america. spasms of destructive violence, a recurring feature of our history, in fact of every country's history. the ideologues will tell you that the problem is race relations or capitalism or police brutality or global warming, but only on the surface. the real cause is deeper than that, and it's far darker. what you're watching is the ancient battle between those who have a stake in society and would like to preserve it, and those who don't and seek to destroy it. underneath it all, this violence doesn't have that much to do with the behavior of the minneapolis police department. for evidence, watch this tape. it's from the 1992 riots in los angeles. it was shot almost 30 years ago. it could have been shot this afternoon. colorado research in linguistics, volume 25 (2021) 14 appendix b “tucker carlson tonight” (fox news) may 29, 2020 carlson: so i'm going to ask you the question that i asked deroy, you're watching these pictures. you followed this for the past three days. what do you make of this? where do you think it is going? cruz: well, listen, it's horrific and it starts with a horrific act of police brutality. you know, anytime you have a police officer involved shooting, the media often goes into a frenzy and there is an immediate demonization and attack of the police officers, and i think that's wrong. i think it's premature. that being said, in this instance, we have a video of the incident and we can see with mr. floyd, the officer with his knee on his neck for eight minutes. mr. floyd has his handcuffs. he is clearly incapacitated. he is begging for his life -and what we saw was wrong. there's no legitimate law enforcement purpose for what we saw right there. carlson: well, i'm sorry, senator, let me just -let me just stop right there and just ask a question, and i agree with you, i found the video very upsetting. i mean, there's a lot of abuse of power by a lot of different people in charge, including the police sometimes. do you believe, since let's just deal with facts here -do you believe that the man in custody died of suffocation because the police officer was sitting on him? cruz: i don't know. we'll have to see what the medical evidence shows. but what i do - carlson: wait. wait. hold on. isn't that the question? i mean, either the cop killed him or he didn't? i mean -no? cruz: the question is, was that abuse of authority and police brutality? carlson: it was definitely an abuse of authority. but the guy has been charged with murder. so, isn't the question whether he killed him or not? how the “law and order” trope individualizes racism and inverts racial vulnerability 15 cruz: well, there are two separate questions. number one, the department of justice opened a civil rights investigation. that was the right thing to do. i applauded the department of justice for doing that. number two, the prosecutor chose today to bring homicide charges. now, to prove that, they will have to prove that the evidence supports it. i don't know what the medical examiner is going to determine on that. so, whether or not it was homicide will depend on the evidence, but it was clearly police brutality, and it was not conduct we expect of any officer. the officers are entitled to defend themselves - carlson: i totally agree with that. i think it was awful. i've seen that kind of -i covered cops. i've seen the kind of thing before and i hate it. however, the country is convulsing on the basis of the idea that a cop killed this man who was restrained. he was in handcuffs. and i just -i think it's a meaningful question. it's not something we could alight over them and like, oh, it doesn't matter. of course it matters. why wouldn't it matter? cruz: tucker, saying that the criminal justice system will operate and it will depend upon what the evidence is and whether the case be proven to the jury is not alighting over it. it's saying - carlson: no, it's not and i agree with you a hundred percent there. cruz: and, and one of the reasons, sadly, that we are seeing this violence and this rioting is that you have a lot of demagogues that want to use this incident of clear abuse by one police officer and they want to use it to paint every police officer as corrupt and racist. and most police officers heroically risked their lives to protect the communities they're in, often minority communities and for everyone that is stirring up racial division and engaging in violence and looting, that is completely unacceptable. violence and criminal conduct is unacceptable whether it is committed by a mob in rage or whether it's committed by a police officer who is breaking the law. the law should apply fairly and uniformly to everyone. colorado research in linguistics, volume 25 (2021) 16 carlson: so, why is that so difficult for so many republicans in washington to say, i saw the tape, i was horrified by it. the guy should be punished for doing this, and you're not allowed to burn our cities down. how the “law and order” trope individualizes racism and inverts racial vulnerability 17 appendix c “the ingraham angle” (fox news) june 1, 2020 ingraham: we're going to check back with you as 11 pm draws closer. now, as i said we're going to get to the action on some streets across the nation in moments. but first, this is my statement about what happened today and what's been happening. restoring order. that's the focus of tonight's angle. all people of good faith agree that what happened to george floyd was heinous and depraved. it was murder. but that's not what we're seeing on our violent streets. we're not seeing outrage really expressed about that. and that's not what the criminals and the domestic terrorists are perpetrating as they use mr. floyd's killing to try to murder america. appendix d “the ingraham angle” (fox news) august 31, 2020 ingraham: so when you see the unrest on the streets — and so much of it is driven by an antipathy toward law enforcement. trump: yes. ingraham: and more african-americans are stopped by the police, the statistics that are cited over and over again. what can you say to those families who live on those streets and who are worried? they're worried because they think their sons or even- trump: yes. ingraham: --their daughters could be targeted. because i know because i've known you for a long time, you don't want that. you want people to all be treated equally. but they have a caricature of republican voters, and you're the leader of the party. what do you say to them about that mischaracterization? colorado research in linguistics, volume 25 (2021) 18 trump: what the black community wants in this country is they want police and they want law and order. they don't want what's happening to their communities. they're being affected in a much harsher, meaner manner than anybody else. that includes hispanics, where i'm doing very well also. look, they want law and order. they want the police. they do polls, and the polls are at 82, 83 percent, they want the police. they've gotten along with the police, and the police have been very badly mistreated because you got one bad apple, and it becomes a story for weeks. ingraham: st. louis african-american police officer shot in the head and killed - trump: yes, dorn. ingraham: -last night. no another african-american just killed yesterday. trump: that's true. yes, that's true. killed. ingraham: it's more dangerous to be a police officer today, do you not think, than it has been a long time? trump: the police are under siege because of things -they can do 10,000 great acts, which is what they do, and one bad apple, or a choker -you know a choker, they choke -shooting the guy in the back many times. couldn't you have done something different? couldn't you have wrestled him? in the meantime, he might've been going for a weapon. and there's a whole big thing there. but they choke. just like in a golf tournament, they miss a three-foot - ingraham: you're not comparing it to golf, because of course that's what the media - trump: i'm saying people choke. ingraham: people make -people panic. how the “law and order” trope individualizes racism and inverts racial vulnerability 19 trump: people choke. and people are bad people. you have both. you have some bad people, and they choke. you could be a police officer for 15 years, and all of a sudden you're confronted. you've got a quarter of a second to make a decision. if you don't make the decision and you're wrong, you're dead. people choke under those circumstances, and they make a bad decision. i've seen bad decisions of people that it looked bad but probably it was a choke. but you also have bad police, but you also, the vast -not only the vast majority -thousands and thousands of great acts, and one bad one, and you make the evening news for weeks. the dialogic emergence of ‘truth’ in politics: reproduction and subversion of the ‘war on terror’ discourse colorado research in linguistics. june 2008. vol. 21. boulder: university of colorado. © 2008 by adam hodges. the dialogic emergence of ‘truth’ in politics: reproduction and subversion of the ‘war on terror’ discourse adam hodges university of colorado truth claims in political discourse are implicated in a dialogic process whereby political actors "assimilate, rework, and re-accentuate" prior discourse (bakhtin 1986:89). while political actors themselves may view truth as an object to be discovered, i argue that discourse analysts are best served by viewing truth as an emergent property of this dialogic process. in this paper, i examine how intertextual connections are integral to both the reproduction and subversion of established truth claims (such as the claim that saddam hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction). my data draw from george w. bush's speech on may 1, 2003 to declare the end of "major combat operations" in iraq, the first presidential debate between john f. kerry and george w. bush in september 2004, and joseph lowery's speech during the coretta scott king funeral in february 2006. my analysis examines these data in light of key phrases (e.g. "weapons of mass destruction") that form intertextual series across these contexts, as well as the role of reported speech in connecting one discursive encounter with another. 1. introduction in american political discourse, debates are often framed around issues of truth. in recent years, questions surrounding the possession of weapons of mass destruction by saddam hussein or the culpability of iraq in the events of 9/11 have taken center stage. political actors wield facts to show that they have uncovered what they claim to be the ‘real’ truth as they counter their opponents’ truth claims. yet, as widely recognized by postmodern philosophers, truth in these debates is not so much discovered as enacted. that is, truth is not simply an object external to the debate; but rather, a form of knowledge emergent from the debate.1 a version of this paper was presented at the 2007 culture, language, and social practice conference at cu-boulder. i would like to thank the organizers and participants for the invaluable discussions that resulted from the conference. 1 not surprisingly, opposing sides in debates both feel they have ‘truth’ on their side. when our side believes we have the truth, but our opponents do not, we usually say one of two things: either our opponents simply lack appropriate information—that is, they haven’t seen all the facts yet. or to be less generous, we might accuse them of knowing the truth (like we do) but of obscuring it because it is damaging to their cause—that is, they must be lying (cf. jervis 2006). in either case, political actors still orient to truth as an object. truth is an object wielded in political 1 hodges: the dialogic emergence of ‘truth’ in politics published by cu scholar, 2008 colorado research in linguistics, volume 21 (2008) 2 while political actors themselves may view truth as an object to be discovered, i argue that discourse analysts are best served by viewing truth as an emergent property of a dialogic process. in describing austin’s (1962) work on performative utterances, duranti (1993) notes that “words do not simply describe the world, they also change it” (235). to take this further, words do not simply describe a pre-existing truth; words in political discourse effectively help realize it. so as analysts, we need to place our focus on “the emergent, interactive nature of the process” (duranti 1993: 227). in this paper, i examine political discourse as a dialogic process through a framework that draws upon the bakhtinian-inspired idea of intertextuality (bakhtin 1981, 1986; kristeva 1980). social actors do not formulate utterances in a vacuum; nor do individual “speech events” (jakobson 1960; hymes 1974) take place in isolation from one another. rather, as bauman and briggs (1990) note, “a given performance is tied to a number of speech events that precede and succeed it” (60). discourse, according to bakhtin, “cannot fail to be oriented toward the ‘already uttered,’ the ‘already known,’ the ‘common opinion’ and so forth” (bakhtin 1981: 279).2 2. repetition and variation on a theme the concept of intertextuality is important in understanding the dialogic emergence of truth because it allows the analyst to do more than describe the structure of discourse in isolation, and instead to connect it with the larger interpretive web in which it is embedded. the interconnectivity of discourse is central to both the reproduction of truth claims as well as the subversion of truth claims. for truth claims to become widely accepted as valid and credible versions of reality, they must enter into the public domain where they are repeated, reaffirmed, and reified. even in the challenging of established truth claims, political actors do not create utterances completely from scratch, but rather construct their utterances out of a reservoir of prior discourse. therefore, political actors involved in either the reproduction or subversion of truth claims draw from previously uttered words, which, as bakhtin (1986) describes, they “assimilate, rework, and re-accentuate” (89). in the examples that follow, i focus on the way key phrases are reiterated across different types of contexts by both george w. bush and his political opponents. as kristeva (1980) points out, the repetition of prior text may be done “seriously, claiming and appropriating it without relativizing it” or the process of debate, but it is an object that is seen as separate from (outside of) political debate itself. (see also duranti 1993 for a discussion of truth and intentionality). 2 as mannheim and tedlock (1995) state, “any and all present discourse is already replete with echoes, allusions, paraphrases, and outright quotations of prior discourse” (7). 2 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 21 [2008] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol21/iss1/1 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/gkzf-q768 the dialogic emergence of ‘truth’ in politics 3 recontextualization may introduce “a signification opposed to that of the other’s word” (73). in its extreme, resignification may move into the realm of parody (bakhtin 1981: 340; cf. álvarez-cácamo 1996: 38). i explore each of these dimensions in turn. 3. establishing and reinforcing an intertextual series the following two examples illustrate the use of talking points to reinforce the bush ‘war on terror’ narrative, a narrative that forwards a powerful set of assumptions and explanations about america’s struggle against terrorism since 9/11 (hodges 2007). central to this narrative is the truth claim surrounding the presence of weapons of mass destruction (wmds) in iraq. saddam hussein’s supposed possession of wmds is made doubly worrisome in the narrative due to a second truth claim about his putative ties to terrorist organizations. excerpts (1) and (2) are both taken from george w. bush’s speech on may 1, 2003 aboard an aircraft carrier off the coast of san diego. in that speech, he declared that “major combat operations in iraq have ended.” in these examples, we see the reiteration of talking points that reinforce the truth claims in the ‘war on terror’ narrative. in particular, we see the key phrase “weapons of mass destruction” embedded in this discourse (underlined in the examples). 1) from bush’s speech on the end of major combat operations in iraq, may 1, 2003 the liberation of iraq is a crucial advance in the campaign against terror. we've removed an ally of al qaeda, and cut off a source of terrorist funding. and this much is certain: no terrorist network will gain weapons of mass destruction from the iraqi regime, because the regime is no more. ((applause)) 2) from bush’s speech on the end of major combat operations in iraq, may 1, 2003 any outlaw regime that has ties to terrorist groups and seeks or possesses weapons of mass destruction is a grave danger to the civilized world -and will be confronted. ((applause)) the phrase “weapons of mass destruction” forms part of an intertextual series (hanks 1986; cf. hill 2005). as it enters into subsequent contexts, it points back to the prior contexts where it has been previously uttered. namely, this includes numerous presidential speeches prior to and after the invasion of iraq where the phrase is embedded in truth claims about the threat posed by saddam hussein. moreover, the diachronic repetition (tannen 1989)3 of this phrase occurs in sound bites from these speeches that are recontextualized in media reportage that reiterates these truth claims. in this way, an important indexical association is 3 tannen (1989) use the term ‘diachronic repetition’ to refer to intertextuality, as opposed to ‘synchronic repetition,’ or intratextuality (i.e. repetition within a text). 3 hodges: the dialogic emergence of ‘truth’ in politics published by cu scholar, 2008 colorado research in linguistics, volume 21 (2008) 4 formed between this key phrase and the contexts where the ‘war on terror’ narrative is articulated. as developed by charles peirce and further refined by ochs (1992, inter alia), silverstein (1976, 1985, inter alia) and others, the notion of indexicality “is the semiotic operation of juxtaposition” (bucholtz and hall 2004: 378) whereby contiguity is established between a sign and its meaning. as bauman reminds us, indexicality is important in intertextual connections. he notes that: bakhtin’s abiding concern was with dimensions and dynamics of speech indexicality— ways that the now-said reaches back to and somehow incorporates or resonates with the already-said and reaches ahead to, anticipates, and somehow incorporates the to-be-said. (bauman 2005: 145) in sum, the repeated juxtaposition of the phrase “weapons of mass destruction” in contexts where bush reiterates the truth claims in the ‘war on terror’ narrative allows this phrase to effectively operate as an index for those claims. in excerpt (3), taken from the first presidential debate between bush and john f. kerry before the 2004 election, we again see the repetition of this key phrase as bush reiterates elements of his narrative. 3) from the first presidential debate, september 30, 2004 bush: we're facing a group of folks who have such hatred in their heart they'll strike anywhere, with any means. and that's why it's essential that we have strong alliances, and we do. that's why it's essential that we make sure that we keep weapons of mass destruction out of the hands of people like al qaeda, which we are. in these first three examples, we see repetition of an intertext done in a manner that, as kristeva (1980: 73) points out, takes what is repeated seriously, without relativizing it. in fact, the recontextualization of the phrase “weapons of mass destruction,” lifted by bush out of prior presidential speeches and placed into subsequent contexts such as the debate, merely works to reinforce its previously established social meaning. in other words, the phrase indexes and attempts to bolster the truth claims espoused by the administration. even in contexts such as the debate where the entire bush ‘war on terror’ narrative may not be told in full detail, the invocation of the key phrase may be sufficient to point to it and thereby work to reinforce, or at least remind an audience of its claims. 4. recontextualization and the reshaping of prior text the process of lifting key phrases out of one context and moving them to another allows social actors to bring with the text varying degrees of the earlier context while also transforming the text in the new setting (cf. gal 2006: 178; 4 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 21 [2008] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol21/iss1/1 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/gkzf-q768 the dialogic emergence of ‘truth’ in politics 5 voloshinov 1971). while the indexical associations between a key phrase and its contextual significance may draw on already established meanings—what silverstein (2003) terms presupposed indexicality—new indexical links may also be created—what silverstein terms creative or entailed indexicality.4 put another way, the social meanings associated with an indexical sign are both partly preestablished and partly recalibrated when that sign is brought into a new context.5 in this way, prior text is always open to reinterpretation and reshaping as it enters into new settings. political discourse, in particular, is effectively a struggle over entextualization. it is a struggle over whose “preferred reading” of a prior text will be accepted as more valid (cf. blommaert 2005: 47). control over the process of entextualization is frequently achieved through the use of reported speech. voloshinov (1973) provides a significant discussion on the topic where he characterizes reported speech as “speech within speech, utterance within utterance, and at the same time also speech about speech, utterance about utterance” (115; italics in original). voloshinov’s comments highlight the capacity of reported speech to not just represent pieces of previously uttered discourse, but to re-present what has been said elsewhere by others—that is, to effectively recontextualize a prior utterance with “varying degrees of reinterpretation” (bakhtin 1986: 91). voloshinov (1973) explains that the use of reported speech “imposes upon the reported utterance its own accents, which collide and interfere with the accents in the reported utterance” (154). as buttny (1997) summarizes, “reporting speech is not a neutral, disinterested activity. persons report speech along with assessing or evaluating it” (484). 5. reported speech in the challenging of truth claims the next example also comes from the first 2004 presidential debate. in (4), kerry uses a reported speech frame to attribute and re-present words previously uttered by bush. (the quotatives are highlighted in bold and the reported words are underlined.) 4 as silverstein (2003) explains, “any socially conventional indexical” sign is “dialectically balanced between” what he calls indexical presupposition and indexical entailment (195). 5 we might think of this recalibration in terms of social meanings as emergent properties of interaction: the meanings that emerge may simply reaffirm established ones or may involve significant modifications made within the current context. social meanings are never fixed once and for all, but are subject to continual renewal through micro-level discursive encounters; and therein exists the potential for shifts in indexical associations, which in turn contribute to changes in macro-level social categories and forms of knowledge. silverstein (2003) stresses that indexicality should not be misconstrued “as being micro-contextually deterministic” (197). 5 hodges: the dialogic emergence of ‘truth’ in politics published by cu scholar, 2008 colorado research in linguistics, volume 21 (2008) 6 4) from the first presidential debate, september 30, 2004 kerry: now, i'd like to come back for a quick moment if i can to that issue about china and the talks because that's one of the most critical issues here -north korea. just because the president says it can't be done, that you'd lose china, doesn't mean it can't be done. i meanthis is the president who said there were weapons of mass destruction, said mission accomplished, said we could fight the war on the cheap, none of which were true. we can have bilateral talks with kim jong il and we can get those weapons at the same time as we get china because china has an interest in the outcome too. in the highlighted portion of this example, kerry begins by reanimating the phrase “weapons of mass destruction” that we have already seen in bush’s discourse. by bringing this phrase into the context of the debate, kerry invokes the truth claims forwarded by bush. yet kerry does not bring these words into the new setting to simply maintain fidelity to the way these words have been used previously by bush. rather, the reported speech frame allows kerry to reshape the words in line with a different interpretation. in his metapragmatic comments about these reported words (italicized in the example), kerry provides his own interpretation about their larger significance in the debate over iraq and terrorism. as sacks (1992) points out, the reported speech frame works to convey to listeners “how to read what they’re being told” (274; cited in buttny 1998: 49). in other words, reported speech frames can recontextualize another’s words in line with the present speaker’s desired interpretations. importantly, this reshaping of prior text works to recalibrate the larger social meanings associated with the phrase “weapons of mass destruction.” instead of simply indexing the truth claims espoused by bush, the phrase now begins to form an association with an alternative narrative which undermines the veracity of those claims and links the phrase “weapons of mass destruction” with a deceptive policy put forth by the administration. next, kerry reiterates another key phrase from bush’s prior discourse: “mission accomplished.” this phrase stands metonymically for the event aboard the aircraft carrier on may 1, 2003 where bush declared the end of major combat operations in iraq. (recall that the first two examples were drawn from this speech.) the phrase “mission accomplished” was prominently displayed on a banner behind the podium where bush spoke, pictured in (5). 6 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 21 [2008] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol21/iss1/1 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/gkzf-q768 the dialogic emergence of ‘truth’ in politics 7 5) bush’s declaration of the end of major combat operations in iraq, may 1, 2003 one might compare these economical references to keith basso’s description of the way apaches speak with place-names. as basso (1996) describes, apaches often invoke a particular place-name in the midst of conversation to conjure up a shared narrative associated with that place. without reiterating the narrative itself, mentioning the place-name is sufficient to set interlocutors into the proper position from which they can view the scene and recall the events that took place there. in a similar way, kerry’s use of the phrase “mission accomplished” invokes the narrative articulated by bush aboard the aircraft carrier. as with the phrase “weapons of mass destruction,” the phrase “mission accomplished” is embedded within an evaluative framework that reshapes its meaning. instead of indexing a valid set of truth claims, it now points to a set of incredulous claims. in turn, kerry positions himself as someone with a better handle on the ‘real’ truth; but this stance is made possible by first drawing upon the reservoir of words previously uttered by his opponent. in the final highlighted portion of this example, kerry uses the reported speech frame to typify bush’s prior discourse about his administration’s desire to streamline the military and wage war with a smaller, more nimble force. kerry reports the president to have said, “we could fight the war on the cheap.” this typifying speech (parmentier 1993, irvine 1996) emphasizes the content of bush’s prior discourse rather than its verbatim form. and importantly, the words used to convey this content imbue the message with an implicit evaluation. that is, through these reported words, kerry provides a preferred interpretation for how the discourse should be read. in particular, the phrase “on the cheap” conveys a negative evaluation of bush’s military policy. as bakhtin (1981) notes, prior words are “transmitted with varying degrees of precision and impartiality (or more precisely, partiality)” (330). for this reason, tannen (1989) prefers the term “constructed dialogue” to reported speech. the key point here is that reported speech frames provide an important means by which speakers reshape prior text, whether explicitly through accompanying metapragmatic commentary or implicitly through constructed dialogue that contains embedded evaluations. in excerpt (4), we see the political struggle over entextualization as political actors engage with their opponents’ words in an effort 7 hodges: the dialogic emergence of ‘truth’ in politics published by cu scholar, 2008 colorado research in linguistics, volume 21 (2008) 8 to recontextualize them authoritatively and imbue them with their own preferred reading. 6. parody in the subversion of truth claims perhaps the most interesting aspect of intertextual connections is the way previously uttered phrases can be reanimated through parody. as bakhtin (1981) notes, “by manipulating the effects of context […] it is, for instance, very easy to make even the most serious utterance comical” (340). moreover, parody can be an effective tool of subversion. not only can it seriously challenge the truth claims of a political opponent, but in doing so, it can give play to an alternative narrative. i illustrate this with an example from an address given by rev. joseph lowery at the coretta scott king funeral in february 2006. with the current and past living presidents sitting behind him on the dais, lowery lifted the phrase “weapons of mass destruction” out of bush’s prior discourse, and reanimated it in his speech. part of the power of this example comes from the genre lowery chose: speaking in poetic verse. i have attempted to capture some of this verse by transcribing the example into lines and stanzas, as seen in (6). (note especially the underlined portions.) 6) from lowery’s speech at the coretta scott king funeral, february 7, 2006 she extended martin’s message against poverty, racism and war. she deplored the terror inflicted by our smart bombs on missions way afar. we know now there were no weapons of mass destruction over there ((23 sec cheers)) but coretta knew, and we knew, that there are weapons of misdirection right down here. millions without health insurance, poverty abounds, for war billions more, but no more for the poor. 8 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 21 [2008] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol21/iss1/1 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/gkzf-q768 the dialogic emergence of ‘truth’ in politics 9 this example illustrates how genre can regulate intertextual relations. on the surface, the genre conventions associated with poetic verse allow for greater freedom in reanimating the words, especially for the incorporation of puns. as bakhtin (1986) notes, “speech genres in general submit fairly easily to reaccentuation, the sad can be made jocular and gay, but as a result something new is achieved” (87). the recontextualization in this example takes a serious issue and inserts it into a jocular frame that allows it to be transformed with a great deal of partiality. despite (or perhaps because of) the levity of the frame, the reaccentuation of the words seriously challenges the claims associated with “weapons of mass destruction” in bush’s narrative. instead of bolstering bush’s story, the pun on the phrase “weapons of mass destruction” undermines it; and it does so without an overly didactic tone. as a result, a serious point is made subversively. the effect of lowery’s incorporation of these words into his speech is to further a dialogue between alternative perspectives poised against one another in the politics of truth. these perspectives differ on the veracity and sincerity of the bush administration’s truth claims about the possession of weapons of mass destruction by saddam hussein. while the truth claim asserted by the bush administration gained powerful sway in public discourse prior to and immediately after the invasion of iraq, the opposing side in the debate has been compiling their own talking points to forward an alternative truth claim. this larger dialogue forms the backdrop to lowery’s address, even though it is a speech made by one person in what might traditionally be characterized as a monologue. as seen earlier, the phrase “weapons of mass destruction” carries indexical links to the narrative espoused by the bush administration. incorporation of this short phrase into the current context is sufficient to conjure up that larger text. in this way, as briggs and bauman (1992) note, “a crucial part of the process of constructing intertextual relations may be undertaken by the audience” (157). moreover, this reference to “weapons of mass destruction” and the subsequent play on those words—“weapons of misdirection”—reshapes the meaning of this key phrase in the national dialogue. basso’s work on apache moral narratives is useful to further explore lowery’s speech. recall how the apache invoke place-names in conversation to conjure up an entire story associated with that place. from that invoked story, a moral is drawn to be applied to the current purposes of the situation (cf. hanks 1989: 116). in particular, the moral is aimed at a specific individual who is present; and as the apache describe, the “stories go to work on you like arrows” (basso 1996: 38). briggs and bauman explain it this way: the point of the performance [in apache place narratives] is to induce an individual who is present to link her or his recent behavior—and what community members are saying about it—to the moral transgression committed in the story. (briggs and bauman 1992: 157) 9 hodges: the dialogic emergence of ‘truth’ in politics published by cu scholar, 2008 colorado research in linguistics, volume 21 (2008) 10 the effect of the lowery example is somewhat similar. with bush sitting behind lowery on the dais, lowery (as the apache would metaphorically say) “shoots an arrow” at him by incorporating the phrase “weapons of mass destruction” into his verse. in reanimating these words, lowery turns them against bush as a reminder of the cumulative evidence against his administration’s truth claims. in effect, this works as a reminder directed at bush of his administration’s moral transgression and what critics are saying about it.6 lowery thus lodges a rebuttal as part of the larger dialogic struggle over truth in american politics. moreover, the words spoken by lowery in this particular context give play to a narrative in opposition to the one told by bush. importantly, this sound bite from lowery’s speech was itself subsequently recontextualized in the media in the weeks that followed; and lowery made appearances on fox news as part of the continuing discursive competition over the recontextualization of the phrase “weapons of mass destruction.” 7. conclusion the different discourse excerpts explored earlier form part of a larger national dialogue. in looking at the recycling of key phrases across different contexts, researchers gain a snapshot of the way intertextual series are drawn upon by political actors to engage in this dialogue and produce differing truth claims. as social actors draw from this reservoir of prior words, they work to reshape the larger social meanings associated with those words. in short, the process of entextualization is a political act in that lifting words and voices out of a prior context and recontextualizing them in a different setting imbues them with new interpretations. thus, truth in political discourse should not merely be analyzed as a product of the individual style of the politician to persuade or deceive, but as the confluence of various texts and discourses—as emergent from a dialogic process. political discourse is, like bakhtin (1981) says of the novel, “a system of languages that mutually and ideologically interanimate each other” (47). the effectiveness of rhetoric, therefore, comes from the interpretive web into which it enters. 6 this is also a prime example of signifying. that is, as mitchell-kernan (1972) describes, it is “a way of encoding messages or meanings in natural conversations which involves, in most cases, an element of indirection. this kind of signifying might be best viewed as an alternative message form, selected for its artistic merit, and may occur embedded in a variety of discourse” (165). 10 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 21 [2008] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol21/iss1/1 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/gkzf-q768 the dialogic emergence of ‘truth’ in politics 11 references álvarez-cáccamo, celso. 1996. “the power of reflexive language(s): code displacement in reported speech.” journal of pragmatics 25: 33-59. austin, j.l. 1999 [1962]. “how to do things with words.” in the discourse reader, adam jaworski and nikolas coupland (eds.), 63-75. new york: routledge. bakhtin, mikhail. 1981. the dialogic imagination, caryl emerson and michael holquist (trans.), michael holquist (ed.). austin: university of austin press. bakhtin, mikhail. 1986. speech genres and other late essays, vern w. mcgee (trans.), caryl emerson and michael holquist (eds.). austin: university of austin press. basso, keith. 1996. wisdom sits in places: landscape and language among the western apache. albuquerque: university of new mexico press. bauman, richard and briggs, charles l. 1990. “poetics and performance as critical perspectives on language and social life.” annual review of anthropology 19: 59-88. bauman, richard. 2005. “commentary: indirect indexicality, identity, performance: dialogic observations.” journal of linguistic anthropology 15(1): 145-150. blommaert, jan. 2005. discourse: a critical introduction. cambridge: cambridge university press. briggs, charles l. and bauman, richard. 1992. “genre, intertextuality, and social power.” journal of linguistic anthropology 2(2): 131-172. bucholtz, mary and hall, kira. 2004. “language and identity.” in a companion to linguistic anthropology, alessandro duranti (ed.), 369-394. malden, ma: blackwell. buttny, richard. 1997. “reported speech in talking race on campus.” human communication research 23(4): 477-506. buttny, richard. 1998. “putting prior talk into context: reported speech and the reporting context.” research on language and social interaction 31(1): 45-58. duranti, alessandro. 1993. “truth and intentionality: an ethnographic critique.” cultural anthropology 8(2): 214-245. gal, susan. 2006. “linguistic anthropology.” in encyclopedia of language and linguistics, keith brown (ed.), 171-185. hanks, william f. 1986. “authenticity and ambivalence in the text: a colonial maya case.” american ethnologist 13(4): 721-744. hanks, william f. 1989. “text and textuality.” annual review of anthropology 18: 95-127. hill, jane. 2005. “intertextuality as source and evidence for indirect indexical meanings.” journal of linguistic anthropology 15(1): 113-124. hodges, adam. 2007. “the narrative construction of identity: the adequation of saddam hussein and osama bin laden in the ‘war on terror.’” in 11 hodges: the dialogic emergence of ‘truth’ in politics published by cu scholar, 2008 colorado research in linguistics, volume 21 (2008) 12 discourse, war and terrorism, adam hodges and chad nilep (eds.), 67-88. amsterdam: john benjamins. hymes, dell. 1974. foundations in sociolinguistics. philadelphia: university of pennsylvania press. irvine, judith t. 1996. “shadow conversations: the indeterminacy of participant roles.” in natural histories of discourse, michael silverstein and greg urban (eds.), 131-159. chicago: university of chicago press. jakobson, roman. 1960. “closing statement: linguistics and poetics.” in style in language, thomas sebeok (ed.), 360-377. cambridge: mit press. jervis, robert. 2006. “understanding beliefs.” political psychology 27(5): 641663. kristeva, julia. 1980. “word, dialogue, and novel.” in desire in language: a semiotic approach to literature and art, leon s. roudiez (ed.), 64-91. new york: columbia university press. mannheim, bruce and tedlock, dennis. 1995. “introduction.” in the dialogic emergence of culture, dennis tedlock and bruce mannheim (eds.), 1-32. urbana and chicago: university of illinois press. mitchell-kernan, claudia. 1972. “signifying and marking: two afro-american speech acts.” in directions in sociolinguistics, john j. gumperz and dell hymes (eds.), 161-179. new york: holt, rinehart and winston. ochs, elinor. 1992. “indexing gender.” in rethinking context: language as interactive phenomenon, alessandro duranti and charles goodwin (eds.), 335-358. cambridge: cambridge university press. parmentier, richard. 1993. “the political function of reported speech: a belauan example.” in reflexive language: reported speech and metapragmatics, john lucy (ed.), 261-286. cambridge: cambridge university press. sacks, harvey. 1992. lectures on conversation. cambridge: blackwell. silverstein, michael. 1976. “shifters, linguistic categories, and cultural description.” in meaning in anthropology, keith basso and henry selby (eds.), 11-55. albuquerque: university of new mexico press. silverstein, michael. 1985. “language and the culture of gender: at the intersection of structure, usage, and ideology.” in semiotic mediation: sociocultural and psychological perspectives, elizabeth mertz and richard j. parmentier (eds.), 219-259. silverstein, michael. 2003. “indexical order and the dialectics of sociolinguistic life.” language and communication 23: 193-229. tannen, deborah. 1989. talking voices: repetition, dialogue, and imagery in conversational discourse. new york: cambridge university press. voloshinov, v.n. 1971. “reported speech.” in readings in russian poetics: formalist and structuralist views, ladislav matejka and krystyna promorska (eds.), 149-175. cambridge, ma: mit press. voloshinov, v.n. 1973. marxism and the philosophy of language, ladislav matejka and i.r. titunik (trans.). new york: seminar press. 12 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 21 [2008] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol21/iss1/1 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/gkzf-q768 colorado research in linguistics 6-2008 the dialogic emergence of ‘truth’ in politics: reproduction and subversion of the ‘war on terror’ discourse adam hodges recommended citation microsoft word cril_paper_hodges.doc 1. introduction the modification patterns of “compound indefinite pronouns” in english like something, everybody, and nowhere (quirk et al. 1985, cf. wu 2021) are intriguing because unlike other pronouns, this word class can take adjectival modifiers, but unlike nouns, these modifiers cannot occur pre-(pro)nominally (quirk et al. 1985, kishimoto 2000, larson & marušič 2004, leu 2004, wu 2021). for example, something interesting is grammatical but *interesting something is not. 1 many theorists have explained indefinite pronoun modification by comparing it to nominal adjectival modification. the two main nominal adjectival modification constructions in english are the attributive construction, in which adjectives come before a noun, and the predicative construction, in which adjectives come after a predicate that relates the adjective to a noun (bolinger 1967). however, there are a limited set of scenarios in which an adjective can occur in a postpositive position, directly after a noun, in english. first, adjectives with complements or coordination can come after nouns, as in an actor suitable for the part and soldiers timid or cowardly (quirk et al. 1985). second, a specific class of attributive adjectives are able to follow nouns without complementation, construing a relationship with the noun that is temporary or “stage-level” (carlson 1977): visible, navigable, responsible, and other -ible/-able adjectives, ablaze, afloat, and other aadjectives, as well as adjectives such as present, concerned, and involved (bolinger 1967, quirk et al. 1985, larson & marušič 2004). the existence of what i call the post-indefinite pronoun modification construction (pipm) has stumped many proponents of the generative syntactic perspective: how, if at all, are examples like something interesting related to post-nominal modification? from what underlying structures do such examples originate? do they involve attributive adjectives, predicative adjectives, postpositive adjectives or something else entirely? various analyses have been proposed to explain post-indefinite pronoun modification. kishimoto (2000) argues for a movement-based analysis of these structures, in which everything interesting is a transformation of the np deep structure every interesting thing. larson and marušič (2004) critique this analysis, articulating that the adjectives in this construction must originate “in place” because of certain behavioral similarities between postnominal adjectival modification and postindefinite pronoun adjectival modification. for example, like all the stars visible, everything visible has a stage-level (temporary/episodic) interpretation, while prenominal modification is ambiguous between stage-level (temporary/episodic) and individual-level (inherent/intrinsic) interpretations. however, larson and marušič’s (2004) arguments rely on comparison to a different set of postpositive adjectives (e.g. visible, navigable) than those that are most typical of post-indefinite pronoun modification (e.g. interesting, unusual). wu (2021) adds on to larson and marušič’s analysis, arguing that adjectives like unusual and interesting are “coerced” into postpositive position, while visible and navigable are inherently postpositive. however, like larson & marušič (2004), wu’s analysis assumes that all types of post-modification, whether nominal or pro-nominal, have the same types of interpretations. i suggest that there are key differences between the semantic construal associated with postnominal modification and pipm that set pipm apart. in this paper, i draw on the framework of construction grammar (cxg; michaelis 2012; hilpert 2014; goldberg 1995, 2006) to demonstrate that post-indefinite pronoun modification is best understood as a separate construction from postnominal modification. although it is true that post-indefinite pronoun modification shares various qualities with postnominal modification, tokens like everything interesting have individual-level construal rather than stage-level construal. for example, while everything visible means everything that is currently visible, everything interesting means everything that is inherently interesting. this difference is evidence of a separate schematic form-meaning pairing from other cases of postpositive modification. in pipm, gradable evaluative adjectives follow indefinite pronouns, and pick an indefinite entity or event out of a class of entities or events prototypically socially evaluated as the adjective in question for the situation being described. for example, something weird happened construes a set of prototypically weird events that can happen and identifies the referent as one of these events. this paper will be structured as follows: in §2, i will give several examples of the pipm construction. in §3, i will review previous analyses of this construction that compare postindefinite pronoun modification to postnominal modification, involving what i call “restricted access” adjectives. in §4, i will present preliminary semantic arguments for why pipm should be understood as a construction separate from not only attributive and predicative modification, but also from postnominal modification involving restricted access adjectives. i also discuss why the framework of cxg is perfectly suited to describe the unique construal associated with pipm. in §5, i will follow up with additional syntactic evidence from the contemporary corpus of american english (coca) 2 that pipm is a separate construction from postnominal modification. the remaining sections of the paper will outline the form and meaning of pipm (§6) and demonstrate some coercion effects (§7), before concluding remarks in §8. 2. examples of pipm in this section i provide several examples of pipm from coca. this construction consists of any compound indefinite pronoun, and any gradable, evaluative adjective. compound indefinite pronouns are those made up of two morphemes, a determiner/quantifier morpheme (e.g. every-, some-, any-, no-) and a nominal morpheme (e.g. -one, -body, -thing), and thus do not include indefinite pronouns like some and one (quirk et al. 1985). based on the corpus analysis i conduct in §5, common evaluative adjectives in this construction are as follows: new, wrong, different, unusual, cool, good, bad, suspicious, strange, interesting, funny, special, nice, stupid, similar, negative, terrible, unexpected, & amazing. see examples of pipm in 1: 1) a. and that’s where we see something new and potentially something very promising b. do you see anything wrong in that? c. they are willing to spend more to get something special. d. he saw nothing unusual at first e. everything bad was over f. the deceased must have been somebody important g. just find someplace nice h. one thing good about late spring is… while i agree with larson & marušič (2004) that transformational analyses that involve movement of thing from post-adjectival to pre-adjectival position are not appropriate, thing is still relevant to this construction. when preceded by a quantifier, thing and other semantically “light” nouns play a similar semantic role as compound indefinite pronouns and therefore fit into this pattern (see 1h). 3. previous analyses kishimoto’s (2000:558-559) analysis outlines the problem of post-indefinite pronoun modification with a set of contrasts between attributive adjectival modification of nouns vs. indefinite pronouns, reproduced below in examples 2-7. it should be noted that these adjectives must precede nouns (as in 2a, 3a, & 4a) and must follow indefinite pronouns (as in 5b, 6b, & 7b): 2) a. every interesting book b. *every book interesting 3) a. a delicious dish b. *a dish delicious 4) a. cold rooms b. *rooms cold 5) a. *interesting everything b. everything interesting 6) a. *delicious something b. something delicious 7) a. *cold someplace b. someplace cold to account for these distinctions, kishimoto (2000) proposes an n-raising analysis in which the “light nouns” thing and place can move from a location in an np, after the adjective, to a position in a num phrase, before the adjective, as outlined in 8a (pre-movement) and 8b (postmovement): 8) a. [dp every [nump [np interesting thing]]] b. [dp every [nump thing [np interesting________]]] larson & marušič (2004) argue that the movement analysis cannot be correct, by drawing comparisons between post-indefinite pronoun modification and the behavior of certain postnominal adjectives, including visible, navigable, and responsible. they build off of bolinger’s (1967) argument against a movement analysis that ties attributive and postnominal uses of these adjectives to the same underlying structure. bolinger instead analyzes postnominal adjectives as reduced relative (predicative) clauses, as in 9b, reduced from 9a: 9) a. the stars that are visible b. the stars visible although larson & marušič (2004) provide many reasons why a movement analysis of postindefinite pronoun modification cannot be correct, here i will review only two of them: 1) attributive-only adjectives do not occur with indefinite pronouns and 2) indefinite pronoun modification involves stage-level construal, like postnominal modification. firstly, post-indefinite pronoun modification cannot be underlyingly attributive because indefinite pronouns cannot be modified by the adjectives that bolinger (1967) identifies as only occurring attributively. bolinger (1967) points out that there are specific adjectives, such as live and mere, that occur attributively, as in 10, but do not occur predicatively or postnominally, as in 11 and 12 respectively. larson & marušič (2004) points out that these attributive-only adjectives also do not occur following indefinite pronouns, as in 13 (larson & marušič 2004:273, wu 202:826): 10) a. live animal b. mere idea 11) a. *this animal is live (cf. this animal is alive) b. *no idea is mere 12) a. *an animal live b. *no idea mere 13) a. *something live (cf. something alive) b. *nothing mere therefore, larson & marušič (2004) suggest that post-indefinite pronoun modification cannot be underlyingly attributive, otherwise indefinite pronouns would be able to be post-modified by attributive-only adjectives. secondly, and crucial to the current analysis, larson & marušič (2004) draw on bolinger’s (1967) observation that while attributive modification can either be interpreted as stage-level (temporary/episodic) or individual-level (inherent), postnominal modification necessarily has a stage-level construal. larson & marušič (2004) argue that like postnominal modification, indefinite pronoun modification also only has a stage-level construal. larson & marušič (2004:274) contrast attributive modification in 15a & 16a with postnominal modification in 15b & 16b: 15) a. list all the visible stars, whether we can see them or not. b. ??list all the stars visible, whether we can see them or not. 16) a. list all the responsible individuals, whether they were involved or not. b. ??list all the individuals responsible, whether they were involved or not. attributive modification, in 15a, can refer to stars that are in general visible to the naked eye – or “inherently” visible (individual-level) – or it can refer to stars that are currently (temporarily/episodically) visible (stage-level). because visible stars can have both readings, it can occur with a continuation that directly references the two possibilities of currently visible or currently invisible. similarly, in 16a, responsible individuals can be interpreted either as individuals who are responsible in general, in other words, trustworthy (individual-level), or responsible for a specific situation (stage-level), and thus can occur with a similar continuation that denies the possibility of current involvement. nominal post-modification on the other hand, does not have both possibilities. stars visible in 15b necessarily means the stars that are temporarily currently visible (stage-level), and thus the same continuation sounds odd (denoted by ??). similarly, individuals responsible necessarily refers to individuals responsible for some current situation (stage-level). larson & marušič’s (2004) then compare these construals to 17, examples of post-indefinite pronoun modification: 17) a. ??list everything visible, whether we can see it or not. b. ??list everyone responsible, whether they were involved or not. like 15b, everything visible in 17a necessarily means everything that is currently visible (stagelevel) and cannot mean everything that is visible in general (individual-level), and like 16b, everyone responsible in 17b necessarily means someone who is responsible for some current act (stage-level). therefore, both of these cannot take the continuation that contrasts two possibilities. larson & marušič (2004) propose that if everything visible was underlyingly every visible thing, that it would have the same semantic construal as the attributive modification pattern in 15a & 16a – that it would be ambiguous between stage-level and individual-level. they thus provide convincing evidence that post-indefinite pronoun modification does not originate prenominally (attributively). however, while larson & marušič (2004) begin their discussion by citing kishimoto’s examples (2-7) of evaluative adjectives that can occur after indefinite pronouns but not after nouns, their argumentation relies solely on comparison to adjectives that can occur after nouns, the -ible/-able adjectives, such as visible and responsible. many of these adjectives convey that there is restricted access to the noun they modify, in other words, that only a limited number of the noun is visible or responsible (and that others are non-visible, or not responsible). therefore, i’ll call this group of adjectives “restricted access” (ra) adjectives, for ease of reference.3 this is in general, a different set of adjectives than those that can only follow indefinite pronouns and which typically occur with pipm (see §2), which i’ll refer to as pipm adjectives. larson & marušič (2004:270) admit that their account is not able to explain, if post-indefinite pronoun adjectives “originate postnominally” in a similar fashion to postnominal modification, what prevents *every book interesting, *a dish delicious, and *rooms cold in 2-4. an analysis of the pipm pattern must address the distinction between adjectives that can generally follow nouns (ra adjectives) vs those that cannot (pipm adjectives), and cannot rely upon the syntax and semantics of one modification pattern to explain the other. along these lines, wu (2021) expands upon larson & marušič’s (2004) analysis, proposing a syntactic explanation for why *every book interesting doesn’t occur but something interesting does. while wu (2021) agrees that tokens like stars visible are reduced from relative clauses (stars that are visible), he claims that only certain adjectives (ra adjectives) are inherently postpositive and thus can undergo this reduction. adjectives that typically (except for in pipm) occur prenominally (e.g., interesting) are instead coerced to postpositive position specifically when occurring with indefinite pronouns (not nouns). wu (2021) argues that this coercion process occurs because the “prenominal” modifier position is not available, as the “determiner” (e.g., every) and “noun” (e.g., thing) pieces of compound indefinite pronouns cannot be broken up by the insertion of a prenominal modifier. therefore, the modifier needs to occur after the compound indefinite pronoun, since modifiers cannot occur before determiners. this explanation is favorable because it focuses on the unique morphosyntactic properties of indefinite pronouns – on their properties that fall between phrase-hood and word-hood. however, wu (2021:836) claims that as a corollary of this coercion process, “the placement of potential attributive adjectives in postposition will restrict them [to] ‘temporariness.’” in other words, he again explains the semantics of pipm modification in terms of ra modification, even while successfully separating the syntactic patterns involved. while this construal effect is often true for ra adjectives like visible, it is not true for pipm adjectives. i will demonstrate evidence for this assertion in the next section. 4. pipm: a construction in its own right some theorists have suggested that post-indefinite pronoun modification is underlyingly attributive and undergoes movement to occur in postpositive position (kishimoto 2000). others have suggested that it is underlyingly postpositive, possibly reduced from a predicative relative clause (larson & marušič 2004), or coerced to postpositive position because of the specific morphosyntactic structure of compound indefinite pronouns (wu 2021). in this section, i review the evidence for each position, detailing in what ways post-indefinite pronoun modification is similar to attributive modification, and in what ways it is similar to ra postnominal and predicative modification. ultimately, i argue that post-indefinite pronoun modification shares particular features with each of these types of modification and is therefore best described as a separate construction in its own terms. as discussed in the last section, previous analyses have demonstrated that post-indefinite pronoun modification is similar to postnominal and predicative modification patterns in that attributive-only adjectives such as live and mere cannot modify indefinite pronouns. pipm is clearly not the same modification pattern as attributive modification. previous approaches (larson & marušič 2004, wu 2021) have also argued that post-indefinite pronoun modification produces a temporary (stage-level) construal. however, i argue that this is often true for ra adjectives but not for pipm adjectives. for example, in 18a, an example with a pipm adjective, goodness is characteristic of everything (individual-level), not a temporary quality. similarly, in 18b (repeated from 1f), importance is a characteristic quality of the deceased (individual-level), that does not disappear after their death. lastly in 18c (repeated from 1d), unusualness is a characteristic quality of the possible entities or events to be seen (individual-level). what is temporary in this case is the period in which one has not seen one of these items. 18) a. you remind me of everything good. b. the deceased must have been somebody important. c. he saw nothing unusual at first. due to the individual-level construal involved in pipm, in addition to this pattern showing conflict with attributive-only adjectives, it is in fact also rare with predicative-only adjectives, like afraid and sorry, that tend to convey temporary feelings rather than general characteristics. this is not predicted by larson & marušič’s (2004) and wu’s (2021) claims that all postpositive adjectives have a temporary construal. while the man is afraid is felicitous, someone afraid is distinctly odd. in coca, although there are 54 hits for indef-pronoun afraid, many of these involve secondary predicates or adjectival complements. there is only one true example of pipm, in 19: 19) mr-hamill: they -i learned that, that they -they dwell on fear. if you -if you give into them, you know, that -that -that gives them a big high. they want to see somebody afraid. and -and -and i really wasn't -didn't have to -to try to act like i wasn't. being afraid is typically not something that characterizes somebody, but in 19, hamill construes fright as a characteristic quality of someone the individuals in question are looking for. this is a marginal example; in general, afraid doesn’t tend to occur in pipm. similarly, there are no true examples of pipm with sorry. thus, while post-indefinite pronoun modification shares some features with predicative and postnominal modification (including conflict with attributive-only adjectives), it shares individual-level construal with attributive modification. this makes examples of pipm different from reduced relatives – someone who is sick doesn’t mean the same thing as someone sick, because someone sick construes sickness as an individual-level property, while the predicative relative clause construes it as a temporary stage-level one. this is very different from what we see with post-indefinite modification involving ra adjectives, like visible. as discussed in the previous section, something visible does mean the same thing as something that is visible. thus, pipm is a different constructional pattern than attributive, predicative, or postnominal modification, and should not be explained in terms of any of these other syntactic patterns. instead, the framework of construction grammar (cxg) can be utilized to explain the idiosyncrasies associated with post-indefinite pronoun modification. within cxg, syntactic patterns are assigned specific meanings and/or functions, just as words are (michaelis 2012, hilpert 2014, goldberg 1995, 2006). whereas generative perspectives find it difficult to explain cases in which the same schematic syntactic structure is associated with two different functions or meanings, cxg can account for such patterns. for example, goldberg (1995:204-209) identifies two different meanings associated with the “way” construction, a “means” version and a “manner” version labeled in 20: 20) a. means: in some cases, passengers tried to fight their way through smoke-chocked hallways to get back to their cabins to get their safety jackets. b. manner: …he was scowling his way along the fiction shelves in pursuit of a book. the means version of this construction involves interpretations of the verb (e.g. fight) in which the associated action is the means of creating a path, while the manner version involves interpretations of the verb (e.g. scowl) in which the associated action is an activity occurring at the same time as traversing a path. in the present analysis, we are dealing with a similar case, in which the same surface form, postpositive modification, is associated with two separate functions, restricted stage-level modification (ra modification), and evaluative individual-level modification (pipm). if there are two separate constructions associated with the same surface form, we should be able to find examples in which the same adjective is used in both constructions, with two different construals. indeed, these cases can be found. while bolinger (1967) says that “the man responsible is unambiguously ‘to blame’ and the responsible man is almost unambiguously ‘trustworthy’” (p. 4), and larson & marušič (2004:273) claim that post-indefinite examples always share the episodic (to blame) reading with postnominal modification, we do see post indefinite examples like those in 21, in which someone responsible means someone that is trustworthy: 21) a. that's great, " she says. " the landlord is definitely looking for someone responsible. " " i'm that person, " i say. b. if you could pair him with someone responsible maybe a girl. these examples, although they include ra adjectives, appear to be examples of the pipm construction, with individual-level construal, rather than examples of the typical pattern that bolinger (1967) and larson & marušič (2004) describe for postnominal ra modification, involving stage-level construal, as in 22: 22) i did nothing... not my fault. nobody says it is. take it easy, right? we will find someone responsible. thus, rather than post-indefinite pronoun modification following the phrase structure rules for nouns or requiring movement or coercion to produce, the modification pattern that occurs with indefinite pronouns is specific to this lexical class – it is a formal idiom (michaelis 2012), associated with its own form and function. in the next section, i aim to demonstrate that while there are examples of ra adjectives that occur in the pipm construction, in general, pipm adjectives and ra adjectives are separate sets of adjectives that occur in separate syntactic patterns. 5. corpus analysis in the previous section, i demonstrated that pipm and ra modification have different semantic construals. in the current section, i demonstrate that although their immediate surface structure is the same – they both occur postpositively – they occur in different larger syntactic patterns. specifically, pipm occurs in at least two larger syntactic patterns that ra adjectives are rare or do not occur in: after verbs of perception (e.g., see something unusual) and before verbs of occurrence (e.g., something unusual happened). the general goal of this corpus case study is to show that adjectives common in previous arguments that compare postnominal modification to post-indefinite pronoun modification – the ra adjectives – don’t occur in the same syntactic contexts as pipm adjectives. for ra adjectives, i selected a small group of adjectives that consistently have come up in the literature: visible, navigable, available, possible, and present (a non-ible adjective, that also participates in the same restricted access pattern). for pipm adjectives, i first selected the larger syntactic patterns that appear to be specific to pipm (after verbs of perception and before verbs of occurrence), in order to isolate examples of pipm, and then identified adjectives that occur most commonly in these patterns. this led to the group of adjectives similar, strange, terrible, unusual, different, and new. although the adjective wrong is also very frequent in pipm, it is often used as a secondary predicate or adverbial, and its use in pipm is therefore difficult to isolate. the need for an analysis involving larger syntactic structures becomes apparent when examining the results of an initial corpus search in table 1 below. many more nouns occur before ra adjectives than indefinite pronouns, but only some pipm adjectives have more indefinite pronouns than nouns preceding them. in order to show that pipm occurs in unique syntactic patterns, additional examination of these examples is needed. restricted access adjs indef-pronoun adj something visible noun adj man visible visible 102 2201 navigable 0 19 available 351 31845 possible 1210 9416 responsible 402 7538 present 236 11825 pipm adjs similar 2664 9486 strange 1278 676 terrible 1336 325 unusual 1848 275 different 6684 5291 new 14498 11489 table 1. restricted access adjs vs pipm adjs after nouns & indefinite pronouns (coca) in table 1, there are several types of examples of pipm adjectives following nouns that aren’t true examples of post-modification. for example, included in these numbers are secondary predicates as in 23a, adverbials as in 23b, and examples with adjectival complements as in 23c-d. examples with adjectival complements are not examples of pipm because all adjectives can occur postpositively if they occur with complements, as discussed in §1. 23) a. it's harder to make those jokes and make comedy funny if you don't have any profanity b. after completing the book i saw things different c. …creating a self funded program similar to those in at least 10 other states… d. …we'd found 400 species new to the park… thus, corpus work with this construction requires manual attention to weed out irrelevant examples. i thus examined larger syntactic patterns for two reasons: 1) i thought i would be more likely to isolate examples of pipm within these patterns, and 2) to create a smaller set of data to manually remove examples of secondary predicates, adverbials, adjectives with complements, as well as idioms like brand new. for both analyses below, i manually examined all tokens, in other words, examples with both ra and pipm adjectives, and those after both nouns and indefinite pronouns, removing all examples of these irrelevant patterns. although coordinated postposed adjectives are another pattern that license post-modification, many valid examples of pipm involve coordination (as in 1a). therefore, i retained these examples and discuss an example of this pattern below. 5.1 verbs of perception table 2 shows the results of searches in coca for patterns involving post-modified nouns and post-modified indefinite pronouns with ra & pipm adjectives, following the perception verbs see, hear, taste, smell, and touch. two separate noun searches were needed to account for singular & plural tokens. during manual review of the data, in addition to the types of examples discussed above, i also removed tokens in which the constituency wasn’t clear. for example, in 24, a wh-question constituency test is awkward: 24) a. i don’t see anything unusual about this. b. ??what do you see _____ about this? restricted access adjs see/hear/taste/smell/touch indef-prn adj see something visible see/hear/taste/smell/touch noun adj see men visible see/hear/taste/smell/touch * noun adj see a man visible visible 1 0 0 navigable 0 0 0 available 2 2 16 possible 1 0 4 responsible 0 0 1 present 0 0 2 pipm adjs similar 73 1 0 strange 119 1 0 terrible 22 0 0 unusual 187 0 0 different 191 0 0 new 276 0 0 table 2: restricted access adjs vs pipm adjs in the “perception-verb x adj” pattern (coca) as expected, indefinite pronouns with pipm adjectives are much more common after perception verbs than both indefinite pronouns with ra adjectives or nouns with either type of adjective. examples of pipm adjectives following indefinite pronouns in this pattern are shown below in 25: 25) a. did you hear anything unusual last night? b. because whenever he saw something new and interesting, or new and ridiculous, he always wondered what she'd have to say about it. while ra adjectives following indefinite pronouns are less common (at least after perception verbs), they are still grammatical, as the examples in larson & marušič (2004) show. one example of this type is given in 26. this example has the stage-level construal predicted in previous analyses, while pipm examples in 25 are individual-level. 26) we need a lefty in the outfield and i don't see anyone available. lastly, while it is expected that ra adjectives would also follow nouns, it is unexpected that pipm adjectives would follow nouns. therefore, these tokens, in 27, require further discussion: 27) a. we saw visions strange and foreboding, but we kept them to ourselves, because heaven blesses the meek b. but just hearing and seeing videos similar on the internet, it just made me uncomfortable. 27a is an example that involves coordination, and thus is a predictable example of postmodification (§1). however, 27b is not easily explainable. while “on the internet” is a secondary predicate of see rather than a complement of similar, perhaps this example may also be licensed due to the “heaviness” of this clause (bolinger 1967, larson & marušič 2004). overall, such examples appear to be marginal. examples of pipm are common after verbs of perception, while examples of restricted access modification are less common after verbs of perception. crucially, the adjectives identified as pipm adjectives only felicitously occur after indefinite pronouns. 5.2 verbs of occurrence table 3 shows the results of searches in coca for patterns involving post-modified nouns and post-modified indefinite pronouns with ra & pipm adjectives, preceding the occurrence verbs happen, occur, begin, start, and be going on. restricted access adjs indef-pronoun adj happen/occur/start/begin/be going on something visible happened noun adj happen/occur/start/begin/be going on thing visible happened visible 2 0 navigable 0 0 available 0 1 possible 0 0 responsible 0 0 present 0 3 pipm adjs similar 140 0 strange 183 2 terrible 186 0 unusual 106 1 different 36 0 new 37 0 table 3. restricted access adjs vs pipm adjs in the “x adj occurrence-verb” pattern (coca) as in the previous section, it is clear that indefinite pronouns with pipm adjectives are more common preceding verbs of occurrence than both indefinite pronouns with ra adjectives or nouns with either type of adjective. examples of pipm adjectives following indefinite pronouns in this pattern are shown below in 28: 28) a. did anything strange happen when you were living there? b. it becomes more apparent that something terrible is going on inside kosovo. there are three postnominal examples of pipm with verbs of occurrence, two examples involving the same phrase (shown in 29a) from different parts of the movie killer tomatoes eat france, and one additional example in 29b: 29) a. when these four things strange occur as one... " the true king of france shall return with the sun. b. …that he will go away satisfied and not report back to the authorities that some thing unusual is going on in that household 29a is an example of quantified “light noun” thing, therefore an example of pipm. since this example also involves a rhyme, this suggests that the ordering of this token is creative and playful. 29b is also an example of pipm with a space between the “determiner” and “noun” parts of the compound indefinite pronoun. therefore, while these examples are marginal, they are explainable. in this short corpus case study, i have shown that despite the same surface structure of postmodification, there are larger syntactic contexts in which pipm is relatively common but restricted access modification is rare. by isolating pipm examples after verbs of perception and before verbs of occurrence, i have provided further evidence that pipm is a separate modification construction than restricted access modification, adding on to the semantic evidence in the previous section. the pipm adjectives that i examined rarely post-modify nouns in these patterns, and when they do, they are typically examples of the pipm pattern, with the quantified light noun thing or with a space between parts of the indefinite pronoun. furthermore, despite comparisons to ra adjectives in the literature on the pipm pattern, in the syntactic patterns analyzed here, ra adjectives rarely occur. 6. constructional analysis of pipm pipm is a formal idiom, or construction, because its form cannot be licensed by traditional phrase structure rules, it has a special interpretation, and because there are semantic constraints on the words that can occur in the construction (michaelis 2012). the formal structure of the pipm construction is as follows: [compound indefinite pronoun | quantifier thing(s)] (degree or essence adverb) evaluative adjective the meaning of the construction is a gestalt construal of an indefinite entity or event that is selected from a backgrounded larger category of entities or events, evaluated by prototypical societal norms as falling somewhere along the scale of the adjective in the typified context of use. context is important to this construction because something unusual means something different in say something unusual, taste something unusual, and something unusual happened: a different larger category of actions or entities (unusual things that are said, things that taste unusual, unusual things that happen) is construed for these different phrases. therefore, the larger category from which an indefinite pronoun is selected can be abstract or concrete, and made of entities or events, since indefinite pronouns can refer to many different things. the fact that similar and different are common in this construction emphasizes the social situatedeness and intersubjectivity of this construction, as social actors commonly employ it to discuss situations that are similar or different from what they are currently jointly focused on. however, despite a contextual construal, the categories evoked by this construction are contingent on conventional ideologies and social stereotypes about what kinds of things can be described as the adjective in question (or can be evaluated as similar or different from the entity in question). thus, while the adjectives in this construction are subjective and gradable, the construction identifies a class of entities or events that rely on conventional societal norms to establish what is terrible, unusual, strange, new, similar, or different in a given context. the construction doesn’t just identify one such thing, but a whole category of things, which emphasizes socially sanctioned or “typified” understandings of social action (gal & irvine 2019). pipm’s referent is a gestalt – rather than emphasizing the referents’ indefiniteness or the quality of the adjective, the construction construes both as equally important to its meaning. this distinguishes something unusual from similar ways of to say the same thing like something that is unusual, or some unusual thing, which have far fewer tokens in coca. as discussed in §3, while larson & marušič (2004) & wu (2021) argue that postnominal and post-indefinite modification construes adjectives as only temporarily or episodically modifying the nouns they describe, the kind of social meaning that pipm imparts is necessarily individuallevel, since it deals with stereotypes of social action. this can be shown by the fact that you can modify pipm with “essence” adverbs, such as fundamentally, essentially, and inherently, as in 30. it does not appear that these adverbs can be used in ra modification. 30) this is an exciting result that suggests something fundamentally different about what processes play a key role in the generation of mercury's magnetic field…. degree adverbs can also modify the adjectives in this construction. this includes adverbs such as so, very, slightly, and totally, which push the category in one direction on the scale construed by the adjective. finally, comparatives also are sanctioned, since this merely construes a category that is compared to another category. but superlatives, like ??something most different, are not attested in coca, since superlatives refer to the highest end of a scale rather than a categorical class associated with a region on a scale. something should be said about the effect of different indefinite pronouns in this construction, since the construction has a slightly different meaning with indefinite pronouns that start with the quantifiers no, some, any, and every. in these different cases, the backgrounded category against which the indefinite meaning is construed is the same, but the foregrounded part of the category, the referent of the overall construction, is different. with indefinite pronouns that start with no, as in the phrase nothing new, a category is construed of things prototypically socially evaluated as new, and the referent of the phrase is associated with none of these things. with some, we have seen that the referent is identified as an indefinite thing out of the larger category. any acts similarly to some, but is often used in negative contexts, questions and subjunctives. lastly, when the indefinite pronoun begins with every, the referent of the construction is the entire construed category. 7. coercion effects and social meaning one of the demonstrations of a meaningful and productive constructional pattern is the observation that its constructional meaning can coerce a new meaning from a lexical item that doesn’t match its selectional restrictions, in other words, the types of lexical items with which it normally combines (michaelis 2012). as i discussed in §6, pipm generally occurs with gradable, subjective adjectives that are associated with socially proscribed categories in a particular context. however, occasionally, non-subjective adjectives (31a), non-gradable domain adjectives (sullivan 2013; 31b-c), and proper nouns or adjectives formed from proper nouns (31d-g) can occur in pipm: 31) a. i was waiting for him to say something drunk like this baby needs us. this baby didn’t need us. b. nothing sexual happened beside a few erotic kisses. c. does that mean a christian may not say anything christian in an islamic state? d. and they stopped paying sarah palin to come into the office once every three months and say something sarah paliny e. when i get home from work, i build a fire and chuckle to myself that mr. murphy saw something thoreauvian in my nature f. i almost wanted to do a vegas theme for this but alas nothing vegas happened on this day in hockey history. g. and now for something completely… obama (gonzálvez-garcía 2014:281) in these examples, adjectives (or nouns) that typically are not considered gradable, subjective, or associated with social evaluation receive a construal as such. in 31a, an adjective that is not typically used to describe a subjective quality, drunk, is construed as a subjective evaluative term that describes a category of things one might say while drunk. in 31b-c, non-gradable adjectives that normally designate a domain under which types of activities or actions can be categorized, such as sexual and christian, are also construed as socially evaluated gradable categories. crucially, these tokens rely on shared social knowledge of what types of things can be evaluated as sexual or christian. lastly, there are several examples of pipm tokens that involve proper nouns or adjectival forms of proper nouns, in 31d-g. these examples rely on metonymic inferencing (gonzálvez-garcía 2014, danygier 2011) to evoke the quality associated with a category of socially evaluated entities, and thus presuppose expertise with the domain associated with the proper noun. since expertise often signals ones’ engagement with particular activities or communities, this construction may be leveraged in the construction of social meaning (eckert 2008, silverstein 2006). for example, something thoreauvian indexes one as both elite (possessing academic knowledge) and as a lover of nature. 8. conclusion in this case study i have shown that the post-indefinite pronoun modification, or pipm, construction is a separate adjectival construction than postnominal modification with restricted access adjectives. while the “light” noun thing can participate in this construction, other nouns cannot. in addition, while pipm involves individual-level construal, postnominal modification involves stage-level construal. thus, pipm should be analyzed on its own terms, and not as a form of postnominal modification as generative analyses have done (larson & marušič 2004, wu 2021). using the framework of construction grammar (michaelis 2012), i have shown that this construction has a specific form and semantic interpretation that cannot be predicted from its parts. its meaning plays into and (re)constructs ideologies about particular social qualities, and it even coerces adjectives and nouns that are not usually evaluative to evaluate entities and events along social scales. analysis of this construction can thus complement work at the intersection of syntactic analysis and the construction of social meaning (moore 2009). references bolinger, dwight. 1967. adjectives in english: attribution and predication. lingua 18.1–34. carlson, greg. 1977. a unified analysis of the english bare plural. linguistics and philosophy 1.413–456. dancygier, barbara. 2011. modification and constructional blends in the use of proper names. constructions and frames, 3.208–235. eckert, penelope. 2008. variation and the indexical field. journal of sociolinguistics, 12.453– 476. gal, susan and judith irvine. 2019. signs of difference: language and ideology in social life. cambridge university press. goldberg, adele. 1995. constructions: a construction grammar approach to argument structure. the university of chicago press. goldberg, adele. 2006. constructions at work: the nature of generalization in language. oxford university press. gonzálvez-garcía, francisco. 2014. “that’s so a construction!”: some reflections on innovative uses of “so” in present-day english. studies in functional and structural linguistics, ed. by maría de los ángeles gómez, francisco ruiz de mendoza ibáñez, and francisco gonzálvez-garcía, 271–294 (vol. 68). john benjamins publishing company. hilpert, martin. 2019. construction grammar and its application to english (2nd ed.). edinburgh university press. kishimoto, hideki. 2000. indefinite pronouns and overt n-raising. linguistic inquiry, 31.557– 566. larson, richard and franc marušič. 2004. on indefinite pronoun structures with aps: reply to kishimoto. linguistic inquiry, 35.268–287. leu, thomas. 2005. something invisible in english. university of pennsylvania working papers in linguistics, 11.143–154. michaelis, laura. 2012. making the case for construction grammar. sign-based construction grammar, ed. by hans boas and ivan sag, 31-67. csli publications. moore, emma and robert podesva. 2009. style, indexicality, and the social meaning of tag questions. language in society, 38. 447–485. quirk, randolph; sidney greenbaum; geoffrey leech; and jan svartvik. 1985. a comprehensive grammar of the english language. longman. silverstein, michael. 2006. old wine, new ethnographic lexicography. annual review of anthropology, 35.481–496. sullivan, karen. 2013. frames and constructions in metaphoric language. john benjamins publishing company. wu, zhen. 2021. compound pronouns in english. english language and linguistics, 25.825– 849. end notes 1 wu (2021:845) explains an exception that some indefinite pronouns can occur with articles and prenominal adjectives, however then they are construed as nouns, as in a very special someone. 2 all examples cited in this paper are from coca. 3 while it is likely the case that these postnominal adjectives occur in a particular restricted access construction, i stay agnostic on the constructional status associated with this postnominal modification since it is not the focus of this paper. developing psycholinguistic models of subject-verb agreement in speech production: new data from shipibo-konibo relative clauses colorado research in linguistics. june 2010. vol. 22. boulder: university of colorado. © 2010 by cecily jill duffield developing psycholinguistic models of subject-verb agreement in speech production: new data from shipibokonibo relative clauses* cecily jill duffield university of colorado subject-verb agreement is assumed to be the marking of the verb in an utterance as determined by properties of the subject. psycholinguistic models of agreement in speech production differ as to whether they treat this phenomenon as driven primarily by syntactic processes or semantic influences. but these models are based primarily on research in indo-european languages. this paper suggests that a useful approach to investigating the psycholinguistic mechanisms behind agreement in speech production is to extend the research to more typologically variant languages and more complex structures. relative clause data from a panoan language, shipibo-konibo, based on the work of valenzuela (2002) is presented here as an ideal case study for psycholinguistic research on syntactic and semantic influences on subject-verb agreement. shipibo-konibo has a flexible word order, and a variety of relative clause types and relativization strategies that display subjects and verbs in various positional relationships. the data is presented in the context of two psycholinguistic models of agreement production: the marking and morphing model (eberhard, cutting & bock 2005) and the maximal input model (vigliocco & hartsuiker 2002). 1. introduction the study of sentence production investigates how speakers produce grammatically well-formed utterances that communicate an intended message. the successful production of an utterance entails that, during grammatical encoding, the speaker must match not only lexical and morphological items to conceptual information from the message she intends to convey, but also that each of these items are compatibly integrated in a conventional syntactic structure that can then be phonologically encoded. as with other areas of psycholinguistics, research into sentence production is informed by data provided first through observation of the linguistic phenomenon in question and then experimental investigation and modeling of the phenomena under examination. as it is assumed that the psychological mechanisms involved in speech production are the same for all normal speakers, theories of these mechanisms must account for data observed in a wide range of typologically variant languages. the purpose of this i would like to thank alexandra aikhenvald, bhuvana narasimhan, susan brown, les sikos, steve duman, michael thomas, and two anonymous reviewers for feedback and discussion of the ideas presented here. all errors are of course my own. 1 duffield: developing psycholinguistic models of subject-verb agreement in speech production published by cu scholar, 2010 colorado research in linguistics, volume 22 (2010) 2 paper is to present a general overview of current psycholinguistic approaches to one particular linguistic phenomenon, agreement, while drawing attention to data in a language unlike those previously considered in psycholinguistic studies of agreement, shipibo-konibo. it will be argued that the data observed in shipibokonibo, based on the work of pilar valenzuela (2002), are of interest not only because they exhibit features not seen in languages previously examined in agreement studies thus far, but also because they provide suitable stimuli that may be used in well-established experimental paradigms used to investigate agreement in speech production. so what is “agreement”? in theoretical linguistics, agreement is typically understood as an asymmetric syntactic relationship in which the form of one element (the “target”) in a sentence corresponds to the form of another (the “controller”) (corbett 2006). typical examples include number marking on verbs to correspond with the number of the subject, as in the english examples (1-2). (1) the cat (sg) plays (sg) (2) the cats (pl) play (pl) other features often considered as reflecting agreement in subject-verb relations include person and gender (but see corbett 2006:133-5 for discussion). within psycholinguistic studies of agreement production, one main question concerns the extent to which agreement morphology is influenced by information in the conceptual representation of the message rather than being strictly the result of syntactic procedures as defined by a language’s grammar. in other words, do targets (verbs) “look into” the conceptual message to access the notional values of agreement features, such as whether or not the referent is conceived of as singular or plural with regard to the number feature, or do they simply copy the grammatical values from the corresponding controlling elements (subjects) in the sentence, that is, whether or not the lexical item referring to the controlling element is specified as singular or plural1? thus, data of interest to studies of agreement production often include examples in which there is a mismatch between the notional value of the feature and the grammatical value of the feature. example of such mismatch with regard to the number feature include 1 in this example, ‘singular’ and ‘plural’ refer to values for the feature ‘number.’ however, the same distinction between ‘notional’ and ‘grammatical’ values is relevant for other agreement features, such as gender. in languages that mark gender, some referents (such as humans and other animate entities) may have notional gender values (e.g., female-feminine, male-masculine), while other referents may only have grammatical gender. this paper will focus on the number feature involved in subject-verb agreement, as that is the feature relevant to the shipibo-konibo data presented. 2 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 22 [2010] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol22/iss1/2 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/j4en-sm72 developing psycholinguistic models of subject-verb agreement in speech production: new data from shipibo-konibo relative clauses 3 the english noun scissors, in which the referent is notionally singular but grammatically plural, or family, which is grammatically singular but may, in some dialects, have a notionally plural value (being conceived of as a set of indivual members). cases in which agreement morphology reflect the grammatical number of the controlling referent (the scissors are) are taken to be evidence for agreement production being governed by syntactic processes. on the other hand, when agreement morphology reflects the notional value of the controlling referent (the family are, in some dialects), we have evidence that conceptual information is relevant to the agreement production process. on one side of the debate are production models that describe agreement as being driven primarily by syntactic procedures. one such model is the marking and morphing model (eberhard, cutting & bock 2005). the marking and morphing model assumes a grammatical encoding process that includes roughly two components: functional assembly, during which lexical entries are accessed and matched to grammatical functions as marked by the conceptual message, and structural integration, at which point agreement morphology is added to the lexical forms that have been accessed, and those forms are integrated into the appropriate constituent structure. agreement processes operate under syntactic guidance with respect to hierarchical representations of sentence structure, where features are transmitted or copied from the controller to the target. during subject-verb agreement production the agreement target (verb) has no access to the conceptual representation of the controlling referent, but only to the grammatical value of the features as marked on the lexical form (the subject noun phrase, after it is encoded lexically). on the other end of the spectrum are constraint-based models such as the maximal input model (also referred to as the unification model; vigliocco, butterworth & semenza 1995; vigliocco, butterworth & garrett 1996; vigliocco & franck 2001; vigliocco & hartsuiker 2002). such models claim that agreement features marked on targets are derived not solely from the syntactic controller, but also from information in the conceptual representation of the message. targets have direct access to the notional value of the referent—for example, in the case of the number feature, whether or not the referent is conceived of as ‘singular’ or ‘plural.’ controllers and targets are marked separately for features and are then unified during structural assembly. during this unification process, agreement features are checked for compatibility.2 2 based on her work with franck (franck, vigliocco, antón-méndez, collina & frauenfelder 2008), one may assume that vigliocco now rejects the unification model. this rejection is based partially on the fact that the model has not fully accounted for morphophonological effects on agreement, but primarily on the claim that a conceptually-driven account of agreement “is 3 duffield: developing psycholinguistic models of subject-verb agreement in speech production published by cu scholar, 2010 colorado research in linguistics, volume 22 (2010) 4 both models are based in part on observational data. the marking and morphing model accounts for the observation that subject noun phrases differing in notional number but having the same grammatical (e.g., the label on the bottles vs. the road to the lakes) both display grammatical agreement in english (bock & miller 1991). observational data that motivate the maximal input/unification model include agreement features marked on verbs in null-subject languages and conceptual effects on verb agreement features (vigliocco, butterworth & semenza 1995:188-189; vigliocco, butterworth & garrett 1996:264-266). beyond observational data, each model has been supported by a variety of experimental data, almost all of which is based on eliciting a type of speech error referred to as attraction (bock & miller 1991). attraction occurs when agreement features on a target erroneously match those on a referent other than the controller, as in the cost of the improvements have not yet been estimated, where have agrees with the plural improvements rather than the singular cost. yet the data investigated in studies underlying these models hardly cover all agreement phenomena. as eberhard, cutting and bock (2005:553) themselves note in presenting the marking and morphing model, “[n]o other models have yet been developed to address in any detail the range of findings generated in the literature on grammatical agreement, so there is ample room for improvement”. evidence for the models discussed are based primarily on results from empirical studies in english, although other languages have, to various degrees, been investigated (english: bock, eberhard & cutting 2004, bock, butterfield, cutler, cutting, eberhard & humphreys 2006; eberhard, cutting & bock 2005; french: franck, vigliocco, antón-méndez, collina & frauenfelder, 2008; german: berg, 1998; russian: lorimor, bock, zalkind, sheyman & beard 2008; hebrew: deutsch & dank 2008). agreement morphology in languages that are more typologically variant has not yet been examined. moreover, there is still much variation in the type of syntactic structures to be examined; while there is a well established literature on agreement in tag questions and subject-verb agreement in non-embedded clauses, (bock, nicol & cutting 1999; vigliocco, butterworth & semenza 1995; vigliocco, butterworth & garrett 1996) psycholinguistic research in agreement production has just begun to consider a wider variety of structures (see franck, frauenfelder & rizzi 2007). incompatible with most modern linguistic accounts of agreement which, in order to account for a number of syntactic phenomena, assume a fundamental difference between the way features are specified on the noun and on the verb or adjective” (franck et al. 2008:355). this critique ignores constraint-based accounts of syntax (pollard & sag 1994; wechsler & zlatic 2003). because no psycholinguistic model of agreement has yet explained the full range of agreement phenomena observed across languages, and because there are indeed modern syntactic theories that are compatible with a unification-based model of agreement, i take the maximal input/unification model to still be relevant. 4 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 22 [2010] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol22/iss1/2 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/j4en-sm72 developing psycholinguistic models of subject-verb agreement in speech production: new data from shipibo-konibo relative clauses 5 how to address these gaps in the current literature? further development of psycholinguistic models to handle a wider range of agreement phenomena seen in language production can be based on two possibilities: one, considering languages that are more typologically variant, and two, following the current trend and continuing to examine structures that have not been previously examined with respect to agreement in the context of the model. this paper presents data that address both possibilities by considering the morphology of a particular linguistic structure, relative clauses, from data in a language previously uninvestigated in psycholinguistic studies—shipibo-konibo. it will be argued here that the examination of agreement morphology as well as other morphologically-marked relations of compatibility in relative clauses in shipibokonibo, a panoan language spoken in the peruvian amazon, challenges the architecture and underlying assumptions of current psycholinguistic models of agreement in speech production. shipibo-konibo is a morphologically rich language with variable plural marking on verbs, adverbial transitivity agreement, and case-marked arguments, among many other morphological features. within relative clauses, shipibokonibo demonstrates multiple positional types (pre-nominal, post-nominal, internally-headed) as well as various relativization strategies (including gaps and anaphoric pronouns). thus, the abundance of overt morphology and variation in shipibo-konibo relative clauses as compared to languages such as english offers an opportunity for empirical researchers to examine a broader range of notional and grammatical agreement morphology. such variance would allow for researchers to investigate the psycholinguistic processes of agreement production while varying more parameters, including word order, clause boundaries, and optional expression of morphemes. the remainder of this paper will be organized as follows: section 2 will present a brief typological sketch of data in shipibo-konibo, based on the work of pilar valenzula (2002), relevant to the discussion of the psycholinguistic mechanisms behind the production of agreement. section 3 provides a basic overview of the two psycholinguistic models of agreement in sentence production compared here, as well as how they differ with respect to the role of conceptual (notional) and syntactic (grammatical) information in the production of subjectverb agreement. section 4 will discuss shipibo-konibo relative clause features that show promise as data for further investigation in researching agreement in speech production, and section 5 briefly concludes. 2. relative clauses in shipibo-konibo 5 duffield: developing psycholinguistic models of subject-verb agreement in speech production published by cu scholar, 2010 colorado research in linguistics, volume 22 (2010) 6 this brief typological sketch of shipibo-konibo, a panoan language with approximately 26,000-30,000 speakers inhabiting the peruvian amazon along the ucayali river and its tributaries, is based on the work of pilar valenzuela (2002). i will follow valenzuela’s operational definition of relative clauses as “all expressions in which an optional clause containing a verb form adds information about a single head nominal, even if the latter remains unexpressed,” (valenzuela 2002:6). three general characteristics of shipibo-konibo that will be relevant to the discussion of models of agreement production will be presented here: features of the morphological system, including the behavior of s and a arguments and number marking on verbs; flexible word order within both main clauses and relative clauses; and a range of relativization strategies. 2.1. morphological features relevant to subject-verb agreement shipibo-konibo has an ergative/absolutive phrasal-suffix case marking system. as there are no cross-referencing subject and object pronouns on verbs or auxiliaries in shipibo-konibo, and word order is relatively flexible, these casemarking suffixes are helpful in marking arguments of the verb. case marking is realized on main-clause arguments, which may be modified by relative clauses, as well as arguments within the relative clause. in the case of modified main-clause arguments, the case marking appears at the end of the noun phrase, attached to the relative clause modifying the argument. examples are shown in (3-6).3 in (3), ainbo “woman” is shown in the absolutive form, being the s argument. in (4), the ergative marker tonin is attached at the end of the relative clause modifying the a argument, ainbo, rather than at the end of ainbo. regarding case marking for arguments within the relative clause, (5-6) demonstrate the use of the ergative form e-n-ra “i” for the a argument in a single clause “i met a woman last year,” in (5), and the same use of the ergative marker when that clause is then embedded as a relative clause modifying ainbo “woman” in (6): (3) ainbo-ra kako-nko-ni-a-x nokó-ke woman:abs-ev kako-loc-lig-abl-i meet:dtrnz-cmpl ‘the/a woman arrived from kako.’ (valenzuela 2002:12) (4) ainbo [kako-nko-ni-a-x nokot-a]-tonin-ra rao woman kako-loc-lig-abl-i arrive-pp2-erg-ev plant.medicine:abs kobin-ak-[a]i boil-do.t-inc 3 a list of abbreviations and conventions (valenzuela 2002) are provided in the appendix 6 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 22 [2010] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol22/iss1/2 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/j4en-sm72 developing psycholinguistic models of subject-verb agreement in speech production: new data from shipibo-konibo relative clauses 7 ‘the woman who arrived from kako is boiling the plant medicine.’ (valenzuela 2002:12) (5) e-n-ra ainbo onan-yantan-ke makáyain-xon 1-erg-ev woman:abs know-pst3-cmpl makaya:loc-t ‘i met the/a woman in makaya last year.’ (valenzuela 2002:13) (6) ainbo [makáyain-xon e-n onan-yantaan-a]-ra ne-no nokó-ke woman makaya:loc-t 1-erg know-pst3-pp2:abs-ev prox-loc meet:dtrnz-cmpl ‘the woman i met in makaya last year arrived here.’ (valenzuela 2002:13) although shipibo-konibo displays ergative/absolutive morphology, the language often treats subjects of intransitive verbs (s arguments) similarly to subjects of transitive verbs (a arguments). one example of such categorization is seen in plural agreement marking. plurality is coded through a verbal suffix if it is not indicated on the s/a argument (valenzuela 2002:1). the data presented here suggest that plural marking on the verb is not obligatory when the s/a argument is marked as in (7), as there is no plural marking on the verb keyo-ai “finish”, while there is plural marking on the ergative (a) argument joni-baon-ra “people”. it is required on the verb when the plural subject is omitted, as in the headless relative clause shown in (8); note the plural –kanon meni-kati-kan-ai “give”, and the absence of an ergative argument “they”. it is also required when the s argument is unmarked, as in (9), where plural is unmarked on bake “child” but is shown on be-kan-a “come”. the data also suggest that nothing prevents plural marking on the verb when it is marked on the subject nominal as well, as seen in (10), where both the a argument, shipi-baon-ra “the shipibo” and the verb pi[y]ama-kan-ai “eat” display plural morphology. (7) [jatik-xon-bi sepa-[a]i] joni-baon-ra jatí-tian ishton altogether-t-em slash-pp1 person-pl:erg-ev all-temp quickly keyo-ai finish-inc ‘men who slash a chacra altogether always finish quickly.’(valenzuela 2002:13) (8) [jawerato-n-ki yokat-ai] ja meni-kati-kan-ai. which-erg-int ask-pp1:abs 3:abs give-pst4-pl-inc ‘they gave her (her daughter) to whoever asked for (her).’ (valenzuela 2002:58) 7 duffield: developing psycholinguistic models of subject-verb agreement in speech production published by cu scholar, 2010 colorado research in linguistics, volume 22 (2010) 8 (9) jain-ribi-ronki be-kan-a iki… oa bake there-rep-hsy come.pl-pl-pp2 aux dist child [moa xontako-ai]. already (become) young.woman-pp1:abs ‘there also came…those girls (who were) already turning into young women.’ (valenzuela 2002:55) (10) shipi-baon-ra kapé pi-[y]ama-kan-ai shipibo-pl:erg-ev alligator:abs eat-neg-pl-inc ‘the shipibo don’t eat alligator.’ (valenzuela 2002:9) it is the case for relative clauses as well as main clauses that when the plural s/a argument is not overtly expressed, plural marking on the verb is obligatory, as seen in (11). within the relative clause, the a argument “they” is not expressed. the verb, ta-nini-nan-yama-bain-wan-kan-a appropriately displays the plural morpheme –kan-. (11) nokon koka r-iki [jawen ochíti pos1 maternal.uncle:abs ev-cop pos3 dog:abs ta-nini-nan-yama-bain-wankan-a] joni foot-pull-mal-neg-and2-pst1-pl1-pp2 person ‘the man whose dog they did not pull by the foot to his detriment while passing earlier today is my maternal uncle.’ (valenzuela 2002:10) 2.2. word order the basic constituent order of shipibo-konibo is aov/sv, although word order within the main clause can be flexible to include non-verb-final orders. word order within the relative clause, however, is strictly verb-final, although a and o arguments may be switched (valenzuela 2002:15-17). within noun phrases, nouns and modifying elements including adjectives, quantifiers, numerals and relative clauses display flexibility in word order. (valenzuela 2002:1). shipibo-konibo displays an interesting variety of positional types of relative clauses. pre-nominal, post-nominal, and internally-headed relative clauses are found in the language, as well as relative clauses which separate a determiner and the head noun. discontinuous relative clauses are also present, in which the head and the relative clause are separated by a modifying expression. examples of pre-nominal, post-nominal and internally-headed relative clause types are presented in (12-14), where the head nominal jono “peccary” is shown following, preceding, and residing within the relative clause papa-n reteibat-a “(that) father killed”: 8 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 22 [2010] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol22/iss1/2 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/j4en-sm72 developing psycholinguistic models of subject-verb agreement in speech production: new data from shipibo-konibo relative clauses 9 (12) [papa-n rete-ibat-a] jono-ra moa no-n keyo-ke father-erg kill-pst2-pp2 peccary:abs-ev already 1p-erg finish-cmpl ‘we already finished the collared-peccary father killed yesterday.’ (valenzuela 2002:18) (13) jono [papa-n rete-ibat-a]-ra moa no-n keyo-ke peccary:abs father-erg kill-pst2-pp2:abs-ev already 1p-erg finish-cmpl ‘we already finished the collared-peccary father killed yesterday.’ (valenzuela 2002:19) (14) [papa-n jono rete-ibat-a]-ra moa no-n keyo-ke father-erg peccary:abs kill-pst2-pp2:abs-ev already 1p-erg finishcmpl ‘we already finished the collared-peccary father killed yesterday.’ (valenzuela 2002:19) 2.3. relativization strategies in addition to the variety of positional types of relative clauses, shipibokonibo has several relativization strategies. these include a gap strategy, in which the relativized element corresponding to the head nominal is omitted from the relative clause, and an anaphoric pronoun strategy, where the relativized element corresponding to the head nominal is expressed in the relative clause by an anaphoric pronoun ja, a third-person singular pronoun unmarked for gender (valenzuela 2002:51). overall, while relative clauses in shipibo-konibo show some nominalization behaviors (some constraints on word order with the relative clause, and other nominalization features that will not be relevant to the analysis presented here), it is important to note that they exhibit hallmarks of main declarative clauses. like declarative clauses, relative clauses usually keep their full array of case-marked arguments and full adverbials with transitivity marking. most important for this study is the fact that relative clauses, like main clauses, show some flexibility regarding word order as well as their position relative to the modified head noun. thus, agreement morphology linking arguments and verbs is not dependent upon linear order or overt expression of arguments. the next section continues with an examination of the psycholinguistic models that will may examined with respect to such agreement morphology. 9 duffield: developing psycholinguistic models of subject-verb agreement in speech production published by cu scholar, 2010 colorado research in linguistics, volume 22 (2010) 10 3. psycholinguistic models of agreement in sentence production 3.1. the marking and morphing model in the marking and morphing model (bock, eberhard, cutting, meyer & schriefers 2001; eberhard, cutting & bock 2005) subject-verb agreement in speech production is composed of two distinct stages during grammatical encoding. the first stage, marking, is a mapping of agreement features (such as person, number, and gender) from a conceptual representation to grammatical representations early in the grammatical encoding process. early in the grammatical encoding process, marking assures that a subject noun phrase is specified for agreement features in accordance with the conceptual representation. in certain cases, the features marked on the subject np may not be realized in the lexical specification. for example, in the sentence, “the sheep are grazing,” sheep has no morphological plural marker. yet the subject np the sheep is marked as notionally plural, as demonstrated by the verb morphology (i.e., are, rather than is). the realization of number (and, presumably, person and gender) on subject nps is then a joint product of the notional number retrieved from the conceptual representation and the grammatical number specified by the lexical representations used to build the noun phrase. a computational version of the theoretical marking and morphing model explains how both notional number (from marking) and grammatical number (from lexical specifications) contribute to the final value of number for subject noun phrases (eberhard, cutting & bock 2005). while lexical specifications of local nouns inside the subject noun phrase (i.e., books in “the editor of the history books,”) are calculated into the final subject np number value (and, in some cases, can override the head noun, leading to errors in agreement), notional number of local nouns is not a factor. moreover, the lexical specification of nouns embedded in clausal modifiers inside the noun phrase (i.e., books in “the editor who rejected the books,”) are less likely to affect the number value of the subject np than nouns in the same clause as the head noun of the subject np (bock & cutting 1992). in the second stage, morphing, subject noun phrases control the agreement marking on the target verb by copying person-number-gender features, as determined by a combination of the notional marking process and lexical specification, onto the verb phrase. this occurs later in the grammatical encoding process, at the point when agreement-relevant features marked on grammatical representations (i.e., ‘subject’ marked as ‘plural’) are reconciled to those features specified in the lexicon (either a plural morpheme ‘-s’ or the appropriate lexical item, as in ‘sheep’). those morphological forms are retrieved and integrated into the constituent structure in the subject noun phrase position. the realization of agreement morphology on the verb, however, is constrained by syntactic processes. verbs inherit person-number-gender features 10 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 22 [2010] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol22/iss1/2 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/j4en-sm72 developing psycholinguistic models of subject-verb agreement in speech production: new data from shipibo-konibo relative clauses 11 from the subject noun phrase; they cannot directly access notional number from the conceptual message. the verb ‘morphs’ to take on the correct form in accordance with the number value copied from the subject noun phrase. thus, the marking and morphing model treats agreement as primarily driven by syntactic procedures in which agreement features are copied from the subject np to the verb during grammatical encoding. 3.2. the maximal input/unification model a second model for the production of agreement, the maximal input model (vigliocco, butterworth & semenza 1995; vigliocco, butterworth & garrett 1996; vigliocco & hartsuiker 2002), claims that the production of agreement morphology is semantically driven. unlike the marking and morphing model, in which only the grammatical representation of the subject np receives person-number-gender information from the message’s conceptual representation, in the maximal input model, relevant conceptual features are retrieved by both the subject np and the verb. in this approach, features are not copied from a controller to a target. rather, each element (in this case, the subject and the verb) individually retrieves information from the conceptual representation. agreement is thus a relation in which two elements supply partial information about a single linguistic form. unlike the marking and morphing model, the maximal input model does not assume directionality (i.e., a controller-target relationship) in agreement, although if one element involved in the agreement relationship carries more information than another, as in english, agreement may appear directional. once features have been retrieved from the conceptual representation by the head of the subject np and the verb, they are passed up to the highest projections in the syntactic structure (the subject np node and the vp node) and the structures then undergo a unification process. this occurs during the grammatical encoding stage when constituents are combined in a structural representation but before word order is determined. subject-verb agreement is the result of unification of the subject np and the vp at the s node (vigliocco, butterworth & garrett 1996). the final realization of agreement features is a combination of the information provided by both subject np and verb, and unification may be considered to be a sort of “feature checking” procedure that ensures that the features of each element are compatible (franck, vigliocco & nicol 2002:376). 4. shipibo-konibo relative clauses and psycholinguistic models of subjectverb agreement 11 duffield: developing psycholinguistic models of subject-verb agreement in speech production published by cu scholar, 2010 colorado research in linguistics, volume 22 (2010) 12 as presented in section 2, above, the typological features of relative clauses in shipibo-konibo offer new potential for assessing psycholinguistic models of agreement in speech production. these features will be discussed here with respect to the models, looking at both observational data (attested utterances that it is assumed the models strive to account for), and data of experimental interest (potential stimuli that may be constructed in shipibo-konibo for the purposes of experimental investigation of the models.) 4.1. observational data relative clauses in shipibo-konibo provide an opportunity to study subject-verb agreement production that languages previously investigated with respect to agreement do not provide. unlike previously studied languages, shipibo-konibo displays a wide range of flexibility not only with regard to word order in both main and, to some extent, relative clauses, but also in the positional types of relative clauses allowed. as discussed above, plural morphology may or may not appear on the verb when plural subject nps (s/a arguments) are overtly expressed, but when the plural subject np is not expressed, plural marking on the verb is obligatory. the first issue, then, concerns the case of non-overt subjects. while this particular issue is not unique to shipibo-konibo and has been discussed previously in both psycholinguistic and theoretical linguistic studies of agreement, the data presented here allow new ways to address the issue. the relative clause verb in (15) shows the plural suffix –kanwhile the a argument “they” is not expressed overtly. (15) jain iki pionis bepon [ja-n rao-n-kati-kan-ai] there cop pionis resina 3-inst plant.medicine-trnz-pst4-pl-pp1:abs ‘there is the resina pionis with which they cured the girls.’ (valenzuela 2002:23) it has been suggested in previous literature that the phenomenon of agreement with null-subjects is problematic for hierarchically-based syntactic models of agreement, such as the marking and morphing model or the feature selection and copy model (which will not be examined here) (franck, vigliocco, antón-méndez, collina & frauenfelder 2008), as no subject exists in the utterance from which to copy agreement features. a unification-based approach such as that of the maximal input model, however, is more easily able to account for the appearance of agreement morphology on the target (the verb) in absence of the controller (the subject) because agreement does not depend upon the surface expression of the controller; the target may receive feature information directly from the conceptual message. 12 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 22 [2010] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol22/iss1/2 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/j4en-sm72 developing psycholinguistic models of subject-verb agreement in speech production: new data from shipibo-konibo relative clauses 13 a somewhat different picture is painted by relative clause utterances in which the unexpressed subject corresponds to the modified head nominal, as in (16): (16) [jatik-ax-bi teet-ai] joni-baon-ra jatí-tian ishton keyo-ai altogether-i-em work-pp1 person-pl:erg-ev all-temp quickly finish-inc ‘people who work altogether always finish quickly.’ (valenzuela 2002:13) although the subject joni-baon “people” is not expressed in the relative clause, the verb teet-ai “work” does not display plural morphology. there are two possible explanations for this. first, it may be the case that shipibo-konibo only requires the plural-marked head nominal corresponding to the subject of the clause to be expressed in the main clause of the utterance in order to omit plural verbal morphology. second, as the relative clause displays a “gap” strategy of relativization, one might hypothesize that the syntactic structure of the relative clause contains a trace—a null argument that carries all of the features of the subject, even though it is not overtly expressed. the first hypothesis may very well be in line with some version of the constraint-based maximal input model but would be problematic for syntactically driven models. without a subject carrying features to control the form of the verb, there is no way to predict whether the verb should or should not exhibit the plural morpheme. the constraint-based model shows more promise. the lack of plural morphology on the verb in the relative clause can presumably be explained in maximal input model because of two features: one, the unification procedure that occurs during constituent assembly is a checking procedure to make sure that features expressed on the head nominal coindexed with the relative clause subject and relative clause verb are compatible; and, two, it is assumed that all that is necessary for such compatibility is for the plural marking to be expressed by at least either the head nomial or the relative clause verb. in this way, the maximal input model can explain examples such as (16) as well as cases in which both subject and verb show plural marking, and those in which there is plural marking on the verb in the absence of marking on the subject. this would require, however, that the gap in the relative clause (the missing subject) be coindexed with the head nominal. while unification based theories of syntax posit such representations where a missing element can be coindexed with other elements in the utterance—without positing a “trace” (see sag, wasow & bender 2003, chp. 14)—the maximal input model has not been fully developed to explain how such representations would be processed on-line during speech production. the second hypothesis is more compatible with syntactically-driven models of speech production. if one assumes an underlying representation of the relative clause contains a subject argument coindexed with a trace containing its 13 duffield: developing psycholinguistic models of subject-verb agreement in speech production published by cu scholar, 2010 colorado research in linguistics, volume 22 (2010) 14 features, the form of the verb can be explained as a result of those features. evidence for traces controlling target features has been demonstrated in prior experimental research (franck, frauenfelder & rizzi 2007). the difference in shipibo-konibo, however, is that the plural features on the subject cause an omission of features being expressed on the verb rather than a copying of features on to it. this would not be terribly problematic—it would still be a “systematic covariance” of one element dependent upon another (steele 1978:610, cited in corbett 2006)—if it were not for the fact that shipibo konibo shows variability in the marking of subject-verb agreement. example (17) provides an example of a relative clause in which the omitted subject corresponds to the marked-plural head nominal, but the verb also displays plural marking: (17) jain ik-á iki oa [no-a shiro bewakan ninká-ma-ai-bo] there do.i-pp2 aux dist 1p-abs shiro song:obl hear-caus-pp1-pl ainbo-bo. woman-pl:abs ‘there stood the women who provoked us with their shiro songs.’ (valenzuela 2002:28) finally, shipibo-konibo relative clauses are of interest in assessing psycholingistic models of agreement in speech production in that they present data for which the models cannot account. one such example concerns number marking of resumptive pronouns within relative clauses. as shown in (18), the resumptive pronoun ja-n (3-erg) that corresponds to the head nominal joni-bo “men”, is singular, despite its reference to a plural antecedent. (18) [ja-n jato bi-ai] joni-bo ik-á iki tampóra-ya. 3-erg 3p:abs get-pp1 person-pl:abs be-pp2 aux drum-prop ‘those men who welcomed them had drums.’ (valenzuela 2002:59) this mismatch in number marking between pronoun and antecedent cannot be explained as a difference in notional and grammatical number of the target, nor can it be described as attraction. previous research on pronounantecedent agreement has have treated the phenomenon as being more sensitive by conceptual information than by grammatical features; this is not the case here. anaphoric pronouns in shipibo-konibo relative clauses are generally rejected by speakers (valenzuela 2002:58). both syntactically-driven and constraint-based models of agreement production have yet to explain how agreement features might be blocked from targets in certain clauses that would otherwise express those features. that such data have not yet been explained by the models is not in 14 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 22 [2010] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol22/iss1/2 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/j4en-sm72 developing psycholinguistic models of subject-verb agreement in speech production: new data from shipibo-konibo relative clauses 15 and of itself surprising; it is, however, interesting in that tokens such as these suggest directions for future work in modeling agreement in speech production. 4.2. data of experimental interest the variation of relative clause types and the flexible word order in shipibo-konibo allow for the creation of possible stimuli that can test and develop the agreement mechanisms proposed by psycholinguistic models using well-established experimental paradigms. for example, consider the verb and pronouns within the pre-nominal relative clause with respect to the head nominal in (19): (19) tita-r keyot-ai, ja-tian no-a bane-ti ka-[a]i mother;abs-ev finish-inc that-temp 1p-abs stay-inf go-inc [ja-n no-a axe-a-a] jawéki-bo-ya. [3-erg 1p-abs get.used.to-caus-pp2] thing-pl-prop ‘our mother dies and then we stay with the things she has taught us.’ (valenzuela 2002:19) the ergative pronoun ja-n, in agreement with its antecedent, tita-r “mother”, has no plural marking. likewise, the verb also lacks plural marking. the plural head nominal jawéki-bo-ya “things” follows the prenominal relative clause. but shipibo-konibo allows for not only pronominal but also post-nominal and internally-headed relative clauses. the inventory of relative clause types of shipibo-konibo presumably would allow the head nominal jawéki-bo-ya “things” to appear inside the relative clause, between the subject ja-n ‘she’ and the verb axe-a-a “taught.” would it be possible to elicit attraction errors in shipibokonibo internally-headed relative clauses by placing a head nominal between the subject and verb of a relative clause, resulting in a plural marking on the verb (in bold), as hypothesized in (20)? (20) tita-r keyot-ai, ja-tian no-a bane-ti ka-[a]i mother;abs-ev finish-inc that-temp 1p-abs stay-inf go-inc [ja-n no-a jawéki-bo-ya axe-a-a (-kan-?)] [3-erg 1p-abs thing-pl-prop get.used.to-caus-pp2 (-pl-?)] ‘our mother dies and then we stay with the things she has taught us.’ (adaptation my own) 15 duffield: developing psycholinguistic models of subject-verb agreement in speech production published by cu scholar, 2010 colorado research in linguistics, volume 22 (2010) 16 by allowing variations in form for the same semantic content as seen in (20), shipibo-konibo provides a rare opportunity to tease apart syntactic and semantic factors in the production of agreement.4 there should be no difference between the semantics of (19) and (20) above; therefore, any attraction effects seen would have to be the result of syntactic processes and not conceptual features. the possibility of constructing experimental stimuli to elicit attraction effects is further suggested by the existence of discontinuous relative clauses such as (21), in which the head nominal is separated by a clause with an attributive function: (21) ja-káti-ai [yotokoni pi-á] kikin xeta wiso-bi-ribi exist-pst4-inc yokotoni:abs eat-pp2 extremely tooth black-em-also ik-í joni-bo do.i-sssi person-pl:abs ‘there were people who ate yotokoni and whose teeth were extremely (shiny) black.’ (valenzuela 2002:30) in (21), the a argument corresponding to the head nominal joni-bo ‘people’ is not expressed within the relative clause. however, the relative clause verb pi-á ‘eat’ has no plural marking despite the separation of relative clause from head nominal. just as (18) above, (21) demonstrates that it is not the case that such marking is required on a relative clause verb when a subject argument is missing in the relative clause, as long as that missing subject corresponds to the head nominal expressed in the main clause. what is worth noting here is that the variety of elements that are allowed to appear between relative clause and head nominal provide an opportunity for designing stimuli that would be useful in examining attraction phenomena in the production of agreement. experiments examining attraction in english number agreement have found that attractors specified for number are more likely to affect agreement than attractors that have a default number. in english, singular nouns, which are unmarked, are less likely to cause an attraction effect than nouns marked for plurality (bock et al. 2001). number in shipibo-konibo appears to be similarly marked in that the plural is specified while the singular form is the default. the agreement pattern, however, defies the canonical definition of agreement (corbett 2006). it is not the presence of the number feature on the noun that requires a number marking on the verb; rather it is the absence of the feature that triggers number agreement. the presence of the plural marker on the noun actually seems 4 whether or not variations in the form of relative clauses in shipibo-konibo are due to discourse factors has not yet been investigated (valenzuela 2002:51). 16 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 22 [2010] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol22/iss1/2 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/j4en-sm72 developing psycholinguistic models of subject-verb agreement in speech production: new data from shipibo-konibo relative clauses 17 to make plural marking on the verb optional. how, then, might it be possible to test attraction effects in this language? one possibility would be to create a variation of stimuli based on those used in previous experiments, in which singular subject noun phrases contain plural attractors, but to have the plurality unmarked on the attractor such that it might trigger the obligatory plural marking on the verb at a higher rate than singular attractors. consider (22), an assumed adaptation of (21) above, in which the head nominal “people” would be placed before the relative clause, and xeta (assumed to be notionally plural “teeth” in this context) were to also remain unmarked for plurality5: (22) ja-káti-ai joni-bo kikin xeta wiso-bi-ribi… exist-pst4-inc person-pl:abs extremely tooth black-em-also … ‘there were people whose teeth were extremely (shiny) black and who…’ (adaptation my own) now consider a token in which xeta “teeth” were to be replaced with a notionally singular item, perhaps the word for “canoe,” nonti: (23) ja-káti-ai joni-bo kikin nonti wiso-bi-ribi… exist-pst4-inc person-pl:abs extremely canoe black-em-also … ‘there were people whose canoe was extremely (shiny) black and who…’ (adaptation my own) as with previous experiments investigating attraction in subject-verb agreement, the point of interest is whether or not speakers prompted with sentence fragments given above finish the sentence with a plural form of the verb. because the subject joni-bo “people” is marked as plural, a verb either marked or unmarked for plurality would be acceptable. because unmarked plural subject nouns require verbs marked for plurality, however, if there is a higher rate of verbs produced with plural marking in the presence of a notionally plural attractor (xeta “teeth”) than singular attractors (nonti “canoe”), we may conclude that shipibo-konibo provides evidence in support of a constraint-based psycholinguistic model of agreement production. a second possibility for experimental investigation lies in the variation of positional types of relative clauses in shipibo-konibo. as discussed in section 2, shipibo-konibo displays pre-nominal, post-nominal and internally-headed 5 the examples adapted from valenzuela (2002) are intended for illustration purposes and may not be grammatically felicitous. naturally, any stimuli created for experimental investigation would require the review of a native speaker consultant. 17 duffield: developing psycholinguistic models of subject-verb agreement in speech production published by cu scholar, 2010 colorado research in linguistics, volume 22 (2010) 18 relative clauses. consider possible variations of example (19), repeated here as (24), as containing a post-nominal (25) and internally-headed relative clause (26) with the head nominal as unmarked for plurality and the verb omitted. (24) tita-r keyot-ai, ja-tian no-a bane-ti ka-[a]i mother;abs-ev finish-inc that-temp 1p-abs stay-inf go-inc [ja-n no-a axe-a-a] jawéki-bo-ya. [3-erg 1p-abs get.used.to-caus-pp2] thing-pl-prop ‘our mother dies and then we stay with the things she has taught us.’ (valenzuela 2002:19) (25) tita-r keyot-ai, ja-tian no-a bane-ti ka-[a]i mother;abs-ev finish-inc that-temp p-abs stay-inf go-inc [ja-n no-a jawéki-ya … [3-erg 1p-abs thing-prop … ‘our mother dies and then we stay with the things she ____ us.’ (adaptation my own) (26) tita-r keyot-ai, ja-tian no-a bane-ti ka-[a]i mother;abs-ev finish-inc that-temp 1p-abs stay-inf go-inc jawéki-ya [ja-n no-a … thing-prop [3-erg 1p-abs … ‘our mother dies and then we stay with the things she ____ us.’ (adaptation my own) both the post-nominal and internally-headed relative clauses allow the head nominal to appear before the verb, making it possible to examine any attraction effects it might have on the production of the verb. similar to the previous example, the influences of syntax and semantics in the production of agreement in speech might be examined by replacing the notionally plural head nominal attractor with a notionally singular attractor and examining the rates of production of plural marking on the elicited verb. these are just a couple of examples of the range of possible experimental stimuli that might be designed in shipibo-konibo to examine psycholinguistic processes of subject-verb agreement production. additional possibilities include examining attraction effects with respect to variations in linear and structural distance, examining the role of clause boundaries in attraction effects, and attraction effects on main verbs. 18 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 22 [2010] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol22/iss1/2 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/j4en-sm72 developing psycholinguistic models of subject-verb agreement in speech production: new data from shipibo-konibo relative clauses 19 5. conclusion even the cursory examination of typological features of relative clauses in shipibo-konibo presented here clearly demonstrates that this language is unique among those considered for psycholinguistic investigation. this reason alone should prove enough to prompt researchers to add it to the lists of languages under psycholinguistic investigation up to now. but even beyond the need to consider a wider range of language types in psycholinguistic research, the variation seen in shipibo-konibo with respect to word order, relative clause positional types and relativization strategies are absolutely compelling. these features provide a wealth of possibilities for investigating both syntactic and semantic influences on agreement in speech production. moreover, experimental paradigms such as elicitation techniques used in numerous previous studies promise to be suitable for investigating shipibo-konibo. 19 duffield: developing psycholinguistic models of subject-verb agreement in speech production published by cu scholar, 2010 colorado research in linguistics, volume 22 (2010) 20 references berg, thomas. 1998. “the resolution of number conflicts in english and german agreement patterns.” linguistics 36(1): 41-70. bock, kathryn, & carol a. miller. 1991. “broken agreement.” cognitive psychology 23(1): 45-93. bock, kathryn, & j. cooper cutting. 1992. “regulating mental energy: performance units in language production.” journal of memory and language 31(1): 99-127. bock, kathryn, janet nicol, & j. cooper cutting. 1999. “the ties that bind: creating number agreement in speech.” journal of memory and language 40(3): 330-346. bock, kathryn, kathleen m. eberhard, j. cooper cutting, antje s. meyer, & herbert schriefers. 2001. “some attractions of verb agreement.” cognitive psychology 43(2): 83-128. bock, kathryn, kathleen m. eberhard, & j. cooper cutting. 2004. “producing number agreement: how pronouns equal verbs.” journal of memory and language 51(2): 251-278. bock, kathryn, sally butterfield, anne cutler, j. cooper cutting, kathleen m. eberhard & karin r. humphreys. 2006. “number agreement in british and american english: disagreeing to agree collectively.” language 82(1): 64113. corbett, greville g. 2006. agreement. new york: cambridge u press. deutsch, avital, & maya dank. 2008. “conflicting cues and competition between notional and grammatical factors in producing number and gender agreement: evidence from hebrew.” journal of memory and language 60: 112-143. eberhard, kathleen m., j. cooper cutting, & kathryn bock. 2005. “making syntax of sense: number agreement in sentence production.” psychological review 112(3): 531-559. franck, julie, gabriella vigliocco, & janet nicol. 2002. “subject-verb agreement errors in french and english: the role of syntactic hierarchy.” language and cognitive processes 17(4): 371-404. franck, julie, ulrich h. frauenfelder, & luigi rizzi. 2007. “a syntactic analysis of interference in subject-verb agreement.” mit working papers in linguistics 53: 173-190. franck, julie, gabriella vigliocco, inés antón-méndez, simona collina, & ulrich h. frauenfelder. 2008. “the interplay of syntax and form in sentence production: a cross-linguistic study of form effects on agreement.” language and cognitive processes 23(3): 329-374. lorimor, heidi, kathryn bock, ekaterina zalkind, alina sheyman, & robert beard. 2008. “agreement and attraction in russian.” language and cognitive processes 23(6): 769-799. 20 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 22 [2010] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol22/iss1/2 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/j4en-sm72 subject-verb agreement in the production of shipibo-konibo relative clauses 21 sag, ivan a., thomas wasow, & emily m. bender. 2003. syntactic theory: a formal introduction (2nd ed.). stanford, calif: center for the study of language and information. steele, susan. 1978. “word order variation: a typological study.” in j. a. greenberg, c. a. ferguson & e. a. moravcsik (eds.) universals of human language iv: syntax, 585-623. stanford: stanford university press. valenzuela, pilar. 2002. relativization in shipibo-konibo: a typologicallyoriented study. münchen: lincom europa. vigliocco, gabriella, brian butterworth, & carlo semenza. 1995. “constructing subject-verb agreement in speech: the role of semantic and morphological factors.” journal of memory and language 34(2): 186-215. vigliocco, gabriella, brian butterworth, & merrill f. garrett. 1996. “subjectverb agreement in spanish and english: differences in the role of conceptual constraints.” cognition 61(3): 261-298. vigliocco, gabriella, & julie franck. 2001. “when sex affects syntax: contextual influences in sentence production.” journal of memory and language 45(3): 368-390. vigliocco, gabriella & robert j. hartsuiker. 2002. “the interplay of meaning, sound & syntax in language production.” psychological bulletin 128: 442472. 21 duffield: developing psycholinguistic models of subject-verb agreement in speech production published by cu scholar, 2010 colorado research in linguistics, volume 22 (2010) 22 appendix: abbreviations and conventions (valenzuela 2002) 1 first person singular 2 second person singular 3 third person singular 1p first person plural 2p second person plural 3p third person plural a transitive subject function abl ablative abs absolutive advz adverbializer agtz agentivizer all allative assoc associative att attenuative aug augmentative aux auxiliary ben benefactive caus causative chez chezative cmpl completive aspect com comitative coni conjunction cop copula des desiderative dim diminutive dist distal distr distributive dtrnz detransitivizer dub dubitative em emphatic erg ergative ey direct evidential fds following event, different subject fssi following event, same-subject, intransitive matrix clause fsst following event, same-subject, transitive matrix clause fut future gen genitive hab habitual hsy hearsay hsy2 shorter hearsay i intransitive (subject orientation) imp imperative inc incompletive aspect inf infinitive infr inferential inst instrumental int interrogative intens intensifier intrst complement of interest lig ligature lim limitative loc locative mal malefactive mns means neg negative nmlz nominalizer nom nominative o object function obl oblique onom onomatopoeia pds previous event, different subject pel pejorative p/j prospective/jussive pl plural po>s/a previous event, dependent object is coreferential with matrix subject posl possessive first person singular pos3 possessive third person singular 22 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 22 [2010] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol22/iss1/2 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/j4en-sm72 subject-verb agreement in the production of shipibo-konibo relative clauses 23 ppl incompletive participle pp2 completive participle prev preventive priv privative prog progressive prop proprietive pssi previous event, samesubject, intransitive matrix clause psst previous event, samesubject, transitive matrix clause pst1 earlier today past pst2 yesterday past pst3 several months/a few years ago past pst4 several years ago past rec reciprocal rem remote past s intransitive subject function sds simultaneous event, different subject siml similitive specl speculative sssi simultaneous event, same-subject, intransitive matrix clause ssst simultaneous event, same-subject, transitive matrix clause t transitive (subject orientation) temp temporal trnz transitivizer voc vocative 23 duffield: developing psycholinguistic models of subject-verb agreement in speech production published by cu scholar, 2010 colorado research in linguistics 6-2010 developing psycholinguistic models of subject-verb agreement in speech production: new data from shipibo-konibo relative clauses cecily jill duffield recommended citation microsoft word cril_duffield_revisions_submit.doc a corpus-based linguistic analysis of latin frequentative verbs a corpus-based linguistic analysis of latin frequentative verbs cover page footnote this paper was originally completed as part of the university of colorado department of linguistics preliminary examination doctoral requirement, submitted to the preliminary examination committee on october 1, 2015 and passed on december 3, 2015. i would like to thank dr. laura michaelis for helping develop and problematize the introduction of this paper. this working paper is available in colorado research in linguistics: https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol24/iss1/1 https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol24/iss1/1?utm_source=scholar.colorado.edu%2fcril%2fvol24%2fiss1%2f1&utm_medium=pdf&utm_campaign=pdfcoverpages a corpus-based linguistic analysis of latin frequentative verbs jared desjardins university of colorado boulder considering that latin frequentative verbs have transparent morphological structure (the supine stem of the base verb concatenated with the frequentative -itare suffix and regular first conjugation inflectional endings), one would assume that the meaning of each such verb is related in a predictable way to that of its corresponding base verb, and that all members of the frequentative class share semantic entailments. however, frequentative verbs resist a uniform semantic analysis and can mean something entirely unpredictable from the sum of their parts, and traditional and contemporary definitions of frequentatives ignore the degree of idiomaticity between frequentative form and function and are based on limited corpus data. this paper provides a synchronic, corpus-based linguistic analysis of frequentative verbs in comparison to their base forms from both derivational (source-oriented) and usage-based (product-oriented) perspectives in order to explore the nature of the latin frequentative. the paper concludes that a usage-based, product-oriented treatment of the data provides a more straightforward characterization of latin frequentative verbs, highlighting the interconnectedness of morphology, syntax, and semantics. keywords: morphology, syntax, semantics, corpus linguistics, latin 1. introduction frequentative (fv) verbs (from latin frequentare ‘to repeat often’) comprise a class of latin verbs classically characterized as denoting forcible or repeated action, as in the case of pulsare ‘beat repeatedly’, from pellere ‘beat’. a salient feature of the latin lexicon, fv forms survive in the etymologies of learned english borrowings (e.g., inhabitant, fluctuate, agitate) and as a shared inheritance of romance languages, in numerous reflexes of latin fv lexemes: italian cacciare ‘hunt’, from the fv form of latin capio ‘catch’, french raser ‘shave’, from the fv form of latin radere ‘scrape’, and spanish cantar, from the fv form of latin canere ‘sing’ (solodow 2010:151-153). the latin fv template is both highly productive and transparent, representing a straightforward instance of concatenation: fvs are formed by first-conjugation inflection of the supine (passive-participial) stem of the base verb (greenough et al. 2001:152). while fvs are formed from all three latin verb conjugations, the derived fvs are exclusively first conjugation (and exhibit first conjugation morphology), as illustrated by rogitare (derived from first conjugation rogare ‘ask’), habitare (derived from second conjugation habere ‘have’) and cursare 1 desjardins: a corpus-based linguistic analysis of latin frequentative verbs published by cu scholar, 2019 (derived from third conjugation currere). a survey of fv instances in the classical corpus (comprising latin works from the 100 bce to 100 ce period) shows that the fv pattern is widely attested across that particular latin lexicon. the pattern’s internal transparency and high type frequency suggests that its semantic effect is equally transparent – that the fv derivation modulates the base verb’s semantic representation in a predictable and uniform way. it is immediately apparent, however, that the traditional account of fv meaning is inadequate; while some fv predications do express repeated actions, or actions performed with unusual force, many do not. the fv habitare, for example, is derived from a state verb (habere ‘to have, hold’), and does not indicate repeated episodes of having. instead, it typically denotes ‘holding’ a piece of real estate, or inhabiting a house, as demonstrated in 1: (1) et cn. servilio praetori urbano negotium datum ut campani cives, ubi cuique ex senatus consulto liceret habitare, ibi habitarent, animadverteretque in eos qui alibi habitarent ‘additionally cnaeus servilius, the city praetor, was to see that the campanian citizens were living where the senate allowed them to live, and he was to punish those living elsewhere’ (liv. 28.46) example 1 is an account of cnaeus servilius’s duties as city praetor, an elected government position in which he is to oversee that the citizens of capua are living only where the senate decrees and punish those who reside elsewhere. livy’s use of habitarent is in the context of the senate’s orders to servilius and his responsibilities as city praetor and servilius’s obligations to manage capua’s residential laws. a traditional fv interpretation of habitarent in 1 is problematic, since a reading in which the capuan citizens repeatedly engage in states of ‘having’ is inconsistent with the context set up by servilius’s position as city praetor, and his orders to enforce land ownership and residential restrictions. instead a more idiomatic interpretation of residing or inhabiting a house for habitarent is preferred, since ‘residing in/inhabiting a house’ can be seen as a metaphorical extension of the base verb habeo’s basic meaning of ‘having’. considering fv verb lexemes tend to be highly polysemous, which follows from the productivity of the fv template in the language, and that the meaning of a fv verb is often unpredictable in relation to its ‘base’ verb lexeme’s semantics (since new meanings are known to replace the original fv sense) the traditional grammatical treatment raises questions concerning what it means to be a fv, and how that verb class can be characterized in latin. to augment the 2 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 24 [2019] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol24/iss1/1 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.33011/cril.24.1.1 repertoire of notions traditionally associated with fv meaning, modern authors including viti (2012) have characterized fvs as expressing “emphasis or expressivity” (p. 1). one can generalize this characterization to one that applies to those instances in which fvs express actions performed in unusual ways. one such instance is given in 2: (2) singula verba vellenti tamquam dictaret non diceret single words plucking as if dictate not speak ‘when vinicius was dragging out his words one by one, as if he were dictating, not speaking’ (sen. ep. 40) example 2 is a passage from one of seneca’s letters to lucilius, in which the author is discussing the proper style for a philosopher’s speech and communication. here seneca recommends that lucilius not concern himself with the criticism of those who care more about the volume of output than the manner in which it is conveyed and suggests lucilius speak as publius vinicius ‘the stammerer’ speaks. the passage offers a contrast between the canonical mode of speaking, denoted by diceret and a hyperarticulate mode of speaking expressed by dictaret. the repertoire of possible fv meanings can therefore be seen as including more figurative variants of both their base verb’s semantics as well as the semantics associated with the derived fv, lending themselves more readily to be used creatively and in novel contexts and environments (both in terms of the formal characteristics of their distribution(s), as well as their use in different semantic and pragmatic contexts). this is supported by the observation that fv verbs are numerous in comedy (viti 2012:1). in other words, viti (2012:2) contests the classical assumption by contrasting the a priori traditional definition of the repeated, intensive fv interpretation with what she claims to be the fv derivation’s primary function of emphasis and expressivity as a strategy to express imperfective (either progressive or habitual) aspect and backgrounded information (particularly when taken into consideration with proto-indo european’s historical aspectual system paradigm). however, even viti’s broadened definition fails to apply to the wide array of fv forms. for example, viti’s labels of ‘emphasis’ and ‘expressivity’ are highly subjective, limiting the explanatory and predictive power that would follow from an operationalized, synchronic analysis utilizing formalized linguistic features. furthermore, even viti’s proposed expanded repertoire of 3 desjardins: a corpus-based linguistic analysis of latin frequentative verbs published by cu scholar, 2019 fv meanings fails to include a majority of highly idiomatic fv interpretations, as in examples 3 and 4: (3) domin-us callist-um vendidit master-nom callistus-acc sell ‘the master sold callistus’ (sen. ep. 47) (4) quint-us frater [ … ] tusculan-um venditat ut … quintus-nom brother.nom [ … ] tusculan.property-acc sell so.that… ‘my brother quintus is now trying to sell his tusculan property, in order to purchase, if he can, the townhouse of pacilius’ (cic. att. 1.14) in 3, seneca is recalling how much more callistus’s former master lost in comparison to his gains in selling callistus. seneca ends by saying dominus callistum vendidit ‘the master sold callistus [but how much has calllistus made (his master) pay for!]’, a standard transitive use of the base verb vendidit ‘he sold’. in 4, cicero is telling atticus, a close friend, that his brother quintus is trying to sell his tusculan property. the emphatic, intensive action can be inferred from the fact that the selling action (venditat) introduces a purpose clause (headed by the conjunction ut): so that he (quintus) can purchase a townhouse he desires. however, both a traditional as well as an emphatic/expressive (cf. viti 2012) interpretation result in inadequate translations, since the use of venditare in 4 is not only an intensive form of ‘selling’, but a very specific form of ‘selling property’. given that fvs resist a uniform semantic analysis and that any fv can mean something entirely unpredictable from the sum of its parts, and traditional and contemporary (viti 2012) fv definitions ignore the degree of idiomaticity between fv form and function (and are based on limited corpus data), this paper therefore provides a synchronic, corpus-based linguistic analysis of fv verbs in comparison to their base forms from both derivational (source-oriented) and usage-based (product-oriented) perspectives (bybee 2001:126) in order to explore the nature of the latin fv ‘derivation’. to do so, i analyze 15 tokens of each fv and corresponding base verb for the top nine most frequent fv lexemes (totaling 135 fv and base verb tokens; 270 verb tokens total), in terms of their morphological, syntactic, and semantic properties. the remainder of this paper is organized as follows: in section 2 i outline the procedure and methodology in acquiring the latin fv data and corpus development, and the subsequent linguistic analysis of 4 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 24 [2019] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol24/iss1/1 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.33011/cril.24.1.1 each verb token. in section 3 i present and discuss the results of the linguistic analysis and provide a summary and concluding remarks in section 4. 2. methodology and analysis 2.1. corpus data the present analysis utilizes a latin data corpus (currently in development) in order to locate any and all possible fv verb forms. first, the entire collection of the latin perseus digital library (crane 2005) (provided under the creative commons sharealike 3.0 license) was downloaded as individual extensible markup language (.xml) files. since the latin text in each .xml file was encoded in a machine-readable format, a python program was developed to extract all latin text, which was then written to individual text (.txt) files. once the latin .txt files were generated, a subsequent program was created to clean, format, and normalize the latin text, addressing the following considerations: • each generated .txt file contained various xml and html (hypertext markup language) encodings. therefore, a function was implemented which removed all remaining xml or html encodings, while leaving any latin text unchanged. • due to the frequency of roman dates (e.g. prid. id. mart. = pridie idus martias = march 14), roman numerals (e.g. lxvii = 67), and roman name abbreviations2, a separate function identified each (and their various forms) in order to treat them as proper constituents. • another common occurrence in latin text concerns the orthographic representation of the phonemes /j/ and /w/. for example, the verb /ˈjakio/ ‘i throw’ might be written as iacio or jacio. similarly, the noun /ˈserwus/ ‘slave’ might be represented as servus or seruus. therefore, the data was normalized so that the latin phonemes /j/ and /w/ were uniformly represented by the same grapheme (⟨i⟩ and ⟨u⟩, respectively). • finally, the latin data was generally formatted, addressing concerns such as capitalization and punctuation, and a new .txt file corresponding to each latin author and particular text (e.g. caesar: de bello gallico ‘on the gallic war’) was generated, producing the entire raw text latin corpus. 2 it was common in latin literature to abbreviate one’s praenomen, or first name, as in c. (gaius) julius caesar and m. (marcus) tullius cicero. 5 desjardins: a corpus-based linguistic analysis of latin frequentative verbs published by cu scholar, 2019 since the present study considers fv verbs from the golden age of latin (approximately 70 bce – 18 ce specifically), the corpus was partitioned based on authors who were active during that time period. at the time of writing, the golden age latin subcorpus consists of 16 authors (from caesar to vergil) and 157,8603 tokens. once the latin golden age subcorpus was sufficiently prepared, a final program was written in order to: (1) locate any and all possible fv verb forms, (2) generate separate results files containing each fv token and textual context, and (3) return the token frequency of each fv verb. since the derived fv verb form is invariably first conjugation, regardless of the conjugation class of the base verb, certain morphological information was taken into consideration in the detection process. as the program iterated over each token, it ‘checked’ whether the token is a first conjugation verb, based on predictable first conjugation verbal morphology (specifically, the presence of the vowel a in the verb stem), and whether the fv -it suffix immediately follows the verb root and immediately precedes any inflectional morphology, as in 5: (5) ag-it-aret root-fv-infl ‘he may have agitated …’ after the fv tokens were located, a randomizing function was called shuffling the fv data. results files were generated containing a random sample of 15 fv tokens for the top nine most frequent fv verb lexemes (including the token, context, and author and source for each). 2.2. procedure and analysis i consider three levels of linguistic abstraction in my analysis – morphology, syntax, and semantics – and how those levels interact with respect to latin fvs and their base verbs. the proceeding subsections outline the specific morphological, syntactic, and semantic features noted for each verb token. 3 this figure is a best approximation and will be finalized as the corpus is further developed. 6 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 24 [2019] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol24/iss1/1 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.33011/cril.24.1.1 morphological properties two morphological characteristics were noted in the annotation of each fv and base verb token: grammatical voice, and whether the token was a base or derived (i.e. fv) form. the grammatical voice of the token was determined by the presence of active or passive verbal morphology, which is largely systematic and predictable in latin4, in conjunction with recognized syntactic properties of passivization, such as demotion of the actor from the nominative case to an oblique (typically ablative, or a prepositional phrase if syntactically realized), and promotion of the undergoer from the accusative case to nominative (dixon and aikhenvald 2011). additionally, as noted in section 2.1, the derived form was determined based on the transparent morphological structure of the fv relative to its base verb form (i.e., the presence of the -it fv morpheme and first conjugation morphology). syntactic properties in addition to word-level properties, i consider three syntactic properties: verb valency, the syntactic frame (and syntactic restrictions), and the number of syntactically realized protoagents and proto-patients. verb valency was determined by the number of arguments present in the sentence or clause that are semantically necessary to the proposition expressed by that verb. for example, in example 6 the arguments needed to ‘complete’ the verbal action are hic ‘that man’ (agent), patriam ‘country’ (theme), and auro ‘for gold’ (asset), indicating that this verb token vendidit has a valency of three. (6) vendidit hic aur-o patri-am sell that.nom gold-dat country-acc ‘that traitor sold his country for gold’ (verg. a. 6.621) syntactic frames were modeled on those utilized in the verbnet (kipper-schuler 2005) verb lexicon and were considered in the present analysis with the hypothesis that syntactic frames can correlate with semantic class membership (levin 1993), in the same sense as verbnet. an example syntactic frame might be [np[nom] v np[acc] np[dat]] for 6 above (the syntactic frames’ word 4 with the exception of deponent and semideponent verbs, which are morphologically passive but syntactically and semantically active. 7 desjardins: a corpus-based linguistic analysis of latin frequentative verbs published by cu scholar, 2019 order reflects english’s for the purpose of analysis, mirroring the syntactic representations in verbnet, but with the awareness that word order is flexible in latin and is not used to track grammatical relations). in cases where the syntactic subject had been ‘dropped’ (facilitated by subject agreement morphology on the verb), a pro constituent was provided in the syntactic frame. additionally, restrictions were included on each syntactic constituent as subcategorization information, reflecting information such as: • the specific case argument nps appeared in (e.g. np[nom] for nominative, np[dat] dative). • voice for passivized verbs (e.g. np[nom] v.pass). • the specific preposition heading pps (e.g. pp[ex] for ‘out of…’, pp[ad] for ‘toward…’). • the sentential complement type (e.g. s[inf] for a bare infinitive, s[cx] for a syntactic construction). finally, quantitative figures were collected for the number of syntactically realized protoagents and proto-patients (introduced below) for each fv and base verb lexeme, since the overt realization of proto-agents and proto-patients can be seen to reflect the degree of transitivity of the verb – an overt (individuated) subject is typically more agentive (and nonindividuated as less agentive), and an overt object is typically more physically affected (and nonindividuated is less physically-affected) (hopper and thompson 1980:252). semantic properties at the highest level of abstraction, in the sense that the morphological and syntactic properties tend to be physically instantiated and directly observable, certain semantic properties were considered: semantic role array (and selectional restrictions), verbnet semantic class, and the number of agentive proto-agents and physically affected (or having undergone changes in state) proto-patients. i assume the same set of semantic roles as those used in verbnet (kipper-schuler 2005), and in order to facilitate any potential semantic generalizations, these fine-grained semantic roles (e.g. agent, stimulus, experiencer, theme, patient, etc.) were also considered in terms of their classification into dowty’s (1989) two ‘macro-roles’: proto-agent (pag) (expressing volition, sentience, causation, etc.) and proto-patient (ppt) (change of state, causally affected, etc.). furthermore, for each semantic role certain selectional restrictions were noted in a similar fashion 8 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 24 [2019] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol24/iss1/1 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.33011/cril.24.1.1 to verbnet, such as whether the role(s) require a +/animate argument. however, i consider one additional selectional restriction as an additional measure of overall transitivity: whether the verbal arguments are +/referential, in the strict semantic sense that the argument is + referential if it denotes an individual or property in the world (kearns 2011:2). this additional semantic feature can therefore be seen as reflecting the degree to which that argument is truly agentive (pag) or physically affected (ppt) (hopper and thompson 1980:252). in addition, i mapped each verb token to an existing verbnet semantic class (vnc), in order to generalize across several related and potential interpretations of that particular token, as well as to assist in the determination of the token’s semantic role array. in certain ambiguous cases, the possible english senses of the token were located in the proposition bank (propbank) (palmer et al. 2005) english framesets index, and the vnc was then determined through the mapping between propbank and verbnet, facilitated by the unified verb index5. finally, quantitative figures were calculated reflecting several semantic effects of the fv derivation, such as the number of agentive pags, physically affected ppts, +/referential pags, +/animate ppts, etc. 3. results results of the linguistic analysis demonstrate that while some linguistic features are unhelpful in attempting to characterize the latin fv verb, such as the number of valent members and passive or active morphology, other syntactic and semantic properties do appear to be helpful, albeit to varying degrees and depending on whether a derivational or usage-based perspective is assumed. in section 3.1 i discuss possible derivational generalizations, followed by a discussion of the usagebased generalizations in section 3.2. 3.1. derivational characterizations from a strictly derivational perspective, no clear semantic generalization was able to be formed in regard to the semantic class membership of latin fv verbs. however, the application of the fv -it suffix does appear to affect particular semantic properties in a general manner, primarily concerning the pag, ppt, and potentially the transitivity of the derived fv form. 5 the unified verb index merges information from four natural language processing projects: verbnet, propbank, framenet, and ontonotes sense groupings. online: https://verbs.colorado.edu/verb-index/index.php. 9 desjardins: a corpus-based linguistic analysis of latin frequentative verbs published by cu scholar, 2019 effects on pags the fv derivation seems to disfavor referential pags in comparison to their base verb semantics, however this generalization is slightly variable. for example, the derived fv verb form cit (represented by its root) was observed to occur only twice with a referential pag and 13 times with a nonreferential pag compared to its base verb ci(e), whose occurrence is more evenly distributed between referential and nonreferential pags: nine times with a referential pag, and six times with a nonreferential pag (a full table reflecting these figures is provided in table 1 in the appendix). examples 7 and 8 illustrate this: (7) latin-us dux [ … ] proeli-um ciet latin-nom leader.nom [ … ] battle-acc urge ‘the latin leader [not the least discouraged by his wounds] urged on the fighting’ (liv. 2.19) (8) labor optim-os citat labor.nom best-acc call ‘work calls for the best men’ (sen. prov. 1.5) in 7, livy is recounting in his history of rome an intense battle among several soldiers, and our example occurs just as the latin leader is injured and withdraws from the battle. the pag latinus dux ‘latin leader’ is syntactically realized, clearly referential, and functions as the subject to the base verb cie. in contrast, although also syntactically realized, the pag in 8 is largely nonreferential, in that it expresses a highly abstract concept ‘labor; work; toil’. the pags of the derived fv forms tend to be in general nonreferential and less potent in their agency, indicating a lower degree of transitivity (hopper and thompson 1980:252). therefore, a preliminary conclusion concerning the derivational effects of the fv suffix might be the reduction in agency and transitivity of the derived lexeme, considering approximately 73% of all fv forms sampled occur with nonreferential pags (cf. table 1) in contrast with an approximately even distribution of base verb forms occurring with referential and nonreferential pags. effects on ppts fv derivational effects on ppts were similar to those on pags; specifically, the derived verbs seem to prefer nonreferential ppts, with approximately 40% of fvs occurring with nonreferential ppts as opposed to approximately 34% of base forms occurring with nonreferential ppts (cf. 10 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 24 [2019] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol24/iss1/1 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.33011/cril.24.1.1 table 1). however, derivational effects on ppts appear to be more uniform, and in general seem not to result in a change of state or take a physically affected ppt. for example, the fv habit never occurred with referential ppts or physically affected ppts, compared to its base verb hab, which was observed to occur eight times with a physically affected ppt and 11 times with a referential ppt. similarly, the fv vendit was observed to occur only three times with a physically affected ppt and once with a referential ppt, whereas its base verb vend occurred 14 times with a physically affected ppt, and 13 times with a referential ppt. these effects of the fv derivation on ppts are also apparent between the fv and base verb pair cogit and cog, as shown in 9 and 10: (9) eos ipsos [ … ] ced-ere in tutm coegit pro.masc.pl.acc those-masc.pl.acc [ … ] withdraw-inf into safety force ‘he forced/compelled them to withdraw to a place of safety’ (liv. 2.10) (10) nihil de resistendo cogitabat nothing.acc concerning resisting consider ‘they (inferred attinian army) never thought of making resistance’ (caes. civ. 2.34) it is important to note that, similar to the fv habit, the fv cogit never takes a physically affected or referential ppt, whereas its base cog almost exclusively does. example 9 occurs as livy recounts an attack on rome, and how one individual, horatius cocles, had been able to prevent the onslaught. the ppt ipsos eos ‘those individuals (masculine plural)’ is referential, referring to a group of individuals (roman citizens), and evidently undergoes a change of state, being the object in an object control construction in which the ppt is the syntactic object of the control verb (coegit ‘force’) and the syntactic subject of the subordinate infinitival cedere ‘withdraw’. furthermore, the subordinate action of ‘withdrawing’ involves a change in location, further highlighting the change of state of the ppt ipsos eos. the fv cogitabat ‘consider’ in 10 takes a nonreferential ppt (nihil de resistendo ‘nothing concerning resisting’), and is neither physically affect nor undergoes a change of state. analogous to the prior observation concerning the fv derivation’s effects on pags, the tendency of fvs to take nonreferential, nonphysically affected ppts suggests reduction in transitivity to be a result of the application of the fv suffix, as well as a reduction in agency of the pag. 11 desjardins: a corpus-based linguistic analysis of latin frequentative verbs published by cu scholar, 2019 3.2. usage-based characterizations in contrast to a derivational (or source-oriented (bybee 2001:126)) approach, which attempts to specify the base verb form and a single operation with a single set of conditions (croft and cruse 2004:301) (in this case, the application of the fv -it suffix and the attempt to predict and generalize over its semantic effects), fvs can be investigated in terms of “conditions” on the fv form only (becker and fainleib (2009:3). when viewed in terms of a usage-based, or product-oriented (bybee 2001:126), the semantic classification of fv tokens appear to be influenced by their syntactic frames, semantic role array, and particular lexemes appearing in their argument complementation. frames, roles, and vnc membership examples 11 and 12 illustrate the relationship between vnc membership and particular syntactic frames and semantic roles: (11) cum se cogitat esse pi-um adv himself.acc consider be.inf pious-acc ‘when he knows that he is pious’ (lit. ‘considers himself to be..’) (catul. 76) (12) sed [ … ] cogitavit [ … ] reg-es barbar-os incit-are conj [ … ] plan [ … ] ruler-acc foreign-acc incite-inf ‘but he planned [from the start] […] to incite foreign rulers’ (cic. att. 8.11) the frame [pro v np[acc] np[inf]] in 11 exclusively occurred with the ‘consider, know’ interpretation of the fv cogit correlating with the consider-29.9 class, as matched to verbnet. furthermore, the semantic role theme also only occurred with the consider-29.9 class, indicating a relation between the semantic role(s) of the fv verb’s core arguments and its semantic class membership. in comparison, the syntactic frame [pro v s[inf]] exhibited in 12 exclusively occurred with the ‘plan, intend’ interpretation of cogit, correlating with the wish62 semantic class (its closest match in verbnet). lexical complementation and vnc membership another structural feature that tended to correlate with fv’s vnc membership concerns particular lexemes appearing in the complementation of the verb, as demonstrated in 13 below: 12 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 24 [2019] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol24/iss1/1 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.33011/cril.24.1.1 (13) et defendend-ae urb-is consili-a agitaba-ntur conj defending-gen city-gen plans-nom discuss-pass ‘plans of defending the city were discussed’ (liv. 10.21) semantically, the fv agit in example 13 might belong to nine6 possible vncs. however, the lexeme consilia ‘plans, counsel’ (and a related lexeme res ‘thing, event, fact’) only occurred with the discuss interpretation (and vnc classification) of agit. a similar relationship was observed among the fv vendit sample: when the ppt being ‘sold’ is the reflexive pronoun se ‘oneself’, coindexed with the pag, the interpretation of agit is exclusively ingratiate – a metaphorical extension, considering the literal translation as ‘sell oneself’. it is interesting to note that these highly metaphorical, idiomatic interpretations, and particular lexical complementation patterns, tend to occur with lower frequency fv lexemes (e.g. flagit (90 token frequency), vendit (54), and dict (46)), compared to higher frequency fvs such as cogit (748); this will be explored in future work. 4. concluding remarks this study considered certain morphological, syntactic, and semantic properties of latin fv verbs from two synchronic perspectives: derivational (source-oriented) and usage-based (productoriented). in attempting to characterize the fv as a derivational process, the fv -it suffix appears to affect whether the derived verb’s pag and ppt are referential, tending to take non-referential core arguments in relation to their base verb forms, and unaffected ppts. this can be viewed as a reduction transitivity and agency (hopper and thompson 1980), which follows from fvs’ denominal origins (greenough et al. 2001:152) with denominal verbs typically denoting a state (viti 2012:7) and low transitivity. the fv derivation can therefore be seen as a potential stativizing 6 the possible vncs to which the fv agit might belong, as identified in this study, include: 1. discuss (no verbnet equivalent, sense from propbank) 2. amuse-31.1 3. establish-55.5-1 4. conduct (no verbnet equivalent, sense from propbank) 5. handle (ibid.) 6. force-59 7. judgement-33 8. push-12-1-1 9. risk-94 13 desjardins: a corpus-based linguistic analysis of latin frequentative verbs published by cu scholar, 2019 process as reflected by its argument selection and overall reduction in transitivity. in contrast, a usage-based, product-oriented analysis reveals that specific syntactic frames, semantic roles, and lexical complementation allows fv lexemes to be clustered in terms of prototypical semantic classes, providing a more straightforward characterization of latin fv verbs and highlights the interconnectedness of morphology, syntax, and semantics. references becker, michael, and lena fainleib. 2009. the naturalness of product-oriented generalizations. amherst, university of massachusetts amherst, ms. online: http://www.phonologist.org/hebrewplurals/. bybee, joan. 2001. phonology and language use. cambridge: cambridge university press. crane, gregory r. (ed.) 2005. perseus digital library. medford, tufts university. online: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu. croft, william, and d. alan cruse. 2004. cognitive linguistics. cambridge: cambridge university press. dixon, r. m. w., and alexandra aikhenvald. 2011. a typology of argument-determined constructions. in language at large: essays on syntax and semantics. leiden: brill. dowty, david r. 1989. on the semantic content of the notion ‘thematic role’. in gennaro chierchia; barbara h. partee; and raymond turner. (eds.) properties, types and meaning, ii. dordrecht: kluwer academic publishers. greenough, j. b.; g. l. kittredge; a. a. howard; and benj. l. d'ooge. (eds.) 2001. allen and greenough’s new latin grammar. newburyport: focus publishing, r. pullins & company. hopper, paul j., and sandra a. thompson. 1980. transitivity in grammar and discourse. language 56.251-299. kearns, kate. 2011. semantics. new york: palgrave macmillan. kipper schuler, karin. 2005. verbnet: a broad-coverage, comprehensive verb lexicon. philadelphia: university of pennsylvania dissertation. levin, beth. 1993. english verb classes and alternations: a preliminary investigation. chicago: university of chicago press. palmer, martha; daniel gildea; and paul kingsbury. 2005. the proposition bank: an annotated corpus of semantic roles. computational linguistics 31. 14 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 24 [2019] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol24/iss1/1 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.33011/cril.24.1.1 solodow, j.b. 2010. latin alive: the survival of latin in english and the romance languages. cambridge: cambridge university press. viti, carlotta. 2012. the use of frequentative verbs in early latin. proceedings of the xvi colloquium internationale linguisticae latinae, uppsala. 15 desjardins: a corpus-based linguistic analysis of latin frequentative verbs published by cu scholar, 2019 appendix – table 1. fv and base verb quantitative figures fv base token freq. vncs overt pags overt ppts transitive/ agentive pags phys. affected ppts pags +/ref. ppts +/ref. agit 362 9 2 14 0 2 1 / 14 2 / 13 ag 6 3 12 2 4 7 / 3 5 / 10 cit 427 3 4 14 10 2 2 / 13 12 / 3 ci(e) 2 9 15 11 15 9 / 6 11 / 4 cogit 748 2 6 13 10 0 4 / 11 0 cog 1 2 9 11 15 4 / 11 10 / 5 concit 278 1 4 14 8 15 5 / 10 11 / 4 conci(e) 1 9 15 15 15 6 / 9 10 / 5 dict 46 1 6 12 15 15 3 / 12 8 / 7 dic 4 6 15 11 4 7 / 8 9 / 6 excit 311 3 7 14 12 15 5 / 10 8 / 7 exci(e) 4 9 15 13 15 4 / 11 9 / 6 habit 269 1 9 0 0 0 9 / 6 0 hab(e) 2 5 14 5 8 5 / 10 11 / 4 flagit 90 2 4 11 7 1 4 / 11 9 / 6 flagr 3 11 0 0 0 10 / 5 0 vendit 54 2 3 14 3 3 3 / 12 1 / 14 vend 1 12 14 12 14 12 / 3 13 / 2 appendix – roman works and authors referenced in this paper caesar, gaius julius. c. 100 bce – 44 bce. de bello civili. catullus, gaius valerius. c. 84 bce – 54 bce. carmina. cicero, marcus tullius. c. 106 bce – 43 bce. epistulae ad atticum. livius (livy), titus. c. 59 bce – 17 ce. ab urbe condita. seneca, lucius annaeus. c. 4 bce – 65 ce. ad lucilium epistulae morales and de providentia. vergilius (vergil) maro, publius. c. 70 bce – 19 bce. aeneidos. 16 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 24 [2019] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol24/iss1/1 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.33011/cril.24.1.1 colorado research in linguistics 6-2019 a corpus-based linguistic analysis of latin frequentative verbs jared desjardins recommended citation a corpus-based linguistic analysis of latin frequentative verbs cover page footnote microsoft word desjardins-cril2019-final.docx female-to-male transsexuals and gay-sounding voices: a pilot study colorado research in linguistics. june 2010. vol. 22. boulder: university of colorado. © 2010 by lal zimman. female-to-male transsexuals and gay-sounding voices: a pilot study* lal zimman university of colorado a great deal of work has now been published on the perception of men’s sexual orientation on the basis of phonetic characteristics. in this paper, i present a pilot study focusing on a population that sheds new light on this topic: female-to-male transsexuals. as individuals who were raised as girls but self-identify as men, trans men (as they are also called) are often perceived as gay-sounding after undergoing the drop in vocal pitch that is typically brought on by testosterone therapy. using recordings of read speech from three trans men and five non-trans men who were each rated as gayor straight-sounding by listener subjects, the analysis presented here shows that trans men are perceived in much the same way as gay-sounding non-trans men, despite a number of differences in the acoustic features of their voices. ultimately these findings lend credence to the notion that there is no single gay-sounding phonetic style, but rather multiple styles that are lumped together perceptually as gay-sounding on the basis of their deviation from norms for straight-sounding voices. 1. introduction as the study of language and sexuality has become an established subdiscipline within sociolinguistics over the past two decades, a number of linguists have taken an interest in the question of whether sexual orientation can be detected on the basis of particular phonetic features or styles, particularly among male speakers (gaudio 1994; levon 2007; linville 1998; munson, jefferson and mcdonald 2006; munson et al. 2006; munson 2007; pierrehumbert, et al. 2004; podesva, roberts and campbell-kibler 2001; podesva 2007; smyth and rogers 2002; and smyth, jacobs and rogers 2003).1 while one of the most basic questions explored in this literature has been whether listeners can accurately judge male speakers as gay or straight based on voice alone, these authors have also sought to uncover the precise phonetic features that correlate with the perception of a man’s voice as “gay-sounding.” this paper is a revised version of the author’s preliminary examination for the phd in linguistics at the university of colorado, boulder. thanks are owed to rebecca scarborough for her help in designing this research, and to steven duman, joshua raclaw, richard sandoval, susanne stadlbauer, and an anonymous cril reviewer for feedback during the revision of this work. 1 a few studies (waksler 2001; pierrehumbert et al. 2004; munson et al. 2006; munson, jefferson & mcdonald 2006) have also examined the voices of lesbian women and/or women perceived as lesbian-sounding. the findings of these studies are important, but beyond the scope of the present paper. 1 zimman: female-to-male transsexuals and gay-sounding voices published by cu scholar, 2010 colorado research in linguistics, volume 22 (2010) 2 in this paper, i focus on these same perceptual and acoustic questions, but i also provide new insight through the introduction of a group of speakers that are almost completely absent from the sociocultural linguistic literature: female-tomale transsexuals. female-to-male transsexuals, who are also called trans men, are individuals who are assigned to a female gender role and raised as girls, but who come to identify as men at some point later in life. trans men make for an especially interesting community for sociophonetic study because of their unique set of experiences with the biological and socialized aspects of the voice. while trans men typically have female-sounding voices before their shift from a female social role to a male one, these individuals generally come to be heard as malesounding over the course of their gender role transition. this is in large part due to the fact that many trans men make use of testosterone for hormone replacement therapy, which results in a marked drop in vocal pitch just as it does during typical male puberty. in fact, as i show in later sections of this paper, trans men’s voices are indistinguishable from the voices of other men when it comes to fundamental frequency. on the other hand, many of the differences between men’s and women’s voices have been shown to be learned during childhood rather than determined by the biological differentiation that arises during adolescence. and since trans men are expected to grow up as girls and later become women, their experiences with socialization are different from those had by men who are raised as boys. the questions driving the research described in this paper have to do with the consequences of this mixture of biological and social factors that is characteristic among trans men. because some authors studying gay-sounding voices have suggested that boys who acquire “feminine” phonetic traits during childhood might come to sound gay as adults (smyth and rogers 2002; renn 2002), my goal in undertaking this work has been to explore whether trans men would be described as gay-sounding by listeners in a perceptual experiment like those conducted by other authors. if trans men’s voices do indeed tend to be gaysounding, i also aim to discover which vocal features might explain this perception, and whether the acoustic characteristics of trans men’s voices are the same as those found among gay-sounding non-trans men. i begin this paper with an overview of the findings of previous studies on gay-sounding men’s voices, which provide a starting point for my own analysis. notably, the findings of these studies have often been contradictory, making it difficult to construct a unified model of gay-sounding men’s voices. rather than presenting a challenge to be overcome, however, i argue that the differences in these findings likely reflect real-life diversity among gay-sounding speakers. in other words, different studies have reached different conclusions because there are in fact multiple phonetic styles that might be interpreted as gay-sounding. in section 3, i discuss my own research comparing the voices of trans men to the voices of both gay-sounding and straight-sounding non-trans men. what my findings show is that trans men are indeed perceived as gay-sounding: members of this group were rated by listeners in the same way as the gay-sounding non2 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 22 [2010] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol22/iss1/3 doi: https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol22/iss1/3/ female-to-male transsexuals and gay-sounding voices: a pilot study 3 trans men. however, my phonetic analysis reveals a number of differences between these groups when it comes to acoustic measurements. in the discussion section i ultimately argue that these findings support the idea, introduced by zwicky (1997), that different phonetic styles are lumped together as gay-sounding by listeners simply because they deviate from a straight-sounding norm. i conclude with reflections on how the linguistic practices of trans men can enhance our understanding of gay-sounding voices more generally, and with directions for future research. 2. previous research a number of studies, such as those carried out by gaudio (1994), linville (1998), and smyth, jacobs and rogers (2003), have compared speakers’ selfidentified sexual orientation to listeners’ perception of these same individuals as straight or gay on the basis of read speech. consistently, such work has shown that listeners are able to identify speakers’ sexual orientations at better than chance rates. at the same time, however, each of these authors have noted that the correlations they have uncovered are imperfect, simply because not all gay men sound gay and a few straight men do. nevertheless, this work suggests there is a salient socio-perceptual category for “gay-sounding” voices. having shown that such a grouping exists on the perceptual level, these authors and others have focused on uncovering the acoustic characteristics that correlate with the categorization of a particular voice as gayor straight-sounding. as i mentioned in the previous section, it is difficult to synthesize the findings of research on gay-sounding voices because of the way different studies have sometimes reached contradictory conclusions. for example, most research that has investigated speakers’ mean fundamental frequency have shown no difference between gayand straight-sounding men on this measure (gaudio 1994; linville 1998; podesva, roberts and campbell-kibler 2001; smyth and rogers 2002). however, munson et al.’s (2006) study, which analyzed words produced in isolation rather than connected speech, found that the gay-sounding men in their study did have higher fundamental frequency than the straightsounding men. the same study also found that gay-sounding men had higher mean f1 and f2 than straight-sounding men, with munson (2007) further confirming the significance of mean f1. however, all of the other studies that have compared mean f1 and f2 across gayand straight-sounding speakers show no significant differences (linville 1998, smyth and rogers, 2002; pierrehumbert et al. 2004). vowel duration also seems to play some role in the perception of men’s sexual orientation, but it isn’t clear whether this difference is found only in certain vowels (podesva, roberts and campbell-kibler 2001; smyth and rogers 2002), in all vowels (munson et al. 2006), or potentially not at all (pierrehumbert et al. 2004). crucially, whether a variable correlates with listeners’ perception of a voice as gay-sounding seems to depend in part on the other variables present in 3 zimman: female-to-male transsexuals and gay-sounding voices published by cu scholar, 2010 colorado research in linguistics, volume 22 (2010) 4 the speakers’ style: levon (2007) found that decreasing a gay speaker’s pitch range through digital manipulation lead to reduced gayness ratings by listeners, but increasing a straight speaker’s pitch range had no significant effect on how his voice was rated. some of the variation that shows up in these findings is no doubt due to differences in data collection methods, which have included individual words (munson jefferson and mcdonald 2006; munson et al. 2006; munson 2007) and connected read speech (gaudio 1994; linville 1998; pierrehumbert et al. 2004; smyth and rogers 2002) and spontaneous speech (smyth, jacobs and rogers 2003) produced in laboratory conditions, as well as an unscripted radio broadcast (podesva, roberts and campbell-kibler 2001). however, there is another very important potential explanation, which is that speakers perceived as gay-sounding are probably not all using the same phonetic style. as i mentioned in the previous section, this is the argument advanced by zwicky (1997). specifically, he says that there is unlikely to be a single set of characteristics that can be delineated as the gay-sounding style (also see podesva, roberts and campbell-kibler 2001 for a highly nuanced treatment of this idea). instead, as zwicky suggests, virtually any deviation from ways of talking associated with heterosexual masculinity – whether by virtue of a higher pitch, higher first and second formants, greater duration for vowels and/or consonants, or any of the other of numerous features that have been investigated – can be interpreted as indexing gay identity. this idea is highly intuitive, given the pervasive cultural discourse that equates any kind of gender non-normativity, particularly among men, with homosexuality (discussed in detail by gaudio 1994). there are also empirical findings to support zwicky’s argument. gordon (2008) presents an analysis that compares the same speakers delivering gay-sounding and straight-sounding readings of the same passage. gordon found that speakers made use of a wide variety of styles in their gay-sounding guises, each characterized by different marked phonetic variants, while their straight-sounding guises were much more similar to one another’s. what these speakers’ gay-sounding readings had in common, then, was their deviation from a more homogenous straight-sounding style. although authors have often reached different conclusions regarding which acoustic features are salient in the perception of sexual orientation, many researchers working on this topic have pointed out the similarities between the speech of gay-sounding men and that of women. particularly in the work of smyth and his colleagues (especially smyth and rogers 2002), gay-sounding voices have been characterized as a mixture of features typically associated with men’s voices, such as a relatively low mean f0, with other features typically associated with women’s voices, such as relatively longer sibilants or vowels that are articulated closer to the periphery of the vowel space. given these similarities, some authors have suggested that men who reject or fail to conform to heteronormative masculinity are more apt to sound gay than men with more conventional and ideologically unmarked enactments of gender (renn 2002; smyth and rogers 2002). more specifically, gender socialization during 4 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 22 [2010] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol22/iss1/3 doi: https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol22/iss1/3/ female-to-male transsexuals and gay-sounding voices: a pilot study 5 childhood is presented in this work as a likely source for gay-sounding voices among men, given that children are known to acquire sociophonetic markers of gender quite early in life (e.g. sachs 1975). for instance, smyth and rogers (2002) argue that despite getting similar linguistic input from adults, some boys may engage in selective intake by orienting more strongly to women speakers as linguistic role models rather than men.2 considering what we know about the acquisition of other forms of sociolinguistic distinction (such as regional dialect) and the way that adolescents negotiate their role in the heterosexual marketplace as part of a peer-based social order (eckert 2003), young speakers’ age cohorts probably also play a considerable role in the socialization of gendered phonetic traits. based on the arguments presented by these authors, it is worth considering the possibility that men who grow up orienting to the norms for women speakers in their communities, rather than men, will tend to be judged as gay-sounding in adulthood. the present study addresses this question from a rather unusual angle: by focusing on the voices of trans men. as i mentioned in the introduction, trans men very often make use of testosterone therapy as part of their transition from a female gender role to a male one, which generally results in a great deal of physiological masculinization, including changes in the larynx. one study of trans men’s voices, which appears to be the only of its kind (described in both van borsel et al. 2000 and in adler and van borsel 2006), found that the two individuals studied experienced a significant decrease in mean f0 and in f0 range, which put them within a normative male range during the first year of testosterone therapy. on the other hand, testosterone has no apparent effect on the many phonetic cues for speaker gender that are learned during language socialization, such as differences in segment duration or vowel quality (see simpson 2009 for a review). of course, given that trans men are raised in a female gender role, their experiences with childhood language socialization are markedly different from most men’s. if trans men do differ from most other men in terms of socially-learned gendered phonetic traits, and if these speakers are perceived as gay-sounding men, then the unique experiences of members of this group would seem to provide evidence that childhood gender socialization can be a significant factor in predicting whether a man will be perceived as gayor straight-sounding, at least for some speakers. in order to explore this issue, the remainder of this paper is devoted to a comparison of men from three groups: trans men (hereafter tm), non-trans men with gay-sounding voices (gsm), and non-trans men with straight sounding voices (ssm). in this space i focus on two questions: first, how are the voices of tm perceived, compared to gsm and ssm? second, what are some of the acoustic similarities and differences between members of these groups? before 2 of course, it might just as easily be the straight-sounding boys who are engaging in selective intake by orienting only to men rather than also paying attention to women, or that all children are engaging in some kind of selective intake in choosing their speaker role-models. 5 zimman: female-to-male transsexuals and gay-sounding voices published by cu scholar, 2010 colorado research in linguistics, volume 22 (2010) 6 answering these questions, section 3 will describe the methods for data collection and analysis used in this project. 3. methods 3.1. data collection in order to test the questions presented above, speakers were recruited through previous research contacts and the researcher’s own extended social network at the university of colorado and in san francisco, ca. none of the participants were aware of the topic of the investigation before being recorded beyond the fact that they were participating in a study about “how men talk.” three speakers were recorded from each of the three groups under investigation: tm (trans men), gsm (gay-sounding non-trans men), and ssm (straightsounding non-trans men). the gsm and ssm speakers were initially selected on the basis of whether i perceived them to be gay-sounding or straight-sounding, but these perceptions were then checked against listener ratings (see section 3.2 below). speakers were from urban or suburban areas in the western us and were between the age of 20 and 27, with the exception of one 47 year old speaker in the gsm group. while the non-trans men each identified as either gay or straight, all of the trans men identified with broader and potentially more fluid sexuality labels, such as bisexual, pansexual, and/or queer. following the methodology described by smyth, jacobs and rogers (2003), speakers were recorded while reading two passages: the rainbow passage (fairbanks 1960), which is an historical and scientific overview of rainbows, and the fire passage (crist 1997), which is a dramatic narrative about a building fire. however, the final analysis presented in this paper includes only the fire passage (the text of this passage can be found in appendix a). this choice was motivated primarily by smyth, jacobs and rogers’ finding that the scientific rainbow passage tended to evoke inflated gayness ratings for speakers who were perceived as straight in other contexts. additionally, these authors found no significant differences between the dramatic read passage and a spontaneous spoken passage, suggesting that the dramatic passage is more representative of speakers’ more naturalistic speaking styles.3 in addition, technical problems with the computer used for recording meant that a few speakers had to reread the scientific passage, which had a clearly audible effect on the speed at which they read; obviously, this would problematize the comparison of segment duration. while read speech is known to differ from naturally-occurring discourse in a number of ways and thus limits the generalizability of this study, read speech was chosen to facilitate the perceptual experiment described in section 3.2 as well as providing easily 3 two volunteers for this study also pointed out the symbolic significance of rainbows in the gay community. although smyth, jacobs and rogers assume that genre is the only factor at work here, it could be that the topic also influences listeners’ judgments or even speakers’ production. 6 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 22 [2010] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol22/iss1/3 doi: https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol22/iss1/3/ female-to-male transsexuals and gay-sounding voices: a pilot study 7 comparable data for acoustic analysis. however, these findings should be seen as a starting point that will guide future studies that make use of interactional language data (see section 5). recordings were made with a samson c03u usb multi-pattern condenser microphone and digitized at 48,000 hz using the audacity recording software program (audacity development team 2008). 3.2. listener evaluation identical segments of approximately 30 seconds were extracted from each speaker’s reading of the fire passage. eight listener subjects, all native speakers of american english, were then recruited to evaluate these clips via an online survey. the survey presented each audio clip along with sets of binary adjectives from which listeners were instructed to choose; for example, they were asked to rate how tall or short each speaker sounded on a scale of 1 to 5.4 listeners were instructed to play the audio clips and mark each speaker’s characteristics according to their best guess, but there was also an option to choose “no clue” to signify that the listener had no guess whatsoever as to a particular characteristic. listeners were not instructed on the purpose of the experiment, nor that collecting the gay versus straight ratings were the primary purpose of the study. discussion of the other social characteristics listeners rated is beyond the scope of the present analysis. on the basis of listener perceptions, one speaker from the gsm group was excluded – despite my perception of him as gay-sounding, listeners consistently perceived him as a straight-sounding speaker (i.e. his gayness ratings were not significantly different from the straight men in this study). because the goal was to compare the voices of straight-sounding straight men and gay-sounding gay men (rather than defining groups primarily on self-identification), only 2 speakers from the gsm group were included for analysis. 3.3. acoustic analysis each thirty second clip that was played for listener subjects was also subjected to acoustic analysis using the praat software package (boersma and weenink 2008). the features chosen for this analysis were selected on the basis of previous studies’ findings and included the following measures: 1. voiceless sibilant consonants (20 tokens of /s/, 1 token of /ʃ/) a. mean duration b. mean frequency at peak amplitude c. mean center of gravity 4 other traits, in addition to gay versus straight and masculine versus feminine, included young versus old, rude versus polite, and short versus tall. 7 zimman: female-to-male transsexuals and gay-sounding voices published by cu scholar, 2010 colorado research in linguistics, volume 22 (2010) 8 2. vowels a. mean f0 across 11 stressed vowels b. f0 range across 11 stressed vowels c. mean f1 and f2 across 11 stressed vowels d. f1 and f2 of /æ/ (3 stressed tokens) and /ɛ/ (2 stressed tokens) given the stereotype of the “lisping” gay man, it is unsurprising that researchers of gay-sounding voices have often directed their attention to sibilant consonants. indeed, variation in the properties of /s/ has been consistently shown to correlate with the perception of men’s voices as gayor straight-sounding. many researchers have investigated the duration of these sounds (linville 1998; podesva, roberts and campbell-kibler 2001; smyth and rogers 2002; though see also levon 2006, 2007), but some have also focused on the acoustic qualities of these segments themselves (linville 1998; munson et al. 2006; munson 2007). sibilant consonants, like other fricatives, are characterized by high-frequency aperiodic energy. fricatives can be distinguished from one another by which frequencies are most prominent in terms of amplitude. that is, while /s/ tends to have relatively high-amplitude energy at around 8,000 hz, the highest-amplitude energy in /ʃ/ tends to be closer to 4,000 hz (johnson 1997:130). thus, one measure that has been used in investigations of sibilants in general, and in gaysounding sibilants in particular, has been the frequency of the sound at peak amplitude (linville 1998). similar information can be gathered through the measurement of the center of gravity of /s/, which provides a holistic view of which frequencies have the highest amplitude within a sound. another measure that has received attention is spectral skew (munson et al. 2006; munson 2007), which refers to whether the majority of acoustic energy is located in the higher frequencies of the sound or the lower frequencies, but this particular measure was not used in the present study. in order to compare the sibilant consonants of the speakers in this study, i identified the instances of /s/ (n = 20) and /ʃ/ (n = 1) in the thirty second clips played for listeners. i then measured each token’s length, generated a spectral slice for the token,5 from which the peak frequency was identified visually, and finally generated center of gravity measurements using praat’s automated moments analysis function, which were checked against visual examinations of the spectra. because the 20 tokens of /s/ appeared in identical phonemic contexts, comparisons across speakers used the mean values of these measurements (i.e. mean duration, mean center of gravity, etc.). vowel quality has also been consistently shown to influence the perception of sexual orientation. although men with gay-sounding voices have not usually been found to have overall higher mean formants than straight sounding men, some research has turned up differences in the quality of individual vowels in terms of either f1 or f2 (smyth and rogers 2002; 5 a spectral slice provides a visual representation of the relationship between frequency and amplitude within a sound at a given point in time. 8 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 22 [2010] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol22/iss1/3 doi: https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol22/iss1/3/ female-to-male transsexuals and gay-sounding voices: a pilot study 9 pierrehumbert et al. 2004; munson et al. 2006). in this study, i discuss two of these vowels: /æ/ and /ɛ/. i analyzed three stressed instances of /æ/ and two stressed instances of /ɛ/ from each 30-second sample. in addition to the five tokens of /æ/ and /ɛ/, six other stressed vowels were included in the analysis in order to have a broader range of data from which to calculate f0 measurements, including three tokens of /i/, two tokens of /a/, and a single token of /ʌ/. each of these vowels was measured for duration; maximum, minimum, and mean f0 across the entire token; mean f1 and f2 across the entire token; and f1 and f2 at two points in the vowel, approximately 1/3 and 2/3 of the way through the segment (estimated visually). 4. results 4.1. perceptual results before discussing the acoustic findings of this project, it is important to establish which speakers were perceived as gay-sounding and which were perceived as straight-sounding. aside from the gsm speaker who was eliminated from the sample (see section 3.2 above), listener evaluations correlated strongly with my preliminary groupings of men as gayor straight-sounding (see appendix b for listener ratings). a one-way anova test6 showed that speakers’ average numerical rating for gayness interacted significantly with the group in which they had been placed (ssm, gsm or tm). the group effects, as calculated by a post hoc (tukey hsd) test, can be seen in table 1. table 1: speaker grouping vs. gayness rating group comparison p-values ssm vs. gsm 0.0171 * ssm vs. tm 0.0313 * gsm vs. tm 0.5994 .. * = significant at .05 as the table shows, there was a highly significant difference between the gayness ratings given to the speakers in the ssm and gsm groups, confirming 6 statistical analyses were performed using the r project for statistical computing software (r development core team 2008). anova is a useful approach to the data in question because it allows for the comparison of data on a linear continuum instead of requiring the use of categorical variables like traditional statistical software for sociolinguistic analysis (i.e. varbrul). 9 zimman: female-to-male transsexuals and gay-sounding voices published by cu scholar, 2010 colorado research in linguistics, volume 22 (2010) 10 that listeners shared my perception of the gsm speakers as gay-sounding and the ssm speakers as straight-sounding. notably, there was also a significant difference between the gayness ratings for speakers in the ssm and tm groups. however, there was no significant difference between the gsm and tm speakers. we are now in a position to answer one of the questions driving this research: how are the voices of trans men perceived, compared to gay-sounding and straight-sounding men? these perceptual data indicate that tm and gsm speakers are both perceived as significantly more gay-sounding than the ssm speakers. furthermore, the fact that there is no significant difference between the gayness ratings given to the gsm and tm groups suggests that these groups are lumped together perceptually as gay-sounding men, in contrast to the straightsounding speakers in this study.7 however, the second question to be addressed in this paper remains: are the voices of gsm and tm as similar acoustically as they are perceptually? 4.2. sibilants as i discussed in section 3, one set of measurements i took was of the voiceless sibilant consonants /s/ and /ʃ/, including duration, frequency at peak amplitude, and center of gravity. beginning with /s/, i calculated each speaker’s mean for duration, peak frequency, and center of gravity across 20 tokens. i then ran statistical tests that compared each of these means against three factors: first, speaker group (e.g. do speakers in the gsm and/or tm category have a longer mean duration for /s/ length than those in the ssm group?); second, gayness rating (do speakers who were rated by listeners as more gay-sounding have a higher peak frequency than those who were rated as less gay-sounding?); and finally, masculinity rating (do speakers who were rated by listeners as less masculine have a higher center of gravity than those who were rated as more masculine?). based on these tests, the only statistically significant interaction was between group and center of gravity (p < 0.0012). specifically, the tm group had a significantly higher center of gravity in the distribution of energy in /s/ than either the ssm or gsm groups. the specific group interactions, as shown by post hoc analysis, can be seen in table 2. these results show that while there was no statistically significant difference between ssm and gsm speakers, there were significant differences between both the ssm and tm groups and between the gsm and tm groups. in this case, then, the voices of tm and gsm are not alike acoustically, despite their similarity perceptually. while the interaction of center of gravity and group was the only statistically significant result from this set of measurements, a few other results 7 listeners were explicitly told that all speakers were male in order to avoid the possibility that some speakers might be perceived as female. 10 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 22 [2010] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol22/iss1/3 doi: https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol22/iss1/3/ female-to-male transsexuals and gay-sounding voices: a pilot study 11 were statistically suggestive (i.e. with p-values less than .1), namely, both the interaction between masculinity rating and sibilant duration (p < 0.0947) and the interaction between masculinity rating and peak frequency (p < 0.0766) approached significance. both of these factors thus deserve ongoing attention in future extensions of this research. table 2: speaker grouping vs. center of gravity for /s/ group comparison p-values ssm vs. gsm 0.1152 . ssm vs. tm 0.0043 * gsm vs. tm 0.0012 * * = significant at .05 although there was only one token of /ʃ/ for comparison, center of gravity again provided a statistically significant result. however, in this case it is the gsm group that stands apart from the other two rather than the tm group. table 3: speaker grouping vs. center of gravity for /ʃ/ group comparison p-values ssm vs. gsm 0.1040 . ssm vs. tm 0.3384 . gsm vs. tm 0.0234 * * = significant at .05 as table 3 shows, there is a significant difference between gsm and tm groups, and a difference that is nearly statistically suggestive between ssm and gsm groups, but no significant or suggestive difference between tm and ssm groups. again, the tm and gsm groups are acoustically different, despite being perceptually similar. interestingly, however, in this case it is the tm speakers who are like ssm speakers, whereas for /s/ it was the gsm group that resembled the ssm group. also of interest is the fact that the gsm’s center of gravity was significantly lower than the other two groups, when we might expect it to be higher. 11 zimman: female-to-male transsexuals and gay-sounding voices published by cu scholar, 2010 colorado research in linguistics, volume 22 (2010) 12 4.3. fundamental frequency pitch was examined through measurements of fundamental frequency, but no significant or suggestive results were obtained. neither mean f0 nor f0 range correlated with speaker group, gayness rating, or masculinity rating. tests were also run on the f0 values for each of the individual stressed vowels examined in section 3.4, and again no significant results were obtained. in fact, the variation within groups was obviously greater than the variation across groups – the best example of this is the fact that the tm group contained both the speaker with the highest mean f0 and the speaker with the lowest mean f0 of all participants in the study. 4.4. vowel formants like a number of other studies of gay-sounding voices, the data i analyzed showed no significant differences in speakers’ overall mean first and second formants. as smyth and rogers (2002) have pointed out, this is one of the ways in which gay-sounding men’s voices are different from women’s. indeed, i found no differences between the mean vowel formants for gayand straight-sounding speakers, and this held true for both the gsm group and the tm group. however, as i mentioned above, a few studies have shown individual vowels to be especially likely to differ between gayand straight-sounding speakers. the current analysis produced similar findings. as i mentioned in section 2.3, i focused on the vowel quality of 3 stressed tokens of /æ/ and 2 stressed tokens of /ɛ/ that appeared in the spoken excerpt played for listener subjects. instead of taking the mean formant values for these vowels, i compared each token of /æ/ and /ɛ/ individually. the first instance of stressed /æ/ appears in the sentence “they must have been trapped,” (see appendix a). for this token, a one-way anova test showed that speakers’ mean f2 for this vowel interacted significantly with speaker group (p < 0.0152). specifically, the gsm group had a lower mean f2 than either the tm or ssm groups. the effects of each individual group, as shown by a post hoc test, are in table 4. in this case there is again a significant difference between the gsm and tm speakers (p < 0.0286), further demonstrating that these groups are acoustically different even as they are perceptually similar. however, this is the only one of the three tokens of /æ/ that showed statistically significant interaction between f2 and speaker group (none showed significant interaction with gayness rating or masculinity rating), making this finding tentative until further analysis is carried out. one other token of /æ/ did show a statistically suggestive interaction between mean f1 across this vowel and both speaker gayness rating (p < 0.0972) 12 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 22 [2010] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol22/iss1/3 doi: https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol22/iss1/3/ female-to-male transsexuals and gay-sounding voices: a pilot study 13 and speaker masculinity rating (p < 0.0986). however, neither of the other two instances of /æ/ showed any significant or suggestive variation in f1 values. table 4: speaker grouping vs. f2 for /æ/ group comparison p-values ssm vs. gsm 0.0153 * ssm vs. tm 0.7619 . gsm vs. tm 0.0285 * * = significant at .05 the other vowel investigated in this analysis was /ɛ/. both instances of this vowel show a relationship between f1 and speaker gayness ratings as well as between f1 and speaker masculinity ratings. in the first token of /ɛ/, which appears in the sentence, “but as soon as i poked my head out, i smelled smoke,” there was a significant correlation between mean f1 for this vowel and gayness rating (p < 0.0432) as well as between f1 and masculinity rating (p < 0.0446). that is, speakers who were more gay-sounding (or less masculine-sounding) had relatively higher f1 values for /ɛ/. the second token of this vowel, from the sentence, “the ambulance guys had to put a splint on his leg,” showed the same pattern, but with only a statistically suggestive correlation between f1 and gayness rating (p < 0.0972) and between f1 and masculinity rating (p < 0.0986). the second token of /ɛ/ also showed a statistically suggestive correlation between f2 and gayness rating (p < 0.0538) – specifically, speakers with higher gayness ratings had lower f2 values. 4.5. vowel duration finally, vowel duration was examined, both as a mean across all stressed vowels analyzed for this project as well as individually within the stressed tokens of /æ/ and /ɛ/ discussed above. only one such comparison yielded statistically significant results, which was the duration of the second token of /ɛ/. in this case a one-way anova showed that the duration of this segment correlated significantly with speaker group (p < 0.0391) such that duration of this segment in the gsm group was significantly longer than it was for the ssm group. while the difference in duration was only statistically suggestive when comparing the gsm and tm groups, there was no statistical difference between the ssm and tm group, suggesting that tm are patterning more closely along the lines of the ssm 13 zimman: female-to-male transsexuals and gay-sounding voices published by cu scholar, 2010 colorado research in linguistics, volume 22 (2010) 14 speakers rather than the gsm speakers. the effects of each group can be seen in table 5. table 5: speaker grouping vs. vowel duration (token #1 of /ɛ/) group comparison p-values ssm vs. gsm 0.0363 * ssm vs. tm 0.6755 . gsm vs. tm 0.0849 . . = suggestive at .1, * = significant at .05 these results serve as a final illustration of the ways in which the voices of tm and gsm are not alike acoustically. 4.6. summary this section has described several significant differences across the three speaker groups under investigation. first, for sibilant consonants, speakers in the tm group have a higher center of gravity for /s/ than the gsm and ssm groups, while speakers in the gsm group have a lower center of gravity for /ʃ/ than the tm and ssm groups. there may also be a connection between perceived masculinity and sibilant length and peak frequency. in terms of vowels, speakers in the gsm group had a significantly lower f2 for one instance of /æ/, but there were no differences in the two other examples. additionally, speakers with higher gayness ratings had higher f1 values for /ɛ/; it is also possible that speakers with higher gayness ratings had lower f2 values for this vowel. finally, speakers in the gsm group had a longer duration for the second token of /ɛ/ than speakers in either the ssm or tm groups. in terms of mean f0, f0 range, and overall mean f1 and f2, there were no significant differences across these groups. 5. discussion the results just presented point to a very significant conclusion that also serves to answer the second research question of this paper: given that we have established (in section 4.1) that the speakers in the tm and gsm groups are both perceived as gay-sounding compared to the speakers in the ssm group, are these two sets of speakers’ voices as similar acoustically as they are perceptually? 14 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 22 [2010] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol22/iss1/3 doi: https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol22/iss1/3/ female-to-male transsexuals and gay-sounding voices: a pilot study 15 several findings in this study suggest that the answer is “no.” while some of the phonetic variables i have discussed correlated with the speaker’s mean gayness or masculinity rating regardless of group membership, suggesting that both tm and gsm speakers are using these features, other variables were used primarily by tm speakers or gsm speakers. specifically, tm speakers had a higher center of gravity for /s/, while the gsm speakers had a lower center of gravity for /ʃ/, a lower f2 for one instance of /æ/, and a longer duration for one token of /ɛ/. these results thus provide support for zwicky’s suggestion that there is more than one kind of gay-sounding voice, and that any number of different kinds of male voices that differ significantly from the straight-sounding norm can be perceived as indexing gay identity. the fact that trans men seem to be particularly likely to have gay-sounding voices even if they don’t identify as gay also suggests that early life gender socialization may very well be an important factor in accounting for why some men have gay-sounding voices and others do not – and, especially, why some men who do not identify as gay might nevertheless sound gay. of course, this isn’t to say that gender socialization is the only factor at work here. the fact that the trans men in this study did not identify as straight and for the most part tended to reject mainstream limitations on masculinity is surely relevant as well. however, considering that phonetic gender differences in the very features discussed here are known to arise early in life (e.g. flipsen et al. 1999 on /s/), socialization during childhood deserves more attention. at the same time, it isn’t as simple as saying that men who were raised as girls must be somehow inherently more feminine than men who were raised as boys – gender socialization does not have the same effect on everyone. if gender socialization always “worked” to produce gender normative adults, transsexuals would probably not exist, nor would many other kinds of gender diversity. why else would one trans speaker (#2 in appendix b) have such a high gayness rating at 4.167 out of 6, while another trans speaker (#4) had a much lower rating at 2.714? these two trans men are the same height, speak very similar varieties of american english, and are both queer-identified but have had little contact with communities of gay men. in fact, we might expect speaker #4 to have the higher gayness rating, because he was in a long-term relationship with a gay man at the time of recording, while speaker #2 has been in a long-term relationship with a straight woman for several years. clearly, these issues of gender, socialization, sexual orientation, and the interaction between them deserve more theoretical development than has so far been applied to this literature. unfortunately, a thorough exploration of these issues is outside the scope of the current project and will have to wait for future extensions of this work. there are also a few limitations of the study described in this paper that provide good reason for building on this work in the future. first, the small number of speaker subjects, especially in the gsm group, is an obvious weakness. in addition to more speakers, future work will also include more 15 zimman: female-to-male transsexuals and gay-sounding voices published by cu scholar, 2010 colorado research in linguistics, volume 22 (2010) 16 features for acoustic analysis in order to achieve a fuller picture of how speakers talk. vowels in particular will reveal a more comprehensive picture of how these speakers vary from one another if examined as a system rather than in isolation. one final limitation is that read laboratory speech does a relatively poor job of reflecting how people actually speak in interaction. while smyth, jacobs and rogers (2003) found no significant difference between a spontaneous spoken passage and the dramatic passage used in this study, there is no reason to believe that even their spontaneous spoken passage produced in laboratory conditions would reflect a speaker’s more typical manners of speaking in everyday interaction. the findings put forth by podesva (2007) emphasize this point – he studied the use of falsetto as a stylistic resource for constructing a gay identity, but it is extremely unlikely that a speaker who makes use of falsetto during interaction with his friends, for example, would employ it while reading into a microphone, or even while engaged in a sociolinguistic interview. however, the results from this pilot will be highly valuable as a jumping off point for further work that makes use of interactional language data. one issue in this research that might be perceived as a problem is the fact that only one token of /æ/, out of the three analyzed, showed statistically significant variance across speakers and only one token of /ɛ/ showed significant differences in f2 and duration. however, this may simply be a reflection of normal intra-speaker variation – in other words, even the most gay-sounding speakers don’t necessarily sound equally gay all of the time. it may be that pronouncing a single word in a way that sounds gay is sufficient to create the perception that the speaker is gay.8 it is also worth noting that both of these tokens appeared in sentence-final position, while the other instances of these vowels were mid-clause. position in a syntactic or intonational phrase may thus play some part in determining which vowels are likely to be marked by this sort of sociolinguistic variation. extending the scope of analysis and including a greater number of speakers and tokens would also likely aid in answering these questions more satisfactorily. a final issue that may have complicated this analysis is the variability within the tm group. while these speakers were demographically similar (european-american, queer identified transsexual men in their early 20s of comparable physical size), the length of time since their transition varied considerably. one speaker (#2) began living in a male social role and taking testosterone approximately eight years before this recording was made (starting at age 15), another (#4) started testosterone approximately three years prior to being recorded (at age 19), and the last (#5) had started testosterone only 8 months prior (at age 20). mean f0 did correlate, among these speakers, with the length of time since they had started testosterone therapy. speaker #5, who began testosterone therapy at age 15, also had by far the lowest f0 among these speakers – indeed, 8 see mendoza-denton 2008 for an example of this phenomenon among latina gang members’ use of chicano english features. 16 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 22 [2010] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol22/iss1/3 doi: https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol22/iss1/3/ female-to-male transsexuals and gay-sounding voices: a pilot study 17 the lowest of any speaker in this study – and this may be related to the fact that beginning testosterone therapy at an early age is thought to have more dramatic effects. however, these findings also suggest that previous studies on transsexual men’s voices (van borsel et al. 2000; adler & van borsel 2006) have been limited by only recording during the first year of testosterone therapy, as changes appear to continue beyond that point. to extend this work, i am currently completing the data collection phase of a larger project that builds on this pilot. in addition to a larger number of speaker and listener subjects, the analysis also includes a greater variety of acoustic measures, including voice quality, overall vowel expansion, a greater number of individual vowel classes with larger numbers of tokens for each class, and other sociophonetic features implicated in the linguistic construction of gender and sexuality. furthermore, a great deal more work is needed in order to explain, from a sociocultural linguistic perspective, why trans men tend to have gay-sounding voices and what this tells us about the indexical nature of gender and sexuality more generally. 6. conclusion in this paper, i have argued that the voices of trans men are perceived in much the same way as are the voices of gay-sounding non-trans men. however, there are important acoustic differences between these two groups in terms of both vowels and sibilant consonants. this supports a theory advanced by zwicky (1997) over a decade ago but which has yet to be fully integrated into scholarship on gay-sounding voices: there is more than one kind of gay-sounding phonetic style. further study is needed to confirm and expand on the results discussed in this paper, but the findings presented here are a promising starting ground for understanding the relationship between the many varieties of non-heteronormative voices. 7. references adler, richard k. and john van borsel. 2006. “female-to-male considerations.” in richard k. adler, sandy hirsch, and michelle mordaunt (eds.), voice and communication therapy for the transgender/transsexual client: a comprehensive clinical guide, 139-167. san diego: plural publishings. audacity development team. 2008. audacity (version 1.2.6.) [computer program]. http://audacity.sourceforge.net. boersma, paul and david weenink. 2008. praat: doing phonetics by computer (version 5.0.34) [computer program]. http://www.praat.org. 17 zimman: female-to-male transsexuals and gay-sounding voices published by cu scholar, 2010 colorado research in linguistics, volume 22 (2010) 18 van borsel, john, griet de cuypere, robert rubens, and b. destaerke. 2000. “voice problems in female-to-male transsexuals.” international journal of language & communication disorders 35(3): 427-442. crist, sean. 1997. “duration of onset consonants in gay male stereotyped speech.” university of pennsylvania working papers in linguistics 4(3): 53-70. eckert, penelope. 2003. “language and gender in adolescence.” in miriam meyerhoff & janet holmes (eds.), handbook of language and gender, 381400. malden, ma: blackwell. fairbanks, grant. 1960. voice and articulation drillbook. new york: harper & row. flipsen, peter, jr., lawrence shriberg, gary weismer, heather karlsson and jane mcsweeny. 1999. acoustic characteristics of /s/ in adolescents. journal of speech, language, and hearing research 42(3): 663-677. gaudio, rudolf p. 1994. “sounding gay: properties in the speech of gay and straight men.” american speech 69(1): 30–57. gordon, bryan. 2008. “gay sounds: a non-discrete model of gay speech.” paper presented at the lavender languages and linguistics xv, washington, d.c., february 18. johnson, keith. 1997. acoustic & auditory phonetics. malden, ma: blackwell. levon, erez. 2006. “hearing ‘gay’: prosody, interpretation, and the affective judgments of men’s speech.” american speech 81(1): 56-78. levon, erez. 2007. “sexuality in context: variation and the sociolinguistic perception of identity.” language in society 36(4): 533-554. linville, sue ellen. 1998. “acoustic correlates of perceived versus actual sexual orientation in men’s speech.” folia phoniatrica et logopaedica 50(1): 35-48. mendoza-denton, norma. 2008. homegirls: language and cultural practice among latina youth gangs. malden, ma: blackwell. munson, benjamin, sarah v. jefferson, and elizabeth c. mcdonald. 2006. “the influence of perceived sexual orientation on fricative identification.” journal of the acoustical society of america 119(4): 2427-2437. munson, benjamin, elizabeth c. mcdonald, nancy l. deboe and aubrey r. white. 2006. “acoustic and perceptual bases of judgments of women and men's sexual orientation from read speech.” journal of phonetics 34(2): 202240. munson, benjamin. 2007. “the acoustic correlates of perceived masculinity, perceived femininity, and perceived sexual orientation.” language and speech 50(1): 125-142. pierrehumbert, janet b., tessa bent, benjamin munson, ann r. bradlow and j. michael bailey. 2004. “the influence of sexual orientation on vowel production.” journal of the acoustical society of america 116(4): 1905-1908. podesva, robert j. 2007. “phonation type as a stylistic variable: the use of falsetto in constructing a persona.” journal of sociolinguistics 11(4): 478-504. podesva, robert j., sara j. roberts, and kathryn campbell-kibler. 2001. “sharing resources and indexing meanings in the production of gay styles.” in 18 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 22 [2010] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol22/iss1/3 doi: https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol22/iss1/3/ female-to-male transsexuals and gay-sounding voices: a pilot study 19 kathryn campbell-kibler, robert j. podesva, sarah j. roberts, and andrew wong (eds.), language and sexuality: contesting meaning in theory and practice, 175-189. stanford, ca: csli publications. r development core team. 2008. “r: a language and environment for statistical computing (version 2.7.2)” [computer program]. vienna, austria: r foundation for statistical computing. http://www.r-project.org. renn, peter. 2002. “subtypes of male homosexuality: speech, male sexual orientation, and childhood gender nonconformity.” unpublished ba thesis, university of texas at austin. sachs, jacqueline. 1975. “cues to the identification of sex in children's speech.” in barrie thorne and nancy henley (eds.), language and sex: difference and dominance, 152-171. newbury, ma: newbury house publishers. simpson, adrian p. 2009. “phonetic differences between male and female speech.” language and linguistics compass 3(2): 621-640. smyth, ron and henry rogers. 2002. “phonetics, gender, and sexual orientation.” proceedings of the annual meeting of the canadian linguistic association, 299-311. montreal, canada: l’universite du quebec au montreal. smyth, ron, greg jacobs and henry rogers. 2003. “male voices and perceived sexual orientation: an experimental and theoretical approach.” language in society 32(3): 329-350. waksler, rachelle. 2001. “pitch range and women's sexual orientation.” word 52(1): 69-77. zwicky, arnold. 1997. “two lavender issues for linguists.” in anna livia and kira hall (eds.), queerly phrased: language, gender, and sexuality, 21-34. new york: oxford university press. 19 zimman: female-to-male transsexuals and gay-sounding voices published by cu scholar, 2010 colorado research in linguistics, volume 22 (2010) 20 appendix a the following is the passage from crist (1997) that was read by speakers. the italicized portion is the segment that was played for listeners and analyzed: you wouldn't believe what just happened! i was just sitting here studying, and it was getting pretty late, and i was going to go to bed here pretty soon. but then i started hearing these people screaming out in the street. so i got up, and i was going to yell out the window, "will you please hold it down out there!" but as soon as i poked my head out, i smelled smoke, and you know that ski store down at the end of the corner? it was all full of flames. there were all these people in the apartments upstairs screaming out of the windows; they must have been trapped. i was scared that the fire might spread down the street to my place too. then i heard sirens screaming, and all these cop cars and fire trucks pulled up. the firemen went up on ladders and helped all the people get out. one girl looked like she had bad burns on her skin, and this other guy fell, and the ambulance guys had to put a splint on his leg. i could see the guys down on the ground; they were having some kind of problem with the fire hydrant, but they finally got the hoses hooked up to the spouts, and then they went up and poked a hole in the roof with a big metal kind of stick, and they sprayed tons and tons of water in. it took them better than two hours to get the fire out. you know that spanish student down the hall from me? later, he told me he heard the owner set the fire himself. the whole thing was a big scam to get the insurance money. unbelievable! 20 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 22 [2010] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol22/iss1/3 doi: https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol22/iss1/3/ female-to-male transsexuals and gay-sounding voices: a pilot study 21 appendix b the following table includes the mean ratings assigned to each speaker subject on a scale of straight to gay (1 = definitely straight, 5 = definitely gay) and masculine to feminine (1 = definitely masculine, 5 = definitely feminine). speaker # speaker group man gayness mean masculinity 2 tm 4.167 4.167 4 tm 2.714 2.857 5 tm 3.33 3.5 3 ssm 2 2 7 ssm 2 2.429 8 ssm 1.4 1.4 9 gsm 4.125 4 10 gsm 3.666 4 21 zimman: female-to-male transsexuals and gay-sounding voices published by cu scholar, 2010 colorado research in linguistics 6-2010 female-to-male transsexuals and gay-sounding voices: a pilot study lal zimman recommended citation microsoft word cril_zimman_revised.doc stories of narrative: on social scientific uses of narrative in multiple disciplines colorado research in linguistics. june 2007. vol. 20. boulder: university of colorado. © 2007 by john bryce merrill. stories of narrative: on social scientific uses of narrative in multiple disciplines john bryce merrill university of colorado this paper explores how narrative is understood and used by scholars in multiple disciplines to investigate social scientific issues. this is not, however, a traditional literature review. it is a report on an empirical study that involved systematic methods of data collection and analysis. the data in this case are scholarly literature on narrative, and an inductive analysis reveals three emergent themes. the first is the general tendency to view narrative as a formative mechanism in the construction of self and reality. the second addresses the ways narrative is conceptualized in terms of linguistic features, including structural and formal qualities, and how these features are studied in relation to social interaction. the third theme addresses how narrative is understood and employed as a method of social research. this paper contributes a valuable resource on narrative studies for scholars working within multiple disciplines. 1. introduction scholars of narrative understand that narratives are often both complex and revealing. they are linguistic structures: they are syntax and semantics; they are plots and characters; they are sequences. narratives are also substantive, in that they are what we say: they are phrases; they are colloquialisms; they are loaded. narratives, too, are contextualized within their construction: what they are depends on when and where they are said and, of course, by whom. narratives are ripe and fertile: they are simultaneously products of individual and society and individual and society are their products. narratives are social: they are local and national and global; they are feminine and masculine and all other positions possible. this laundry list of narrative’s qualities is not exhaustive—narratives are these things and many more—but even a list this brief implicates the limits of disciplinary narrative studies. it suggests that scholars interested in narrative must traverse disciplinary boundaries to do their work comprehensively. for example, we must consider simultaneously how sociolinguists theorize identity by studying linguistic practices; how anthropologists and sociologists speak to how local narratives i would like to thank leslie irvine, kira hall, martha gimez, and janet jacobs for their help with this paper. 1 merrill: stories of narrative published by cu scholar, 2007 colorado research in linguistics, volume 20 (2007) 2 resonate with or resist global ones; how social psychologists relate narrative to the construction and maintenance of selfhood; and how cultural studies implicates narrative in the discursive formation of salient social categories such as “heterosexual” or “poor.” if narrative is to be richly understood, its students must seek out and conduct research that crosses disciplinary boundaries. this paper provides a valuable resource for narrative scholars interested in crossing these boundaries. i explore how narrative is contemplated and used by scholars in multiple disciplines to investigate social scientific issues. using a systematic method of data collection and analysis, i focus on three predominant themes on the uses of narrative. the data in this case are scholarly literature on narrative, and an inductive analysis reveals these themes. the first is the general tendency to view narrative as a formative mechanism in the construction of self and reality. the second addresses ways narrative is conceptualized in terms of linguistic features, including structural and formal qualities, and how these features are studied in relation to social interaction. the third theme addresses how narrative is understood and employed as a method of social research. my ultimate aim is to encourage interdisciplinary studies of narrative by pointing to existing connections as evidence not only of the feasibility of this type of work, but its fruitfulness. while loosely united as social scientists, the authors i have referenced work in several different disciplines. these disciplines are characterized by varying theoretical and methodological assumptions. psychologists, for example, are generally interested in individual psychological processes, which may or may not be socially relevant or influenced, while sociologists place a primacy on society even when examining individuals. there are also substantive differences within disciplines. there are sociolinguists who pay little or no attention to social context when studying identity; others suggest it cannot be ignored. intradisciplinary difference is magnified in a field like social psychology, which requires qualifiers such as psychological social psychology and sociological social psychology to delineate critical even contradictory methodological and theoretical differences. a psychological social psychologist might run laboratory experiments to test theories of cognitive processes in simulated social settings, while a sociological social psychologist might study ethnographically the ways homeless people create meaningful relationships—two very different pursuits, both social psychological. variation in the social sciences is complicated further with the inclusion of newer fields like cultural studies, where disciplinary traditions do not formally exist and are often objects of cultural critique. altogether “social science” is a category that contains innumerable similarities, differences, and contradictions. and it is important to acknowledge, particularly when researching across these disciplines, that social scientists may have little more in common with each other than their shared title. for the purposes of this analysis, then, it is necessary to recognize that the authors i have referenced here, housed in different disciplines, are influenced by their larger disciplinary concerns. i have found that the differences in disciplinary 2 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 20 [2007] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol20/iss1/4 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/cnf0-ks61 stories of narratives 3 traditions—complicated, messy, and prohibitive in other ways as they are—have not prevented the emergence of a great deal of similarity in narrative studies across the social sciences. in fact, the heart of my argument is that at least in three important ways there is a great deal of consensus on the social scientific uses of narrative, regardless of disciplinary differences. therefore, i have avoided discussing disciplinary traditions when talking about a particular author’s work. instead, i have highlighted how authors’ works can be understood apart from their disciplinary moorings and as part of a larger, cohesive discourse on narrative. in other words i have given narrative center stage and have kept disciplines off in the wings. a final note before i proceed, the majority of the work reviewed is social psychological, but i hesitate to call it that because of the disciplinary implications. a clarification intended to stress subject matter, and not knowledge territories, lets me make a distinction between social psychology as the general study of individual and society and social psychology as a codified academic discipline. to be clear, my concern is with how social scientists address narrative’s place in the on-going relationships between the individual and society. the remainder of this essay is devoted to discussing research methods and analytical strategies employed in this project, presenting a summary presentation of the data and analysis, and concluding with closing thoughts. 2. methods this essay is more than a literature review. it is a report on data that is systematically collected and analyzed. the data in this case are literature on social scientific uses of narrative, and the analysis reveals existing interdisciplinary linkages in narrative studies. an objective of this essay is to present an important collection of narrative work to scholars who aspire to an interdisciplinary approach. in this way this project is a literature review. i also draw conclusions about narratives specifically and narrative research in general based on close analysis of the data. for this reason—the treatment of this project as an empirical case study—i am compelled to summarize my methods. my research here is mostly limited to the social sciences for two simple, yet complex reasons, which are practical and methodological limitations. narrative is so widely studied in the social sciences, and in its original home in the humanities, that exhaustive coverage is an unreasonable expectation. it would be impossible to review all that has been said about narrative given its enormous popularity. furthermore, all researchers either deliberately or indirectly exclude relevant data. ethnographers cannot talk with all groups of people that may shed light on similar meaningful practices. similarly, demographers cannot use all data sets to understand the ebbs and flows of migration. it is, perhaps, an implicit assumption in all research that some data are necessarily excluded. 3 merrill: stories of narrative published by cu scholar, 2007 colorado research in linguistics, volume 20 (2007) 4 the disciplinary literature analyzed here met an important initial criterion. my generic research interests are relationships between individual and society, subjects most commonly addressed in the social sciences. accordingly, i mostly limited my research to literature in the social sciences. specifically, i mined anthropology, cultural studies, psychology (including cognitive psychology), social psychology (including sociological and psychological forms), sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, and sociology for data on narrative. treatment of narrative in the humanities went largely unconsidered, except in such cases where literary scholars located their work in larger social scientific discussions. the most obvious absence is work on narrative as fiction. my search was even more narrowly focused on theoretical rather than empirical studies. this decision was guided by the want to understand what can roughly be referred to as the state of narrative studies across disciplines. i sought articles that summarized and synthesized narrative scholarship, often including references to empirical studies, offer a review of the treatment of narrative in specific fields. the empirical studies included here, such as penelope eckert’s (2000) ethnography of high school girls, offer rich overviews of narrative studies, often as introductions to their research. i also present case studies that exemplify theoretical ideas conveyed in this essay, though the focus remains narrative in general, even when specifically applied to case studies. having established these boundaries of selection, i employed two data collection strategies: theoretical and snowball sampling. these collection techniques are common among qualitative researchers, who are less likely than quantitative researchers to sample randomly. their popularity is in large part due to their potential to produce ample data. researchers use this approach when they have good theoretical reasons to search for data in particular places. guided by the aforementioned two key assumptions, i began reviewing literature in the usual fashion: searching social scientific databases, following bibliographic trails, and asking narrative scholars for their recommendations. formally the latter two methods of data collection are examples of snowball sampling, the practice of gathering data upon recommendations of others, usually research participants who are connected to potential participants. each of these practices yielded bountiful data, ultimately generating a data set consisting of forty-one journal articles, books, or book chapters. the data was analyzed using a strategy consistent with a grounded theory approach (charmaz and mitchell 2001; glaser and strauss 1967). this involved a recursive practice of data collection and analysis. data were sampled, reviewed, and initially loosely coded. i revisited and revised these categories as i collected more data. during this process, codes were assigned to emergent themes or, in other words, commonly held assumptions about narrative across selected disciplines. i ceased data collection when codes were solely recurrent instead of original. this is also a practice consistent with a grounded theory approach. i began with numerous codes that whittled the data down to six categories and ended with three master categories, which were produced by collapsing 4 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 20 [2007] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol20/iss1/4 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/cnf0-ks61 stories of narratives 5 smaller categories into larger ones. in essence, i created three dominant categories containing thematically related subcategories. initially, all varieties of narrative theories or propositions were documented as they appeared. for example, if a particular author discussed narrative time, then her work would be categorized as “narrative time.” eventually, commonalities among categories began to appear. for example, discussions of narrative time and linguistic variation were grouped under a large category, in this case the linguistically-oriented category forms and features. data were similarly coded and categorized until no new themes emerged. six themes emerged as recurrent and were labeled as follows: poststructuralism and structuralism; narrative construction of self; narrative construction of reality; narrative forms and features; narrative as interaction; narrative as method. based on additional theorized similarities, these were reduced to three categories: narrative construction of self and reality (ncsr); narrative forms and features (faf); and narrative as method (meth). these three “master” categories and their subcategories are the focus of the next section of this essay. 3. uses of narrative by analytical theme in this section, i present a detailed overview of the data and my analysis by discussing the data in thematic sections according to emergent themes. i begin with the largest section on narrative and the social construction of self and reality (ncsr), followed by a discussion of narrative as linguistic structures (faf), and concluding with narrative as a method of research (meth). in each section i outline the explicit meaning of the category and offer examples from the literature. i also present important discourses surrounding each theme, including commentary by proponents and opponents of these positions. i will not present in the body of the paper the arguments of every author analyzed; therefore, i have included a table (see appendix) that classifies authors by coded category. if an author or authors contribute to multiple categories, they are listed under each heading (e.g. riessman 1993 is located in all three master categories, so her name appears three times in separate columns). before covering narrative’s shared intellectual ground, let me speak to one of its most divisive, indecisive, and potentially pressing dilemmas: namely, arriving at an exact shared definition of narrative. as much work as has gone into defining narrative (for further discussions see bruner 1991; leiblich 1994; miller 1995; ochs and capps 2001) there has also been a great deal of disagreement: these disagreements are sometimes ideological and political (who gets to decide what is and what is not a narrative and what are the consequences of such decisions?); sometimes they are analytical (should narratives meet some strict criteria, such as possessing a beginning and end, notable events, cultural themes, and so on?); often, they are some confounding combination of each of these and more (if narratives must contain sequenced events, what about non-sequential talk told by people who do not or cannot tell sequential narratives, as in the chaos 5 merrill: stories of narrative published by cu scholar, 2007 colorado research in linguistics, volume 20 (2007) 6 narratives of terminally ill narrators in arthur frank’s [1995] the wounded storyteller). such an innocent question commands dizzying, sometimes insidious responses. but it or versions of it are asked repeatedly because it seems reasonable for researchers and theorists to want conceptual clarity. lacking clarity, ambiguous terms risk devalued explanatory power. thus, failure to reach an agreement on narrative’s definition could be the most pressing issue facing narrative scholars. or a consensus definition could be unimportant. this assertion may border on unfounded speculation (or treason to some), but it seems likely that one reason for this lacuna is that it is not vital to narrative studies to have a shared, concise definition. narrative studies are thriving without one, so clearly the explanatory value of narrative is not lacking. i think a better approach to this “problem” of narrative can be found by considering the question rather than the answer, specifically the type of question and the type of knowledge it is capable of producing. a definition of the term discourse is also hard to come by and contentiously contemplated. in a book devoted to defining critical terms in literary theory, paul bove (1995) writes an essay on why discourse should not be defined, essentially refusing the task at hand. the thrust of his argument is that discourse cannot be reduced to some meaningful essence. he begins justifying his contrary position by critiquing the question, taking the poststructuralist position that it comes out of existing “interpretive models of thought” that discourse studies seek to explore (53). in other words, one cannot ask innocently what something is, as i previously suggested. questions of this nature are born out of knowledge systems and power structures that dictate the limits of reasonable thought, of reason itself. it is only “reasonable” to ask what something is insofar as reasonable thinking falls within the boundaries of established modes of thought preserved in the power of institutions. it is reasonable to ask for a definitive version of discourse (or narrative) because contemporary thought values essential meanings (bove 1995, 53). what is the meaning of life? discourse studies are less interested in essential meanings; instead, they focus on “functional and regulative” (52) properties. for example, the question is not “what is discourse?” instead, we should ask, “what does it do?” or, as bove (54) suggests, what are its social and regulative effects? how does discourse function and how, as an analytical concept, does it discipline ways of thinking? this essay offers a similar way of thinking about narrative. it ignores the essentialist question “what is a narrative?” in favor of entertaining possible functions of narrative. it also does not address the epistemological dimensions of narrative studies, although this might be fertile ground for future research. instead, it concentrates on locating commonly held assumptions about what narrative does and can do. 6 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 20 [2007] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol20/iss1/4 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/cnf0-ks61 stories of narratives 7 3.1. narrative construction of self and reality (ncsr): the so-called “interpretive turn” in the social sciences has led scholars to question radically canonical ontological and psychological assumptions1. social reality is no longer assumed objective, and the notion of a ‘core’ self is also suspect. theoretical understandings of ‘reality’ and ‘self’ are pried from the hands of enlightened modern theorists and thrust into the spinning technicolor world of postmodernism, where, in the minds of some radical theorists, they are fictions or fossils. for the most part, however, scholars have opted not to annihilate these categories, in favor of deconstructing them to see what else can be learned about ‘reality’ and ‘self’. one of the most common and fruitful ways people have (re)envisioned self and reality is through the lens of narrative. narrative is not only seen as formative material for self and reality, but in some cases, a bridge between the two: between individual and society. the locus of the argument is that social reality exists because of human action, as do individual selves. communicative action is particularly critical. narrative as a form of communication, implicating what is said and how it is said in this process, then, is seen as being an essential conduit for the development of self and reality. the narrative construction of self and reality is not always addressed simultaneously, which was a reason for originally coding these two separately. so i will first review them separately, beginning with narrative and selfhood. next i will address narrative and social reality. third, i will add a section that qualifies the first two and adds to the overall theme by stressing each of these phenomena as types of interaction, narrative processes that must be enacted. the separation of these themes reflects my attempt to organize this section and not their empirical or theoretical differences. i will conclude this section by returning to the prevalence of these ideas in narrative studies and considering the few voices of dissent it faces. 3.1.1. narrative construction of self without reviewing the entire social history of the ‘self’ as a concept (see hewitt 1989), i want to point to a key development in the maturation of this concept, which is a generic shift away from social psychological notions of the self as a “core” entity, an object lodged psychologically or sociologically in the individual. modernist understandings of the self that sometimes figuratively, and sometimes literally, envision the self as an essence have been rejected by scholars 1 this is also sometimes referred to as the “discursive turn,” indicating a pointed focus on language. each references a marked move away from positivism, modernism, and objectivism, and an inclination to consider social realities differently. 7 merrill: stories of narrative published by cu scholar, 2007 colorado research in linguistics, volume 20 (2007) 8 looking to move away from essentialist social psychology and toward perspectives that stress the constructed nature of selfhood. this involves rejecting the idea that the self presupposes the social and thus social relations are guided by the internal drives of individual actors. the interiorized self (harre 1989) is a misleading fiction2. instead, selfhood is not betrothed to the individual; it is a social accomplishment. it requires the negotiated actions of individuals not only for its development, but also for its continued existence. there is no predominant theory of the constructed nature of selfhood, and there is disagreement among those who take this as canonical to social psychological studies. however, there is a great deal of consensus that narrative is a primary mechanism in the social construction and maintenance of self. holstein and gubrium (2000) suggest that selves are storied beings, the result of continued narrative practices that are undeniably social. bucholtz and hall (2005, 585), also arguing against organic “core” notions of selfhood, suggest that “identity [self] is the “product rather than the source of linguistic practices.” here bucholtz and hall (2005) rely on the concept of emergence to argue that selfhood, as well as culture and language, emerge during processes of interaction. it does not preexist interaction, but comes out of social performances. telling narratives—practices that rely on linguistic as well as relational skills—is one way selves come to be. 3.1.2. narrative as interaction it is critical to the proposition that selves are the products of narratives not to obscure the obvious point that narratives are products of narration, and that narration is a social activity. narratives cannot take on a reified quality, whereby they make us. they are creations, as much as we are. with an awareness of the performative nature of narrative self-construction, narrative scholars have paid considerable attention to unveiling how the telling of a narrative is just as important as the narrative produced. one of the more interesting developments to come out of this line of thinking is an interrogation of the putative differences between narrative and narration, or doing and saying. atkinson, coffey, and delamont (2003, 108), write that the “strict dualism between ‘what people do’ and ‘what people say’” held by researchers is at best unhelpful and at worst untrue. their point is that human actions are made understandable through narration; we tell stories of our actions to render meaningful what we have done. doing is saying. furthermore, narratives come into being by acts of telling. saying is doing. this second point emphasizes the interactive side of narrative 2 there are some who argue that the self in general is a fiction and no longer a salient social psychological concept. 8 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 20 [2007] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol20/iss1/4 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/cnf0-ks61 stories of narratives 9 and makes room for theorizing how narrative forms of action result in the creation of selves and social relations. holstein and gubrium (2000) outline a few generic strategies people employ to actively narrate identities. narrative linkage (108) is the first type. this involves weaving threads of coherence into stories that unify “biographical particulars” (108) and situational considerations3. narrators link present narratives to past and anticipated future ones, for example, to establish or maintain a consistent, desired self presentation. narrative slippage (109) references how narrators actively avoid (or employ) expected story lines or types of narrative. for example, narrative slippage occurs when individuals can claim the status “victim” but do not, when a story of victimization would be believable and accepted. instead, they may draw on qualitatively different discourses to narrate more (or less) favorable identities, such as “survivor”. this concept points to the agentive nature of narration, revealing how culture does provide means of narration, but individuals make decisions on what offerings they will use and for what reasons. finally, narrative options (110) describes how potential story lines are built into narratives, giving authors and audiences opportunities to accommodate the contingencies of narration. holstein and gubrium present an excellent empirical example of this concept in a narrative taken from an ethnographic interview of a student in a parent effectiveness class in a residential treatment center for emotionally disturbed children (110-2). the student, a mother, is asked whether she is like her parents in disciplining her children. her response supplies her a great deal of wiggle room: it depends. when my kids are really bad, i mean really bad, that’s when i think how my mother used to do with us. you know, don’t spare the rod or something like that in those days? but, usually, i feel that mother was too harsh with us and i think that kind of punishment isn’t good for kids today. better to talk about it and iron things out that way. still, like i say, it depends on how you want to think about it, doesn’t it? (from tanya quoted in holstein and gubrium 2000, 111-2). tanya leaves open the narrative option for either aligning herself or distancing herself from her mother. narrative options also speak to the agentic quality of narration and, like the previous strategies, this one reveals how narrative actions 3 holstein and gubrium’s concept is similar to jerome bruner’s (1990, 15) idea of “context sensitivity and negotiability,” which assumes that narratives must relate to the context in which they are told and should be negotiable. the difference here is that bruner uses his concept to define what a narrative should be; holstein and gubrium explicitly focus on the active creation of narratives, the focus of this section. 9 merrill: stories of narrative published by cu scholar, 2007 colorado research in linguistics, volume 20 (2007) 10 are contextual and contingent. thus, the narrative self is also contextual and contingent. these concepts exemplify how narration can be studied and understood as a process of self-construction. narratives told become storylines in the biography of self, one that is constantly under review and revision. this points to a triadic reflexive relationship with the self emerging between narration and narrative. of course, what type of self emerges and exactly how it does so is open for empirical as well as theoretical investigation. 3.1.3. narrative construction of reality bucholtz and hall (2004, 382) have developed a set concepts similar to holstein and gubrium’s, except their intention is to articulate how social relations are created during linguistic acts of self-construction. they refer to these acts as tactics of intersubjectivity (382). i want to present one of the three sets of tactics—adequation and distinction—to exemplify how social relations, including group memberships and communal identities, are the result of linguistic actions. adequation refers to “the pursuit of socially recognized sameness” (383). a blending of the words equation and adequacy, adequation requires narrating a reasonable likeness of others. in doing so, narrators must highlight available similarities while diminishing the significance of remarkable differences. adequation, then, refers to similarity among groups of people—nationalities, ethnicities, religions, and so on—and they are active creations rather than stable social categories. building generally on bourdieu’s analyses of the production and reproduction of class differences, bucholtz and hall (384) articulate distinction as “the mechanism whereby salient difference is produced.” similar to adequation, distinction involves selective punctuation of differences at the cost of recognizable similarities. thus, distinction is the active pursuit of difference even when evidence of similarity is available. using the concept of distinction, we can see how detrimental social differences that are often classified as inequalities are partially created and maintained as a result of narrative actions. bucholtz and hall theorize connections between linguistic strategies for identity construction and social relations constituted in part by these strategies. to put it another way, people tell stories to themselves and others and, in the telling, they create themselves and each other. they also create the very social realities in which they live. this is the narrative construction of reality. the proposition is that reality owes its existence in some or all part due to the narrative activities of people. it also assumes that narratives are ontological building blocks. in other words, reality is constituted by narration and consists of narratives. on the narrative construction of reality, it is necessary to make a distinction between moderate positions on reality construction and more radical ones. a moderate position on the narrative construction of reality, one that is more complimentary to theories that assume the existence of objective realities, is that narrative constitutes a type of reality. jerome bruner (1991, 4) proposes that 10 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 20 [2007] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol20/iss1/4 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/cnf0-ks61 stories of narratives 11 “narratives…are a version of reality” and are different from logical, scientific realities that are verifiable empirically. narrative realities, according to bruner, can achieve a likeness of reality, but do not exist in any verifiably objective way. only social validation determines the authenticity of narrative realities. not everyone who theorizes the ontological functions of narrative assumes a difference between narrated realties and objective ones. j. hillis miller (1995, 68) proposes an alternative way of thinking by presenting two possible versions of reality construction: one that suggests narrative creates reality, and one that argues it reveals it. the latter proposition implies the preexistence of a world that narrative can bring into focus. narrative translates blurry, incomprehensible realities into clear and meaningful ones. on the other hand, to suggest that narrative creates reality is to suspect the world does not presuppose narrative; narrative presupposes the world. the performative rather than clarifying function of narrative is reasonably considered a radical ontological view, one that stands in contrast to bruner’s theory of versions of reality and other theories that assume the existence of objective realities. regardless of disagreements over what types of realities owe their existence to narrative, there is a great deal of consensus that narrative and narrative activities produce consequential realties. 3.1.4. ncsr: popularity and dissent it is truly striking to consider how overwhelmingly common the sentiment is that narrative is essential to the formation of social reality, including the emergence and maintenance of self. what might be more remarkable than this is how few disagree with this proposition (see craib 2000, 64-74 for a scathing, but largely unconvincing critique). critics are less likely to engage in narrative studies directly, preferring to criticize the aforementioned interpretive turn in general. theories of narrative are but one part of a larger disagreement. interestingly, the most formidable and fruitful critiques have come from people wanting to present non-discursively oriented ontological and psychological theories. in these cases, the argument is not that narrative is not an important way that self and reality come to be, but that it is not the only way. nonetheless, the ontological and social psychological function of narrative is widely accepted and broadly used. if this is to continue, however, narrative researchers will have to consider seriously whether the role of narrative in the formation of the individual and society is overstated and, if other constructive processes are at work, how narrative can be seen in concert and/or opposition to them. 3.2. narrative features and forms (faf) consideration of the features and forms of narrative is at once focused on narrative structures and types of narratives and, simultaneously, on the nature of their existence. attention is paid to types of narratives: personal, local, cultural, canonical, and other forms. how narratives are composed and with what materials 11 merrill: stories of narrative published by cu scholar, 2007 colorado research in linguistics, volume 20 (2007) 12 are also important here. the grammar of narratives, paralinguistic qualities, and other formative features are investigated. unlike narrative studies that end with structures, research addressed in this section treats structure as suggestive of social psychological processes, such as identity work. a related, larger theoretical concern underscores much of this work, guided by the questions, “are narrative structures underlying entities, existing prior to human use or do they arise out of interactions?” how these questions are answered affects considerably how narrative structures are studied and what can be learned from them. i present this thematic section in three parts. first i discuss scholarship that argues narratives do contain universal, underlying structures, which can be found through structural analysis. i juxtapose this work with the work of those who assert that narrative structures do exist and are important objects of study, but that they are not essential things. narrative structures emerge during particular occasions of interaction—be they local or otherwise—and their existence depends on human action. i categorize the first position as a “structuralist” argument and the second as “poststructuralist”. i do recognize that there is more to these two categories of thought than what i am presenting here; however, i am only interested in their views on narratives structures. third, i look at work in this category that examines narrative features and forms, without regard for the nature of structures. 3.2.1. narrative and structuralism the thrust of a structuralist discussion on narrative is that certain indelible aspects of narrative, such as sequential order, morals, or plots, exist as universal structures. it is upon these structures that all narratives are built: they are essentially foundational. chatman (1978) refers to essential narrative components as “deep structure,” and “surface manifestation” occurs when stories are built upon them. variation in stories (or surface manifestations), even across cultures, is explained as mere differentiation, different spins of the same yarn. as mandlar (1984, 22) suggests, “stories have an underlying, or base, structure, that remains relatively invariant in spite of gross differences in content from story to story.” there are versions of shakespeare’s romeo and juliet told in different languages and times, by different people in different ways, but the core of the story does not change: regardless of the telling, it is still a tale of tragic destiny. it is important to consider that a structuralist argument envisions narrative structures existing at different levels of abstraction. deep structures are abstract analytical concepts, while surface manifestations (content) exist empirically. for example, william labov (1972) has famously argued that narratives are comprised of a series of clauses. a fully-formed narrative is comprised of an abstract, orientation, complicating action, evaluation, result or resolution, and a coda (363). these clauses are abstract categories that can take empirically different forms. an abstract may foreshadow death by poison, for example, or 12 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 20 [2007] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol20/iss1/4 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/cnf0-ks61 stories of narratives 13 good fortune from good deeds, but it will introduce audiences to forthcoming stories either way. the structuralist’s task is to reveal these structures through detailed narrative analysis, often involving parsing a narrative according to some criteria. for example, james gee (1986) proposes examining narrative data for the following structures: lines, stanzas, strophes, and sections. each of these units is defined in specific structural terms. for example, lines are short, simple clauses that typically begin with a conjunction and are syntactically and semantically related to lines around them (396). according to these specifics, a narrative is sectioned out into lines, as well as the other units. again, this method is an attempt to reveal analytically existing structural properties. and, to be clear, the analysis is only a means to a larger theoretical end. gee (1986, 2), like other structuralists, suggests that it makes sense that there is a great deal of cultural variation in the surface matter of stories.4 what also makes sense to gee is that there should be very little variation in the structure of these stories across languages. he states that [i]t seems hardly likely that there isn’t a great deal in common with the production of language in context across cultures, given that the same human brain, with its processing strengths and limitations, is producing this language in all cases (393). here is the heart of the structuralist argument: the human brain is the same in all people, and the human brain is the source of language and, thus narrative. therefore, the human brain must produce similar narratives for all people. if this is so, then these similarities can be found. their location is possible through structural analysis—in its many varieties—and so the location of a universal element of human cognition is similarly possible. narrative structures are cognitive structures, so cognitive structures can be revealed by looking at narrative structures. structuralists make claims about the universality of narrative structures and connect their existence to universal psychological processes. the general contentious issue here is whether these universal, underlying linguistic structures exist and, thus, can be located using structural analysis. moreover, if we accept the structuralist position on the existence of deep structures, we are compelled to consider their additional, more significant point: that these structures commonly 4 gee uses the term ‘discourse’ similarly to chatman’s ‘surface manifestations’. for the sake of consistency, i have stayed with chatman’s term or a version thereof. 13 merrill: stories of narrative published by cu scholar, 2007 colorado research in linguistics, volume 20 (2007) 14 bond all of humanity in an essential, organic way. human brains are made of the same matter, and so are our stories. 3.2.2. narrative and poststructuralism an informative way to transition from structuralism to poststructuralist narrative studies is to examine barbara hernstein smith’s (1981) treatment of the putative universality of the cinderella story. many structuralists (as well as other social scientists and literary scholars) have cited this as an actual example of a deep structure; rags to riches stories exist universally. smith, however, questions whether these stories share enough to merit common categorization and whether deep structures actually exist or whether they are actually the products of a particular type of knowledge, namely structuralism. her responses are decidedly anti-structuralism and lend themselves to poststructuralist thinking, although i am not sure whether smith would claim such classification. the deep structure of cinderella is the theme of “rags to riches.” this story can and has been told in a variety of ways. smith makes the wonderful, if not obvious argument that these variations often result in stories being markedly different. it is a stretch, she argues, to claim structural similarity when content changes so dramatically. she cites an icelandic “version” of cinderella, where the “prince” and “cinderella” invite the wicked stepmother to their ship for dinner; they serve her salted meat, which is the flesh of the wicked stepsisters that they just killed (1981, 212). this is certainly a grim version, but it is hardly comparable to the version of the brother’s grimm. it could still be a rags to riches story, but it could also be a story of the savagery of human nature. this is an interpretive decision that the analyst must make: it is not self-evident in the data. this second point—that analysts make interpretive decisions—is critical to smith’s position. not only do analysts make interpretive decisions, they do so within disciplinary boundaries. smith writes that [a]ll of us—critics, teachers and students of literature, and narratologists— tend to forget how relatively homogenous a group we are, how relatively limited and similar are our experiences of verbal art, and how relatively confined and similar are the conditions under which we pursue the study of literature (1981, 213). this is the lesson that feminists and others have passed on and that smith applies to structuralism: all knowledge is situated. theories of universal structures come from a particular group of people, structuralists, working in similar academic institutions and disciplines. thus, if a majority of literary scholars read all possible versions of cinderella and share the conclusion that they are structurally the same, one could assume this to be true. or one could assume that the theorized commonality of the stories more likely reflects the commonality of the theorists. rather than considering the intellectual merits of structuralism, then, it might be 14 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 20 [2007] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol20/iss1/4 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/cnf0-ks61 stories of narratives 15 more revealing to consider how this theory has been used, by whom, and for what reasons. whether smith identifies as a poststructuralist is not important. her critique of structuralism echoes foucault’s (1981) interrogation of the regulative functions of disciplines and, more importantly to narrative studies, his principles of specificity and exteriority (1981, 127). foucault, preeminent among poststructuralists, warns against considering the preexistence of discursive structures: [w]e must not resolve discourse into a play of pre-existing significations; we must not imagine that the world turns towards us a legible face which we would have only to decipher (127). this principle of specificity is buttressed by the principle of exteriority: that discursive explorations, including narrative studies, should not focus inwards to some mythical core of language; rather, they should remain externally concerned (foucault 1981, 127). this denial of interior structures of language and focus on what exists externally is what guides poststructuralist narrative research. poststructuralism is aptly named, as it moves beyond structuralism but retains some of its character. particularly, poststructuralist narrative scholars do examine narrative structures to study social psychological phenomenon, but they do so without heavy claims to universal cognitive processes. they discuss how structural qualities of narrative emerge during processes of interaction and how the uses and characteristics of these structures, such as how certain phrases are sequenced, are contextually dependent. groups may develop certain styles of narration that are marked by structural similarities, but they are the creators of their stories, not solely the creations of them. this departure from structuralism allows scholars to discuss how, as bucholtz and hall (2005, 585) propose, “identity is the product rather than the source of linguistic practices.” this position contradicts prior views of identity that suggested, for example, being a man encouraged speakers to tell masculine narratives. instead, telling “masculine” narratives is one way that people perform and become the category “man.” this also suggests that identities are not stable categories but malleable and relational social accomplishments. not surprisingly, similar thought exists surrounding discussions of the formation and maintenance of selfhood and other social realities, as referenced in the previous section. the guiding proposition is that identities and selves and other forms of social reality emerge in the processes of social relations, including narrative acts. not all research that avoids the essentialization of narrative claims to be poststructuralist. as well, not all poststructuralist researchers entertain questions regarding narrative structures. however, the debate between structuralists and poststructuralists is very important for narrative researchers, who are inevitably going to deal with structural questions. some may choose to move beyond these issues, but ignoring them is not likely or recommended. 15 merrill: stories of narrative published by cu scholar, 2007 colorado research in linguistics, volume 20 (2007) 16 3.2.3. narrative structures and types it is possible to consider narrative structures, as well as its other features and forms without considering their essence. for example, conversation analysis (see heritage 1984; holstein and gubrium 2000; sacks, schegloff, and jeffeson 1974) examines linguistic and paralinguistic aspects of narratives, such as narrative sequencing, turn-taking, and changes in vocal inflection, without assuming a structuralist or poststructuralist stance. however, these scholars have their own thoughts on the essential nature of narrative, which also do not go unchallenged. conversation analysts argue that it is at the microscopic level of ordinary talk that the mechanisms of social reality construction are found (holstein and gubrium 2000, 89). others have predictably refuted (or revised) these claims, suggesting that such a narrow focus excludes too much of social life to be so formative. regardless, the features and forms of narrative remain fruitful topics for social scientific investigation. concentration on narrative features might include sociolinguistic variation studies, where the researcher explores styles of speech, including prosody, lexicon, or syntax (eckert 2000, 1). penelope eckert explores ethnographically sociolinguistic variation among adolescent girls in a high school in new jersey. her theoretical aim is to bridge linguistic studies of structures with social studies of practice (44). she writes that variation is a linguistic process that is “inseparable from social process” (44). the “jocks” and “burnouts” of belton high narrate meaningful social realities by employing particular styles of narration. niko besnier (1992) also bridges the linguistic with the social in his examination of reported speech practices of nukulaelae, “a predominantly polynesian” group of people on a “small and isolated atoll of the tuvalu group” (164-5). reported speech, besnier argues, is often explored solely for its linguistic or grammatical qualities. besnier uses reported speech, the authorial practice of directly or indirectly quoting others, to explain how the nukulaelae satisfy the need to communicate affectively in spite of prohibitions against doing so. again, the focus is on how structural features of narratives are actively created and, most importantly, how these features reveal social processes. studies of narrative structures and social practices are plentiful. so, too, is research on forms of narratives. by “forms of narrative” i refer to identifiable types of narratives. these are sometimes divided into analytical binaries such as personal/cultural, everyday/dramatic, local/national. personal narratives can vary from those present during everyday conversations to ones given during life story interviews. cultural narratives reveal social meanings shared by a group of people. jerome bruner (1991, 19) theorizes a connection between personal and cultural narratives called “narrative accrual.” narrative accrual occurs when personal narratives amass into larger cultural narratives, taking on the qualities of collective sentiments. narrative forms defined geographically (e.g. local and national) are similar to the previous set. local narratives might be the shared stories of smaller 16 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 20 [2007] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol20/iss1/4 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/cnf0-ks61 stories of narratives 17 groups of people, even within nations, and national narratives are the stories of supposedly unified nations. national narratives may and often do contradict local narratives, but they must retain some resonance with local ones. this is why national narratives often manifest in generalities, potentially applicable and appealing to various groups. national narratives, often products of mass media, attempt to maintain a hegemonic dominance over local narratives (jacobs 2004), because their function is to maintain existing social relations, which are in large part narratively formed. ronald jacobs’ (2004) study of narrative and public culture references the 1992 uprising in los angeles to show how national narratives shaped local understandings. particularly, national narratives colored the incident as either a localized problem of chaotic violence or the expected outcome of the rodney king trial, where one racist cop, mark furman, or a racist jury could be blamed. competition from non-national narrators who might have attributed the incident to institutionalized racism and poverty was rendered largely impotent. narrative forms are also referred to as dramatic (textual) or everyday (conversational). elinor ochs and lisa capps (2001) propose that these types of narratives are different in three important ways: process of construction, prevalence, and ontological function. unlike dramatic narratives that are thought to be systematically and intentionally constructed, everyday narratives take on more chaotic qualities. they are often collaboratively produced in unscripted instances of interaction, with authors changing positions with audiences sometimes unexpectedly. the messiness of everyday narration offends the sterility of dramatic narrative construction. everyday narratives, according to ochs and capps (2001, 3) are far more ubiquitous than dramatic ones, marking a clear difference in the prevalence of the two. finally, a qualification combining the first two, the hazards of everyday narratives and their abundance suggest that they play a more dominant role in sense-making activities. therefore, everyday narratives are a primary ingredient in the making of social realities; dramatic, scripted, rehearsed, controlled narratives offer secondary contributions. whether these distinctions—or any distinctions—between everyday and dramatic narratives hold up is questionable. however, their differences are typically met with few objections from scholars or general audiences. i conclude this section by demonstrating a connection between each section in this thematic category “narrative as structure.” with or without a theory of the existence of narrative structures that presuppose social relations, narrative researchers have richly explored, as barbara johnstone (1990, 77) puts it, “how storytellers make use of the resources of grammar to make statements about, and to manipulate, social relationships in their stories and in the world” (77). if we expand johnstone’s “resources of grammar” to include additional narrative resources (linguistic structures as well as types of narratives), we can see the type of recursive relationship between individual and society that social psychologists strive to understand. individuals create narratives in particular ways by drawing on resources, such as existing cultural narratives. likewise, the cultural narratives 17 merrill: stories of narrative published by cu scholar, 2007 colorado research in linguistics, volume 20 (2007) 18 of any society have their genesis in personal narratives, taking on forms and meanings created by individuals. the assumption here is that individual and society are in an on-going dialogic relationship. dennis tedlock and bruce mannheim argue that [c]ultures are continuously produced, reproduced, and revised in dialogues among their members. cultural events are not the sum of the actions of their individual participants, each of whom imperfectly expresses a pre-existent pattern, but are scenes where shared culture emerges from interaction (1995, 2). what these authors refer to as the “dialogic emergence of culture” is synonymous with my claim that individual and society exist in a recursive relationship whereby the narrative construction of reality occurs in part at the level of structural narrative usage. one important implication of this assumption is obvious: narrative studies are critical to understanding the emergence and continued existence of social life. exactly how to use narrative to answer this core social scientific question is not so obvious. 3.3. narrative as method (meth) in this section, i consider researchers’ uses of narrative methods to collect data, how narrative data is analyzed, and ancillary methodological considerations. some of the items discussed here will be relevant to other methods of research, particularly qualitative methods. however, this section addresses discussions of research that refer explicitly to narrative as a type of method. this is consistent with my desire to represent as genuinely as possible the data on narrative. of course, as riessman (1993) and others point out, honestly representing narrative data is hardly a simple task. this thematic section can be separated into three smaller categories: 1) narrative as a method of data collection, 2) narrative as a method of analysis, and 3) methodological issues in doing narrative research. these can be separated for purposes of summarizing, but these matters are closely related. narrative methods are used to generate narrative data that can be subsequently analyzed in a particular way. guiding and sometimes inhibiting these processes of collection and analysis are ethical and methodological issues that all narrative researchers are likely to encounter. so, i’ll treat these categories separately to begin with but conclude with thoughts on their interrelations and the implications for narrative studies in general. narrative as a method of data collection is best exemplified by william labov’s groundbreaking work (1972). labov devised a method for collecting narrative data that involved asking participants a leading question, such as “when was a time where you nearly experienced death?” labov, however, was 18 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 20 [2007] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol20/iss1/4 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/cnf0-ks61 stories of narratives 19 uninterested in the empirical intricacies of near-death experiences. these questions were mere means for extracting narratives, which would be analyzed not for their content but their structural features. the key feature of this approach is that narrative content (what is said) is a secondary concern to form (how it is said). this approach is dissimilar to interviewing methods where the object of exploration is the substantive details of participants’ narratives. instead, as riessman (1993,2) argues, this method produces data that speaks to how narratives are composed, what narrative resources are used, and how narrators convince audiences of authenticity. gubrium and holstein (1998 cited in holstein and gubrium 2000, 104) refer to these as dimensions of “narrative practice.” they write that this term characterizes “the activities of storytelling, the resources used to tell stories, and the auspices under which stories are told.” narrative method, then, can be considered a method of observing narrative practices. narrative analysis involves the ways researchers draw theoretical conclusions from narrative data or, in other words, how specific narrative practices are conceptualized. leslie irvine’s (1999) narrative study of codependents anonymous groups reveals how group members use the vocabulary of the group to construct a “codependent” self. loseke (2001) also writes about how “battered women” sometimes draw on cultural narratives (formula stories, in loseke’s term) to tell an acceptable story of victimization, which is needed to secure services in domestic violence shelters. in each case, the narrative practices of individuals are revealed and conceptualized theoretically. loseke and irvine’s analyses of narratives reveal how self and identity are accomplished using narrative. riessman (1993, 13) proposes that narrative analysis is one of five stages of narrative research. in fact, it is just one stage in the process of representing narrative experiences. she proposes five stages (or types) of representation: 1) attending, 2) telling, 3) transcribing, 4) analyzing, and 5) reading. this methodological assertion begins by assuming that researchers attend to experience selectively. we cannot make sense of everything around us, so we make sense of some things. our choices largely reflect who we are, including social positions we occupy (gender, sexuality, age, and so on). experiences are then told to others, a process that is also infused with subjectivity—ours and our audience’s. the character of narratives depends on who is listening (or reading), as much as who is telling. researchers often transcribe the telling of experiences, and it is commonly assumed that the act of transcription is unproblematic. voices are turned into words. but, as bucholtz (2000, 1463) demonstrates, “the transcription of a text always involves the inscription of a context.” transcribing requires interpretive decisions, from deciding how narratives will be transcribed (with or without temporal indicators? with or without notations for changes in vocality?) to what will be transcribed (will the whole narrative be transcribed or just parts? will utterances be included?). riessman and bucholtz’s point is that transcribing is no neater, no less objective than the other levels of representation. of course, neither is conducting a narrative analysis. to make matters more complicated, 19 merrill: stories of narrative published by cu scholar, 2007 colorado research in linguistics, volume 20 (2007) 20 audiences that read narrative research make up riessman’s (1993, 14) fifth level of representation, thereby adding additional interpretive contingencies to the subjective mix. all of this leads to the conclusion that narrative researchers must be aware that their tasks are inherently charged with subjectivity and lodged in particular social relations. they are also charged with being less than scientific, an offense that sometimes threatens exile from the academy. narrative research is often confronted with claims questioning its validity as a method of social science research. “given that much of it moves beyond the realms of realism and positivism,” social scientists ask, “what criteria exist to judge credible narrative work?” riessman (1993, 65-68) proposes these possible criteria. the first is persuasiveness. the question asked to audiences that included research participants and like scholars is this: are the data and analysis persuasive? participants may judge how their voices are represented, empirically and analytically. other scholars can consider how the research fits in with other similar literature. if both parties are persuaded, then one criterion for validity is met. next, akin to persuasiveness is correspondence. do theories derived match the data? again, this question should be asked of participants and other researchers. finally, the work may be judged valid if it can be useful to future research. this usefulness is determined by related researchers who, presumably, would consider the previous standards of validity. riessman’s proposal, although not entirely unique to narrative research, does provide a sold initial stance for defending against accusations from social scientists that narrative should, figuratively speaking, go back where it belongs— in the arts, not the sciences. it also rightly avoids one of the least convincing complaints about narrative research: that people lie. ian craib (2004) uses the academic euphemism “bad faith narratives” to shroud his complaint about lying in sophisticated language. i admit to finding his tongue-in-cheek comment that his “mother may have been a better psychologist than [jerome] bruner for she could tell the difference between a life lived and a life as told” (65) humorous. however, the sentiment—that a true reality exists and it is experiential—is not as welcomed. the fatal flaw in this argument is that it fails to leave the confines of positivism and realism to critique narrative research on its own terms. criticisms of this kind do not advance narrative research; they only undermine it. at best, they allow narrative a place in the softer side of academia. i am not suggesting that theories of narrative go unquestioned by outsiders. in fact, i think it is vital for both narrative and non-narrative scholars to interrogate theories of narrative, such as narrative’s relationship to the construction of reality. our methods of research and our analytical techniques should be continually scrutinized and, if necessary, revised. my point is that critiques should be constructive; they should be guided by the objective of advancing narrative studies and, consequently, enriching social scientific knowledge. 20 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 20 [2007] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol20/iss1/4 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/cnf0-ks61 stories of narratives 21 returning to craib’s concern about lying, a valid methodological question would be, “how do narrative researchers consider the truth or falsity of narrative data?” richard bauman (1996) handles this question in a way that results in a work of innovative narrative research. bauman argues that the issue of truth is presented as a typological problem: one type of narrative is the truth; lies are another type. instead, bauman proposes that the question is ethnographic. “what is needed,” bauman (1996, 161) writes, “are closely focused ethnographic investigations of how truth and lying operate as locally salient storytelling criteria within specific institutional and situational contexts in particular societies.” this is exactly what he does with his study of expressive lying among dog traders— lying, like telling the truth, is one way narrative lives are lived. this type of response should be the archetype for constructive reactions to legitimate critiques. 4. conclusion this essay points to studies that implicate narrative in the formation of reality and in the creation and maintenance of selfhood. it also summarizes how narrative as linguistic structures and forms are used by individuals to create meaningful social relations. finally it addresses how empirical and theoretical knowledge of narrative is generated and how this knowledge can be valued in the social sciences. it does not come close to clarifying narrative’s definitive character, and may in fact make the question “what is narrative?” even harder to answer. hopefully, it discourages the question altogether, in favor of inquiring into the social function of narrative. only a few answers to this question have been presented here. so many more answers—some contradictory, some complementary—are to be found both within disciplines and between them. with this essay, i have hopefully provided a helpful resource for students of narrative who prefer to cross disciplinary boundaries rather than stay within their own territories. i have done this by providing a synthesis of narrative scholarship and references for additional research. if my analyses and summaries are believable, researchers have an invaluable tool for future investigations. if they are not, the data is available for alternative considerations. references atkinson, paul, amanda coffey, sara delamont. 2003. key themes in qualitative research. walnut creek, ca: alta mira. besnier, niko. 1992. "reported speech among the nukulaelae atoll." in jane h. hill and judith irvine (eds.) responsibility and evidence in oral discourse, 161-181. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. bove, paul. 1995. "discourse." in frank lentricchia and thomas mclaughlin (eds.) critical terms for literary study, 50-65. chicago: university of chicago press. 21 merrill: stories of narrative published by cu scholar, 2007 colorado research in linguistics, volume 20 (2007) 22 briggs, charles l. and richard bauman. 1992. "genre, intertextuality, and social power." bruner, jerome. 1991. "narrative construction of reality." critical inquiry autumn:1-21. bucholtz, mary. 2000. "the politics of transcription." journal of pragmatics 32:1439-1465. bucholtz, mary and kira hall. 2004. "language and identity." in alessandro duranti (ed.) a companion to linguistic anthropology. malden, ma: blackwell. —. 2005. "identity and interaction: a sociocultural linguistic approach." discourse 7(4-5): 585-614. charmaz, kathy and richard g. mitchell. 2001. "grounded theory in ethnography." in amanda coffey, paul atkinson, sara delamont, john lofland and lyn lofland (eds.) handbook of contemporary ethnography, 160-74. london: sage. chatman, seymour. 1978. story and discourse: narrative structure in fiction and film. ithaca, ny: cornell university. craib, ian. 2000. "narrative as bad faith." in shelly day sclater, molly andrews, corrine squire, and amal treacher (eds.) the uses of narrative: explorations in sociology, psychology, and cultural studies, 64-74. new brunswick: routledge. eckert, penelope. 2000. linguistic variation as social practice. malden, ma: blackwell publishers. foucault, michele. 1981. "the order of discourse." in robert young, untying the text, 48-78. boston and london: routledge and kegan paul. frank, authur w. 1995. the wounded storyteller. chicago: university of chicago press. gee, james paul. 1986. "units in the production of narrative discourse." discourse processes:391-422. glaser, barney g. and anselm l. straus. 1967. the discovery of grounded theory: strategies for qualitative research. chicago: aldine. gubrium, jaber f. and james a. holstein. 1998. "narrative practice and the coherence of personal stories." sociological quarterly:163-87. harre, rom. 1989. "language games and texts of identity." in john shotter and kenneth gergen (eds.) texts of identity, 20-35. london: sage. heritage, john. 1984. garfinkle and ethnomethodology. cambridge, england: polity. hewitt, john p. 1989. dilemmas of the american self. philadelphia: temple. holstein, james a. and jaber f. gubrium. 2000. the self we live by: narrative identity in a postmodern world. new york: oxford university press. jacobs, ronald n. 2000. "narrative civil society and public culture." in shelly day sclater, molly andrews, corrine squire, and amal treacher (eds.) the uses of narrative: explorations in sociology, psychology, and cultural studies, 18-35. new brunswick: routledge. 22 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 20 [2007] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol20/iss1/4 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/cnf0-ks61 stories of narratives 23 johnstone, barbara. 1990. stories, community, and place: narratives from middle america. bloomington: indiana university press. labov, william. 1972. lanaguage in the inner city. phildadelphia, pa: university of pennsylvania. lieblich, amy. 1994. "introduction." in ruthellen josselson and amy lieblich (eds.) exploring identity and gender: narrative study of lives, xi-xiv. thousand oaks, ca: sage. loseke, donileen r. 2001. "lived realities and formula stories of 'battered women'." in jaber gubrium and james holstein (eds.) institutional selves: troubled identities in a postmodern world. new york: oxford university press. maines, david. 2001. faultline of consciousness: a view of interactionism in sociology. new york: aline de gruyter. malson, helen. 2000. "fictional(ising) identity? ontological assumptions and methodological productions of ('anorexic') subjectivities." in shelly day sclater, molly andrews, corrine squire, and amal treacher (eds.) the uses of narrative: explorations in sociology, psychology, and cultural studies, 150-163. new brunswick: routledge. mancuso, james l. 1986. "the acquisition and use of narrative grammar structure." in theodore r. sarbin (ed.) narrative psychology: the storied nature of human conduct, 91-110. new york: praeger. mandlar, j.m. 1984. scripts, stories, and scenes: aspects of schema theory. hillsdale, nj: lawrence earlbaum associates. mannheim, bruce and dennis tedlock. 1995. "introduction." in bruce mannheim and dennis tedlock (eds.) the dialogic emergence of culture. urbana and chicago: university of illinois press. miller, hillis j. 1995. "narrative." in frank lentricchia and thomas mclaughlin (eds.) critical terms for literary study, 66-79. chicago: university of chicago press. neisser, ulric. 1994. "self narratives: true and false." in ulric neiser and robyn fivush (eds.) the remembering self: construction and accuracy in the selfnarrative, 1-18. cambridge: cambridge university press. ochs, elinor and lisa capps. 2001. "a dimensional approach to narrative." in living narrative: creating lives in everyday storytelling. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. polkinghorne, donald e. 1991. "narrative and the self-concept." jounral of narrative and life history:135-53. riessman, catherine kohler. 1993. narrative analysis. london: sage. sacks, harvey, emanuel schegloff, and gail jefferson. 1974. "a simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking in convesation." language 50:696-735. sampson, edward e. 1989. "the deconstruction of the self." in john shotter and kenneth gergen (eds.) texts of identity, 1-19. london: sage. 23 merrill: stories of narrative published by cu scholar, 2007 colorado research in linguistics, volume 20 (2007) 24 sarbine, theodore r. 1986. "the narrative as root metaphor for psychology." in theodore r. sarbin (ed.) narrative psychology: the storied nature of human conduct, 3-21. new york: praeger. schaefer, roy. 1981. "narration in the psychoanalytic dialogue." in w.j.t. mitchell (ed.) on narrative. chicago: university of chicago press. smith, hernstein barbara. 1981. "narrative versions, narrative theories." in w.j.t. mitchell (ed.) on narrative, 209-232. chicago: university of chicago press. somers, margaret r. 1994. "the narrative construction of identity: a relational approach." theory and society 23:605-49.:605-49. 24 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 20 [2007] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol20/iss1/4 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/cnf0-ks61 stories of narratives 25 appendix authors by master code faf ncsr meth briggs and bauman 1992 atkinson, coffey, and delamont 2003 atkinson, coffey, and delamont 2003 bruner 1991 bruner 1991 bucholtz and hall 2004 bucholtz and hall 2004 bauman 1996 bucholtz and hall 2005 bucholtz and hall 2005 bucholtz 2000 chatman 1978 foucault 1981 graves gee 1986 harre 1989 gubrium and holstein 1998 foucault 1981 holstein and gubrium 2000 holstein and gubrium 2000 harre 1989 johnstone 1990 holstein and gubrium 2000 maines 2001 jacobs 2000 johnstone 1990 mancuso 1986 labov 1972 jacobs 2000 miller 1995 lieblich 1994 labov 1972 neiser 1994 maines 2001 heritage 1984 oaks and capps 2001 irvine 1999 maines 2001 polkinghorne 1991 loseke 2001 mancuso 1986 riessman 1993 neiser 1994 mandlar 1984 sampson 1989 oaks and capps 2001 mannheim and tedlock 1995 sarbin 1986 riessman 1993 sacks, schegloff, and jackson 1974 schafer 1981 sampson 1989 besnier 1992 ochs and capps 2001 schafer 1981 polkinghorne 1991 riessman 1993 loseke 2001 smith 1981 25 merrill: stories of narrative published by cu scholar, 2007 colorado research in linguistics 6-2007 stories of narrative: on social scientific uses of narrative in multiple disciplines john b. merrill recommended citation untitled microsoft word ryan-cril2021-proof_final.docx 1 what led us to the data zachary ryan university of colorado boulder the usefulness of bibles in natural language processing is wildly underrated, especially when looking at low-resource languages. the reason these texts are so useful in machine translation is because it provides parallel text in languages that would otherwise have non or very little other parallel texts available. the question is then, how can we turn these parallel texts into a useable, organized, and reliable data set? there are two general methods that can be used to collect and organize this data, the old fashioned way by hand or automating the process through a computer. while this paper will touch on both methods, it takes a much deeper dive in the automated processing side and looks at some of the reasons this route was chosen. keywords: data collection, data organization, machine learning, natural language processing, automation 1. introduction many researchers and companies have ideas for machine learning or artificial intelligence (ai) projects which often times hit a barrier immediately. where do i get enough data to create my model? this is the very question myself and two other researchers had to ask ourselves when working with what we consider a low-resource language. for those not familiar with the term low-resource language, it is a language that lacks significant monolingual or parallel corpora that usually requires manually crafted linguistic resources needed for the study of the language. the languages the lead of my team chose to study were basque and navajo, which we wanted to use to create working translation models to english from the respective language and vice versa. 1.1. the team and its research the three of us started working together to because the leader of our team, mans hulden, a linguistics professor at university of colorado, wanted to see how useful bibles could be for neural machine translation (nmt) models. and if any tokenization methods on top of this could help improve the nmt models. the second member of the team, ling liu, a master’s student at university of colorado, was already helping mans with the linguistic side of the project before i was brought in. i was the last person brought in to help more with the coding side of the project colorado research in linguistics, volume 25 (2021) 2 because i had done some previous work in natural language processing (nlp) with mans and was also at the time a senior finishing my computer science degree. 2. choosing a method for creating translation models to create this type of translation model would be possible through two methods. large amounts of monolingual text which can be looked at for each language where patterns are found until small accurate translations are made which are then expounded upon. this will eventually lead to very accurate translation models but this has only been shown to be successful with languages with large amounts of text like english and spanish (conneau et al. 2018). the second way to create a successful translation model is to use sets of parallel text from each language. since the translation is known, the model guesses and we tell it if its right or wrong and to adjust from there. this method does not require as nearly as much text as the first option. since we were working with low-recourse languages we chose the second option to create our translation models. 3. finding data the next steps were to now find where we could collect data from. one of us had found a pdf file of pictures of bible scripture written in navajo. an example of what one of these pages looks like can be seen below in figure 1. figure 1 what led us to the data 3 we attempted to use an optical character recognition (ocr) reader on the pdf document to pull the text from it. what it did extract from the document was messy data with missing characters and also extra characters being picked up from the poor quality of the photos. an example of a messy page and its incorrect results from the ocr reader can be seen in figures 2 and 3 respectively. one of the mistakes can be found in the last word of the second line in figure 2 and 3, can you find any more on this page? figure 2 figure 3 this would not be useful unless someone manually went through the text to fix the mistakes the ocr reader made. another method would need to be found, but this gave us the idea to search out more bible scripture for a couple of reasons. the bible has been translated to many languages and even languages only spoken by very remote people in hopes of bringing those people to the religion. the religious aspect is not what is important here but the fact this would provide parallel translations for many languages that had very little other forms of written text. we also had a very colorado research in linguistics, volume 25 (2021) 2 high confidence that this data would be accurate because it is very likely the church would not want their message to be misconstrued. the last thing that enticed us was the bible and its translations are all public, so there is no worry of using someone's private data or data you may have to pay for. this led us to a website, www.bible.com, that contained thousands of translations for the bible, some of which were considered low-resource languages. basque and navajo both had translations for sections of the bible which we wanted to use; the issue was how do we collect it all. 3.1. data collection and processing there were two ways that i saw we could collect this data: manually copy and pasting the data to a text document which could then be processed or create a web scraper for this website. with my two colleagues being linguistics researchers and myself being a computer scientist i was tasked with collecting the data. i chose to use the web scraper and will go though some of the reasons why and the code in this section, the data storage, and additional features sections. i wanted to use the web scraper because in the long run it would be easier than manually coping the text and would also allow for some preprocessing to be done alongside data collection. due to the structure of the website, it allowed for a somewhat easy automated data collection process, not that this cannot be done with other websites, but i'll explain what i mean. the website we used defines which bible we used through a numeric code, the biblical book, and the language version used all in the url of the page. this allows us to go directly to the bible version and chapter we want without needing to go through intermediary pages. with this initial part figured out this meant there were two next steps. how do we get it to move from to the next chapter of the bible version wanted and what do we actually scrape from the page? taking on the problem of moving to the next chapter i anticipated would be more difficult so i started with this one first. after looking at the bible versions for the two respective languages i noticed that not every chapter of the bible was translated for the respective languages. to work around this, i obtained a list of the chapters and the abbreviation used in the url embedded in the html of the website. i could then create an array of the abbreviations to use to ping the website in the web scraper. the outermost layers of the web scraper consist of loops used to ping the website by cycling through the list of abbreviations to complete the url. if a ping was successful this indicates that the bible version contained the chapter pinged and the html of the page would be grabbed, this process will be talked about later. if a ping was not successful this would mean what led us to the data 3 the chapter is not there and to move onto the next. at this point in the development process the only other feature added to this layer of the code was being able to choose specific ranges of chapters to ping and possibly grab. we wanted to start collecting data in any format so i moved onto the next problem. 3.2. data storage the next major problem was what did we want off of the page and how should the data be stored. the way the data was obtained was through a python package called beautifulsoup which would grab the entirety of the html for the page pinged. after reading through the html, i created a regular expression that would pick out the text of the titles and the verses based off of the html tags the text would reside in. after getting to this point, i needed a way to store the data. the website would sometimes provide the title of the chapter on the page and also sub-titles depending on the version of the bible. another categorizing feature given was the verse numbers of each chapter. using all of these categorizing features in conjunction with one another provides a simple way to catalog the data and also this would provide enough break down of the text so that it would give an ample amount of data points but also each data point would have some depth to it. the storing of the data was done through text files which consisted of two columns. the first columns were numeric reference consisting of the book version, chapter number, verse number, and an indication if it was a title or the verse itself, these values were separated by a colon. the second column was the cleaned text of the verse. here the text needed to be cleaned of irregular characters, these were things like commas and dashes that were changed to comply with the machine learning tools being used. at this point the web scraper was working in its most primitive form. it was capable of connecting to the version of the bible needed if you knew the numeric code, could then collect all the information for that specific bible, and store the information into a more user-friendly version. 3.3. additional features of data collection and processing after refining the code somewhat and talking with the other researchers we wanted to add more features to the web scraper. the two major tasks were to make the web scraper more universal so that it could be useable on any of the bible's available and to also have the preprocessing work be done alongside the initial storing of the data. at this point i opted to give the file command line options to make the web scraping process more user friendly. i added features to scrape all colorado research in linguistics, volume 25 (2021) 4 available bibles, create specific lists of bibles to grab, range of bibles to grab, an option to tokenize words based off english grammar, an option to tokenize based of a standard rule set, and a syllabifier. a more hidden feature available if you want to write some of your own code for a language was to create your own tokenizer. during the preprocessing of data within the web scraper another file gets called to tokenize the text. within this file tokenizers can be added for specific languages and if one is not present the standard rule set is used unless instructed otherwise. we experimented with a few different types of tokenizers, all of which can still be seen in the original code. at this stage the code was much closer to its final form, from here only bugs and small formatting changes in file structure used to save the text were changed in the code. from here there was nothing left to do but collect our data and begin building our models. 4. conclusion now that we were able to collect and preprocess our data, we could actually run the experiments that mans and ling had originally set forth. is it possible to create neural machine translation model from a low-resource language and can any additional techniques be applied to help aid this? the results of our research can be found in our paper (liu et al. 2021) and the code itself can be seen on our github (liu et al. 2021). references conneau, alexis; guillaume lample; marc’aurelio ranzato; ludovic denoyer; and hervé jégou. word translation without parallel data. arxiv:1710.04087 [cs.cl] (january 30, 2018). accessed april, 2021. online: http://arxiv.org/abs/1710.04087. read the bible. a free bible on your phone, tablet, and computer. read the bible. a free bible on your phone, tablet, and computer. | the bible app | bible.com. (n.d.). https://www.bible.com/. liu, l., ryan, z., & hulden, m. (2021). the usefulness of bibles in low-resource machine translation. proceedings of the workshop on computational methods for endangered languages, 1, 44–50. https://doi.org/10.33011/computel.v1i.957 liu, l., ryan, z., & hulden, m. (2021). the usefulness of bibles in low-resource machine translation. github repository, https://github.com/lonelyrider-cs/low_resource_mt rhematization as etiology in the diagnosis of posttraumatic stress disorder rhematization as etiology in the diagnosis of posttraumatic stress disorder cover page footnote this paper was only possible through the generous feedback and reference suggestions by kira hall, kathryn goldfarb, and chase raymond. this working paper is available in colorado research in linguistics: https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol24/iss1/6 https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol24/iss1/6?utm_source=scholar.colorado.edu%2fcril%2fvol24%2fiss1%2f6&utm_medium=pdf&utm_campaign=pdfcoverpages rhematization as etiology in the diagnosis of posttraumatic stress disorder ayden parish university of colorado boulder current psychiatric nosology emphasizes observable symptoms as the central schema by which mental illnesses should be classified; patients are identified as depressed or schizophrenic by virtue of observed behavior or reported experiences, rather than theoretical underlying causes that may lead to an array of diverse presentations. within this schema, the diagnosis of posttraumatic stress disorder (ptsd) is somewhat an outlier – its identification relies not only on overt symptomatology, but also the identification of a particular etiology from traumatic moment to current distress. that is, symptoms diagnosed as ptsd not only index that diagnostic category, but also a previous pathogenic trauma. this indexicality is bolstered by an act of rhematization, the transformation of indexical relationships into iconic links, whereby ptsd symptoms are understood as resembling a pathogenic trauma, thus distinguishing ptsd from disorders whose presentations carry no such resemblance to trauma. keywords: indexicality, rhematization, posttraumatic stress disorder, trauma 1. introduction and history diagnosis is an act of semiosis, transforming abnormal test results and distressing experiences into meaningful signs that point to a specific disease entity. the meaning created by the diagnostician’s interpretation is indexical: as signs, symptoms point to their diagnoses by virtue of being causally linked to them, a conclusion that has been readily drawn by semioticians (eco 1976; ostwald 1964; peirce 1931-1958; sebeok 1994). as a psychiatric disorder uniquely defined by its traumatic cause, posttraumatic stress disorder (ptsd) carries a particularly heavy reliance on indexical and ultimately rhematized links in order to justify itself as a discrete diagnostic entity. in most areas of medicine, conditions are categorized first and foremost on their causes. viral and bacterial bronchitis both cause an unpleasant cough, yet they are distinguished by different pathogens, ultimately leading to different treatment plans. however, psychiatry ultimately rests its categorization schema on groups of observable symptoms. this aspect of modern psychiatry can be traced back to early 20th century psychologist emil kraepelin and is therefore considered the neo-kraepelinian approach (blashfield 2012; compton & guze 1995). under a neo-kraepelinian model, everyone who experiences similar feelings of lethargy, anhedonia, and excessive guilt are prima facie classed together under depressive. this stands in contrast with earlier largely 1 parish: rhematization as etiology in the diagnosis of ptsd published by cu scholar, 2019 psychodynamic approaches that prioritized theoretical underlying causal mechanisms as the basis of categorical generalizations, such that a single cause like weak ego defenses may lead to a range of different presentations while still being theorized as a single entity. while kraepelin imagined that shared causal mechanisms would eventually be identified across shared presentations of symptoms once thusly categorized, for the most part this has yet to happen. the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (dsm), published by the american psychological association (apa), is for many the ultimate authority of what counts as a mental illness in the united states (and is an influence in many other places of the world).1 it was the third edition of this manual, released in 1980, that truly solidified the neo-kraepelinian approach in what several authors have described as nothing less than a “revolution” (compton & guze 1995; mayes & horwitz 2005; wilson 1993). by emphasizing ostensibly neutral descriptive categories over psychoanalytic etiologies, which could differ between professionals, the psychologists who wrote the dsm-iii hoped to bring a kind of “scientific objectivity” to the field. the dsm-iii asserted itself as an “atheoretical” text whereby “clinicians can agree on the identification of mental disorders on the basis of their clinical manifestations without agreeing on how the disturbances come about” (apa 1980:7). the exception, highlighted in the introduction, was for disorders for which “the etiology or pathophysiological processes are known” (6), such as the organic mental disorders diagnosed after identification of a specific neurological abnormality. the dsm-iii was also noteworthy for introducing a range of new terminologies and diagnostic categories, not simply reorganizing and redefining preexisting ones. one of these was posttraumatic stress disorder (ptsd), a diagnosis whose inclusion largely came from political pressure by war veterans (scott 1990). advocates argued that doctors could only properly treat these veterans if they formally recognized the etiological impact of trauma, and that the “misdiagnosis” of veterans with disorders such as bipolar and schizophrenia was a grave injustice. consequently, at the same time as wide swathes of the dsm were written to avoid suggesting specific causes in the name of being “atheoretical,” we also see the creation of a disorder specifically defined by its theoretical causes. 1 outside of the united states, the world health organization’s (who) international statistical classification of diseases and related health problems (icd) acts as the authoritative text on psychiatric nosology. however, there have been efforts by both who and apa to reconcile the two systems. 2 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 24 [2019] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol24/iss1/6 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.33011/cril.24.1.6 through the lens of indexicality (silverstein 1976) and rhematization (irvine and gal 2000), i suggest that for ptsd to claim legitimacy within a psychiatric framework purporting pure descriptivism, causes must be made just as observable as depressed or anxious affects. this may be done by reading symptoms as unproblematic indexes not just of diagnostic category, the way hallucinations may index schizophrenia, but as rhemes that both point to and phenomenologically resemble a specific trauma. without an etiological cause, a “purely descriptive” rendering of ptsd overlaps considerably with other diagnostic categories: the avoidance of triggering material, mood instability, and even flashbacks may be described as phobic, mood disordered, and psychotic respectively (brewin et al. 2009; mchugh & treisman 2007; young 1995). it is the ability to read a particular causal chain from them that transforms these into symptoms of ptsd. 2. indexes, rhemes, and causes indexicality describes a sign, linguistic or otherwise, that relies on contextual information in order to be interpretable. the current wide use of indexicality can be traced back to charles perice’s tripartite system of types of signs, split by their relation to their signified object: icons, indexes, and symbols. icons are signs whose relation to their signified is one of resemblance or shared qualities, as when a drawn stick figure signifies a human being. symbols are signs whose meanings are purely a matter of convention and which are otherwise wholly arbitrary, such as how the sounds in the word dog mean a particular class of mammal. the relation that defines an index is an existential one: an index “refer[s] to the object that it denotes by virtue of being really affected by that object” (peirce 1931-1958:cp 5.248). this may include physical or spatial contiguity, which directs the interpreter’s attention towards the signified object—such as when a pointed index finger directs attention towards a particular location in space—or, potentially, causal links. an important aspect of this definition is that the interpretation of indexical signs requires an assumption that there is something that exists external to the utterance. smoke indexes fire not because of an arbitrary symbolic relationship, but because the chain of causation from smoke to fire proceeds (in theory) regardless of semiotic interpretation. this connection to a world beyond the sign results in a reliance on contextual information. indexicality has then been taken up as a way to talk about context-dependent meanings, exemplified in deictic expressions such as here, now, i, and you. without sufficient information about the context of the utterance—namely, when it was uttered—the word now holds little 3 parish: rhematization as etiology in the diagnosis of ptsd published by cu scholar, 2019 meaning. however, context is a commonly used word without a clear, uniform definition. common uses highlight its co-constitutive importance to text: context is not the “focal point” or “figure,” but rather the “everything else” that allows for successful interpretation (goodwin & duranti 1992). while this may result in a slightly circular definition—indexicality is that which requires external context, while context is that which is required by indexicality—there is an important insight here: due to the endless possibility of language, everything can be recruited as potential context. think of all the locations that here could possibly refer to! it is the indexical reference itself that transforms inert facts about the world into salient, necessary, contextual information—into socially relevant objects that can be discussed and reasoned about. attention to indexicality helped move the study of meaning away from pure referential semantics, which takes up the study of relatively context-free sentences such as the sky is blue, towards a study of language that necessitates acknowledging its embeddedness in a particular, and a particularly social, context. it is for this reason that indexicality came to be most strongly associated with disciplines that joined language and social reality. silverstein (1976) is credited with bringing the concept of indexicality to linguistic anthropology. he described two actions that an indexical utterance can accomplish: presupposing and performing. because they presuppose some particular context, the indexical deictic terms this and that are uninterpretable and nonsensical if the relevant context is not known; the presupposition fails and meaning breaks down. performative indexicality, also called creative or entailing indexicality, likewise relies on contextual information, but also “seem[s] to be the very medium through which the relevant aspect of the context is made to ‘exist’” (silverstein 1976:34). objects which can be referred to as this or that generally in some way precede their entrance into discourse; however, indexes such as honorifics, which nevertheless require the preexisting context of social convention and a power dynamic among speakers, also enact these social relations in being uttered. when these sorts of indexes “fail,” rather than being referentially baffling, they often change the nature of their medium: honorifics spoken in the wrong contexts may be taken as an insult—a very different kind of social action than the same forms spoken in a different context. these latter indexes fit austin’s (1962) understanding of performativity: they construct their context while simultaneously reflecting it. rather than constituting two separate classes of indexicality, presupposed and creative indexicality exist along a range of possibilities. many indexical utterances can be found to both 4 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 24 [2019] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol24/iss1/6 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.33011/cril.24.1.6 presuppose and perform. silverstein gives the example of first-person pronouns: like other deictics, they presuppose the existence of a person or persons who precede entrance into the discourse—without this context, they are incomputable. however, as first-person pronouns generally mean something like “the speaker of this utterance,” they also create the necessary discourse environment and the notion of a speaking i at all. along the same lines, the word we just as much refers to a preexisting collection of people as it constructs or reinforces a shared group identity. silverstein’s ideas were further refined through the proposal of an indexical order to explain how indexical relations are formed and manipulated in the moment (silverstein 2003). this ordering begins with first-order indexicality: the utterance specific non-referential meanings that come from using one linguistic variant over another. second-order indexicality refers to how this variation is expanded into ideological, metapragmatic meanings as communities attempt to rationalize why linguistic variation exists. a linguistic feature that is recognized by speakers as associated with a certain demographic or location (first-order) can come to signify a certain “type of person” under a particular language ideology (second-order). the word y’all may be statistically more common in the southern united states; however, the social identities attributed to the word, such as “rural,” are second-order indexical meanings that can then be drawn upon when anybody, not just those in the american south, say y’all. this ordering turns on itself indefinitely as speakers draw from second-order indexical meanings, changing the speaker demographics of the linguistic form and generating new metapragmatic understandings: “for any indexical phenomenon at order n, an indexical phenomenon at order n + 1 is always immanent, lurking in the potential of an ethnometapragmatically driven native interpretation” (silverstein 2003:212). silverstein’s class example deals with the highly marked register of wine connoisseurship. this style draws heavily from ideologies regarding what “well-bread,” “expert,” and “high-class” persons sound like. by “wine-talking,” speakers index themselves as wine experts—a type of person that is ideologically linked to above-average intelligence, specialized knowledge, and high socioeconomic class. but what determines what “high-class” persons sound like? it is a second-order understanding of the language varieties found among certain populations, namely the white, rich, and educated. as always, however, n + 1st order indexicality is possible: self-conscious, ironic uses of wine-talk create a new kind of person, namely the kind of person who uses wine-talk ironically. indexical 5 parish: rhematization as etiology in the diagnosis of ptsd published by cu scholar, 2019 ordering then functions as a dialectic, a back-and-forth shifting of language use and language ideology that changes just as soon as speakers develop a metapragmatic understanding of their language variation. for this reason, the terms nth order and n + 1st order are preferred to firstand second-order indexicality—there is no easy way of assessing which (if any) aspects of speaker variation truly came first, absent of any ideological baggage. peirce identified causality as a potential source of indexical relations, specifically calling these causality-based indexical signs reagents. an early example of this was the weathercock, whose position is dictated by the direction of the wind and which therefore indexes this causal force (peirce 1931-1958:cp 2.286). indexicality, by pointing towards pre-existing reality, situates itself in a material world of objects acting upon other objects; this attention to materiality has been described by keane (2003) as a way to “open up signification to causality” (417). however, while peirce seemed to imagine these relations as belonging to the world “irrespective of the interpretant” (cp 2.92), keane noted that there must be ideologies in play that make certain connections recognizable at all. he named these semiotic ideologies: “basic assumptions about what signs are and how they function in the world” (419). these ideologies seem obvious and natural to its holders, and when asked, people can usually give some form of internally-logical explanation for their beliefs. it should be natural, for example, that men should swear more: it’s because of testosterone, innate aggressiveness, socialized competitiveness, and so on. swearing therefore not only indexes masculinity by virtue of convention or mere metapragmatic recognition—i.e., “that’s just the way men speak” without any further value judgements—but seems to on some level resemble or reflect masculinity’s supposed innate aggression and violence. irvine and gal (2000) would describe this as an instance of iconization, later renamed rhematization.2 discussing the rhematization of certain linguistic forms as both indexing and resembling (that is, iconifying) their ideological referents, they described a transformation of the sign relationship between linguistic features (or varieties) and the social images with which they are linked. linguistic features that index social groups or 2 gal’s (2005) recasting of this process as rhematization draws from peirce’s (1940) definition of a rheme as “a sign which, for its interpretant, is a sign of qualitative possibility, that is, is understood as representing such and such a kind of possible object” (103) – in other words, a sign that is interpreted to have qualities (qualia) which are shared with and thus represent some object. 6 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 24 [2019] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol24/iss1/6 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.33011/cril.24.1.6 activities appear to be iconic representations of them, as if a linguistic feature somehow depicted or displayed a social group’s inherent nature or essence (37). that is, the merely indexical relationship between a speech variety and a social identity may be rendered as somehow iconic, such that qualities of language are seen to resemble qualities ascribed to said social group. 3. identifying trauma the diagnosis of ptsd recontextualizes past events into instances of trauma and present cognition or emotions into symptoms of ptsd. it is a potentially paradigm-shifting heuristic through which sufferers and helpers can reinterpret the past and present, imbuing a person’s actions and feelings with a newfound ability to index a traumatic event. that is, there is a sense in which the presently constructed narrative of ptsd grants past events the ability to cause. cause and effect blur further when it is the presence of symptoms that lead clinicians to posit a diagnosis of ptsd even in the absence of clearly-identified traumatic memories (e.g. bass & davis 1988; laibow & laue 1993). young (1996:97-98) goes as far as suggesting that chronic cases of ptsd can be explained just as plausibly if we supposed that time is moving in the opposite direction, that is, from the present (symptoms) back to the past (event). in this scenario, diagnosable depression and anxiety disorders precede the onset of ptsd symptomatology (rather than following or simply co-occurring), and individuals rediscover and rework their memories of past events as a means of accounting for their present distress. this is a troubling scenario, if the nature of indexical links relies on time flowing from cause to event. if indexes are meant to point towards their causes, then this is a form of indexical inversion, a term used by inoue (2004) to describe how the ethno-metapragmatic explanations that define n + 1st order indexical might point to a history—specifically, a linguistic history—that never truly existed. she examined how the idea of women’s language in japan was formed again and again in order to lament its destruction: “the birth of women’s language was also the birth of the corruption of women’s language” (50). it did not necessarily exist even as a statistical correlation until the metapragmatic discussions about the denigrations of women’s language presupposed it into existence. the “corruption” of women’s speech in the late 19th and early 20th was ascribed varyingly to low-class neighborhoods in tokyo, geisha, the mixing of social classes 7 parish: rhematization as etiology in the diagnosis of ptsd published by cu scholar, 2019 in high schools, and contact with westerners. regardless of proposed origin, the ultimate meanings of this corruption were widely agreed upon: sloppiness, laziness, and vulgarity. by suggesting a degree of indexical inversion, i do not mean to suggest that the memories and their effects are invented wholesale; however, their structuring and scaffolding under the framework of trauma relies on the naming of current symptoms as posttraumatic and on the historically and culturally specific science of trauma—in other words, the present-day ideologies that dictate what is defined as trauma. the historically situated nature of these recastings is perhaps clearest in the case of child abuse, which has undergone numerous shifts in meaning over the past century (hacking 1991). events which at the time were not considered abusive or traumatic—were not objects that could be easily indexed by symptoms—become in hindsight instances of child abuse and neglect. an anxiety surrounding the diagnosis of ptsd, then, is ensuring that this powerful indexicality is granted fairly—that there exists a true object being indexed and that the causality supporting the indexical relation is an accurate narrative. causation, after all, evokes blame: the identification of a particular event as causing ptsd opens up the possibility of legal recourse on the basis of psychological injury (day & hall 2016; miller 2015). military veterans who can trace their symptoms to ptsd from a wartime trauma can access disability benefits and resources more easily than if their distress was due to an ostensibly non-traumagenic disorder such as schizophrenia (ray 2014). a seemingly straightforward tactic for determining an adequate causal chain is to ensure that the problematic symptoms only arose after the traumatic event in question. however, even this may prove difficult: ptsd is an appropriate diagnosis if trauma only exacerbates preexisting psychiatric symptoms, and there exists the classification of delayed-onset ptsd when symptoms arise months or years after the traumatic event. additionally, while temporal ordering can suggest causality, it is rarely sufficient as a convincing narrative—indeed, a series of events one after another may be better thought of as “chronicles” than “full-fledged narratives” (carroll 2001:25). ptsd by its nature requires more than a mere chronicle of events; psychiatrists need stronger causal links. young (1995) provided multiple cases of doctors debating the truth of their veteran patients’ etiologies. if there were potential traumatic events prior to the wartime events in vietnam, then there existed a promising alternative narrative wherein the patient’s ptsd was only caused by 8 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 24 [2019] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol24/iss1/6 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.33011/cril.24.1.6 these earlier events; therefore, it was not the obligation of the military hospital to provide treatment. these doctors also struggled with articulating the clear moral evaluation that would point towards a stronger narrative: trauma related to atrocities that the soldier was himself responsible for or personally carried out—so-called perpetrator trauma—complicated any depiction of the veteran as a blameless victim of circumstance and casted suspicion on claims of ptsd. this debate has resurfaced in more recent years centered on cases of ptsd claimed by american drone operators, who are not only viewed as perpetrators but also have to reckon with the difficulties of proving causation across such large distances (mccammon 2017; press 2018; for further discussions on the continuing controversy over perpetration as a source of traumatic stress, see drescher et al. 2011). a common struggle was—and continues to be (breslau et al. 2002)—the identification of as specific a traumatic moment as possible. it was not sufficient to suggest that war in general was traumatic, even when veterans themselves suggested this more diffuse understanding of causality; doctors sought out information about particular battles and even homed in on what event with in a battle constituted “the trauma.” indeed, the idea of a posttraumatic disorder caused by multiple different events over a span of time, as might happen within dysfunctional family dynamics, has been proposed through the alternative construct of “complex posttraumatic stress disorder.” after some debate, complex ptsd was ultimately omitted from the most recent edition of the dsm, with skeptics highlighting how research had yet to clearly illustrate the casual mechanisms from chronic traumatization to the wide range of symptoms described by the proposed disorder, which furthermore overlapped considerably with other diagnoses (resick et al. 2012; şar 2011). in other words, complex ptsd lacked a good, clear causality. 4. rhematizing trauma to help determine what event to highlight and ultimately treat as the pathogenic trauma, doctors and patients turn not only towards the presence or absence of certain symptoms, but also their content. symptoms such as nightmares, flashbacks, and anxiety should all point to the same event, otherwise a diagnosis of ptsd would seem inappropriate (breslau et al. 2002). certain symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder are seen as not only pointing to the etiological event, but furthermore somehow resembling it. flashbacks are “a dissociative state during which aspects of a traumatic event are reexperienced as though they were occurring at that moment” (apa 9 parish: rhematization as etiology in the diagnosis of ptsd published by cu scholar, 2019 2013:821). the images and sensations of a flashback are similar to—if not indistinguishable from—those same images and sensations experienced during the causal trauma. in much of the popular trauma literature, flashbacks are viewed as a privileged form of remembering (antze 1996; hacking 1995) and perhaps even unique to posttraumatic disorders (brewin et al. 2009). under this ideology, nontraumatic memories are prone to distortion through narrativization, reconstruction, and revision; traumatic memories, on the other hand, and particularly those experienced through disorienting flashbacks, are in some way frozen in time. in van der kolk’s (2013) best-selling book about trauma, the body keeps the score, he writes stories change and are constantly revised and updated … such autobiographical memories are not precise reflections of reality; they are stories we tell to convey our personal take on our experiences (177). in contrast, the imprints of traumatic experiences are organized not as coherent logical narratives but in fragmented sensory and emotional traces: images, sounds, and physical sensations (178). isolated from narrative, such “imprints” can then “be re-experienced without appreciable transformation months, years, or even decades after the actual event occurred” (van der kolk 2002:57, emphasis added). narrative memories can index, in the sense that they point to previous events; traumatic memories iconify, and just as the rhematization of certain linguistic features reifies the “naturalness” of their associations with specific social identities, rhematization makes natural and self-evident the causal links between trauma and symptomology. what allows for this rhematization? hacking (1995), in his analysis of the similarly posttraumatic condition of dissociative identity disorder, coined the term memoro-politics to refer to the disciplining of memory into an object of knowledge. paralleling foucault’s (1978) biopolitics and anatomo-politics, memoro-politics involves the control over the right and wrong was to have memories, structure one’s biography, and tell stories about oneself. these amount to what hacking called “the sciences of the soul,” taking soul to involve “character, reflexive choice, and self-understanding, among much else” (215) and what i may reconfigure as respectively morality, agency, and the reflexive presentation of self, situated within an ideology of what memory is and how it functions. the changing sciences of child abuse have changed what it means to have a childhood: not only can one rename past events as trauma, but the possibility of repressed 10 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 24 [2019] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol24/iss1/6 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.33011/cril.24.1.6 memories creates new narrative arcs and identities (such as the survivor with repressed memories) and the language of flashbacks provides a new form of evidence to support the causal link between traumatic event and symptoms—a particular form of indexical iconicity. it is helpful here to consider other instances of perceiving images or sensations that others do not perceive: hallucinations, particularly those associated with psychosis. before posttraumatic stress disorder was an available diagnosis, many veterans were labelled schizophrenic partially on the basis of hallucinatory experiences, which at times may even include the prototypically psychotic auditory verbal hallucinations (crompton et al. 2017; mccarthy-jones & longden 2015; scott 1990; young 1995). the dsm-5 outlines the need to differentiate between hallucinations and flashbacks, advising that “flashbacks are distinguished from these other perceptual disturbances [hallucinations] by being directly related to the traumatic experience and by occurring in the absence of other psychotic or substance-induced features” (apa 2013:286). this direct relation seems to mean an iconic one, as studies have found individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia whose hallucinatory experiences share only “thematic” or “indirect” relations to trauma (hardy et al. 2005; mccarthy-jones & longden 2015; morrison et al. 2003). without content that can be understood as iconic of a pathogenic trauma, psychotic hallucinations are not understood as flashbacks and will likely not be viewed as caused by trauma at all. 5. conclusion: curing causality all diagnosis is a matter of giving meaning to symptoms reported by or observed in a patient. this interpretation is largely indexical in nature, as symptoms point towards their causes. posttraumatic stress disorder holds a particularly noteworthy tie to indexicality due to its uneasy status under the neo-kraepelinian philosophy of modern psychiatry, which privileges empirical observations over theorized causes. unlike a disorder like schizophrenia, which relies on the identification of present-day symptoms as kinds of hallucinations or delusions, ptsd requires the articulation of a certain type of background—a pathogenic trauma—before symptoms can be read as properly connected to ptsd. therefore, if symptoms can be made to index a pathogenic trauma with the same self-evidence that anxiety can index an anxiety disorder, then posttraumatic disorder remains a coherent category. on the other hand, that fact that ptsd symptoms overlap with those of other disorders has led some scholars to question whether there is anything truly unique about traumatic events and whether arguably nontraumatic events could lead to the same presentation, 11 parish: rhematization as etiology in the diagnosis of ptsd published by cu scholar, 2019 which would potentially undermine the very existence of ptsd and a distinct diagnosis and trauma as a concept (bodkin et al. 2007; brewin et al. 2009; mcnally 2003). in defense of causality, doctors and patients draw from rhematized relationships between symptoms and a patient’s past. finally, ptsd’s strong ties to rhematization can be found in its treatment. one dominant treatment philosophy lies in the proposed difference between traumatic and nontraumatic memory as fragmented iconicity and properly ordered narrative respectively. treatment methodologies such as eye-movement desensitization and repressing (emdr), a form of psychotherapy recommended by the u.s. department of veterans affairs and the american psychiatry association, exist to help the patient integrate traumatic memories into their life story, so that “the memory is transformed into a symbolic verbal account … an autobiographical narrative memory of traumatizing events” that no longer phenomenologically resembles the original traumas (van der hart et al. 2006:319; see also fisher 2014; shapiro 2001; van der kolk 2013). once the processing of remembering is made less iconic, the strict, pathological causal links from past to present slowly unravel. symptoms abate or become more manageable until the patient’s day-today life finally no longer carries rhemes of trauma. references antze, paul. 1996. telling stories, making selves: memory and identity in multiple personality disorder. tense past: cultural essays in trauma and memory, ed. by paul antze & michael lambek, 3–24. new york, ny: routledge. american psychological association (apa). 1980. diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders, 3rd ed. washington dc: american psychiatric publishing. apa. 2013. diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders, 5th ed. washington dc: american psychiatric publishing. austin, j. l. 1962. how to do things with words. oxford: oxford university press. bass, ellen and laura davis. 1988. the courage to heal: a guide for women survivors of child sexual abuse. new york, ny: harpercollins. blashfield, roger k. 2012. the classification of psychopathology: neo-kraepelinian and quantitative approaches. new york, ny: springer science & business media. bodkin, j. alexander; harrison g. pope; michael j. detke; james i. hudson. 2007. is ptsd caused by traumatic stress? journal of anxiety disorders 21.176–182. 12 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 24 [2019] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol24/iss1/6 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.33011/cril.24.1.6 breslau, naomi; g. a. chase; and j. c. anthony. 2002. the uniqueness of the dsm definition of post-traumatic stress disorder: implications for research. psychological medicine 32.573– 576. brewin, chris r.; ruth a. lanius; andrei novac; ulrich schnyder; and sandro galea. 2009. reformulating ptsd for dsm-v: life after criterion a. journal of traumatic stress 22.366– 373. carroll, noël. 2001. on the narrative connection. new perspectives on narrative perspectives, ed. by willie van peer and seymour benjamin chatman, 21–42. new york, ny: state university of new york press. compton, wilson m. and samual b. guze. 1995. the neo-kraepelinian revolution in psychiatric diagnosis. european archives of psychiatry and clinical neuroscience 245.196–201. crompton, laura; yael lahav; and zahava solomon. 2017. auditory hallucinations and ptsd in ex-pows. journal of trauma & dissociation 18.663–678. day, terri r. and rycan c. w. hall. 2016. ptsd and tort law. comprehensive guide to posttraumatic stress disorders, ed. by colin r. martin; victor r. preedy; and vinood b. patel, 231–244. new york, ny: springer. drescher, kent d.; david w. foy; caroline kelly; anaa leshner; kerrie schutz; and brett litz. 2011. an exploration of the viability and usefulness of the construct of moral injury in war veterans. traumatology 17:8–13. eco, umberto. 1976. a theory of semiotics. bloomington, in: indiana university press. fisher, janina. 2014. the treatment of structural dissociation in chronically traumatized patients. trauma treatment in practice: complex trauma and dissociation, ed. by trine anstorp and kirsten benum. traumebehandling. komplekse traumelidelser og dissosiasjon [trauma treatment in practice: complex trauma and dissociation.] oslo: universitetsforlaget. foucault, m. 1978. the history of sexuality, vols. 1, 2. new york, ny: pantheon. gal, susan. 2005. language ideologies compared. journal of linguistic anthropology 15.23–37. goodwin, charles and alessandro duranti. 1992. rethinking context: an introduction. rethinking context: language as an interactive phenomenon, ed. by charles goodwin and alessandro duranti, 1–42. cambridge ma: cambridge university press. hacking, ian. 1991. the making and molding of child abuse. critical inquiry 17.253–288. 13 parish: rhematization as etiology in the diagnosis of ptsd published by cu scholar, 2019 hacking, ian. 1995. rewriting the soul: multiple personality and the sciences of memory. princeton, nj: princeton university press. hardy, amy; david fowler; daniel freeman; ben smith; craig steel; jane evans; philippa garety; elizabeth kuipers; paul bebbington; and graham dunn. 2005. trauma and hallucinatory experience in psychosis. journal of nervous and mental disease 193.501–507. inoue, miyako. 2004. what does language remember? indexical inversion and the naturalized history of japanese women. journal of linguistic anthropology 14.38–56. irvine, judith t. and susan gal. 2000. language ideology and linguistic differentiation. regimes of language: ideologies, polities, and identities, ed. by paul v. kroskrity, 35–84. santa fe, ca: school of american research press. keane, webb. 2003. semiotics and the social analysis of material things. language & communication 23.409–425. laibow, rima e. and c. shaffia laue. 1993. posttraumatic stress disorder in experienced anomalous trauma. international handbook of traumatic stress syndromes, ed. by john p. wilson and beverly raphael, 93–103. boston, ma: springer. mayes, rick and allan v. horwitz. 2005. dsm-iii and the revolution in the classification of mental illness. journal of the history of the behavioral sciences 41.249–267. mccammon, sarah. 2017. the warfare may be remote but the trauma is real. national public radio, 24 april 2017. online: https://www.npr.org/2017/04/24/525413427/ mccarthy-jones, simon and eleanor longden. 2015. auditory verbal hallucinations in schizophrenia and post-traumatic stress disorder: common phenomenology, common cause, common interventions? frontiers in psychology 6. mchugh, paul r. and glenn treisman. 2007. ptsd: a problematic diagnostic category. jouranl of anxiety disorders 21.11–222. mcnally, richard j. 2003. progress and controversy in the study of posttraumatic stress disorder. annual review of psychology 54.229–252. miller, laurence. 2015. ptsd and forensic psychology: applications to civil and criminal law. new york, ny: springer. morrison, anthony p.; lucy frame; and warren larkin. 2003. relationships between trauma and psychosis: a review and integration. british journal of clinical psychology 42.331–353. 14 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 24 [2019] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol24/iss1/6 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.33011/cril.24.1.6 ostwald., peter f. 1964. how the patient communicates about disease with the doctor. approaches to semiotics, ed. by thomas a. sebeok; alfred s. hayes; and mary catherine bateson, 11–34. the hauge: mouton & co. peirce, charles s. 1931–1958. collected papers of charles s. peirce, vol. 2, ed. by charles hartshorne and paul weiss. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. peirce, charles s. 1940[1897, 1903, 1910]. logic as semiotic: the theory of signs. philosophical writings of peirce, ed. by justus buchler, 98–119. new york, ny: dover. press, eyal. 2018. the wounds of the drone warrior. new york times, 13 june 2018. online: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/13/magazine/veterans-ptsd-drone-warrior-wounds.html ray, christopher l. 2014. feigning screeners in va ptsd compensation and pension examinations. psychological injury and law 7.370–387. resick, patricia a.; michelle bovin; amber calloway; alexandra dick; matthew king; karen mitchell; michael suvak; stephanie wells; shannon wiltsey stirman; and erika wolf. 2012. a critical evaluation of the complex ptsd literature: implications for dsm-5. journal of traumatic stress 25.241–251. şar, vedat. 2011. developmental trauma, complex ptsd, and the current proposal of dsm-5. european journal of psychotraumatology 2.1–9. scott, wilbur j. 1990. ptsd in dsm-iii: a case in the politics of diagnosis and disease. social problems 37.294–310. sebeok, thomas a. 1994. signs: an introduction to semiotics. london, uk: university of london press. shapiro, francine. 2001. eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (emdr), 2nd ed. new york, ny: the guilford press. silverstein, michael. 1976. shifters, linguistic categories, and cultural description. meaning in anthropology, ed. by keith h. basso and henry a. selby, 11–55. albuquerque, nm: university of new mexico press. silverstein, silverstein. 2003. indexical order and the dialectics of sociolinguistic life. language & communication 23.193–229. van der hart, onno; ellert r. s. nijenhuis; and kathy steele. 2006. the haunted self: structural dissociation and the treatment of chronic traumatization. new york, ny: w. w. norton & company. 15 parish: rhematization as etiology in the diagnosis of ptsd published by cu scholar, 2019 van der kolk, bessel. 2013. the body keeps the score: brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma. new york, ny: penguin books. wilson, mitchell. 1993. dsm-iii and the transformation of american psychiatry: a history. the american journal of psychiatry 150.399–410. young, allan. 1995. the harmony of illusions: inventing post-traumatic stress disorder. princeton, nj: princeton university press. 16 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 24 [2019] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol24/iss1/6 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.33011/cril.24.1.6 colorado research in linguistics 6-2019 rhematization as etiology in the diagnosis of posttraumatic stress disorder ayden parish recommended citation rhematization as etiology in the diagnosis of posttraumatic stress disorder cover page footnote microsoft word parish-cril2019-final.docx microsoft word raclaw-cril2021_proof-final.docx 1 “i saw you like this now i wanna know”: noticing recipiency and responding to likes on twitter joshua raclaw, lauren durante, olivia marquardt west chester university in this paper, we focus on how interactants accomplish different forms of participation in the “one-tomany” context of social media interactions, where single users frequently have a wide audience of potential recipients to their posts. how do social media users ascertain who might be a relevant recipient to these posts, and how do other users who interact with these posts position themselves within a relevant participation framework? we explore these questions by examining how participants on twitter orient to the act of “liking” a post as a resource for moving into the participation framework of the talk, and we show how this orientation allows likes to serve as possible pathways for launching new actions and activities. we examine these practices using the framework of conversation analysis (ca), showing how participants use public noticings of another user’s likes as a preface to, and justification for, a subsequent invitation sequence or complaint sequence. we additionally show how the specific media affordances of twitter, which render likes publicly visible to others, facilitates the noticing of likes as a device for inciting new courses of action. keywords: conversation analysis, social media, response practices, twitter during face-to-face interaction, participants routinely display their recipiency to an ongoing turn at talk through a range of interactional practices that include minimal response tokens or backchannels (goffman, 1981) and embodied resources such as eye gaze and head nods (goodwin 1980; stivers, 2008). such practices treat recipiency as an accomplishment that requires work beyond simply being physically co-present with one’s interlocutors, though co-presence is also, in and of itself, a valuable resource for participation (goodwin & goodwin, 2004). in the context of face-to-face interaction, being visibly co-present enables some of the most basic turn-taking mechanisms of interaction (sacks, schegloff, & jefferson, 1974) by allowing current speakers to address ongoing actions to particular participants, and it additionally allows participants to position themselves in meaningful ways within the embodied participation framework (goodwin, 2000) of the talk. the interactional affordances of visible co-presence are not only made relevant during faceto-face interactions but also those conducted over videotelephony platforms like zoom or facetime, where participants can keep their cameras on to maintain a visible but remote cocolorado research in linguistics, volume 25 (2021) 2 presence. however, interaction occurring in other technologically mediated environments that lack the affordances of visible co-presence, such as telephone calls or text-based modes of digital communication, may motivate shifts in how interactants project, invite, and enact participation in the talk. in this paper, we focus on how interactants accomplish different forms of participation in the “one-to-many” context of social media interactions, where single users frequently have a wide audience of potential recipients to their posts. how do social media users ascertain who might be a relevant recipient to these posts, and how do other users who interact with these posts position themselves within a relevant participation framework? we explore these questions by examining how participants on twitter orient to the act of “liking” a post as a resource for moving into the participation framework of the talk, and we show how this orientation allows likes to serve as possible pathways for launching new actions and activities. we examine these practices using the framework of conversation analysis (ca), extending prior work that has used ca to examine various forms of text-based digital communication (e.g., meredith, 2019) but has only rarely focused on social media as a site for conversation analytic inquiry. one notable exception to this trend is housley et al.’s (2017) exploration of twitter data using ethnomethodological conversation analysis, which focuses on both sequential organization and membership categorization devices. in a somewhat similar vein, giles (2021) offers an in-depth discussion of sequential organization on twitter that interrogates platform-specific issues of context and media affordances. giles additionally illustrates the relevance of doubly articulated units of talk (conceived with both a local and wider audience in mind; bou-franch et al., 2012) to a micro-analytic account of talk on twitter, particularly interactions between public celebrities and the fans who follow them. while both of these papers focus on the written modality of social media interactions, other streams of discourse analytic research have investigated the interactional work that participants accomplish by liking posts on social media. west and trester (2013) offer one such discussion of likes on facebook, which they describe as a response practice “signaling acknowledgment and approval” (p. 138) of a post’s content. the authors focus on the types of facework conducted by responding to posts with written comments, describing such comments as a form of “meaningful engagement” that contrast with the more limited possibilities for doing facework engendered by simply liking a post, which instead offers only a “minimal effort response” (p. 145). their analysis positions likes as working toward pro-sociality by offering quick, positive feedback, yet nonetheless carries the “risk” of being a missed opportunity for the “i saw you like this now i wanna know” 3 types of facework made available through leaving comments on a user’s post. in a briefer discussion of likes on facebook, west (2013) describes them specifically as a backchannel device (goffman, 1981) and again contrasts them with written comments left on a social media post, which are instead described as an “active” form of response practice. though interaction and interpersonal engagement on facebook differs from twitter in significant ways, the two platforms overlap considerably in how both offer two primary ways of responding to a user’s post: by liking it or producing written comments. (while facebook has expanded its platform in recent years to offer users a range of emotive “reactions” in addition to likes, this feature was not yet implemented during the prior research cited here). west and trester (2013) and west (2013) thus both offer relevant insight into the ways that likes may be used and understood across twitter as well as facebook. more recent work by proctor and raclaw (2018) has focused on the social meaning of likes on twitter, examining how users produce metacommentary (i.e., talk about talk) about the presence or absence of likes on their posts. the authors find that likes are treated as a noticeable form of response, with participants producing explicit noticings that either celebrate or lament the likes a particular post has received. it is this particular understanding of likes as a noticeable form of response that drives much of the present analysis, which applies a conversation analytic lens to examine participants exploit this noticeability to incite further forms of participation in interactions on twitter. in particular, we show how participants use public noticings of another user’s likes as a preface to a new course of action, such as an invitation or complaint. in this way, likes are treated as providing for another user’s availability as a relevant recipient to a subsequent unit of talk. for example, in excerpt 1, sam posts a single tweet at lines 1-4. the tweet is a humorous announcement formulated using a popular compound tcu (lerner, 1991) meme format that contrasts sam’s inner monologue about what they should do for the evening (stay at home because they have work the following morning) and what they actually spent their evening doing (going out dancing). colorado research in linguistics, volume 25 (2021) 4 (1) 01 sam: me to myself: i am not going out tonight 02 i have work in the morning 03 me the same night: 04 ((animated gif of child dancing in a nightclub)) 05 sam: linda i saw you like this, come hop state lines 06 with the crew 07 lin: i’m in br for landons state tournament :/ 08 sam: i’ll take shot for you and him xoxo this initial tweet receives several likes, including one from linda, who is addressed as a recipient in sam’s subsequent talk at lines 5-6. here sam formulates a noticing of the fact that linda had liked the initial tweet before producing an invitation for linda to “hop state lines with the crew,” possibly to participate in the same activity described in the initial tweet (going out dancing). linda rejects the invitation at line 7 by offering an account for why they are in fact unavailable for a visit, and sam closes the sequence at line 8 by accepting the rejection (“i’ll take [a] shot for you and him”). in this excerpt, we see that linda’s like of the initial tweet is treated as moving them into the participation framework of the talk by positioning them as a relevant recipient to sam’s invitation. this particular understanding of linda’s like is made salient during sam’s explicit noticing of this like at line 5, which is formulated as both a preface to, and justification for, sam’s subsequent invitation. we note that this understanding of likes as a springboard for a new course of action is in part enabled through one of the media affordances (giles, 2018) of twitter, namely in how the platform automatically notifies the author of a post or comment when another user has liked it. even outside of these notifications, likes are publicly visible to other users who come across the original post or comment, and twitter’s timeline algorithm may even show users which tweets have been liked by other users they follow. this relatively high, public visibility of likes facilitates subsequent turns at talk in which these likes can become explicitly noticed. such noticings are routine occurrences in the data we examine, and they typically serve as both a preface to, and justification for, some new course of action that unfolds in the talk that follows. “i saw you like this now i wanna know” 5 a related case occurs in excerpt 2 as arc posts a single tweet at lines 1-7. this tweet is composed of multiple units of talk: an initial instance of troubles talk (jefferson, 1988) about a problem in the game of dungeons and dragons that arc runs, followed by a solicitation of advice formulated through two questions. in terms of recipiency, the tweet is directed to a limited but still potentially vast set of recipients, namely individuals who also run games of dungeons and dragons (serving as a dm or gm, respectively short for “dungeon master” and “game master”). (2) 01 arc: 🤔 ok dm/gm friends. an open campaign recently 02 took such a hard left i’ve found myself searching 03 for an idea for a decent arc... and coming up 04 with nothing...it happens... 05 has it ever happened to you? and how did you work 06 through it? 07 ((animated gif of actor nathan fillion)) 08 lor: ask the players what their theories are and adlib 09 off off that, or just do a fun, completely 10 unrelated side arc and see where it leads (man a 11 one-shot is written to fit into any setting :d) 12 arc: that’s great advice! unfortunately it’s that side 13 arc i’m searching for lol. so far the theories 14 haven’t solidified. and sadly, in this case, i 15 would be absolutely amazed if a one-shot actually 16 fit the setting/situation...i’ve really stuck my 17 foot in it 😆 18 arc: i saw you like this shit @shad. you up for a call? 19 in fact, who’s up for a discord voice chat? @chao, 20 @tx, @dust? anyone else? at lines 8-11 lorai responds with advice, and at lines 12-17 arc initially accepts and praises the advice but ultimately rejects it as irrelevant to the trouble at hand. subsequently, at lines 18-19 arc colorado research in linguistics, volume 25 (2021) 6 produces a noticing of shad’s like of the initial post from lines 1-7. just as in the prior excerpt, this noticing is formulated as a preface to, and an account for, an invitation: at lines 18 arc “tags” shad by mentioning their username (which sends a notification to shad alerting them to this tweet) and invites them to talk about arc’s trouble at hand (an invitation that is broadened out to other users at lines 19-20). as with the prior excerpt, shad’s liking of the initial tweet is treated as positioning them as a relevant recipient to a new course of action—an invitation. while likes may thus be used to “indicate having noticed and appreciated a friend’s post” (west & trester 2013:145), the data from our larger collection illustrate how likes on social media may also position a participant as being interested in the talk such that their further participation is made relevant. in the prior two excerpts, the talk is organized such that the original author of a post notices another user’s like and thus initiates the subsequent invitation sequence. in other cases, a third party goes on to produce this noticing as well as the new course of action that the original like has engendered. for example, in excerpt 3 the official twitter account for the multiplayer video game dead by daylight formulates an announcement advertising an unlockable download for players of the game (lines 1-5). the original post does not specify any one recipient, though it receives a response from a user called leila who notices that the original post was liked by the official twitter account for trixie mattel, a celebrity drag queen and television personality. (3) 01 dbd: zarina's bringing in the year of the ox in style. 02 if you want to be like zarina... enter code 03 "zarinox" in the in-game store by february 25th to 04 unlock this limited time lunar new year cosmetic. 05 ((image of the game character zarina)) 06 lei: excuse me @trixiemattel 07 i saw you liked this does it mean you play will 08 you party with me? 🥺 at lines 6-7 leila first tags trixie mattel by mentioning her username, then formulates an explicit noticing of mattel’s like of the original tweet that prefaces leila’s invitation for mattel to join them in a multiplayer game of dead by daylight by forming an in-game “party” (the invitation is “i saw you like this now i wanna know” 7 additionally accompanied by a “pleading face” emoji). while leila’s invitation receives no uptake from mattel, it offers an example of how liking a tweet can be understood as positioning a participant as a relevant recipient to a related course of action (here again, an invitation), even when this noticing is accomplished by a third party rather than the author of the original post. similarly, in excerpt 4, a popular twitter account, rate my takeaway, posts a video of food service workers at the restaurant chip inn preparing a large meat box with curry sauce (lines 1-2). as with the prior excerpt, this initial post does not specify any one recipient, though it receives a response from ben as they notice that the original post was liked by a mutually known party, soph (line 3). (4) 01 rmt: 15" chip inn meat box with curry sauce 02 ((video of service workers preparing food)) 03 ben: @soph i saw you liked this, its 15 mins away 04 from me and its fire 05 sop: omw to yours now 06 ben: its at a place called huthwaite ben’s noticing of soph’s like at line 3 serves as a preface to two subsequent units of talk: an announcement that the restaurant featured in the video is only 15 minutes away from where ben lives, and a positive assessment of either the restaurant or the specific meal advertised in the original post (“it’s fire”). while neither unit of talk formulates an explicit, on-record invitation for soph to visit the restaurant, it is nonetheless heard that way as soph responds at line 5 by announcing that they are “on [their] way” to visit ben, ostensibly so that the two of them might visit the restaurant together. while ben’s subsequent turn at talk (line 6) disaligns with this particular interactional project—that is, it offers soph specific directions to get to the restaurant on their own rather than solidifying plans for the two of them to visit together—this case nonetheless illustrates how soph’s like has positioned them as potentially interested in and available for further participation regarding the content of the original post. ben’s noticing of soph’s like thus becomes a preface to, and an account for, this expanded participation, which soph treats as an invitation. colorado research in linguistics, volume 25 (2021) 8 the previous excerpts each illustrate how likes may be treated as noticeable forms of response that provide for the relevance of the respondent’s further participation in the talk. in each of these cases this call to participation is treated as an invitation. and yet because of their sequential organization, none of these noticings are quite analogous to the types of pre-invitations (schegloff, 2007) that speakers routinely use during talk-in-interaction to first ascertain the relevance of an invitation sequence. for example, in the landline telephone interaction below, nelson initiates a pre-invitation at line 4 as he checks to see whether clara is available for the subsequent invitation that follows at line 6, while clara signals this availability through the “go ahead” response she provides at line 5. (5) 04 nel: whatcha doin’. 05 cla: not much. 06 nel: y’wanna drink? 07 cla: yeah. 08 nel: okay. here, the pre-invitation checks the recipient’s availability for a specific course of action—the invitation. by contrast, in the twitter data examined above, a user’s like does somewhat different work; rather than simply providing for the specific action-type relevance of a forthcoming invitation, these likes provides for the respondent’s more general relevance as a recipient to a subsequent course of action. by explicitly noticing these likes, and organizing such noticings as prefaces to this next course of action, participants display an understanding of likes as signaling both the participant’s interest in the talk as well as their potential availability as a relevant participant within it. though our focus thus far has been on the way that likes can engender a subsequent invitation, our collection also shows how other courses of action may also accompany the public noticing of other participants’ likes. for example, excerpt 6 begins as karti formulates a hyperbolic complaint about mint chocolate chip flavoring and the people who like it (lines 1-2). another participant, mari, follows this at line 3 with a turn composed of three distinct units of talk directed at a third “i saw you like this now i wanna know” 9 party, elli, who has liked this initial tweet: an initial response cry (“what the hell”) followed by a negative assessment (“you tweakin”) and a noticing of elli’s like (“i saw you like this”). (6) 01 kar: if u like mint chocolate chip anything seek 02 help ur going 2 hell 03 mar: @elli wth you tweakin i saw you like this 04 ell: i liked it because mint chocolate chip is my 05 favorite ice cream 😭 06 mar: ohhh i thought you were agreeing 😭😭 i was 07 gonna say you missing out in contrast to the prior cases we have analyzed thus far, mari’s noticing of elli’s like is not organized as a preface to the complaint they launch at elli at line 3, but rather serves as the final unit of talk within her turn. despite this difference in turn construction, mari’s noticing of elli’s like is nonetheless positioned as justification for mari’s complaint and, more precisely, elli’s like itself is positioned as the complainable. at lines 4-5 elli responds by accounting for her like, noting that they liked the original tweet not because they agreed with the stance that it put forward but rather because they do, in fact, like mint chocolate chip (formulated through the extreme case formulation, “mint chocolate chip is my favorite ice cream”). mari responds at lines 6-7 with an initial change of state token that offers an acceptance of this account and a justification for their original complaint from line 3. a similar case occurs in excerpt 7. at lines 1-3, u.s. republican leader kevin mccarthy posts some points of disagreement with the covid financial relief plan that was then being put forward by democratic leadership. at lines 5-10 another user, jess, produces a single tweet responding to mccarthy and disagreeing with his argument that funding for the arts should not be a part of this relief plan. at lines 11-16, jess then produces a subsequent tweet that initially tags their local political representative, senator john cornyn, who has liked mccarthy’s tweet; jess then produces an initial noticing of cornyn’s like. colorado research in linguistics, volume 25 (2021) 10 (6) 01 km: dear democrats: stop calling it a “covid 02 relief” plan. a better name would be “the 03 pelosi payoff.” 04 ((graph comparing covid and non-covid funding)) 05 jes: arts funding is not non-covid. arts and culture 06 are a key & significant part of our economy and 07 job market. & covid has shut it down almost 08 completely. i am an arts marketer & currently on 09 unemployment because i lost my job. because of 10 covid. learn @gopleader. listen. for once. 11 jes: also, @johncornyn i saw you liked this & i’m 12 absolutely disgusted that you “represent” me. i 13 miss the arts. i miss working. i miss my industry. 14 i hate seeing so many of my colleagues and 15 friends who are artists suffering. because of our 16 countries incompetence. this noticing of cornyn’s like is formulated as a preface to jess’s subsequent complaint against cornyn (“i’m absolutely disgusted that you ‘represent’ me”), which is followed by further disagreements with mccarthy’s stance that offer accounts for the complaint against cornyn. much as with the prior excerpt, jess’s noticing of cornyn’s like serves as justification for the complaint that follows, with the like itself serving as the complainable. as seen in the transcript above, cornyn does not respond to this complaint. in both this and the prior excerpt, likes may be understood as not just approving of a stance put forward in the liked tweet (cf. west & trester, 2013) but also espousing this stance. public noticings of these likes are thus positioned as justifying the complaints that call these parties to account for these likes and, by extension, the stances they index. the likes seen in excerpts 6 and 7 thus differ from those seen in excerpt 1-4, with the former being treated as affiliating with the stance put forth in the tweet the participant has liked, and the latter being treated as signaling that the participant is sufficiently interested in the topic of the talk that an invitation is made relevant. “i saw you like this now i wanna know” 11 however, each of these cases illustrate how participants on twitter treat likes as a noticeable form of response that may be used to further bring these respondents into the participation framework of the talk. while likes may in fact be a more “passive” form of response compared to the types of written comments that also abound on social media (west & trester, 2013), likes nonetheless engender “active” forms of participation as other participants treat them as justification for pursuing further courses of action such as invitations or complaints. each of these excerpts also illustrate the way that participants are held accountable for their likes; in this sense, likes are not simply neutral ways of acknowledging a post or comment, but also display various stances toward the content that being liked, with such stances forming the basis for the invitation and complaint sequences that we see unfold in the excerpts above. we note that it is the specific media affordances of twitter, that render likes so publicly visible to others, that facilitates the noticing of likes as a device for inciting these new courses of action. references bou-franch, p., lorenzo-dus, n.,& garcès-conejos blitvich, p. (2012). social interaction in youtube text-based polylogues: a study of coherence. journal of computer mediated communication, 17, 501–521. giles, d.c. (2018). twenty-first century celebrity: fame in digital culture. emerald. goffman, e. (1981). forms of talk. university of pennsylvania press. goodwin, c. (1980). restarts, pauses, and the achievement of a state of mutual gaze at turn-beginning, sociological inquiry, 50(3-4), 272–302. goodwin, c. (2000), action and embodiment within situated human interaction. journal of pragmatics, 32(10), 1489–522. goodwin, c. & goodwin, m. h. (2004). participation. in a. duranti (ed.) a companion to linguistic anthropology (pp. 222–244). blackwell. housley, w., webb, h., edwards, a., procter, r., & jirotka, m. (2017). digitizing sacks? approaching social media as data. qualitative research, 17(6), 627–644. meredith, j. (2019). conversation analysis and online interaction. research on language and social interaction, 52(3), 241–256. schegloff, e. a. (2007). sequence organization in interaction: a primer in conversation analysis, volume 1. cambridge university press. stivers, t. (2008). stance, alignment and affiliation during storytelling: when nodding is a token colorado research in linguistics, volume 25 (2021) 12 of affiliation. research on language and social interaction, 41(1), 31–57. west, l. e. (2013). facebook sharing: a sociolinguistic analysis of computer-mediated storytelling. discourse, context & media, 2, 1–13. west, l. & trester, a. m. (2013). facework on facebook: conversations on social media. in d. tannen & a. m. trester (eds.) discourse 2.0. language and new media (pp. 133–154). georgetown university press. the evolution of evolutionary linguistics colorado research in linguistics. june 2007. vol. 20. boulder: university of colorado. © 2007 by jeff roesler stebbins. the evolution of evolutionary linguistics jeff roesler stebbins university of colorado for more than a century after darwin’s origin of species, linguists said little about the origins of human speech. in the past 30 years, however, some linguists and evolutionary biologists have proposed descriptions of the roles of gestures, the vocal apparatus, cognition, syntax, and social interaction in the emergence of language. this paper summarizes some of their claims, especially those that assume the certainty of neo-darwinian evolution. neo-darwinism, though, has various critics disputing its claims to be settled fact. after brief consideration of some of those criticisms, the paper will encourage linguists to exercise more caution in their dependence upon neo-darwinian theory. finally, several other fields of science will be mentioned as possible candidates for offering linguists an increasing understanding of the emergence of speech. 1. introduction many linguists are aware of the 1866 linguistic society of paris’ ban on discussion of the evolution of language shortly after darwin’s 1859 origin of species (e.g. newmeyer 2003:59). this formal ban spread informally elsewhere, and until recently, silence ruled. it appears that the topic re-emerged a century later after bickerton’s discussion of “proto-language” in his 1981 roots of language, but it could also be that interest in language evolution increased after comments in john lyons’ widely-used two-volume semantics, wherein he wrote, the attitude of most linguists to evolutionary theories of the origin of language tends to be one of agnosticism. psychologists, biologists, ethologists and others might say, if they so wish, that language must have evolved from some non-linguistic signaling-system; the fact remains, linguists might reply, that there is no actual evidence from language to support this belief (1977:85-6). lyons here echoes questions he had raised seven years before in an earlier title (1970:229). regardless of the source of their inception, discussions of the evolution of language have recently proliferated–so much so that there is now a bi-annual international conference on the evolution of language. its sixth meeting was in rome in april of 2006. three decades is not long for any new discipline or sub-discipline, and the field still seems to be in its formative stages. there are ‘evolutionary biologists,’ but ‘evolutionary linguists’ remain hard to find. still, we might reasonably speak of ‘evolutionary biolinguistics,’ for cambridge has published a text entitled biolinguistics, with a chapter on the evolution of language. and tecumseh fitch, 1 stebbins: the evolution of evolutionary linguistics published by cu scholar, 2007 colorado research in linguistics, volume 20 (2007) 2 for example, is an evolutionary biologist studying the physiology of animal communication. he often cooperates with marc hauser, whose research is in zoology and physical anthropology. richard dawkins, an evolutionary biologist, and robert pennock, a philosopher of science, have also considered the evolution of language in popular books, but neither are likely to call themselves linguists. it is not clear–nor perhaps need it be–whether the new topic should be a branch of linguistics, of biology, a marriage of the two, or a part of physical anthropology. hauser, chomsky and fitch, in a much-discussed article in science, sought to “promote a stronger connection between biology and linguistics,” and to “clarify the biolinguistic perspective on language and its evolution” (2002:1570). ever since darwin, of course, evolution has been a potent term in the life sciences. other disciplines (such as economics and political science) occasionally appropriate it as a metaphor for developments observed in their fields. those who study the origin and development of language, however, are not merely appropriating evolution as a metaphor; rather, they are applying evolutionary biology to human speech as the foundational approach in which to conduct their research. this paper will therefore summarize what prominent linguists and biologists are writing about the evolution of language before considering the implications of linguists’ dependence upon evolutionary biology. 2. evolutionary linguistics every discipline depends heavily upon clear definitions of its terminology, and evolutionary linguistics may need to do so more than most. writers in this new field argue for certain precursors to (or essential building blocks of) language. assuming that humans are what we are, and have language as we have it, because of long processes of natural selection acting upon random variations, then what do we have, and how and in what order did we acquire it? 2.1. essential building blocks some precursors of speech are obvious, even to lay persons: the abilities to speak and to hear, agreed upon lists of words, and so on. but within linguistics, psycholinguists, phonologists, syntacticians, semanticists and others each emphasize their own respective foci of study, whether they are conceptual frameworks, vocal physiology, systems of reference, or word order. nobody seems able to agree upon the sequence in which these several elements of speech must have evolved, or even if it would have been possible for any of the phenomena to emerge without the simultaneous emergence of all of them. such is the interrelatedness of the ingredients of language that linguists have difficulty imagining any existing independent of most others. the index to jackendoff’s foundations of language, for example, lists 18 interface relationships (in which one element of language interfaces with another): intonation with syntax, phonology with conceptual structures, syntax with semantics and pragmatics, and gestures with morphophonology are just four examples (2002:469). some have 2 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 20 [2007] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol20/iss1/1 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/vefc-nw72 evolution and language 3 even wondered whether language might actually be an irreducibly complex system, which would necessarily preclude it evolving piecemeal, a bit at a time. lieberman says that “brain mechanisms adapted for adaptive motor control were the starting point for the evolution of human language” (2003:255). after that, lieberman’s sequence is unclear. knight, studdert-kennedy and hurford believe that “the emergence of syntax was the final step” (2000:4). jackendoff agrees (2002:260-1). in the absence of a clear evolutionary sequence, linguists and other scientists have divided their labor among the parts of what they think may have happened, leaving other parts of the sequence to experts in other fields. they may not know what happened when; still, what follows will briefly describe their hypotheses about several ingredients of the evolution of language in this order: primate gestures, the vocal apparatus, cognition and logic, syntax, and the social elements of the development of speech. 2.2. a need for tentative hypotheses in their dependence upon the presumed certainties of evolutionary biology, some in evolutionary linguistics make strong claims with words such as know, certainly, and obviously; others in the field are more circumspect. macneilage and davis, for example, begin their discussion of evolving speech complexity asserting, “it is common sense that speech must have been simpler in earlier times than it is now” (2000:148). but linguists have so far sought in vain for evidence to support that claim, which is disputed by others writing on the topic (e.g. pinker 2003:22). no trace of anything like a ‘primitive’ language has ever been found. macneilage and davis use ‘must have’ four times in five lines. such confidence might be warranted were there certainty in the evolutionary biology upon which they depend, but (as will become clear below) this is problematic. fitch, on the other hand, begins more modestly by saying that “discussions of the evolution of language often involve more speculation than data” (2000:258). in contrast to macneilage and davis, fitch uses might have or could have four times in a dozen lines (2000:263). the following, then, is a partial, tentative outline of what some linguists say might have happened: 2.2.1. primate gestures evolutionary linguistics presupposes the theory that non-human primates and humans are descended from some common, prehistoric ancestral primates. linguists therefore study the behavior of other primates, none of whom share the vocal apparatus or vocal acuity of humans. other primates, however, do use manual and facial gestures communicatively, and humans have trained some to use a few hundred words of sign language. linguists therefore study primate gestures to discover what they may have in common with our non-vocal gestures, which are assumed to have preceded human speech (e.g. hewes 1973:5-24, corballis 2003:201-18). modern human ‘body language’ is also thought by some 3 stebbins: the evolution of evolutionary linguistics published by cu scholar, 2007 colorado research in linguistics, volume 20 (2007) 4 to include vestiges or ‘fossils’ of gestural communication used by humans’ and apes’ common ancestors long ago. years of research has shown that, unless they receive extensive training (and most, even if they do), primates do not imitate others’ gestures or vocalizations, do not point, are apparently incapable of directing or sharing attention (which requires a theory of mind–see below), and do not use gestures referentially to represent anything not present (tomasello 2003:100-1, corballis 2003:203). and even when primates (orangutans, chimpanzees, bonobos, or gorillas) receive years of training, they remain unable to understand or use tenses, questions, commands, recursion, or even negation (corballis 2003:204). giacomo rizzolatti and michael arbib believe they may have discovered how we evolved our capacity for imitative gestures and vocalizations. a part of primate brains appears to cause them to grasp (close their hands) when they see another grasping something. because this part shares (or is close to) the part of the brain responsible for vocalizations, rizzolatti and arbib say that this area of the brain may have contained evolutionary ‘bridges’ from mere manual movements to imitative gestures, imitative vocalizations, and then presumably, communicative vocalizations (rizzolatti and arbib 1998, arbib 2003). while various birds (esp. parrots and mynahs) and some aquatic mammals have demonstrated amazing abilities of vocal learning and imitation, primates have proven especially disappointing in this regard (fitch 2000:261); they appear unable to voluntarily control vocal musculature, or even to restrain emotional vocalizations when it would be safer to do so (lieberman 2003:258). fitch, too, points out that other primates lack our “freedom from stimulus-driven control of vocalization” (2000:265). so far, comparisons of human language and primate gestures (whether vocal or non-vocal) appear to teach us more about how we differ than about what we may have in common. experiments in which primates are trained to use sign languages, furthermore, are conducted under such stringently controlled situations that we learn very little about primates in the wild. 2.2.2. the vocal apparatus here is where linguists most require the expertise of biologists, those who can detail the physiology of sound production and perception. given the human laryngeal-pharyngeal complex, glottis, tongue, soft palate, nasal passage, teeth and lips, how and why have humans–only humans–come to have vocal tracts with parts uniquely, interdependently arranged to enable speech? among those varied parts of the human vocal tract, the larynx has received the most attention. nineteenth century anatomists noted that other primates’ larynxes are not as low as those of humans. then, in the 1960s, lieberman highlighted the acoustic implications of this fact: only the human larynx is low enough (and the human pharynx relatively long enough) to produce the phonology of human language. since then, physical anthropologists have been 4 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 20 [2007] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol20/iss1/1 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/vefc-nw72 evolution and language 5 striving to determine the speech abilities of earlier hominids by estimating the length of their pharynx and the position of their larynx. soft tissues decay rapidly, so researchers must base their estimates upon speculations about the position of the hyoid bone, from which the larynx is suspended. so far, such questionable data “do not appear to provide reliable indicators of the speech abilities of extinct hominids” (fitch 2000:262). because differences between larynxes entail trade-offs, it is not clear what these facts about the larynx mean to evolutionary theory. with longer supralaryngeal vocal tracts (and hence lower formant frequencies), it has been assumed that lower larynxes enable animals to sound larger, and therefore too formidable to attack. this is the ‘size exaggeration hypothesis’ (fitch 2000:264, lieberman 2003:258), which some claim gave humans a selective advantage over other primates. but with their higher larynxes, other primates can swallow liquids or solids while breathing; humans cannot. some believe this offers non-human primates significant survival advantages, but evolutionary biologists disagree about whether it would be a greater advantage than that possible advantage provided by lower formants, or even by speech. not all of the attention paid to the vocal apparatus has been focused upon the larynx. lieberman (2003:258-62) and fitch (2000:264-5) mention the tongue and lips in regard to how we use them to form some vowels, which apes cannot produce. this does not seem central to the discussion of survival or other evolutionary selection pressures. iain davidson, finally, includes a table which summarizes several theories about connections between language evolution and archaeological measurements of skeletal indicators for hominid brains, spinal cords, hypoglossal canals, hyoids and vocal passages (2003:145). while those findings remain inconclusive, they represent interesting possibilities for much more future research. 2.2.3. cognition and logic the size and shape of brains can be estimated from the crania of fossilized skulls, but minds and thoughts leave no fossil evidence. einstein, among many, commented often about how little we understand about the physical brain’s relation to the mind: we have the habit of combining certain concepts and conceptual relations (propositions) so definitely with certain sense experiences that we do not become conscious of the logically unbridgeable gulf which separates the world of sensory experiences from the world of concepts and propositions (1944:287). decades later, andrew huxley, president of england’s royal society, complained that neo-darwinists have “too often swept under the carpet the biggest problem in 5 stebbins: the evolution of evolutionary linguistics published by cu scholar, 2007 colorado research in linguistics, volume 20 (2007) 6 biology, the existence of consciousness” (1981:v). there may be little to say about what earlier hominids had in mind, but davidson (2003:140-57) strives to employ archaeological evidence of tool-making to indicate their mental capabilities. tool-making and language are both products of intelligence, but his leap from chipping stone to language does not clearly differentiate between physical dexterity and that of mind. jackendoff, pinker, dunbar and others also write about the cognitive and logical essentials of language, what a mind must be able to do in order to use language as we do. jackendoff’s discussions of the relationship between cognitive conceptual structures and language in foundations of language appear perceptive and bear extensive examination. one of his claims: conceptual structure is not part of language per se–it is part of thought. it is the locus for the understanding of linguistic utterances in context, incorporating pragmatic considerations and “world knowledge”; it is the cognitive structure in terms of which reasoning and planning take place. that is, the hypothesized level of conceptual structure is intended as a theoretical counterpart of what common sense calls “meaning” (2002:123). our brains contain what he calls the f-mind (‘functional mind,’ much like our everyday use of ‘mind’), which contains conceptual structures, our cognitive organization of what we know and think. conceptual structures are connected to what happens in the real world through cognitively constructed percepts. percepts are the bundled chunks of experience (esp. sights and sounds) or perceptions delivered to the conceptual structures in the mind (or brain) by our “perceptual systems [which] evolved in order that organisms may act reliably in the real world” (2002:307). that which our conceptual structures perceive is not reality itself (not the events themselves), but it is “reality for us” (2002:309)–good enough to enable us to survive and function in the world. our brains, in other words, do not ‘get’ the real world directly; rather, they indirectly receive perceptions of the entities and experiences of the real world: events in world > perceptual systems > percepts > conceptual structures in f-mind jackendoff emphasizes that each stage in this cognitive process is physical, that the sequence from external event to our meaning of it is (and can only be studied as) a natural, material event: people find sentences (and other entities) meaningful because of something going on in their brains... there is no magic. that is, we seek a thoroughly naturalistic explanation that 6 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 20 [2007] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol20/iss1/1 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/vefc-nw72 evolution and language 7 ultimately can be embedded in our understanding of the physical world (2002:268). jackendoff then has quite detailed diagrams of relationships between meaning (those conceptual structures in our minds) and the grammatical functions of language. but, of course, between concepts and grammar are the words, the linguistic symbols employed to index the elements of a concept. jackendoff and others discuss this at length. for language to happen, two parties must “have the cognitive components that allow meaning to be attached to arbitrary signals in order to transfer information from one mind to another” (dunbar 2003:225). those parties must have a theory of mind: they must realize the existence of other consciousnesses, that they can affect the attention and intent of other minds. so far, it does not appear that any non-human primates have this capacity (tomasello 2003:100-1). animals do seek to affect each other’s behavior, but not, from what we can tell, to affect each other’s minds through information transfer. what dunbar calls ‘arbitrary signals’ are usually called linguistic symbols. like dunbar, jackendoff (1999:273), deacon (2003:117-9), pinker (2003:17) and others emphasize that symbols must be arbitrary: there is, for example, no iconic resemblance of any kind between an elephant and the word (the symbol) used to index it in spoken language. while most written symbols are also arbitrary, there remains in some languages some residual iconic or visual resemblance between a symbol and that which it represents. in chinese, several characters (e.g. those for mountain and door) still retain some faint resemblance to that which they index. symbols are triadic conventions involving the speaker, the hearer, and a referent; because they are arbitrary, they work only if agreed upon by those who employ them. agreement entails a theory of mind, of course, and must apparently be reached through the use of language (i.e. other symbols). symbols cannot be conventionalized by using only icons and indices; symbols require pre-existing symbols (oller 2002:17). deacon does not address this problem in his discussion of the logic of icons, indices and symbols (2003:111-39, 1997:70ff). and if, as jackendoff claims, “symbol use [is] the most fundamental factor in language evolution” (1999:273), then oller’s point above reveals a serious question to consider in the evolution of language from non-language. oller is not the first logician to argue for symbols’ dependence upon symbols, for, even a century ago, charles sanders peirce did so in his 1902 paper “the icon, index and symbol” (156-173). both deacon and oller frequently refer to peirce’s writings. so if vervet monkeys warn each other with one sound when they see a leopard, another when they see a snake, and a third when they see an eagle, are they using symbols? no, for symbols are not situation-specific; they are used to index something not present, an activity only humans are able to do. while it appears that “some of the foundations of the human conceptual system are present in other primates, such as the major subsystems dealing with spatial, causal, and social reasoning” (pinker and jackendoff 2005:205), those primates appear able 7 stebbins: the evolution of evolutionary linguistics published by cu scholar, 2007 colorado research in linguistics, volume 20 (2007) 8 neither to know nor to index what they do not immediately perceive with their senses. of course, humans go far beyond merely using an arbitrary symbol to stand for some object or event–we can combine a finite range of sounds into a seemingly infinite range of segment-symbols (syllables, words, phrases, clauses, etc.) in such a way that we can utter propositions about complex relations among objects and events. just as our minds deal in reference, predication, categorization and the like, so does our language. and that is syntax. 2.2.4. syntax when noam chomsky began writing about the role of language in issues of nature and nurture, he may have been a significant catalyst for the resurgence in discussion of the evolution of language. after proposing almost half a century ago that all humans are born with some innate biological capacity for syntax (universal grammar, or ug), chomsky and others have spent much of the decades since revising theories of what it is and where it came from. chomsky has consistently denied that ug and other components of the human language capacity can be the result of natural selection acting upon random variation (1975:59, 1978:38-9). pinker and bloom (1990:707), however, argued that the ability to use syntax is an example of adaptive complexity, and that it certainly must have evolved by conventional darwinian means, for natural selection is the only means known to science which can produce such adaptive complexity. thirteen years later, pinker still uses the same argument, a form of questionbegging: we have syntax, so natural selection must have done it, for only natural selection can do things like that (2003:21-2). this is not too far removed from “the bible is true, because god said so in the bible.” deacon (1997:258) also uses the same logic to reach the same conclusion. deacon, pinker and bloom are not alone in this position. dawkins (1976) and dennett (1995), neither of them linguists, are also adaptationists, using the same logic to claim that syntax emerged as a biological adaptation to the environment. jackendoff, too, has joined this camp (1999:272, 2002:231-5). arguing from anti-adaptationist perspectives are almost everyone else in the discussion: chomsky, gould, bickerton, newmeyer, kirby, hurford and others. basically, the anti-adaptationist position says that there is no selective advantage (no increased survival fitness) to our complex conceptual structures or to the expressions thereof (e.g. hurford 2003:44-9). chomsky, especially, opposed any suggestion that the “principles of ug arose by virtue of their utility in fostering the survival and reproductive possibilities of the individuals possessing them” (newmeyer 2003:60). he and some others in the camp have allowed for the possibility of an ‘exaptationist’ scenario, in which ug may have arisen as a byproduct of other evolutionary processes. still, he insisted that “it would be a serious error to suppose that all properties, or the interesting properties of structures that evolved, can be ‘explained’ in terms of natural selection” 8 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 20 [2007] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol20/iss1/1 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/vefc-nw72 evolution and language 9 (chomsky 1975:59). anti-evolutionists agree, and some evolutionary biologists have accused chomsky of closet creationism. jackendoff calls this a “retreat to mysticism” (2002:234). among evolutionary linguists, then, a lot of attention has been given to how some syntactic properties resemble (and may therefore be an evolutionary by-product of) some physical survival ability. syntactic recursion, for example, might be said to parallel an animal’s ability to seek and find food inside an egg inside a nest inside a hole inside an old tree inside a forest. recursion itself has recently received much attention by some in this field. bickerton says, “syntax forms a crucial part, arguably the most crucial part–since no other species is capable of it–of human language. if we are going to explain how language evolved, we have to explain how syntax evolved” (2003:87). but hauser, chomsky and fitch claim that it is only recursion, rather than all of syntax, that is uniquely human (2002:1570). in an important 2002 paper in science, hauser, chomsky and fitch speak of a‘faculty of language in the broad sense’(flb), which includes both the needed sensory-motor abilities (vocalization, breathing, hearing, vision, and gestures) and the conceptual-intentional abilities (cognitive grasp of reference, predication, etc.). these two groups of abilities, and others, according to hauser, chomsky and fitch, evolved as adaptations to an environment, or as by-products of such adaptations. within this shared flb is what they call the ‘faculty of language in the narrow sense’ (fln), consisting only of recursion. this faculty is not shared with other species; it is recently evolved and unique to humans (hauser, chomsky and fitch 2002:1573). while their paper makes other points, the ‘recursion only’ claim is its primary one. pinker and jackendoff respond in a lengthy article in cognition, the main idea of which is that, while recursion is uniquely human, there are other key elements of language which are also unique to humans, among them “phonology, morphology, case, agreement, and many properties of words” (2005:201). they also maintain that “language is a complex adaptation for communication which evolved piecemeal...” (201). in his 1999 article, and in his 2002 book, jackendoff proposes some possibilities for how the evolution of syntax may have proceeded from context-dependent single symbol (word) utterances through the concatenation of words to more fully-formed syntax (1999:272-9, 2002:242-64). as ‘fossilized’ evidence of the transitional stage (mere concatenation), he offers some english compounds of differing relations between their parts: doghouse, housedog, snowman, man-eating, garbage man, etc. (1999:276, 2002:249-50). far more has been written about the possible evolution of syntax. close attention, though, should be paid to the possibly crucial role of symbolic logic and semiotics in understanding the evolution of syntax. deacon, jackendoff and tomasello have avoided, or only barely touched upon, the serious problem raised by peirce and oller above. the logical and mathematical prerequisites of human communication (as defined by information theory, which began with claude shannon’s 1949 mathematical theory of communication) would also seem to apply, but that shall have to be considered in another paper. 9 stebbins: the evolution of evolutionary linguistics published by cu scholar, 2007 colorado research in linguistics, volume 20 (2007) 10 2.2.5. social elements according to bickerton (2003:82), “the most crucial thing to grasp about the emergence of symbolic representation is that it must have been primarily a cultural rather than a biological event.” how communities without symbols cooperated to conventionalize the use of symbols is not explicit in his account, but he appears to make indirect reference to this gap: it is no accident that in most, if not all, computer simulations of language evolution, the self-organizing ‘agents’ already know what their interlocutor means to say. if the problem space were not limited in this way, the simulations simply wouldn’t work–the agents would never converge on a workable system. but such unrealistic initial conditions are unlikely to have applied to our remote ancestors (2003:86, italics in original). in addition to this problem, of course, is perhaps an even greater one for evolutionary linguists. biological evolution is a tale of competition, of natural selection eliminating the less fit and empowering the more fit. if this is the case, how could the evolution of language have occurred, if language (even the mere agreement upon symbols) requires the cooperation of hominids competing with each other for survival? darkness and tall grass may have caused gestural communication to give way to more socially beneficial vocal communication, but how does this reconcile with ‘survival of the fittest?’ it is to each hominid’s survival advantage that his/her competitors not know his/her intent. numerous studies by tomasello, hare, and call, for example, have revealed how animals (especially apes, goats, and dogs) strive to follow each other’s gaze when competing for food. such observations about cooperation and competition are not naïve responses to a merely apparent contradiction, or evolutionary biologists and evolutionary linguists would not struggle so vigorously to counter it. knight, studdert-kennedy and hurford do so creatively: ...language is no ordinary adaptation, but will require ‘special’ darwinian explanation, ...which isolates biologically anomalous levels of social cooperation as central to the evolutionary emergence of language... language, in short, is remarkable–as will be any adequate darwinian explanation of its evolution (2000:12). richard dawkins has put forth an extremely creative ‘special darwinian’ theory to address this anomaly, his selfish gene theory. very simply, the theory asserts that within each organism is a selfish (or selfishness) gene, bent on survival, and willing to put up with temporary inconveniences such as altruism, co-operation, even sacrifice, in order to achieve longer term viability. this gene 10 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 20 [2007] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol20/iss1/1 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/vefc-nw72 evolution and language 11 ‘lives on’ across many generations, and it can even foresee that short-term anomalies benefit long-term patterns (dawkins 1976:2-3). if such a gene has no consciousness, it is hard (perhaps impossible) to grasp how it might ‘foresee’ anything; if it has consciousness, believing in it differs little from faith in a god. dawkins’ approach is one of a variety of attempts to address the issue of depending upon a theory about competition to explain the development of an intrinsically co-operative activity. others have written much more about the integral part played by a theory of mind, by shared attention, by the triadic use of symbols, by culture, and so on. those, however, are also beyond the scope of this very brief introduction to the field. in a summarizing statement, jackendoff does use evolution as a metaphor when he says, “languages may change and ‘evolve’ in the sense of cultural evolution, but as far as can be determined, this is in the context of a fully biologically evolved capacity” (2002:232, italics original). each of the scientists above makes frequent reference to tenets of physical evolution, for it is upon a foundation of evolutionary biology that evolutionary linguistics is building. and some want even more: chomsky has stressed that language is a biological phenomenon. but prevalent contemporary brands of linguistics neglect the evolutionary dimension. the present facts of language can be understood more completely by adopting an evolutionary linguistics, whose subject matter sits at the end of a long series of evolutionary transitions, most of which have traditionally been the domain of biology... the key to explaining the present complex phenomena of human language lies in understanding how they could have evolved from less complex phenomena... modern languages are learned by, stored in, and processed online by evolved brains, given voice by evolved vocal tracts, in evolved social groups (hurford 2003:40). newmeyer also believes in recruiting other scientists from other fields to the study of language evolution, and he states this strongly: . . . if the properties of universal grammar are what they are as a result of physical principles, then it falls to the physicist and molecular biologist to unravel language origins, not to the theoretical linguist (2003:60). obviously, then, given the interdependencies of speech organs and phonology, of the brain and meaning, linguistics and biology are necessarily and irrevocably entangled. 11 stebbins: the evolution of evolutionary linguistics published by cu scholar, 2007 colorado research in linguistics, volume 20 (2007) 12 if neo-darwinian evolutionary biology is supported by solid facts and logic, then linguistics can take this foundation for granted and focus instead upon how best to construct an account of the emergence of human speech. but is it possible that linguists are assuming too much? now, with some sense of the current state of evolutionary linguistics, let us briefly consider the evolutionary biology upon which it apparently depends. 3. evolutionary biology the details of what is almost universally taught about evolutionary biology are too well known to describe at length. over billions of years, from non-organic matter (often called the ‘pre-biotic soup’) organic compounds emerged by sheer chance. from this organic matter, combined with time and chance, the first living, self-replicating cell appeared by some process of self-organization. and from that first cell evolved many more single-celled, then multi-celled, ever more complex organisms: bacteria, amoebae, invertebrates, vertebrates, fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals, primates, and ultimately, linguists. the genius of darwin was in proposing that the driving force for progress (or the filter which preserved the superior and eliminated the inferior) was natural selection. when darwin’s theory was informed by the discovery and application of more modern sciences (especially genetics), the result was called neo-darwinism, now the dominant theory in evolutionary biology. most renowned scientists in the field (cousteau, dawkins, dennett, dobzhansky, gould, haldane, huxley, leakey, mayr, sagan, et al) are or were neo-darwinists. according to neo-darwinists, then, as living organisms evolved at micro (genetic) and macro (species) levels, those variations or mutations which provided survival fitness were selected and passed on by those who had them. variations which provided no survival fitness, no selective advantage, were eliminated as those who possessed them died off. hence, the popular expression ‘survival of the fittest.’ this, roughly, is neo-darwinian microand macroevolution. 3.1. established fact? if one reads the popular science writing of carl sagan, stephen jay gould, richard dawkins, and daniel dennett, if one peruses the pages of national geographic, if one wanders the websites of the national center for science education (ncseweb.org) or the american association for the advancement of science (aaas.org), one will likely conclude that neo-darwinian progressive macroevolution is solid, unquestionable fact, with a few stray details still left to be filled in. some (mostly religious) people are not yet totally convinced, but it is only a matter of time before everyone is enlightened. dennett states this even more strongly, seeming to prefer ad hominem to argument: 12 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 20 [2007] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol20/iss1/1 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/vefc-nw72 evolution and language 13 to put it bluntly but fairly, anyone today who doubts that the variety of life on this planet was produced by a process of evolution is simply ignorant–inexcusably ignorant–in a world where three out of four people have learned to read and write. (dennett 1995:46) the writings of dennett, dawkins, gould, sagan and others are featured in skeptic magazine (www.skeptic.com). differing views are often caricatured there, dismissed as those of “hordes of creationists that infest the american pseudointellectual landscape and stubbornly try to legislate scientific ignorance in our public schools” (pigliucci 2001:54). if scientifically-challenged school board members are neo-darwinism’s only opposition, then evolutionary linguists likely need not concern themselves with such disputes. but this is not the case. some of neo-darwinism’s recent, high-profile challenges have come from those who hold to the theory of intelligent design. as something of a philosophy of science ‘think tank,’ i.d.’s people do not conduct laboratory experiments in pursuit of hard data to support a competing theory; rather, they apply accepted principles of science, math and logic to highlight areas in which neo-darwinism has more work to do before it can claim to represent unassailable, demonstrable fact. while mainstream media claim or imply that i.d. people are fundamentalist christian creationists, little research is needed to learn that numerous prominent adherents do not fit that description. mustafa akyol, michael behe, gertrude himmelfarb, seyyed hossein nasr, gerald schroeder, and vladimir voeikov may be amused or troubled by such a simplistic caricature, by being dismissed with little more than a transparent ad hominem. also contrary to most media, i.d.’s primary unifying focus is neither religion nor public school curricula (though courts have rejected any discussion of i.d. in public schools). i.d. argues that, while the explanatory force of natural selection remains great, it is still unable to account for much of the specified complexity observable in the universe. though no conflict exists between random variation and accidental complexity, specified (or functional) complexity usually indicates intelligence. the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence (or seti), for example, is predicated upon precisely that fact. if seti were someday to detect radio pulses in morse code, or sequences of prime numbers, it will have detected specified complexity (or even language), and would assume that some purposive intelligence is ‘out there.’ few scientists attack seti, though, and the difference, of course, lies in the respective intelligences that i.d. and seti seek. among i.d.’s apparent leaders (michael behe, william dembski, stephen meyer, and others) are credentialed, practicing, peer-reviewed, published scientists, or scholars in non-scientific fields, not exactly dennett’s “inexcusably ignorant” folk. their writings detail technical, procedural, or logical/conceptual weaknesses in neo-darwinism. here, for example, is just one of many questions dembski raises, one clearly relevant to the evolution of language: 13 stebbins: the evolution of evolutionary linguistics published by cu scholar, 2007 colorado research in linguistics, volume 20 (2007) 14 ...there is an inherent tendency in evolving systems for selection pressures to force such systems toward simplicity. this is not to say that darwinism requires or entails that evolution proceed toward simplicity. the point is simply that darwinism, in itself, does not mandate increasing complexity and inherently favors simplicity. thus, if we see increasing complexity, something besides darwinism must be at work (dembski 2004:256). by implication, perhaps, entropy, information theory, complexity theory, and occam’s razor might all be productively applied to questions about the relationship between simplicity and complexity in the evolutionary emergence of language. dembski is referring to ongoing discussion among scientists as varied as stephen jay gould, stuart kauffman, and hubert yockey. for those troubled by the apparently metaphysical implications of i.d., the skepticism of various credentialed, non-i.d. scholars certainly warrant attention. franklin harold, for example, is emeritus professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at colorado state university. from his oxford university press text, the way of the cell: life arose here on earth from inanimate matter, by some kind of evolutionary process, about four billion years ago. this is not a statement of demonstrable fact, but an assumption almost universally shared by specialists as well as scientists in general. it is not supported by any direct evidence, nor is it likely to be. ...the reasons for the general consensus are, first, the lack of a more palatable alternative; and second, that absent the presumption of a terrestrial and natural genesis there is no basis for scientific inquiry into the origin of life (harold 2001:236-7). recall that newmeyer (2003:60), above, recommends that linguists turn to molecular biologists (such as harold) to secure answers to persistent questions about the evolution of life and language. another skeptic, a significant figure in chemistry, genetics and microbiology, is the university of chicago’s robert shapiro. he points out that there are far more unresolved questions than answers about evolutionary processes, and contemporary science continues to provide us with new conceptual possibilities. unfortunately, readers may remain unaware of this intellectual ferment because… serious open-minded discussions of the impact of discoveries in molecular biology are all too rare. the possibility of nondarwinian scientific viewpoints is virtually never considered (shapiro 1998). 14 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 20 [2007] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol20/iss1/1 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/vefc-nw72 evolution and language 15 shapiro is one of dawkins’ professional peers who finds both neo-darwinian and creationist accounts scientifically unsatisfactory, and who wants to reopen discussion. this ‘intellectual ferment,’ as he puts it, is no threat; it is, rather, essential for the progress of scientific knowledge. later, he writes: ...our current knowledge of genetic change is fundamentally at variance with postulates held by neo-darwinists... nonetheless, neo-darwinist writers like dawkins continue to ignore or trivialize the new knowledge... this is to be expected from creationists, who naturally refuse to recognize science’s remarkable record... but the neo-darwinian advocates claim to be scientists, and we can legitimately expect of them a more open spirit of inquiry. instead, they assume a defensive posture of outraged orthodoxy and assert an unassailable claim to truth, which only serves to validate the creationists’ criticism that darwinism has become more of a faith than a science (shapiro 1998). although shapiro’s scientific achievements and credentials are remarkable, with uncompromisingly forthright comments such as these, he may be running the risk of being professionally shunned. mary midgley, philosopher of science at the university of newcastleupon-tyne, has two fascinating titles, evolution as religion (1985) and science as salvation (1992), both of which list many examples of the phenomena shapiro describes above. but because midgley is not a lab coat scientist, her observations are perhaps more easily discounted by the likes of dawkins and dennett. stephen jay gould (until his death harvard’s renowned evolutionary paleobiologist) figures prominently in skeptic, and in the writings of other neodarwinists. he echoes the concerns of shapiro and midgley: “...we have persecuted dissenters, resorted to catechism, and tried to extend our authority to spheres where it has no force...” (1977:146). this is precisely what concerns shapiro, who also says, dogmas and taboos may be suitable for religion, but they have no place in science. no theory or viewpoint should ever become sacrosanct, for experience tells us that even the most elegant laws of nature ultimately succumb to the inexorable progress of scientific thinking and technological innovation (shapiro 1998). if neo-darwinism is established fact, then it has nothing to hide, for as john milton says in areopagitica, “who ever knew truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter?” (1674:746). science need not fear i.d., harold, shapiro or midgley, or others like them who agree with much of what scientists say when they write of scientifically demonstrable facts. 15 stebbins: the evolution of evolutionary linguistics published by cu scholar, 2007 colorado research in linguistics, volume 20 (2007) 16 numerous scientists agree with evidence for microevolution within species but question the macroevolutionary (producing new species) claims of neodarwinism. opponents with purely religious motives (who offer no scientific evidence or logical argument) need not concern scientists. if connections were to exist between life’s origins and a biblical account of creation, or between the diversity of languages and a biblical story of babel, such connections would likely be inaccessible to the scientific methods we now employ. significant dissent, however, has arisen not just from these corners but among scientists who are content to leave bible stories to the clergy. clearly, skepticism about neo-darwinism’s claims and presuppositions is not just emerging from intelligent design, or from a few isolated religious institutions or rural school districts. the wide variety of scholars above are just several of many calling for more transparent discussions of macroevolution’s unsettled questions. in the halls of scientific academia, some of neo-darwinism’s most important assumptions still warrant truly objective (re)consideration. it does not yet appear that the neo-darwinian approach to biology is in imminent danger of collapse; nevertheless, the foundations of evolutionary linguistics are not as solid as some have apparently assumed. a consensus among scientists certainly exists about evolution, but consensus is not scientific evidence. we did not lose the flat earth or gain the periodic table by sheer numbers of voting scientists, and consensus will not serve us well if we try using it to prove or disprove anything in evolutionary linguistics. 3.2. linguistics’ dependence upon evolutionary biology as we have seen above, language is much more than merely biological; it is conceptual/logical, social, mathematical, and more. anatomy and acoustics, for example, inform linguistics’ understanding of the productions and perceptions of sound. between the sounds we share with animals, however, and the meanings to which only humans can harness them, there remains a vast and still poorly understood gulf. to grasp how humans bridged this gulf, it seems that linguistics needs more than evolutionary biology has to offer. psycholinguistics already depends upon developmental psychology and cognitive science. sociolinguistics, too, depends upon sociology and political science. these are fields formerly dominated by two of darwin’s most influential disciples, freud and marx. if ‘oedipal’ and ‘proletarian’ now sound like quaint old jargon, they may also caution linguists against depending too heavily (or even exclusively) upon one still unstable and fallible scientific theory. this will hardly limit evolutionary linguistics, for there also exist other fields whose intersections with linguistics warrant far more research. the rich writings of charles sanders peirce and claude shannon, mentioned above, are seldom referenced in linguistics, yet from them we have much to learn about problems in the logical complexities and mathematical probabilities of homo 16 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 20 [2007] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol20/iss1/1 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/vefc-nw72 evolution and language 17 sapiens sapiens acquiring the capacity to use a finite range of linguistic symbols to express a potentially infinite range of concepts. plotkin and nowak (2000) and oller (2002) are some of the few who have begun exploring how we might benefit from a synergy among the studies of linguistics, information theory, mathematical probability, complexity theory, the logic of symbols, and more. regardless of the sciences to which linguists turn, we will benefit by a commitment to responsibly follow evidence, rather than consensus, even when it leads us to temporarily inconvenient conclusions: i will not inquire as to the details of how increased expressive power came to spread through a population, nor how the genome and the morphogenesis of the brain accomplished these changes. accepted practice in evolutionary psychology… generally finds it convenient to ignore these problems; i see no need at the moment to hold myself to a higher standard than the rest of the field (jackendoff 2002:237). for the sake of brevity and clarity, perhaps, jackendoff might be forgiven for postponing the discussion of certain tangential issues. but as linguists strive to determine and describe the origins of language, we will be wise not to ignore neo-darwinism’s glaring problems as we strive to avoid the sorts of errors that shapiro and others warn against above. “if a single conclusion drawn from [general relativity] proves wrong, it must be given up; to modify it without destroying the whole seems to be impossible” (einstein 1934:60). linguists need not, indeed cannot, surrender all that we have learned from evolutionary theory, but we may regret not exercising more caution, or not asking more questions about the evolutionary biology upon which we currently depend, and not imitating einstein’s increasingly rare intellectual modesty. references arbib, michael. 2003. “the evolving mirror system: a neural basis for language readiness.” in christiansen, morten and simon kirby. language evolution. new york: oxford. 182-200. bickerton, derek. 1981. roots of language. ann arbor, mi: karoma. bickerton, derek. 2003. “symbol and structure: a comprehensive framework for language evolution” in morten christiansen and simon kirby (eds.). language evolution. new york: oxford. 77-93. chomsky, noam. 1975. reflections on language. new york: pantheon. chomsky, noam. 1978. rules and representations. new york: columbia. christiansen, morten and simon kirby (eds.). 2003. language evolution. new york: oxford. 17 stebbins: the evolution of evolutionary linguistics published by cu scholar, 2007 colorado research in linguistics, volume 20 (2007) 18 corballis, michael. 2003. “from hand to mouth: the gestural origins of language” in morten christiansen and simon kirby (eds.) language evolution, 201-18. new york: oxford davidson, iain. 2003. “the archaeological evidence of language origins: states of art.” in morten christiansen and simon kirby (eds.). language evolution. new york: oxford. 140-57. dawkins, richard. 1976. the selfish gene. london: oxford. deacon, terrence. 1997. the symbolic species: the co-evolution of language and the brain. new york: norton. deacon, terrence. 2003. “universal grammar and semiotic constraints” in morten christiansen and simon kirby (eds.). language evolution, 111-39. new york: oxford. dembski, william. 2004. the design revolution. downers grove, il: intervarsity. dennett, daniel c. 1995. darwin's dangerous idea: evolution and the meanings of life. london: penguin. dunbar, robin. 2003. “the origin and subsequent evolution of language.” in morten christiansen and simon kirby (eds.). language evolution, 219-34. new york: oxford. einstein, albert. 1934. the world as i see it. new york: covici-friede. einstein, albert. 1944. “remarks on russell’s theory of knowledge.” in paul arthur schilpp (ed.), the philosophy of bertrand russell. new york: tudor. fitch, w. tecumseh. 2000. “the evolution of speech: a comparative review.” trends in cognitive science: 258-67. gould, stephen jay. 1977. ever since darwin. new york: norton. hare, brian and michael tomasello. 1999. “domestic dogs use human and conspecific social cues to locate hidden food.” journal of comparative psychology 113: 173-7. harold, franklin m. 2001. the way of the cell. new york: oxford university press. hauser, marc, noam chomsky and w. tecumseh fitch. 2002. “the faculty of language: what is it, who has it, and how did it evolve?” science 298: 1569-79. hewes, g. w. 1973. “primate communication and the gestural origin of language.” current anthropology 14: 5-24. hurford, james r. 2000. “introduction: the emergence of syntax” in chris knight, michael studdert-kennedy and james hurford. the evolutionary emergence of language, 219-30. new york: cambridge. hurford, james r. 2003. “the language mosaic and its evolution.” in morten christiansen and simon kirby (eds.) language evolution, 38-57. new york: oxford. huxley, andrew. 1981. supplement to royal society news 12: v. jackendoff, ray. 1999. “possible stages in the evolution of the language capacity.” trends in cognitive science 3: 272-9. 18 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 20 [2007] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol20/iss1/1 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/vefc-nw72 evolution and language 19 jackendoff, ray. 2002. foundations of language: brain, meaning, grammar, evolution. new york: oxford. knight, chris, michael studdert-kennedy and james r. hurford. 2000. the evolutionary emergence of language. new york: cambridge. lieberman, philip. 2003. “motor control, speech and the evolution of human language.” in morten christiansen and simon kirby (eds.). language evolution, 255-71. new york: oxford. lyons, john. 1970. new horizons in linguistics. baltimore, md: penguin. lyons, john. 1977. semantics. new york: cambridge. macneilage, peter and barbara davis. 2000. “evolution of speech: the relation between ontogeny and phylogeny.” in chris knight, michael studdertkennedy and james r. hurford. the evolutionary emergence of language, 146-60. new york: cambridge. midgley, mary. 1985. evolution as a religion. london: methuen. midgley, mary. 1992. science as salvation. london: routledge. milton, john. 1674. “areopagitica.” in merrit hughes (ed.). 1957. john milton: complete poems and major prose, 746. indianapolis, in: bobbs-merrill. newmeyer, frederick. 2003. “what can the field of linguistics tell us about the origins of language?” in morten christiansen and simon kirby (eds.). languageevolution, 58-76. new york: oxford. oller, john, jr. 2002. “languages and genes: can they be built up through random change and natural selection?” journal of psychology and theology 30: 2640. peirce, charles sanders. 1932 [1902]. “the icon, index, and symbol,” in c. hartshorne and p. weiss (eds.) collected papers of c. s. peirce, vol. 2: 156173. cambridge, ma: harvard. pigliucci, massimo. 2001. “review of mathematics and evolution, by sir fred hoyle.” skeptic 8(4): 54. pinker, steven. 2003. “language as an adaptation to the cognitive niche.” in morten christiansen and simon kirby (eds.). language evolution, 16-37. new york: oxford. pinker, steven and p. bloom. 1990. “natural language and natural selection.” behavioral and brain sciences 13: 707-784. pinker, steven and ray jackendoff. 2005. “the faculty of language: what’s special about it?” cognition, 95: 201-36. plotkin, joshua and martin nowak. 2000. “language evolution and information theory.” journal of theoretical biology 205: 147-59. rizzolatti, giacomo and michael arbib. 1998. language within our grasp. trends in neurosciences 21(5): 188-194. shannon, claude and warren weaver. 1949. the mathematical theory of information. urbana, il: university of illinois press. shapiro, james a. 1998. scientific alternatives to darwinism: is there a role for cellular information processing in evolution? retrieved from world wide web: http://www.asa3.org/archive/asa/199809/0015.html 19 stebbins: the evolution of evolutionary linguistics published by cu scholar, 2007 colorado research in linguistics, volume 20 (2007) 20 tomasello, michael. 2003. “on the different origins of symbols and grammar.” in morten christiansen and simon kirby (eds.). language evolution, 94-110. new york: oxford. tomasello, michael, josep call and brian hare. 1998. “five primate species follow the visual gaze of conspecifics.” animal behaviour 55: 1063-9. yockey, hubert. 2005. information theory, evolution and the origin of life. new york: cambridge. 20 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 20 [2007] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol20/iss1/1 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/vefc-nw72 colorado research in linguistics 6-2007 the evolution of evolutionary linguistics jeff r. stebbins recommended citation untitled language policy colorado research in linguistics. june 2006. vol.19, issue 1. boulder: university of colorado. © 2006 by michael f. thomas. book review bernard spolsky. language policy. cambridge: cambridge university press. 2004. 262 pages. isbn-13: 9780521011754 / isbn-10: 0521011752. $29.99 us. reviewed by michael f. thomas when first approaching a field of study as diverse as 'language policy', it’s easy to become disoriented under the avalanche of facts and patterns--educational policies, distinct languages spoken in a region, historical factors, legal issues, linguistic ideologies, nationalisms--and then become hard pressed to see how such divergent forces interact. in his book language policy, spolsky seeks to mediate this overload of information by providing a model to organize it. the basic premise of the model is that language 'policy' is best understood as the relationship between three factors; ideology, management and practice. management is the explicit attempt of a locus of power (such as the state) to manipulate language practices and ideologies. practice simply means how linguistic resources are habitually utilized in a speech community. ideology is the system of beliefs about language varieties and linguistic choices. an example of why this tripartite division is important can be seen in the three-language formula in india, which states that all indians should know the national language, hindi, the regional language of the state and their mother tongue. in the realm of management, children have a right to mother tongue education. the law reflects the dominant national ideology of valuing all languages in india. however, in practice, relatively few children receive instruction in their mother tongue. this is due to a number of factors, including limited resources for the publishing of educational materials in all of the languages of india, unclear distinctions between languages as in the case of dialect chains, local ideologies differing from national ideologies, etc. when analyzing the language policy of india one must look beyond the law and see if the ideology upon which the law is based is actually reflected in the practices of the various speech communities of the nationstate. in addition to this three-way distinction for analyzing language policy, spolsky asserts that three other assumptions are also necessary. first, language policy is not only concerned with named varieties. as illustrated in the example of india, the naming of varieties is in itself sometimes politically motivated (e.g. which variety in a dialect chain gets afforded official status as the standard?) furthermore, other varieties may have unofficial implications in their use. in the us, decisions made regarding the use of aave in the schools are within the realm of language policy whether they are made on an ad hoc basis by individual instructors, as in some areas, or governed by local administrative policy in others. second, language policy must be understood as operating within a speech community. ideologies relevant to the same variety of a given language will differ depending on the speech community where it is being used. third, language policy must be understood as functioning within a complex ecological relationship between linguistic and non-linguistic factors. often the non-linguistic factors include access to resources; as such, language policy often serves as a surrogate political issue for other ideological agendas. chapter 1 gives an overview of these three factors--management, practice and ideology--followed by multiple examples in chapters 2 and 3. the examples are loosely organized around themes in the regulation of language, such as 'driving out the bad' (chapter 2), and 'pursuing the good and dealing with the new' (chapter 3). spolsky’s theory of 1 thomas: language policy published by cu scholar, 2006 colorado research in linguistics, volume 19 (2006) 2 language policy is laid out in chapter four, 'the nature of language policy and its domains.' the remainder of the book discusses language policy as it applies to the modern nation-state. chapters 5 through 10 focus on monolingual polities. chapter 5 focuses specifically on france and iceland. then, in chapter 6, spolsky moves on to discuss the current spread of english around the globe, including the implications for any nation-state with an explicit monolingual policy and various reactions to this spread. chapter 7 discusses the problems of analyzing us language policy. here, the major points touch on the fact that education policy is set at the state rather than federal level, the hegemony of english as a national although not official language, and the fact that language policy issues are generally approached as civil rights issues under title vi of the civil rights act. chapter 8 discusses the various approaches to language rights that have been taken over the centuries in western societies. chapter 9 discusses post-colonial countries and the relationship between minority language users and the official and national languages of the countries the official languages generally being the languages of the colonizers. chapter 10 discusses monolingual polities with recognized linguistic minority groups. chapter 11 begins a discussion of multilingual polities and the problems faced by policy analysts and implementers who hope to partition the linguistic space. chapter 12 discusses attempts to resist language shift in the context of preserving indigenous languages as well as returning to the discussion of maintaining the standard brought up in chapter 3. spolsky wraps up with a review of the model in chapter 13. spolsky's language policy contains a profusion of data from a broad spectrum of times and places. every point about policy is discussed in terms of examples. while such thoroughness is commendable and extremely useful for those doing in-depth analysis of policy issues, at times it makes it difficult for the reader to remain focused on the thread of his arguments. with so many examples being offered and the overlapping nature of the different aspects of language policy being discussed, a clearer organizational scheme would have been helpful. this book was used as the textbook for an undergraduate course on world language policies. while the number and variety of examples certainly did much to bring the topic to life, they sometimes obscured the very model which was being put forward to clarify the issues. if the book were more clearly organized along the lines of the model it contains, it would better serve as a course text. there was also one notable absence in the book. very little was said about language policy in israel, which is very surprising given israel’s uniquely successful policy of revitalizing hebrew and spolsky's own long-standing contributions to the study of that policy. that being said, the book remains an outstanding reference work for anyone wishing to become better informed on language policy issues. the model put forward by spolsky is likely to serve as a basis for much future research on the subject and the many case studies cited are a testament to the multi-faceted nature of the issues involved in dissecting language policy. michael f. thomas university of colorado department of linguistics 2 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 19 [2006] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol19/iss1/3 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/gsa5-d942 colorado research in linguistics 6-2006 language policy michael f. thomas recommended citation microsoft word spolsky review for cril edits.doc microsoft word moeller-cril2021-proof_final.docx 1 computational morphology for language description and documentation sarah moeller university of colorado boulder while the field of linguistics has slowly but surely widened the world’s knowledge about human language, thanks in part to the recent emphasis on language documentation and description of underdocumented languages, computational linguistics has barely expanded beyond a handful of economically or politically powerful languages. this paper is a synthesis of natural language processing (nlp) models and methods and a history about how the models and methods have been applied to the study of morphological structure, particularly in low-resource languages (lrl). the paper assumes that the study of morphology has an important role to play in both nlp and linguistics. it explores the potential for discovering newer and more efficient methods while training computational morphological models on data produced during language documentation and description (ldd) field projects.1 keywords: language documentation, natural language processing, nlp, low-resource languages, machine learning 1. introduction morphology comprises word-building properties in human languages and their accompanying (morpho-)syntactic phenomena. historically, computational linguists and “paper-and-pencil linguists” have taken different and sometimes seemingly incompatible approaches to morphology (karttunen & beesley 2005). yet, despite their out-of-sync approaches, both computational linguistics and “traditional” linguistics benefit from morphological analysis (cotterell et al. 2015). for natural language processing (nlp), work with low-resource languages (lrl) is still largely uncharted territory. this paper explores the limited work in morphology by asking this question: “what [computational] methods...can detect [morphological] structure in small, noisy data sets, while being directly applicable to a wide variety of languages?” (bird 2009). the paper is organized as follows. section 2 describes the workflow and activities of ldd. section 3 sketches the history of nlp work with lrl. section 4 defines morphological analysis and looks specifically at nlp applied to morpheme segmentation and glossing and section 5 looks at the application to learning morphological inflectional paradigmatic patterns. colorado research in linguistics, volume 25 (2021) 2 2. language documentation and description in linguistics, morphological description of a broad range of languages is a foundational step towards any reasonable linguistic theory. a focus of documenting and describing underdocumented languages, including their morphological structure, has been emphasized since the 1990’s along with the development of language documentation as a distinct subfield. himmelmann (1998) defines language documentation as “a comprehensive and representative sample of communicative events [that are] as natural as possible.” woodbury (2003) defines it similarly as “comprehensive and transparent records supporting wide ranging scientific investigations of the language.” language description can be defined as work that analyzes language documentation to create “systematic presentations of the phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics of the language” (bird & chiang 2012). the emphasis on endangered languages over the past three decades has established best practices documenting a new language (bowern 2008; czaykowskahiggins 2009; lupke 2010; vallejos 2014; rice & thunder 2017). however, the specific activities that divide the two subfields are not rigid. therefore, the current work generally refers to them together as “language documentation and description (ldd)” or “documentary and descriptive linguistics”. the workflow of ldd is not standardized, although most projects seem to follow a similar sequence. a version of one common sequence (bird & chiang 2012) is given below (the numbers are used to refer to each task, e.g., “task 2a” refers to transcription). each subsequent task progressively encompasses more description than documentation, except archiving, which comes strictly under language documentation but is logically a last step. (1) collect (audio/video recordings) naturally occurring speech (2) a) transcribe and b) translate (3) perform basic morphosyntactic analysis by segmenting the morphemes and creating morphological glosses and/or a lexicon (4) elicit morphological paradigms that reveal underlying patterns (5) prepare descriptive reports that outline the language’s structure (6) archive data in a long-term repository computational morphology for language description and documentation 3 one primary output of this workflow is interlinear glossed texts (igt), a data format distinctive to linguistics (figure 1). interlinearization is the primary task after transcription. it moves the workflow beyond simple documentation but still serves as a “preprocessing step” to language description (strictly defined) (moon, erk & baldridge 2009). it comprises annotation tasks that enrich the data with analytic information added as lines under the transcribed text (task 1 in above workflow; line 1 in figure 1). the most common lines are shown in figure 1. lines can be added in any order, but translations (task 2a; line 7) morpheme boundaries and morpheme glosses (task 3; lines 2 and 3, respectively) are usually added first. doing more annotation (e.g. lines 4-6) often happens in field projects, but translation, morpheme segmentation, and morpheme glossing are usually given the highest priority. figure 1. interlinearization: interlinear glossed texts add lines of annotation to the original text. interlinearizing data uncovers the rarer and unique linguistic phenomena. interlinearization opens the door for deeper linguistic analysis and lays the foundation for reference grammars, dictionaries, and language learning materials, but interlinearization is not sufficient to create complete grammars, dictionaries, etc. one additional descriptive task is often included: the collection of morphological inflection patterns, or paradigms, for several lemmata (task 4). inflectional colorado research in linguistics, volume 25 (2021) 4 paradigms are elicited because complete paradigms are rarely found in natural language. complete paradigms are needed to infer general rules of inflection. without translations, morpheme segmentation, and glossing, the data is understandable only to someone who already speaks the language. if no speakers are left, the data is mostly inaccessible, much like egyptian hieroglyphics before the rosetta stone was discovered. a few specially designed software tools provide limited automated assistance. the two most popular are elan (auer et al. 2010) and flex (rogers 2010). examples of their interlinearization interfaces are shown in figures 2 and 3. these tools implement hand-constructed, rule-based computational morphological parsers but rule-based parsers do not generalize to new data. flex also copies morpheme boundaries and glosses onto other words if they are identical to words that were previously annotated by hand. neither tool incorporates machine learning. figure 2. user interface for interlinearization in fieldworks language explorer (flex) displaying a manipuri [mni] text computational morphology for language description and documentation 5 figure 3. user interface for interlinearization in elan showing a practice session in english 3. natural language processing (nlp) for low-resource languages though the line between documentation and description may not be clear, one thing is clear: current methods cannot easily process large amounts of data. most archived corpora are only partly annotated because funding and time constraints do not allow complete interlinearization (cox, bouliame & alam 2019). methods currently that are today used commonly in ldd rely primarily on hand annotation which is extremely inefficient. the typical strategy of annotating texts from top to bottom is non-optimal for training a supervised machine learning model (baldridge & osborne 2008; baldridge & palmer 2009; palmer 2009). since naturally occurring speech contains many repeated linguistic structures, manual annotation has been described as repetitive, monotonous, costly, and time-consuming (duong 2017; he et al. 2016). it can take anywhere from 20 to 100 hours to transcribe (task 2a) a single hour of speech (seifart et al. 2018) and it is reasonable to assume that interlinearization (tasks 2b and 3) and eliciting morphological paradigms (task 4) require significantly more time. a recent growth of nlp interest in low-resource languages (lrl) has brought machine learning models and methods that achieve good results even with ldd field data. a notable example is elpis (foley et al. 2018), an online tool that includes a user interface accessible to those with no programming background. machine translation (mt) has also been applied to documentary data, using the output of an automatic speech recognition system as input to the mt system (anastasopoulos, chiang & duong 2016; duong et al. 2016). colorado research in linguistics, volume 25 (2021) 6 the potential for machine learning to perform morphological analysis during interlinearization has been clearly demonstrated (baldridge & palmer 2009; palmer 2009; palmer et al. 2010; xia et al. 2016). for example, felt (2012) found that when a round of annotation is done automatically by a machine learning model and then corrected by the human annotators, the annotators’ accuracy is improve if the machine learning model achieves at least 60% accuracy and significantly speeds manual annotation if it achieves an accuracy of 80%. in the area of morphological paradigm learning, the annual sigmorphon and conll-sigmorphon shared tasks (cotterell et al. 2016; cotterell et al. 2017; cotterell et al. 2018; mccarthy et al. 2019; nicolai, gorman & cotterell 2020) have developed successful methods with limited training data. although nlp interest in lrl has grown noticeably in the past few years, it is not a new area of research. since the late 20th century, nlp has taken several approaches to low-resource languages that can be classified as either rule-based (i.e., finite state transducers) (e.g., cotterell et al. 2015; forsberg & hulden 2016; moeller et al. 2018; moeller et al. 2019) or machine learning models that “learn” rules from data. machine learning approaches to lrl can be classified according to whether the training data was annotated completely (supervised) (e.g., bergmanis et al. 2017; sudhakar & singh 2017; makarov, ruzsics & clematide 2017; liu et al. 2018; makarov & clematide 2018a), partially (semi-supervised) (e.g., ahlberg, forsberg & hulden 2014), or not at all (unsupervised) (e.g., moon, erk & baldridge 2009; palmer et al. 2010; kirschenbaum, wittenburg & heyer 2012; soricut & och 2015). at first glance, unsupervised and semi-supervised learning seem most promising for ldd because they do not require as much manually annotated data. supervised learning is trained on “gold standard” annotated data. however, even though supervised learning requires annotation, it needs much less data than unsupervised learning and almost always yields better results (ruokolainen et al. 2013; cotterell et al. 2015). additionally, without annotated labels, unsupervised learning can only really cluster data by the latent patterns in the data. discovering latent patterns might be quite useful for linguists when first exploring the data; for example, frequent character patterns and substrings that a model discovers could provide an initial hypothesis to the linguist about the language’s morphological structure. however, no matter how accurate an unsupervised model may be, it cannot substitute the valuable process of manually analyzing and discovering patterns in the data. detailed analysis of new data is vital for linguists because through that process the linguist becomes familiar with the data and begins to absorb an computational morphology for language description and documentation 7 intuitive knowledge of the language. nevertheless, the latent patterns discovered by unsupervised models can have many uses such as being leveraged in a semi-supervised approach. semisupervised learning combines some supervised data with a larger set of unsupervised data (kohonen, virpioja & lagus 2010; poon, cherry & toutanova 2009). this approach is suitable if available annotated data is not adequate to effectively train a supervised model and it may be ideal for ldd because having substantial amounts of unannotated data with a small amount of annotated data is a common situation. unfortunately, real applications of semi-supervised learning, specifically for computational morphology, are relatively rare, particularly with neural networks. there are exceptions, such as ahlberg et al. (2014), where semi-supervised learning was used to induce morphological paradigms in low-resource settings. until the 2010s, most machine learning models were feature-based with hand-designed features, illustrated in figure 4. the input would be a hand-designed feature function that for morphological analysis might include 1) the whole word, 2) the position of the word in the sentence, 3) surrounding words or morphemes, 4) the pos tag of the previous morpheme/word. features are assigned weights by the model during training to achieve optimal performance according to some objective function such as classification accuracy. for example, in a morpheme segmentation task where one chosen feature is the previous word and the previous word is some form of the english “to be” verb, and the target word ends in “ing”, then the model might give a high weight to the previous word so that the model pays attention to it when deciding how to segment a word ending in “ing”. the performance of feature-based models, such as conditional random fields (crf) and support vector machines (svm), relies heavily on the manual choice of features. this could be a drawback for under-described languages, because if little linguistic description is available, how does one know which features are optimal for that language? fortunately, some feature-based models have been shown to perform reasonably well using language-independent features such as length of word or placement of letter in word (ruokolainen et al. 2016; moeller & hulden 2018). colorado research in linguistics, volume 25 (2021) 8 figure 4. feature-based machine learning requires a human to identify and extract features that a feature-based classification model such as a crf uses to provide the correct output currently, neural networks models, or deep learning models, are dominating nlp (goldberg 2017). even though they outperform older, feature-based models on almost all tasks, they did not become popular until the mid-2010s because they require greater computing power and, for some tasks, train more slowly (cotterell & heigold 2017). neural networks, illustrated in figure 5, refers to a family of supervised machine learning models that are composed of layers of statistical units. the layers essentially substitute the feature engineering needed in non-neural machine learning. multiple embedded layers allow the model to look at an exponential number of “semantically” neighboring instances of each training instance it encounters (bengio et al. 2003). the layers create intermediate representations of the data that allow the model to “learn” a distributed representation of elements within each instance (e.g., a distributed representation of words within a sentence). this ability of the model to learn requires no (or at most, quite simple) manual feature design. each unit in each layer is connected to each unit in the adjacent layers. vector representations of the data are received by an input layer and transformed in “hidden” layers. the hidden layers feed into a final logistic function layer (i.e., softmax) that outputs a prediction of each possible class as a probability between 0 and 1. the connections between layers are represented by learnable weights; the higher the weight the more influence a unit has on the result. since deep learning is supervised the weights are adjusted with feedback from the gold standard.2 this is done via stochastic gradient descent or some similar optimization algorithm (goldberg 2017) and backpropagation, which tells the model how to change the parameters which build the representation of each layer from the previous layer (lecun, bengio & hinton 2015). computational morphology for language description and documentation 9 figure 5. neural networks, or deep learning, models learn what features in the data are important for giving the correct output until recently, neural networks had the same great disadvantage that unsupervised learning has – superior performance required a great deal of data. data from ldd would have been considered inadequate to train neural networks (duong 2017). even now, a non-neural model can outperform any given neural model that is not tuned to low-resource settings and neural models can be difficult to optimize and tune for low-resource settings (popel & bojar 2018). new methods are being explored to overcome neural models’ dependence on large corpora. examples include fine-tuning a model to the specific task and input data, training intermediate steps, or augmenting the training data. van biljon et al. (2020) looked at fine-tuning a model and determined that shallowor medium-depth size transformer models, for example only 3 encoder and 3 decoder layers, give better results with limited training data. an example of an intermediate training step would be first training a segmentation model to produce surface segments (morphs) and from them to learn underlying forms of morphemes (e.g., “impossible” à “in-possible” à “neg-possible”) (cotterell, vieira & schütze 2016; liu et al. 2018; moeller et al. 2019). the third successful method is augmenting training data. augmentation can be done with artificial word forms (liu et al. 2018) or with information extracted from other resources such as grammars and dictionaries. these are just a few of techniques that have been investigate; there are probably many more that we have not yet discovered. although nlp research in lrl has been growing since the mid-2010’s, very little of it has been applied to linguistic on under-documented languages. one exception is the aggregation project (bender 2014) which has used igt to automatically infer grammatical structure for multiple languages (lepp, zamaraeva & bender 2019; wax 2014). much of their data comes from colorado research in linguistics, volume 25 (2021) 10 the online database of interlinear text (lewis & xia 2010, odin) which is a collection extracted from published linguistic articles or books. these igt excerpts differ from igts produced by field linguists in at least one important way. noise (i.e., typos, inconsistencies, etc.) is generally removed before publication, so that odin does not have the level of noise that field igt does which simplifies pre-processing and does not distract machine learning models with spurious patterns. 4. morphological analysis morphological analysis is a key activity in ldd. morphological analysis is particularly important when working with morphologically complex languages. languages that build words from multiple morphemes or via significant morphophonological changes produce a high number of inflected and compound words which appear to the machine as brand new, unrelated words (dreyer & eisner 2011; goldsmith, lee & xanthos 2017; hammarström & borin 2011; kann, cotterell & schütze 2016; ruokolainen et al. 2013). nlp systems that account for morphology can reduce data sparsity caused by an abundance of individual word forms (mccarthy et al. 2019; vylomova et al. 2020) and help mitigate bias in training data (zmigrod et al. 2019). computational morphological systems have often been limited to languages with publicly available structured data, for example, tables of inflectional patterns in online dictionaries like wiktionary. unfortunately, complete inflectional tables are not easily available for many of the world’s languages. morphological analysis can be separated into two core tasks (cotterell et al. 2015; hammarström & borin 2011; nicolai & kondrak 2017; palmer 2009). the first task is identifying morphemes by determining their shapes and marking boundaries between them, as was done for the lezgi noun in example 1b below. this is known as (unlabeled) morpheme segmentation (creutz & lagus 2007; snyder & barzilay 2008). the second task is deducing each morpheme’s meaning, which is known as parsing, or sometimes called morphological analysis by itself.3 this single step is known in linguistics as glossing, and in computational linguists as labeled morpheme segmentation or, merely, labeling, or tagging. together segmentation and glossing make up a significant part of interlinearization in documentary and descriptive linguistics. these two tasks (step 3 of bird and chiang’s workflow on) are often the most detailed analytical tasks undertaken while still in the field. they are also computational morphology for language description and documentation 11 perhaps the most time-consuming tasks, requiring at least as much, and probably more, time than transcription which can take up to 100 hours for each hour of recorded speech. the linguistic information provided by morpheme segments and glosses lays a vital foundation for subsequent descriptive work. many nlp models have been applied to morpheme segmentation and glossing. automatic morpheme segmentation is commonly traced to the early work of harris (1955) and much segmentation research since then has implemented unsupervised learning which he inspired (goldsmith 2001; creutz & lagus 2002; poon, cherry & toutanova 2009). the preponderance of unsupervised models was probably motivated by the difficulty of finding the high quantity and quality manually segmented data needed to train supervised models. lack of sufficient training data is illustrated by a recent supervised segmentation experiment (ansari et al. 2019) which needed to manually segment a corpus before conducting the experiment. in ldd, segmentation and glossing are typically tackled simultaneously. segmentation finds breaks between morphemes as for the lezgi noun in 1b. glossing labels morphemes with their meaning or function, as in 1c. glossing does not require segmentation, and if done independently is sometimes referred to as parsing. parsing by itself would only provide the information in 1c without indication of morpheme boundaries. (1) a. paçahdin b. paçah-di-n c. king-obl-gen d. ‘king’s’ nlp experiments with lrl often treat segmentation and glossing as separate tasks. other nlp works have taken a tip from ldd and joined the two tasks. joint learning of segmentation and glossing, or labeled segmentation, is less common but has been successful for lrl (cotterell et al., 2015; moeller & hulden, 2018). in general, joint learning is characterized by training on different types of information and is based on the intuition that one type of linguistic knowledge (e.g., syntax) can improve results in another domain (e.g., morphology) (goldsmith et al., 2017). much nlp work focuses on glossing only, which assumes that the data is already is, or does not need to be, segmented into morphemes. mcmillan-major (2020) trained systems to produce a gloss colorado research in linguistics, volume 25 (2021) 12 line by incorporating predictions made from existing segmentations and from the free translation enriched with intent (georgi 2016). both samardzic et al. ( 2015) also used information from other igt lines such as translation and part-of-speech tags to train a system to gloss. 5. inflectional paradigm learning morphology includes the inference of rules that govern word building strategies and the discovery of how word forms are systematically related (roark & sproat 2007). therefore, virpioja et al. (2011) add a third task to morphological analysis: identification of morphologically related words through patterns of inflection. durrett and denero (2013) claim that the inference of inflectional patterns must be based on three assumptions. first, each lexical category is dictated by a subsystem of rules. russian nouns, for example, can be generalized into three simplified patterns of inflection that are usually labeled “masculine”, “feminine”, and “neuter”. lexemes that adhere to the same pattern are grouped into inflectional classes (sometimes called “declensions” for nouns and adjectives and “conjugations” for verbs). the patterns themselves are known as inflectional paradigms. second, inflectional changes are triggered by context and, therefore, the patterns can be inferred from context. descriptive studies look to phonology or else to both phonological structure and the semantic content of the lexeme for the triggering context. computational models, due to the nature of their input, look to orthographic context. the third assumption is that each stem morpheme is inflected consistently according to the inflectional class it belongs to with any idiosyncrasies of the stem itself. monson et al. (2007) give two guiding principles for computational paradigm learning. one is that inflected forms of a lemma look similar to each other. this principle holds well enough to serve as a solid working assumption, although languages abound with exceptions and inflection can even be suppletive (e.g., go vs. went, etc.). the second principle is that “in any given corpus, a particular lexeme will likely not occur in all possible inflected forms”. inflectional paradigms can be quite large. languages may have hundreds or even thousands of forms per lemma (corbett 2013). even with a large corpus, attempts to learn paradigms, like the one illustrated in figure 6, by only using the corpus will leave empty cells in the paradigm’s table. it is possible that certain forms may never occur in natural language even though they are grammatically possible (silfverberg & hulden 2018). additionally, frequent words often follow irregular patterns, as does computational morphology for language description and documentation 13 the english verb be. for these reasons, the ldd workflow includes elicitation of morphological paradigms (lupke 2010; boerger et al. 2016). figure 6. inflectional paradigm of the english verb “to be” computational models can learn frequent and regular paradigmatic patterns with over 90% accuracy even in low-resource settings (hammarström & borin 2011; durrett & denero 2013; ahlberg, forsberg & hulden 2014). most early work on paradigm induction applied unsupervised learning to concatenative morphology (goldsmith 2001; chan 2006; monson et al. 2007). the unsupervised version of the paradigm completion task (jin et al. 2020) has been the subject of a recent shared task (kann et al. 2020), with the conclusion that it is extremely challenging for current state-of-the-art systems. semi-supervised models have been more recently applied on concatenative and non-concatenative languages (dreyer & eisner 2011; durrett & denero 2013). supervised learning has also been applied to inflectional morphology. some work focuses on generating inflected forms, including work motivated by the paradigm cell filling problem (pcfp), illustrated in figure 7 (ackerman, blevins & malouf 2009). the pcfp is framed as an attempt to model how new speakers (e.g., young children ) infer the inflected forms they have not yet encountered (dreyer & eisner 2011; ahlberg, forsberg & hulden 2015; malouf 2016; silfverberg & hulden 2018). colorado research in linguistics, volume 25 (2021) 14 figure 7. illustration of the paradigm cell filling problem (silfverberg and hulden, 2018) with spanish verb paradigms other work with supervised learning has attempted to induce inflectional paradigms from text. with this method, paradigms are completed by finding overlapping patterns from several incomplete paradigms in text. one method does this by abstracting the longest common subsequence of characters in inflected forms of the same lexeme and then clustering words with same or similar patterns (ahlberg, forsberg & hulden 2014; ahlberg, forsberg & hulden 2015). this is illustrated in figure 8. exceptions or irregularities in the paradigms can be accounted for by collapsing the similar patterns. the experiment has been quite successful for a few indoeuropean languages (german, spanish, catalan, french, galician, italian, portuguese, russian), as well as maltese and finnish. kann et al. (2017a) differed from other approaches in that they encoded multiple inflected forms of a lemma to provide complementary information in order to generate unknown forms. cotterell et al. (2017) introduced neural graphical models which completed paradigms based on principal parts. computational morphology for language description and documentation 15 figure 8. ahlberg et al. (2015): inducing paradigms the longest common subsequences (lcs) rng or swm are extracted (step 1) and represented as x1 and x2 which replace the lcs (step 2). words with the same inflectional patterns will be identical (step 3) and can be generalized into paradigms (step 4). the remaining characters i, a, u are assumed to be inflectional affixes. most recent work in paradigm induction has been concerned with generation (as opposed to analysis) of inflected words and has focused on morphological inflection or reinflection (durrett & denero 2013; nicolai, cherry & kondrak 2015; faruqui et al. 2016; kann & schütze 2016; aharoni & goldberg 2017). partially building on these, other research has developed machine learning models which are more suitable for lrl and perform well with limited data (kann, cotterell & schütze 2017b; sharma, katrapati & sharma 2018; makarov & clematide 2018b; wu & cotterell 2019; kann, bowman & cho 2020; wu, cotterell & hulden 2021). 6. conclusion morphology comprises word-building properties in human languages and their accompanying (morpho)syntactic phenomena. historically, nlp and “paper-and-pencil linguists” have taken different and sometimes seemingly incompatible approaches to morphology (karttunen & beesley 2005). despite their out-of-sync approaches, both benefit from morphological analysis (cotterell et al. 2015). morphological analysis includes morpheme segmentation, glossing, and learning inflectional paradigmatic patterns. this paper presented the history of computational models for morphological analysis and looked specifically at their application and success when limited training data is available. the work discussed in this paper demonstrate that computational models colorado research in linguistics, volume 25 (2021) 16 and methods can both successfully perform morphological analysis. this success may be of great benefit for the documentation and description of endangered or under-documented languages. references ackerman, farrell, james p. blevins & robert malouf. 2009. parts and wholes: implicative patterns in inflectional paradigms. in analogy in grammar. oxford: oxford university press. aharoni, roee & yoav goldberg. 2017. morphological inflection generation with hard monotonic attention. proceedings of the 55th annual meeting of the association for computational linguistics (volume 1: long papers) 1. 2004–2015. https://aclanthology.coli.uni-saarland.de/papers/p17-1183/p17-1183 (16 january, 2018). ahlberg, malin, markus forsberg & mans hulden. 2014. semi-supervised learning of morphological paradigms and lexicons. in proceedings of 14th conference of the european chapter of the association for computational linguistics, 569–578. gothenburg, sweden: association for computational linguistics. http://www.aclweb.org/anthology/e/e14/e14-1.pdf#page=569 (1 november, 2016). ahlberg, malin, markus forsberg & mans hulden. 2015. paradigm classification in supervised learning of morphology. in proceedings of the 2015 conference of the north american chapter of the association for computational linguistics: human language technologies, 1024–1029. denver, colorado: association for computational linguistics. http://www.aclweb.org/anthology/n15-1107 (18 january, 2019). anastasopoulos, antonios, david chiang & long duong. 2016. an unsupervised probability model for speech-to-translation alignment of low-resource languages. in proceedings of the 2016 conference on empirical methods in natural language processing, 1255–1263. austin, texas: association for computational linguistics. https://aclweb.org/anthology/d16-1133 (2 july, 2018). ansari, ebrahim, zdeněk žabokrtský, mohammad mahmoudi, hamid haghdoost & jonáš vidra. 2019. supervised morphological segmentation using rich annotated lexicon. in proceedings of the international conference on recent advances in natural language processing (ranlp 2019), 52–61. varna, bulgaria: incoma ltd. https://www.aclweb.org/anthology/r19-1007 (25 january, 2020). computational morphology for language description and documentation 17 auer, eric, albert russel, han sloetjes, peter wittenburg, oliver schreer, s. masnieri, daniel schneider & sebastian tschöpel. 2010. elan as flexible annotation framework for sound and image processing detectors. in nicoletta calzolari, khalid choukri, bente maegaard, joseph mariani, jan odijk, stelios piperidis, mike rosner & daniel tapias (eds.), european language resources association lrec 2010: proceedings of the 7th international language resources and evaluation, 890–893. paris: elra: european language resources association. http://dblp.unitrier.de/db/conf/lrec/lrec2010.html#auerrswsmst10 (30 january, 2014). baldridge, jason & miles osborne. 2008. active learning and logarithmic opinion pools for hpsg parse selection. natural language engineering 14(2). 191–222. baldridge, jason & alexis palmer. 2009. how well does active learning actually work? timebased evaluation of cost-reduction strategies for language documentation. in proceedings of the 2009 conference on empirical methods in natural language processing, 296– 305. singapore. http://www.aclweb.org/anthology/d/d09/d09-1031.pdf. bender, emily m. 2014. language collage: grammatical description with the lingo grammar matrix. in proceedings of the ninth international conference of language resources and evaluation (lrec-2014), 2447–2451. http://www.lrecconf.org/proceedings/lrec2014/pdf/639_paper.pdf. bengio, yoshua, réjean ducharme, pascal vincent & christian jauvin. 2003. a neural probabilistic language model. journal of machine learning research 3. 1137–1155. bergmanis, toms, katharina kann, hinrich schütze & sharon goldwater. 2017. training data augmentation for low-resource morphological inflection. proceedings of the conll sigmorphon 2017 shared task: universal morphological reinflection 31–39. https://aclanthology.coli.uni-saarland.de/papers/k17-2002/k17-2002 (16 january, 2018). biljon, elan van, arnu pretorius & julia kreutzer. 2020. on optimal transformer depth for low-resource language translation. arxiv:2004.04418 [cs]. http://arxiv.org/abs/2004.04418 (14 may, 2020). bird, steven. 2009. natural language processing and linguistic fieldwork. computational linguistics 35(3). 469–474. http://dx.doi.org/10.1162/coli.35.3.469 (16 march, 2015). bird, steven & david chiang. 2012. machine translation for language preservation. in proceedings of coling 2012, 125–134. mumbai. colorado research in linguistics, volume 25 (2021) 18 boerger, brenda h., sarah ruth moeller, will reiman & stephen self. 2016. language and culture documentation manual. leanpub. https://leanpub.com/languageandculturedocumentationmanual (22 may, 2020). bowern, claire. 2008. linguistic fieldwork: a practical guide. houndmills, basingstoke, hampshire [england]; new york: palgrave macmillan. chan, erwin. 2006. learning probabilistic paradigms for morphology in a latent class model. in proceedings of the eighth meeting of the acl special interest group on computational phonology and morphology (sigphon ’06), 69–78. stroudsburg, pa, usa: association for computational linguistics. http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1622165.1622174. corbett, greville g. 2013. the unique challenge of the archi paradigm. in chundra cathcart, shinae kang & clare s. sandy (eds.), proceedings of the 37th annual meeting of the berkeley linguistics society:special session on languages of the caucasus, 52–67. berkeley, ca. https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.657.9753&rep=rep1&type=pd f (12 january, 2021). cotterell, ryan & georg heigold. 2017. cross-lingual character-level neural morphological tagging. proceedings of the 2017 conference on empirical methods in natural language processing 748–759. https://aclanthology.coli.uni-saarland.de/papers/d171078/d17-1078 (16 january, 2018). cotterell, ryan, christo kirov, john sylak-glassman, géraldine walther, ekaterina vylomova, arya d. mccarthy, katharina kann, et al. 2018. the conll–sigmorphon 2018 shared task: universal morphological reinflection. in proceedings of the conll sigmorphon 2018 shared task: universal morphological reinflection, 1–27. brussels: association for computational linguistics. http://www.aclweb.org/anthology/k18-3001 (2 november, 2018). cotterell, ryan, christo kirov, john sylak-glassman, géraldine walther, ekaterina vylomova, patrick xia, manaal faruqui, et al. 2017. conll-sigmorphon 2017 shared task: universal morphological reinflection in 52 languages. in proceedings of the conll sigmorphon 2017 shared task: universal morphological reinflection, 1–30. computational morphology for language description and documentation 19 vancouver: association for computational linguistics. http://www.aclweb.org/anthology/k17-2001. cotterell, ryan, christo kirov, john sylak-glassman, david yarowsky, jason eisner & mans hulden. 2016. the sigmorphon 2016 shared task—morphological reinflection. in proceedings of the 14th sigmorphon workshop on computational research in phonetics, phonology, and morphology, 10–22. cotterell, ryan, thomas müller, alexander m. fraser & hinrich schütze. 2015. labeled morphological segmentation with semi-markov models. in proceedings of the nineteenth conference on computational natural language learning, 164–174. beijing, china: association for computational linguistics. cotterell, ryan, john sylak-glassman & christo kirov. 2017. neural graphical models over strings for principal parts morphological paradigm completion. proceedings of the 15th conference of the european chapter of the association for computational linguistics: volume 2, short papers 2. 759–765. https://aclanthology.coli.uni-saarland.de/papers/e172120/e17-2120 (16 january, 2018). cotterell, ryan, tim vieira & hinrich schütze. 2016. a joint model of orthography and morphological segmentation. proceedings of the 2016 conference of the north american chapter of the association for computational linguistics: human language technologies 664–669. https://aclanthology.coli.uni-saarland.de/papers/n16-1080/n161080 (16 january, 2018). cox, christopher, gilles bouliame & jahangir alam. 2019. taking aim at the transcription bottleneck: integrating speech technology into language documentation and conservation. slideshow presented at the 6th international conference on language documentation and conservation (icdlc), honolulu, hi. https://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/handle/10125/44841. creutz, mathias & krista lagus. 2002. unsupervised discovery of morphemes. in proceedings of the acl-02 workshop on morphological and phonological learning-volume 6, 21–30. philadelphia, pa: association for computational linguistics. creutz, mathias & krista lagus. 2007. unsupervised models for morpheme segmentation and morphology learning. acm trans. speech lang. process. 4(1). 3:1-3:34. http://users.ics.aalto.fi/krista/papers/creutz07acmtslp.pdf. colorado research in linguistics, volume 25 (2021) 20 czaykowska-higgins, ewa. 2009. research models, community engagement, and linguistic fieldwork: reflections on working within canadian indigenous communities. language documentation & conservation 3(1). 15–50. http://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/bitstream/handle/10125/4423/czaykowskahiggins.p df?sequence=1. dreyer, markus & jason eisner. 2011. discovering morphological paradigms from plain text using a dirichlet process mixture model. in proceedings of the conference on empirical methods in natural language processing, 616–627. association for computational linguistics. duong, long. 2017. natural language processing for resource-poor languages. melbourne, australia: university of melbourne phd thesis. http://minervaaccess.unimelb.edu.au/handle/11343/192938 (29 june, 2018). duong, long, antonios anastasopoulos, david chiang, steven bird & trevor cohn. 2016. an attentional model for speech translation without transcription. in proceedings of the 2016 conference of the north american chapter of the association for computational linguistics: human language technologies, 949–959. san diego, california: association for computational linguistics. http://www.aclweb.org/anthology/n16-1109 (6 july, 2018). durrett, greg & john denero. 2013. supervised learning of complete morphological paradigms. in proceedings of the 2013 conference of the north american chapter of the association for computational linguistics: human language technologies, 1185–1195. atlanta, georgia: association for computational linguistics. https://research.google.com/pubs/pub41850.html (2 january, 2018). faruqui, manaal, yulia tsvetkov, graham neubig & chris dyer. 2016. morphological inflection generation using character sequence to sequence learning. in proceedings of the 2016 conference of the north american chapter of the association for computational linguistics: human language technologies, 634–643. san diego, california: association for computational linguistics. https://www.aclweb.org/anthology/n16-1077 (28 april, 2021). felt, paul. 2012. improving the effectiveness of machine-assisted annotation. brigham young university ma thesis. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/3214. computational morphology for language description and documentation 21 foley, ben, josh arnold, rolando coto-solano, gautier durantin, t. mark ellison, daan van esch, scott heath, et al. 2018. building speech recognition systems for language documentation: the coedl endangered language pipeline and inference system. in proceedings of the 6th international workshop on spoken language technologies for under-resourced languages (sltu 2018). https://www.iscaspeech.org/archive/sltu_2018/pdfs/ben.pdf (7 march, 2019). forsberg, markus & mans hulden. 2016. learning transducer models for morphological analysis from example inflections. in proceedings of the sigfsm workshop on statistical nlp and weighted automata, 42–50. berlin, germany: association for computational linguistics. http://anthology.aclweb.org/w16-2405 (18 january, 2019). georgi, ryan alden. 2016. from aari to zulu: massively multilingual creation of language tools using interlinear glossed text. phd thesis. https://digital.lib.washington.edu:443/researchworks/handle/1773/37168 (28 september, 2020). goldberg, yoav. 2017. neural network methods for natural language processing (synthesis lectures on human language technologies 37). morgan & claypool. http://www.morganclaypool.com/doi/10.2200/s00762ed1v01y201703hlt037 (12 january, 2019). goldsmith, john. 2001. unsupervised learning of the morphology of a natural language. computational linguistics 27(2). 153–198. goldsmith, john, jackson lee & aris xanthos. 2017. computational learning of morphology. annual review of linguistics 3. 85–106. hammarström, harald & lars borin. 2011. unsupervised learning of morphology. computational linguistics 37(2). 309–350. http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/coli_a_00050 (29 august, 2017). harris, zellig. 1955. from phoneme to morpheme. language 31(2). 190–222. he, luheng, julian michael, mike lewis & luke zettlemoyer. 2016. human-in-the-loop parsing. in proceedings of the 2016 conference on empirical methods in natural language processing, 2337–2342. austin, texas: association for computational linguistic. colorado research in linguistics, volume 25 (2021) 22 himmelmann, nikolaus p. 1998. documentary and descriptive linguistics. linguistics (36). 161–195. jin, huiming, liwei cai, yihui peng, chen xia, arya mccarthy & katharina kann. 2020. unsupervised morphological paradigm completion. in proceedings of the 58th annual meeting of the association for computational linguistics, 6696–6707. online: association for computational linguistics. https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/2020.aclmain.598. https://www.aclweb.org/anthology/2020.acl-main.598 (8 april, 2021). kann, katharina, samuel r. bowman & kyunghyun cho. 2020. learning to learn morphological inflection for resource-poor languages. proceedings of the aaai conference on artificial intelligence 34(05). 8058–8065. https://ojs.aaai.org/index.php/aaai/article/view/6316 (26 january, 2021). kann, katharina, ryan cotterell & hinrich schütze. 2016. neural morphological analysis: encoding-decoding canonical segments. in proceedings of the 2016 conference on empirical methods in natural language processing, 961–967. austin, texas: association for computational linguistics. http://aclweb.org/anthology/d16-1097 (6 november, 2020). kann, katharina, ryan cotterell & hinrich schütze. 2017a. neural multi-source morphological reinflection. proceedings of the 15th conference of the european chapter of the association for computational linguistics: volume 1, long papers 514–524. kann, katharina, ryan cotterell & hinrich schütze. 2017b. one-shot neural cross-lingual transfer for paradigm completion. in proceedings of the 55th annual meeting of the association for computational linguistics (volume 1: long papers), 1993–2003. vancouver, canada: association for computational linguistics. https://www.aclweb.org/anthology/p17-1182 (26 january, 2021). kann, katharina, arya d. mccarthy, garrett nicolai & mans hulden. 2020. the sigmorphon 2020 shared task on unsupervised morphological paradigm completion. in proceedings of the 17th sigmorphon workshop on computational research in phonetics, phonology, and morphology, 51–62. online: association for computational linguistics. https://www.aclweb.org/anthology/2020.sigmorphon-1.3 (8 april, 2021). computational morphology for language description and documentation 23 kann, katharina & hinrich schütze. 2016. single-model encoder-decoder with explicit morphological representation for reinflection. in proceedings of the 54th annual meeting of the association for computational linguistics (volume 2: short papers), 555–560. berlin, germany: association for computational linguistics. http://anthology.aclweb.org/p16-2090 (5 november, 2018). karttunen, lauri & kenneth r. beesley. 2005. twenty-five years of finite-state morphology. in inquiries into words, a festschrift for kimmo koskenniemi on his 60th birthday, 71–83. csli publications. kirschenbaum, amit, peter wittenburg & gerhard heyer. 2012. unsupervised morphological analysis of small corpora: first experiments with kilivila. language documentation & conservation special publication (potentials of language documentation: methods, analyses, and utilization) 3. 25–31. http://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/bitstream/handle/10125/4513/04kirschenbaumetal. pdf. kohonen, oskar, sami virpioja & krista lagus. 2010. semi-supervised learning of concatenative morphology. in proceedings of the 11th meeting of the acl special interest group on computational morphology and phonology, 78–86. association for computational linguistics. lecun, yann, yoshua bengio & geoffrey hinton. 2015. deep learning. nature 521(7553). 436– 444. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature14539. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature14539. lepp, haley, olga zamaraeva & emily m. bender. 2019. visualizing inferred morphotactic systems. in proceedings of the 2019 conference of the north american chapter of the association for computational linguistics (demonstrations), 127–131. minneapolis, minnesota: association for computational linguistics. https://www.aclweb.org/anthology/n19-4022 (6 april, 2020). lewis, william d. & fei xia. 2010. developing odin: a multilingual repository of annotated language data for hundreds of the world’s languages. literary and linguistic computing 25(3). 303–319. http://llc.oxfordjournals.org/content/25/3/303 (29 january, 2014). liu, ling, ilamvazhuthy subbiah, adam wiemerslage, jonathan lilley & sarah moeller. 2018. morphological reinflection in context: cu boulder’s submission to conllcolorado research in linguistics, volume 25 (2021) 24 sigmorphon 2018 shared task. in proceedings of the conll sigmorphon 2018 shared task: universal morphological reinflection, 86–92. brussels: association for computational linguistics. http://www.aclweb.org/anthology/k18-3010 (2 november, 2018). lupke, friederike. 2010. data collection methods for field-based language documentation. language documentation and description 7. 55–104. makarov, peter & simon clematide. 2018a. uzh at conll–sigmorphon 2018 shared task on universal morphological reinflection. in proceedings of the conll–sigmorphon 2018 shared task: universal morphological reinflection, 69–75. brussels: association for computational linguistics. https://www.aclweb.org/anthology/k18-3008 (16 may, 2019). makarov, peter & simon clematide. 2018b. imitation learning for neural morphological string transduction. in proceedings of the 2018 conference on empirical methods in natural language processing, 2877–2882. brussels, belgium: association for computational linguistics. https://www.aclweb.org/anthology/d18-1314 (28 april, 2021). makarov, peter, tatiana ruzsics & simon clematide. 2017. align and copy: uzh at sigmorphon 2017 shared task for morphological reinflection. in proceedings of the conll sigmorphon 2017 shared task: universal morphological reinflection, 49– 57. vancouver: association for computational linguistics. http://www.aclweb.org/anthology/k17-2004 (3 november, 2018). malouf, robert. 2016. generating morphological paradigms with a recurrent neural network. san diego linguistic papers 6. 122–129. mccarthy, arya d, ekaterina vylomova, shijie wu, chaitanya malaviya, lawrence wolfsonkin, garrett nicolai, christo kirov, et al. 2019. the sigmorphon 2019 shared task: crosslinguality and context in morphology. in proceedings of the 16th sigmorphon workshop on computational research in phonetics, phonology, and morphology. florence, italy: association for computational linguistics. mcmillan-major, angelina. 2020. automating gloss generation in interlinear glossed text. in proceedings of the society for computation in linguistics, vol. 3, 338–349. https://doi.org/10.7275/tsmk-sa32. https://scholarworks.umass.edu/scil/vol3/iss1/33. computational morphology for language description and documentation 25 moeller, sarah & mans hulden. 2018. automatic glossing in a low-resource setting for language documentation. in proceedings of the workshop on computational modeling of polysynthetic languages, 84–93. santa fe, new mexico, usa: association for computational linguistics. http://www.aclweb.org/anthology/w18-4809 (22 august, 2018). moeller, sarah, ghazaleh kazeminejad, andrew cowell & mans hulden. 2018. a neural morphological analyzer for arapaho verbs learned from a finite state transducer. in proceedings of the workshop on computational modeling of polysynthetic languages, 12–20. santa fe, new mexico, usa: association for computational linguistics. http://www.aclweb.org/anthology/w18-4802 (22 august, 2018). moeller, sarah, ghazaleh kazeminejad, andrew cowell & mans hulden. 2019. improving lowresource morphological learning with intermediate forms from finite state transducers. in proceedings of the workshop on computational methods for endangered languages, vol. 1. honolulu, hi. https://www.aclweb.org/anthology/w196011/. monson, christian, jaime carbonell, alon lavie & lori levin. 2007. paramor: finding paradigms across morphology. in advances in multilingual and multimodal information retrieval (lecture notes in computer science), 900–907. springer, berlin, heidelberg. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-540-85760-0_115 (27 february, 2018). moon, taesun, katrin erk & jason baldridge. 2009. unsupervised morphological segmentation and clustering with document boundaries. in proceedings of the 2009 conference on empirical methods in natural language processing: volume 2, 668–677. association for computational linguistics. nicolai, garrett, colin cherry & grzegorz kondrak. 2015. inflection generation as discriminative string transduction. in proceedings of the 2015 conference of the north american chapter of the association for computational linguistics: human language technologies, 922–931. denver, colorado: association for computational linguistics. https://doi.org/10.3115/v1/n15-1093. https://www.aclweb.org/anthology/n15-1093 (26 january, 2021). nicolai, garrett, kyle gorman & ryan cotterell (eds.). 2020. proceedings of the 17th sigmorphon workshop on computational research in phonetics, phonology, and colorado research in linguistics, volume 25 (2021) 26 morphology. online: association for computational linguistics. https://www.aclweb.org/anthology/2020.sigmorphon-1.0 (8 april, 2021). nicolai, garrett & grzegorz kondrak. 2017. morphological analysis without expert annotation. proceedings of the 15th conference of the european chapter of the association for computational linguistics: volume 2, short papers 2. 211–216. https://aclanthology.coli.uni-saarland.de/papers/e17-2034/e17-2034 (16 january, 2018). palmer, alexis mary. 2009. semi-automated annotation and active learning for language documentation. university of texas at austin phd thesis. palmer, alexis, taesun moon, jason baldridge, katrin erk, eric campbell & telma can. 2010. computational strategies for reducing annotation effort in language documentation. linguistic issues in language technology 3(4). 1–42. http://journals.linguisticsociety.org/elanguage/lilt/article/view/663.html (24 january, 2014). poon, hoifung, colin cherry & kristina toutanova. 2009. unsupervised morphological segmentation with log-linear models. in proceedings of human language technologies: the 2009 annual conference of the north american chapter of the association for computational linguistics, 209–217. association for computational linguistics. popel, martin & ondřej bojar. 2018. training tips for the transformer model. the prague bulletin of mathematical linguistics 110(1). 43–70. http://content.sciendo.com/view/journals/pralin/110/1/article-p43.xml (13 may, 2020). rice, sally & dorothy thunder. 2017. community-based corpus-building: three case studies. presented at the 5th international conference on language documentation and conservation (icldc), honolulu, hi. http://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/handle/10125/42052 (6 june, 2017). roark, brian & richard william sproat. 2007. computational approaches to morphology and syntax. oxford; new york: oxford university press. rogers, chris. 2010. review of fieldworks language explorer (flex) 3.0. language documentation & conservation 4. 78–84. http://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/handle/10125/4471 (13 march, 2018). ruokolainen, teemu, oskar kohonen, kairit sirts, stig-arne grönroos, mikko kurimo & sami virpioja. 2016. a comparative study of minimally supervised morphological computational morphology for language description and documentation 27 segmentation. computational linguistics 42(1). 91–120. http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/10.1162/coli_a_00243 (17 january, 2018). ruokolainen, teemu, oskar kohonen, sami virpioja & mikko kurimo. 2013. supervised morphological segmentation in a low-resource learning setting using conditional random fields. in conll, 29–37. samardzic, tanja, robert schikowski & sabine stoll. 2015. automatic interlinear glossing as two-level sequence classification. in proceedings of the 9th sighum workshop on language technology for cultural herita ge, social sciences, and humanities (latech), 68–72. beijing, china: association for computational linguistics. http://aclweb.org/anthology/w15-3710 (25 may, 2020). seifart, frank, nicholas evans, harald hammarström & stephen c. levinson. 2018. language documentation twenty-five years on. language 94(4). e324–e345. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/712110 (8 october, 2019). sharma, abhishek, ganesh katrapati & dipti misra sharma. 2018. iit(bhu)–iiith at conll– sigmorphon 2018 shared task on universal morphological reinflection. in proceedings of the conll–sigmorphon 2018 shared task: universal morphological reinflection, 105–111. brussels: association for computational linguistics. https://www.aclweb.org/anthology/k18-3013 (26 january, 2021). silfverberg, miikka & mans hulden. 2018. an encoder-decoder approach to the paradigm cell filling problem. in proceedings of the 2018 conference on empirical methods in natural language processing, 2883–2889. brussels, belgium: association for computational linguistics. https://www.aclweb.org/anthology/d18-1315 (25 april, 2019). snyder, benjamin & regina barzilay. 2008. unsupervised multilingual learning for morphological segmentation. in acl, 737–745. soricut, radu & franz och. 2015. unsupervised morphology induction using word embeddings. in proceedings of the 2015 conference of the north american chapter of the association for computational linguistics: human language technologies, 1627– 1637. denver, colorado. sudhakar, akhilesh & anil kumar singh. 2017. experiments on morphological reinflection: conll-2017 shared task. proceedings of the conll sigmorphon 2017 shared colorado research in linguistics, volume 25 (2021) 28 task: universal morphological reinflection 71–78. https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/k172007. https://aclanthology.coli.uni-saarland.de/papers/k17-2007/k17-2007 (16 january, 2018). vallejos, rosa. 2014. integrating language documentation, language preservation, and linguistic research: working with the kokamas from the amazon. language documentation & conservation 8. 38–65. http://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/bitstream/handle/10125/4618/vallejos.pdf?sequenc e=1. virpioja, sami, ville turunen, sebastian spiegler, oskar kohonen & mikko kurimo. 2011. empirical comparison of evaluation methods for unsupervised learning of morphology. trait. autom. des langues 52(2). 45–90. vylomova, ekaterina, jennifer white, elizabeth salesky, sabrina j. mielke, shijie wu, edoardo maria ponti, rowan hall maudslay, et al. 2020. sigmorphon 2020 shared task 0: typologically diverse morphological inflection. in proceedings of the 17th sigmorphon workshop on computational research in phonetics, phonology, and morphology, 1–39. online: association for computational linguistics. https://www.aclweb.org/anthology/2020.sigmorphon-1.1 (27 april, 2021). wang, linlin, zhu cao, yu xia & gerard de melo. 2016. morphological segmentation with window lstm neural networks. in aaai’16: proceedings of the thirtieth aaai conference on artificial intelligence, 2842–2848. wax, david allen. 2014. automated grammar engineering for verbal morphology. thesis. https://digital.lib.washington.edu:443/researchworks/handle/1773/25373 (6 april, 2020). woodbury, tony. 2003. defining documentary linguistics. language documentation and description 1. 35–51. wu, shijie & ryan cotterell. 2019. exact hard monotonic attention for character-level transduction. in proceedings of the 57th annual meeting of the association for computational linguistics, 1530–1537. florence, italy: association for computational linguistics. https://www.aclweb.org/anthology/p19-1148 (26 january, 2021). wu, shijie, ryan cotterell & mans hulden. 2021. applying the transformer to character-level transduction. in proceedings of the 16th conference of the european chapter of the computational morphology for language description and documentation 29 association for computational linguistics: main volume, 1901--1907. association for computational linguistics. https://aclanthology.org/2021.eacl-main.163. xia, fei, william d. lewis, michael wayne goodman, glenn slayden, ryan georgi, joshua crowgey & emily m. bender. 2016. enriching a massively multilingual database of interlinear glossed text. language resources and evaluation 50(2). 321–349. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10579-015-9325-4 (14 january, 2020). zmigrod, ran, sabrina j. mielke, hanna wallach & ryan cotterell. 2019. counterfactual data augmentation for mitigating gender stereotypes in languages with rich morphology. in proceedings of the 57th annual meeting of the association for computational linguistics, 1651–1661. florence, italy: association for computational linguistics. https://www.aclweb.org/anthology/p19-1161 (27 april, 2021). colorado research in linguistics, volume 25 (2021) 30 endnotes 1 according to lorelei (https://www.darpa.mil/program/low-resource-languages-for-emergentincidents), ``low-resource'' refers to languages for which no automated human language technology exists. this is due to a lack of linguistic resources. \citet{szymanski_morphological_2012} estimates that 99\% of the world's languages are ``resource-poor''. in linguistics, it is more common to hear other terms. the current work uses the term ``under-described languages'' to refer to languages with minimal published linguistic resources; these have been called ``very scarce-resource language'' \citep{duong_natural_2017}. the term ``under-documented languages'' (duong's ``extremely scarce-resource languages'') refer to languages that lack sufficient raw or annotated data to write a full reference grammar. the term ``endangered languages'' refers to languages that are predicted to have no native speakers within a generation or two. most endangered languages are under-documented and/or under-described, as well as fitting the definition of low-resource languages. the distinctions between the terms are rarely crucial in the current work. in practice, these terms can be used almost interchangeably. 2 deep learning morphological segmentation has been performed on unsupervised texts with some success (wang et al. 2016). 3nicolai and kondrak (2017) subdivide morphological analysis slightly differently, making a distinction between morphological “analysis” and morphological tagging. they describe morphological analysis as a combination of segmentation and labeling, though they later state that “morphological tagging can be performed as a downstream application of morphological analysis” (p. 211), thereby adhering to the same two distinctions described in this section. microsoft word berlova-cril2021.docx 1 should u rly be txtng ur s/o anya berlova university of colorado boulder this paper examines the impact of phone-based communication and the language of texting on romantic relationships in the united states. texting has become an integral aspect of romantic relationships for many young adults (luo 2014), but expert opinion is divided on the subject. certain studies have shown that texting may lead to “disconnect” and mixed signals, further amplified by the lack of “standardization in [emoji] deployment." conversely, others have found that the similarity of mobile communication between partners may lead to “higher understanding” and greater relationship satisfaction, and emoji usage can be effective in cross-cultural engagement and as a signal of conversational and relational exclusivity. through an analysis of research in media and relationships, the paper argues that the ambiguity presented by texting and phone-based communication can be dangerous, but can also contribute to powerful in-group and pro-social activity. if misused, the effect on romantic relationships can be adverse, so it is crucial that both partners are aware of the possible pitfalls to be able to navigate them with care. keywords: text messaging, new media, technologically mediated communication, cell phone, emoji 1. introduction in the current technological world, the phone has emerged as a popular tool of communication. according to luo (2014:145), “[american] cell owners between the ages of 18 and 24 exchange an average of 109.5 messages on a normal day.” hence, it is logical to assume that texting has become an integral aspect of romantic relationships for many young adults in the united states. however, as discussed by mcmanus (2018), the texting language is viewed as a lesser form of english. furthermore, many linguists and sociologists view texting as a harmful communication tool, with negative effects on both the conversation and the relationship between the parties involved. this paper will aim to answer the question of how the language of texting affects romantic relationships in the united states, and whether it is truly problematic as a language in regard to clarity, understanding, and positive development of the relationship. the first section of the paper details the impact of over-reliance on the texting medium, as well as the positive role texting can serve in relationship formation. the second section of the paper highlights the stylistic features of texting, including emojis and acronyms such as ‘lol’, and their effect on relationship colorado research in linguistics, volume 25 (2021) 2 dynamics. the analysis contributes to literature in linguistics on the social effect of mobile communication within the us. 2. the role of texting in establishing or destabilizing relationships the utilization of texting provides affordances as well as hindrances for romantic relationships. a study by schade et al. (2013) of 276 young adults in the united states examines the lower relationship quality brought about by texting for both men and women, in regard to both texting that is used to work through conflicts or apologize, or texting that is simply too frequent. all of the study participants were either in serious relationships, engaged, or married. study results revealed that texting is a narrow form of expression, so neither side can fully express nor understand the breadth of the emotions of the other person. schade et al. propose that texting may be a safer form of communication, but may serve as a replacement for in-person conversations, leading to disconnect (schade et al. 2013). furthermore, as noted by mcsweeney (2019), the texting component forces people to consider a “new layer of compatibility” when assessing their romantic partner. accurately doing so may be difficult and hinder a relationship’s successful development. mcsweeney (2019) explains that a large amount of information is exchanged over text, but this can open the door to misinterpretation because “people have different language skills, dialects, and even expectations.” hence, developing trust and intimacy may not be easily achieved through the texting platform. the intimacy issue and the dangers of a reliance on the texting medium can further be seen in a study conducted by gershon (2011) regarding media switching and relationships. gershon collected 72 interviews with undergraduates at indiana university, and an issue around media switching had surfaced: more specifically, the lack of transition between texting to in-person conversations. according to one of the interviewees, trill, her relationship fell apart when she was not able to communicate with her romantic interest, todd, in person. the two would text, but when they found each other face to face, “all they did was make out” and never actually talked. trill noted that it was easier for her to text, and at first it seemed to be effective, but eventually, todd became less and less engaged and eventually found someone else (gershon 2011:395). this supports the findings by schade et al. (2013) regarding the emergence of disconnect in a relationship when texting replaces talking in person. should u rly be txtng ur s/o 3 gershon (2011) further points out that texting may be specifically problematic for young adults, who may feel “trapped and frustrated in texting-only relationships.” for instance, another interviewee, rebecca, found herself greatly irritated and upset with her breakup after her boyfriend ended things via text messaging. rebecca wanted “clarity” about his intentions and felt that a text exchange could not fully reflect them. confusion around actions and intentions was also present in the case of another student, halle, whose boyfriend continued to text her after breaking up with her over text. it was clear that for them, a breakup text message meant different things; for halle’s now ‘ex’-boyfriend, texting “did not mean the definitive end of the relationship,” contrary to how it was for halle. in the case of trill, rebecca, and halle, the use of texting as the primary form of communication led to the termination of relationships without the opportunity for reconciliation, which may have been possible if in-person conversation was utilized (gershon 2011). additionally, lefevbre (2017) brings up texting as a route towards the avoidance of confrontation and the usage of ghosting. ghosting refers to “unilaterally ceasing communications (temporarily or permanently) in an effort to withdraw access to individual (s) prompting relationship dissolution (suddenly or gradually) commonly enacted via one or multiple technological medium (s)” (220). as lefevbre (2017) describes, a breakup is achieved more easily through the abrupt disengagement of one partner from an online conversation (such as that over text), but is “negatively endorse[d]” by the recipient of the ghosting. although it is possible that the ghosting initiator does so to “save the non-initiators’ feelings”, the act is viewed as ambiguous and lacking compassion, and a passive approach to a difficult conversation (lefevbre 2017:227). luna (2018) provides an alternative viewpoint into this situation: she concludes that texting can be a tool to bring people closer together, not break their connection. luna (2018) cites trub and barbot (2020) on the motivation behind texting of 982 adults between the ages of 18 to 29. the study revealed that often, people express thoughts over text that they were too shy or anxious to do in person. as stated by trub and barbot (2020), “texting may be used in the service of alleviating fear, anxiety or discomfort related to being in social situations, enabling more confidence and ease in expressing oneself.” a study by reid and reid (2007) offers further support for the usage of texting to build connection. for study participants who carried a greater sense of anxiety, texting was preferred over methods of communication such as voice calls. to them, sending texts felt more comfortable, leading to “expressive and intimate contact” (reid & reid, 2007:433). interestingly, study participants who felt lonely rather than socially anxious preferred colorado research in linguistics, volume 25 (2021) 4 voice calls and viewed texting as a less intimate communication method. perhaps, the asynchronous nature of texting grants a sense of safety, but it may also lead to problems in the way the relationship is viewed. dibble (2017) finds that the edited and perfected nature of a text can lead to “high idealization” of the person on the other side of the screen, causing the communication to seem less tangible (75). the research dibble (2017) describes is related to potential infidelity by partners, and their perception of a side-relationship that takes place online as a “fantasy” rather than reality. even so, it can be posited that a parallel could be drawn to romantic relationships and how they are perceived if the use of texting is heavily utilized. it is possible that the presence of a phone as the moderator between two romantically involved parties can create a schism between real life and the “online” life and distort one’s view of their partner and relationship. more specifically, a relationship may be implicitly viewed in a less serious and more casual way, which opens the door for more ambiguity. furthermore, the aspect of idealization stems from one’s ability to filter a text and portray themselves in the best light, and if this is not displayed in real life, it can create uncomfortable unpredictability. according to murray (1996:1156), one may wish to idealize their partner due to a “desire for security” and wish to “feel safe and secure in one’s commitment.” if there is a lack of consistency in the way a partner is over text versus offline, this can sabotage the feeling of security since the actuality of who the partner is will not be clear (murray 1996). 3. stylistic features of texting the texting medium encompasses unique stylistic and technical means of expression. according to an interview held by turello (2017), emojis are a significant communication tool in the language of texting. the interviewees, which included wendy hall, a computer science professor at the university of southampton, alexandre loktionov, an expert in hieroglyphic texts, and jessica lingel, a social media expert and assistant professor at the university of pennsylvania, come to a consensus that emojis are an efficient means of communicating and can add significant meaning to written words and phrases; however, there is an issue with “standardization in sign deployment” (turello 2017). both loktionov and lingel express concerns about the possibility of misinterpretation due to a lack of concrete “dictionary definitions” for each emoji. if texting is viewed as a separate and individual form of language, then, as with english, “standardization” may not be the accurate approach since various people may have different ways of expressing themselves over text and “texting dialects” may emerge. however, there is a higher danger of should u rly be txtng ur s/o 5 misinterpretation during texting communication since the communicating parties do not see each other in real life, so nonverbal cues or tone of voice cannot be observed and interpreted. even so, as noted by loktionov, the lack of “concreteness” with the use of emojis in texting, in part, has contributed to their growing popularity. according to him, the flexibility of emojis may often add to their usage value due to their ability to convey various emotions and thoughts (turello 2017). furthermore, in the cases where language is a definite barrier, emojis may present an effective method of expressing basic ideas and feelings, especially between people of different language groups. still, loktionov once again points out that this flexibility across various languages makes misinterpretation likely and presents a challenge in clear communication. furthermore, according to lingel and hall, in modern days, since emoji usage is associated most with conveying feelings, they have become “feminized” in american society (turello 2017). this has often led men to reject the use of emojis as a form of linguistic expression, which hinder emojis in becoming a more widely accepted form of language. hence, if a male and a female in a heterosexual relationship are communicating, the female may find herself relying so much more on emojis that it may seem she is speaking a different form of texting dialect. this may serve as a barrier in communication between the two. crystal (2008) provides support for these potential negative aspects by discussing the fact that texting language utilizes a lot of unique features that may lead to confusion and frustration if both parties do not have the same understanding of their meaning. for example, texting uses a lot of omitted letters, which involves the removal of middle or end letters from the word. so, the word ‘message’ may be written as ‘msg’, and the word ‘texting’ may be written as ‘txtin’. furthermore, texting utilizes initialisms, which reduces words to their initial letters, resulting in terms such as ‘jk’ to represent ‘just kidding’ (crystal 2008:42). another feature that is common is the presence of logograms, which translates to “the use of single letters, numerals, and typographic symbols to represent words, parts of words, or even noise associated with actions” (crystal 2008:37). hence, the word ‘for’ may be replaced with the number ‘4’, in a word such as ‘4ever’. the use of newly developed omissions, initialisms, or logograms may not be known by the texting recipient, which may cause dissatisfaction in the communication and, as a result, in the relationship overall. mcculloch (2019) further agrees that communication difficulties and misinterpretations may result if there is not an open conversation about the “means” in which one is expressing one’s thoughts. mcculloch (2019) discusses that texters of different generations may differently colorado research in linguistics, volume 25 (2021) 6 interpret simple features of a message. for example, periods at the end of sentences could be viewed by some as an indication of passive aggression, while others would not give them any meaning beyond adherence to rules of punctuation. mcculloch (2019) believes that there is no “one right way” to use language online and various uses are not wrong, but parties need to be open about their texting style. in fact, similarity in texting style between parties may contribute to greater relationship satisfaction. a study of young adults in romantic relationships by ohadi (2018) shows that a larger similarity between two partners in the use of text messaging, as well as the frequency of “initiating and saying hello via text messaging,” leads to a more satisfying relationship. greater similarity may correspond to higher understanding between two partners in regard to their texting behaviors, which confirms the importance of texting clarity in relationships. a perspective i, myself, have developed is the fact that the features used over texting may be a form of slang; hence, a way to signify ‘in-group status’ (mattiello 2008). thus, it may be perfectly fine that certain logograms or initialisms, for example, would not be understood by everyone who looks at the message. in fact, a couple may develop certain initialisms or omissions themselves that only they understand between each other in order to discuss certain topics efficiently or prevent others from understanding the meaning of their conversation (especially in the cases if these topics would be considered ‘taboo’). in this scenario, the two people in the relationship would form their own in-group, with the texting slang they use signaling their belonging in the relationship and their togetherness. thus, their ability to express their thoughts may not necessarily decrease, as they may have developed certain linguistic replacements for complex ideas that they now share and use among themselves. for instance, gershon (2011) provides an example between two roommates, who developed a certain texting style to indicate different emotions. to convey a friendly tone, they would text each other ‘heyy’ with two y’s, and if only one ‘y’ was used, this signaled negative feelings. the roommates found this an effective means of making their emotions known without needing to say it more explicitly (gershon 2011:399). the usage of texting slang as such may be problematic in the case of the two partners belonging to different in-groups from which they draw their slang. if this is the case, it would be more difficult for them to reach an understanding and would hinder their closeness and connectedness. even so, it is important to note that many features of texting can be viewed as informal, so may make the interaction seem more casual and less meaningful. hence, thoughts that could be should u rly be txtng ur s/o 7 expressed in a deeper or more meaningful way in person would be reduced to a quick and concise format. luo (2014) conducted an online study of 395 participants who described and discussed their texting behavior. the study shows that when partners start relying on texting as their primary form of communication, it may further weaken their attachment and lead to a significant decrease in relationship satisfaction. texting may “reduce the feelings of love, closeness, and connection”, and may amplify miscommunication and misunderstanding (mcmanus 2018). according to mcmanus, acronyms such as ‘lol’ can be used as a signal of passive-aggressiveness or lack of seriousness of the statement to which it corresponds. although this may lighten the mood in certain situations, it may also take away from the power and importance of a text, once again diminishing its meaningfulness. however, it is possible that deep conversation is not necessarily expected to occur over text, since, as mcmanus notes, the language of text emerged to fulfill the need of expressing sufficient-enough emotion using as few letters as possible, with emojis serving as virtual replacements for non-verbal dialogue and tone of voice. mcculloch (2019) agrees that in certain circumstances, emojis can help contextualize the meaning of a text, such as in the cases that sarcasm is intended. mcculloch refers to emojis as “gestures” rather than a form of language, and points out that they are “expressive tools for informal writing” that may serve as an efficient tool to convey attention and irony when doing so with one’s voice is impossible. by using emojis, one can be clear when one is utilizing a playful spirit and “offer deliberate cues to the feelings, emotions, and intentions” behind the text. mcculloch (2019) notes this can be particularly useful in the situation when double meaning is intended. gershon (2011) also discusses that the texting platform can be used to one’s advantage when expressing thoughts or emotions one would have difficulty with face to face. this may include conversations involving anger or jealousy, in which case some people use texting to limit and conceal their emotional intensity. this was also confirmed in a study by pettigrew (2009), who found that individuals can use texting to hide their feelings as well as discuss subjects they would find uncomfortable in-person. or, as indicated by students in gershon’s study, texting can be used as a convenient flirting tool, as a phone potentially alleviates anxieties and grants higher levels of comfort. colorado research in linguistics, volume 25 (2021) 8 4. conclusion in summary, texting as a language form needs to be navigated carefully; there has definitely been evidence of its negative effects on romantic relationships in the united states, but it also has potential to be used as a tool to build connection and efficiently convey information. although schade et al. (2013) provide research to support the idea that texting can lead to misinterpretation, lack of effective communication, and disconnect, there is alternative evidence that shows it is not necessarily so. in the interview by turello (2017), both loktionov and lingel agree that emojis are useful in substituting for real-life emotions so can be good conversational cues. although there is no one “emoji dictionary” and emoji usage is open to interpretation, it can be a good method of conveying thoughts and emotions in situations where language may be a barrier. on the other hand, it is important that emoji users are aware of emojis being “feminized” in our society (turello 2017) and support males in using them in order to prevent major communicational differences between males and females in heterosexual relationships. furthermore, as discussed by crystal (2008), although in certain cases, the usage of texting initialisms, omissions, and logograms may act as another source of confusion and misinterpretation, in my opinion, it is a form of slang that can be used to signify in-group status (mattiello 2008) between the communicating parties and build on their connection. furthermore, although mcmanus (2018) notes that the informal structure of texts can reduce their meaningfulness, it is important to note that texting is not necessarily the tool that is widely used for extremely meaningful communication; its value lies in their ability to quickly and efficiently convey a thought or emotion. overall, it does not seem that there is a concrete answer to whether the effects of texting on romantic relationships in the us are positive or negative. more research in this field from the perspective of socio-linguistics may be useful in coming to this conclusion, particularly with consideration of dialectal or cross-cultural differences. as of right now, i believe that the language of texting may benefit romantic relationships if used with care, but may hinder them if neither side is aware of the negative effects they can have and approaches texting carelessly. references crystal, d. (2008). txtng: the gr8 db8. oxford: oxford university press. gershon, i. (2011). breaking up is hard to do: media switching and media ideologies. journal of linguistic anthropology. should u rly be txtng ur s/o 9 luna, k. (2018, august 9). it’s complicated: our relationship with texting. american psychological association. retrieved from https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2018/08/relationship-texting lefebvre, l. (2017). phantom lovers: ghosting as a relationship dissolution strategy in the technological age. in n.m. punyanunt-carter & j.s. wrench (eds). the impact of social media in modern romantic relationships. london: lexington books. luo, s. (2014, april). effects of texting on satisfaction in romantic relationships: the role of attachment. elsevier. mattiello, e. (2008). an introduction to english slang: a description of its morphology, semantics and sociology. polimetrica, international scientific publisher. mcculloch, g. (2019, july). is the internet killing language? lol, no. vox. retrieved from https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/7/22/20702335/internet-language-text-emojisgifs-bad-for-english mcmanus, n. (2018, february). listen up: the linguistics of texting. wellesley centers for women.retrieved from https://www.wcwonline.org/women-s-review-of-bookssept/oct-2018/listen-up-the-linguistics-of-texting mcsweeney, m. (2019, september). revealing your emoticon side: how digital technology has changed the way we talk to each other. cbc radio. retrieved from https://www.cbc.ca/radio/spark/revealing-your-emoticon-side-how-digital-technologyhas-changed-the-way-we-talk-to-each-other-1.5272103 murray, s. (1996). the self-fulfilling nature of positive illusions in romantic relationships: love is not blind, but prescient. journal of personality and social psychology. ohadi, j. (2017, september). i just text to say i love you: partner similarity in texting and relationship satisfaction. elsevier. pettigrew, j. (2009, august). text messaging and connectedness within close interpersonal relationships. marriage and family review. punyanunt-carter, n., & wrench, j. (2017). the impact of social media in modern romantic relationships. london: lexington books. reid, d. & reid, f. (2007, june). text or talk? social anxiety, loneliness, and divergent preferences for cell phone use. cyberpsychology and behavior 10(3). colorado research in linguistics, volume 25 (2021) 10 schade, l., et al. (2013, october). using technology to connect in romantic relationships: effects on attachment, relationship satisfaction, and stability in emerging adults. journal of couple & relationship therapy. trub, l. & barbot, b. (2020) texting – great escape or path to self-expression?: development and validation of the messing motivations questionnaire. measurement and evaluation in counseling and development 53(2). turello, d. (2017, june 15). emoji, texting and social media: how do they impact language? library of congress. retrieved from https://blogs.loc.gov/kluge/2017/06/emoji-textingand-social-media-how-do-they-impact-language/ narrative and identity construction among ethiopian immigrants colorado research in linguistics. june 2007. vol. 20. boulder: university of colorado. © 2007 by weldu michael weldeyesus. narrative and identity construction among ethiopian immigrants weldu michael weldeyesus university of colorado the main objective of this study is to analyze narratives by ethiopian immigrants in the denver metropolitan area, as they share their immigrant experiences while attempting to integrate into the host culture. more specifically, this paper attempts to see how ethiopian immigrants use narrative as a vehicle for constructing their identity as mainstream citizens in the united states. focusing on the issue of language socialization, this study investigates the contrast between a former and a current self exhibited in the narratives and describes the sources of the disparity between these two identity positionings. two main issues are addressed. the first is constructing the current self as a more socialized individual, in contrast with the former-self, representing a less socialized one characterized by linguistic insecurity, nostalgia, and lower self-esteem, among other things. this is exhibited through humorous recall, laughter, code-switching, and at times explicitly stating how one is different currently from who she/he was earlier. the second is the identity that less socialized immigrants construct through negotiation with more socialized immigrants or citizens of the host country making narrative a collaborative enterprise. constructed around linguistic disfluency, these narratives work to project a more assimilated self who is fluent and capable both linguistically culturally. 1 background there are huge numbers of ethiopian immigrants who have come to work and live in the united states. estimates put the number between 300,000-600,000 with a large concentration in the washington dc and maryland area, and the los angeles area in california. there is also a significant ethiopian immigrant population in the denver metro area, which is estimated to be between fifteen and twenty thousand, and the number has been constantly growing. a common problem ethiopian immigrants face, especially at the initial stages of their arrival in the united states, is the acquisition of the english language. even though the ethiopian educational system teaches english from primary up to tertiary (college and university) level and uses it as a medium of instruction from grade seven up to institutions of higher learning, using english as a communication medium for only academic purposes does not offer sufficient exposure to the language or motivation to learn it (dittmar and stutterheim, 1985). when immigrants come to the us, they need at least the minimal degree of proficiency to be able to integrate into the society or to interact with people using english as a medium of communication. stevens (1994) points out that proficiency in english is not only desirable to immigrants for social reasons, it is also necessary for them to access american political and economic life on practical grounds. research in the areas of immigrant studies and intercultural communication indicates that language competence, among other things like cultural distance and level of education, is a major factor that determines the life of immigrants (redmond 1999; nesdale and mak 2003). even if there are numerous immigrants of different national and ethnic origins in the us, not much research has been conducted regarding narrative and identity among 1 weldeyesus: narrative and identity construction among ethiopian immigrants published by cu scholar, 2007 colorado research in linguistics, volume 20 (2007) immigrants in general. in connection with this, anna de fina writes, “aside from mainstream images of who immigrants are, little research has been done on the identity that immigrants themselves build and project, and on the processes that affect the formation of such identity” (2000: 132). this study attempts to contribute to filling this gap. 2 objective of the study the main object of this study is to analyze narratives of ethiopian immigrants in denver, colorado, as they tell and retell their immigrant experiences while attempting to integrate into the host culture. more specifically, this paper attempts to see how the ethiopian immigrants use narrative as an optimal vehicle for constructing their identity as mainstream citizens in the us (schiffrin 1996, johnstone 1996, kerby 1991, riessman 1993, inter alia). focusing on the issue of language socialization, this study in particular investigates the identity contrast that is exhibited in the narratives between what i am calling the less-socialized former self and the more-socialized current self and describes the sources of the contrast between these two identity positionings, which are both linguistic and cultural in nature. six narratives of varying lengths have been used as sources of data, two of which were narrated in tigrinya, an ethiopian semitic language that i speak natively, and four of them narrated primarily in english. the narratives fall under the broad genre of ‘immigrant narratives’ especially with regard to the issue of language socialization since they center around the experiences immigrants undergo in attempting to socialize to the overall way of life of the host country both linguistically and culturally. following elinor ochs and bambi scheffelin (1986), i take language socialization to mean both socialization through the use of language and socialization to use language. the expression ‘immigrant narratives’ has been used by de fina (2000) in a nontechnical sense. her focus was on the role of ethnicity in identification of the self among hispanic immigrants. in this paper, the expression ‘immigrant narratives’ will be used to indicate a macro-genre within which the narratives told by ethiopian immigrants would fall. the immigrant narratives i examine here focus on the difficulty that immigrants face in attempting to socialize linguistically and culturally, a shared experience that most immigrants pass through. 3 analyses of narratives in the narratives employed for this study, there is interplay between language, narrative and identity. for this study, i take identity broadly to mean the social positioning of the self against other (bucholtz & hall 2005: 586). the immigrants were using narratives to show how they are different now, i.e., current-self, from who they were in the past, i.e., former-self, particularly when they first came to the united states. the former-self is characterized among other things by linguistic insecurity, feeling of inferiority, asking for help and seeking comfort when faced with challenging circumstances, at times weeping when unable to cope with situations, resisting interacting with people speaking languages other than one’s native language, and a tendency not to initiate conversation. above all, these immigrants reported feeling uncomfortable when 2 2 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 20 [2007] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol20/iss1/2 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/f4kj-bz84 narrative and identity construction among ethiopian immigrants confronted with situations that were alien to what they were accustomed to. other features include nostalgia and in extreme cases, a desire to go back to the home country, although this is an option which is rarely taken. the current self, on the other hand, is characterized by much better language proficiency and in some cases native-like fluency, a feeling of equality, self-reliance and self-confidence, dealing with diverse situations and resisting routine, and laughter when talking about past experiences, especially incidents in the first few months of stay in the host country. also, the current self does not limit socializing with people of the same origin but interacts with people of different backgrounds and aspires to be naturalized and become an american citizen. in each of the narratives that i will discuss here, speakers jokingly recall a moment of linguistic mishap or misunderstanding with an american interlocutor. as such, linguistic miscommunication becomes a metaphor for the former unsocialized self, which is presented in contrast with a current and more enlightened socialized self. the speaker in excerpt 1, for example, recalls a previous misunderstanding between herself and a customer when she was working in a donut shop, where she worked in the first two years of her arrival in the us. (1) what size? 1 teki: ninetee:::n, ninety-four it was 1994, january. 2 january. 3 ((everybody laughs.)) 4 month of ja-ha-nuary it was the month of january. 5 ʔɨyya nəyra ihihi ((laughter)) 6 ((all others laugh too.)) ((all others laugh too.)) 7 fevy: ehe okay. 8 teki: dunkin donut yɨsərrɨħ nəyrə, i was working at dunkin donuts, … --> 50 teki: can i have croissant? ʔilunni. he said, “can i have croissant?” --> 51 ihihi “what size.” i said, “what size?” 52 ((reporting her own speech.)) 53 ((everybody laughs.)) --> 54 “what size,” ihi ʔiləyyo. “what size?” i said to him. --> 55 “what size,” ((laughter)) “what size?” ((laughter)) --> 56 “no kɨcroissant croissant.” “no kɨcroissant croissant” 57 ((reporting what the man said.)) 58 əh ok ʔɨhɨm “ok. ehm.” 59 (she nods her head to mean she 60 understood.)) --> 61 yea but what size. “yea, but what size?” 62 fevy: gɨn tay ʔɨyyu but what is croissant? 63 tu-croissant 64 ʔanəwwɨn i don’t know it either. 65 ʔayfələt’kuwwon ʔɨkko 66 zɨnəgərɨzi. 67 teki: zɨbɨllaʕ it is something edible. 68 fevy: ( ) 69 teki: kəriʔəki ʔɨyyə i will show you at safe way 70 safe way. 71 getch: ( ) --> 72 teki nɨssom zɨbɨllaʕ ʔɨyyom what they are asking me is --> 73 zɨbluni zəlləwu. something to eat. 74 fevy: ʔɨwwə. yea. 3 3 weldeyesus: narrative and identity construction among ethiopian immigrants published by cu scholar, 2007 colorado research in linguistics, volume 20 (2007) 75 teki: ʔanə dɨmma, but i thought that they --> 76 coffee məsilunni? were asking for coffee. the command of english of the narrator of this story was unsteady at that point and she says the training she received was so formulaic that she was told to respond to people who order coffee by saying ‘what size?’ as can be seen in lines 50-61. what is humorous about this excerpt is that the speaker says ‘what size?’ in response to a customer ordering a croissant, a word that she is not familiar with. the miscommunication was eventually resolved by nonverbal means. significantly, this was a very emotional moment for the teller, who says that this is one of the most terrible but memorable experiences she had ever had in the us. she later narrates that after this incident, she went to the basement of the coffee shop and wept bitterly, especially after one of her co-workers mocked what had happened to other employees. she even recalls that she shared the overall incident to her husband who strongly advised her not to be embarrassed or weep when faced with such kinds of incidents. yet, when telling the narrative 11 years later, she narrates her story with laughter, so as to contrast her current socialized self with a former linguistically (and hence culturally) inept self. in short, now she is a well-socialized and enlightened individual with good command of the english language, a good paying job, and she does not appear to have similar problems any more. at times, immigrants recall misunderstandings with citizens of the host country partly due to language and partly due to some broader cultural asymmetries. in excerpt 2, dawit, an ethiopian who came to the us in the mid 1990s, remembers an interaction between himself and an american who works in a post office. (2) get out of here! 1 dawit: you remember once, i was eh:::: applying for employment in 2 post office, i was giving my application, ... 3 and then the lady was eh checking the amamətə mɨhrət 4 {year of salvation} ((this is to mean ad.)) and then 5 you know the year. 6 yosef: yea. 7 dawit: so she was comparing and at some point there was a big gap. 8 yosef: ehem ... 9 dawit: it’s 1988 in my country. she goes, “are you still in the --> 10 80s?” i said, “yes.” and then she said, “get out of here”. 11 hewan: ihihihi 12 dawit: means like don’t be kidding me, right? 13 hewan: yea. 14 dawit: i said oh what did i do. 15 yosef: ihihi --> 16 dawit: i was collecting everything to get out of there. 17 ((everybody laughs including the narrator.)) ... 18 tedi: dropping your items to leave. --> 19 dawit: sh then she go but what did i do? she goes like, “my god --> 20 you guys are funny. you’re still in the 80s? my god.” and 21 she gave me applications again and i wrote bla bla bla bla. --> 22 then i thought ‘get out of here’ means like ‘don’t be 23 kidding me. 24 tedi: hm::: 25 dawit: so from then on 26 tedi: so that’s the kine {pun} --> 27 dawit: i learnt something. 4 4 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 20 [2007] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol20/iss1/2 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/f4kj-bz84 narrative and identity construction among ethiopian immigrants the misunderstanding between the narrator of this story and his american interlocutor can be seen from two perspectives. on the part of the american, the root source of the misunderstanding is conceptual, i.e., the calendar difference between the us and ethiopia. ethiopians follow the julian calendar, which is about 7 years and 8 months behind the gregorian calendar. on the part of the ethiopian, the misunderstanding results from the american’s colloquial expression ‘get out of here!’ dawit interprets this statement literally as meaning ‘leave this area!’ as he states in line 16. but while the former self of the narrative was challenged by this, the current self positions it as a learning experience, talking about it as a mere former challenge with no similar setbacks in the present. on the other hand, the use by the american of the second person plural ‘you guys are funny’ (line 20) instead of the singular form while addressing the immigrant shows that the narrator of the story is identified not as an individual but as a member of a whole group, i.e., ethiopians and more specifically ethiopian immigrants. excerpt 3 is also about a misunderstanding that an ethiopian immigrant faced due to linguistic setback, i.e., pronunciation. here dawit recalls a moment where he confused the word ‘boss’ with the word ‘bus’ (lines 7-8): (3) boss versus bus 1 dawit: may be you guys have heard this. i was working eh i was 2 working in san jose parking area again. so one guy came 3 early very early seven a.m. he was working for his boss for 4 his alek’a {boss}. he parked his car. he said, “what’s up 5 my friend.” i said, “good morning.” because i was very 6 ch’əwa {well mannered} at that time. ( ) i was honest i’m --> 7 like, “hei good morning.” he goes, “you know what? my boss --> 8 is late.” i said, ‘what number.’ i thought he said ‘bus.’ 9 you know. 10 tedi: woo::: ahaha ((exaggerated laughter)) 11 dawit: i said what number. ahaha imagine my alək’a {boss} is late. --> 12 sɨnt kut’ɨr? sɨnt kut’ɨr aləka? {what number? boss number what?} 13 ((everybody laughs.)) --> 14 tedi: silly guy. 15 dawit: ehm? yea 16 yosef: that was silly. 17 dawit: that was funny man? 18 yosef: ehm? the narrator then switches into amharic (line12) for emphatic purposes so as to make sure everybody gets the meaning. by joking about this linguistic mishap, dawit expresses that this is something that happened to him some years back, before he became a competent and well-socialized ethiopian with a good command of the english language. (silly has a negative connotation, while funny has a positive one.) in like manner, the teller of the story in excerpt 4, tedi, narrates what he faced in the first couple of weeks of his stay in the us. he caught a bus which took him to an area which he had never been before and hence was not able to identity where he was. (he was supposed to take bus 3-a, but he took bus 3-b, which took him in the opposite direction.) in the excerpt given below, there is a disagreement between the immigrant and an american which makes the negotiation of identity somewhat difficult. 5 5 weldeyesus: narrative and identity construction among ethiopian immigrants published by cu scholar, 2007 colorado research in linguistics, volume 20 (2007) (4) you don’t belong to america! 1 tedi: let me finish this. ((he says this fast with the intent of 2 getting the floor.)) finally he said, ok. i said, ok he he 3 got mad. ok “so you don know what city you’re from?” ((the 4 old man is asking and expressing his surprise at the same 5 time.)) 6 ((responding to the man, the storyteller says,)) 7 well, we didn’t leave any we didn’t see any village or any 8 any any land, did we. any forest, did we. because in 9 ethiopia, when we when we when we go to other city, you 10 have to see some kind of forest before you get to another 11 city. and he said, “what?” ihi ((a short laughter as he --> 12 speaks)) you know what? you don’t belong to america.” 13 ((everybody laughs including the storyteller.)) 14 dawit: oh my god! 15 you don’t belong to america. ((repeats what the story 16 teller said out of surprise.)) 17 tedi: you don’t belong to america. ((confirming what the old man --> 18 said)) i wish i met him (this time) how i look. you know --> 19 how what i learned what what i experience i have now. 20 but anyways he he talked to the driver of the the taxi i 21 mean the the bus and he let me go back again and then i had 22 to travel on foot. i think may be ten or thirteen miles 23 home later on. so but anyways yea went on foot, because 24 ((there is overlap here which is hard to detect.)) part of the confusion for this storyteller is that he was trying to assume things as if they were in his country of origin (lines 6-11), where it is not common to see adjacent cities. what results is a problem of acceptance and hence identity challenge on the part of the ethiopian immigrant. when the immigrant tries to justify why he is not able to identify the place where he is supposed to get off the bus, the american not only rejects the justification that the immigrant tries to offer, but also tells him explicitly that he does not belong to the host country altogether (line 12). the immigrant brings up these former challenges as a point of contrast with his current identity. he is a different, competent and well-socialized individual at the time of narrating the story, as shown in lines 18-19 where he explicitly states his wish to show the american how different he is now if he could meet him. in their work on the interrelationship between language and identity, bucholtz and hall (2003, 2005) posit a framework of tactics of intersubjectivity involving three paired components. in extract 4, we observe the adequation and distinction pair of tactics (which roughly mean similarity and difference), as well as what the authors call illegitimation (i.e. delegitimacy). the immigrant attempts to claim that he deserves and is competent enough to be in the us which is adequation in intent, but he is using the tactic of distinction in practice. that is the reason why he could not succeed at that point. on the other hand, the american observes that there is a strong disparity between what he sees and the kind of identity that the ethiopian immigrant claims to be competent enough to belong to the us. he not only emphasizes the distinction (difference) but also delegitimizes the identity the ethiopian immigrant claims. as they are in the process of socializing to the culture and different aspects of life of the host country, immigrants at times do not clearly know what to say and how to act in different contexts. as such, these narratives are often integrated into socialization ‘lessons’. problems are created when immigrants simply try to act as though they were in 6 6 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 20 [2007] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol20/iss1/2 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/f4kj-bz84 narrative and identity construction among ethiopian immigrants their native country, a situation which they always recall in their narratives. excerpt 5 is a good illustration of this, where mary, a teenage ethiopian immigrant, recalls her response to a compliment given to her by her tutor about the progress she was exhibiting in her knowledge of english words. (5) why else would i learn? 1 mary: məs’iʔa nəyra. m: she had come. 2 məs’iʔa tay ʔilahɨnni, she came and she said to me, 3 “meron lomɨsɨbba “meron, this time 4 more wordtat fəlit’ki, ”you know more words,” 5 ʔilahɨnni. she said to me. 6 ((reporting what a tutor said to her.)) 7 ʔanə dɨmma? ehe and then i ehm --> 8 “nɨmɨntay dɨyyə “why else would i --> 9 zɨmahar zəlləxu?” ehe learn?” ehe 10 ʔiləyya. ((laughter)) i said to her. 11 ((reporting what she responded to the tutor.)) 12 ((everybody laughs with teki more audibly.)) 13 teki: wəyləkə. taybəlki? ihihi t: amazing! what did you say? 14 mary: ehehe m: laugh --> 15 teki: [thank you zəytɨblɨyya nerki, t: why didn’t you say thank you to her? --> 16 mary: [why am i learning. eheh m: that’s why i am learning. 17 gech: ehehe w: laughs. 18 teki: ehehehe t: laughs. when the tutor gives her a compliment, the teenager responds using a rhetorical question, which literally translates into ‘why else would i learn?’ this basically means ‘i am a student and i am supposed to work hard and know more and more words.’ this response would be quite appropriate in an ethiopian context. two of her listeners, who are more socialized than the teenage immigrant, comment on what the teenager said, arguing that she should have said ‘thank you’ instead. more specifically, she was ‘problematized’ (ochs & taylor, 2001) by teki, her mom, in line 15, who takes the responsibility of assisting her daughter so that she would have a better understanding of the host culture. there is also an overlap between what the teenager says and what her mother suggests to her concerning what she has to say when responding to compliments (lines 15-16). this overlap happens since the teenage immigrant takes a defensive position sticking to what she said as though she were in ethiopia. it is interesting that following the reaction from the interlocutors, the teenager code-switches into english when reporting what she said to her tutor. she perhaps does so either to mean that she responded to her tutor in english, not in tigrinya, or to demonstrate her command of english. in either case, the teenage immigrant is negotiating a different identity, a more socialized one. in this jointly produced narrative, there is a conflict between less socialized and more socialized immigrants, since the latter usually tend to ‘problematize’ the former in attempting to help them socialize to the host culture better. a related issue regarding newly arrived immigrants is going to english as a second language (esl) classes. as part of the esl program or personal effort to have working knowledge of english for communicative purposes, a common strategy 7 7 weldeyesus: narrative and identity construction among ethiopian immigrants published by cu scholar, 2007 colorado research in linguistics, volume 20 (2007) employed is memorizing certain formulaic expressions which occur frequently. examples of this are expressions such as ‘you know’ and ‘you too’ as in excerpt 6: (6) you too! 1 yosef: ok. le me tell you what she said. somebody came from eh she was 2 workin. this lady she she was working [and 3 david: [which lady, the girl? 4 yosef: her, thel the girl workin here. she was workin and this guy an 5 american guy came and she he talked to her and he said, “where 6 you from?” she said, “from ethiopia.” “oh! really.” ((quoting 7 the american. he is varying his voice while trying to imitate 8 the american man and the ethiopian girl.)) “yea:::h.” ((quoting 9 her)) “ok. oh. you speak you speak good english.” ((quoting the 10 american)) --> 11 “oh! thank you. you too.” ((quoting the girl.)) 12 ((everybody laughs.)) 13 tedi: wow right. [that’s very funny. 14 david: [that’s very it’s beautiful. 15 elsa: liar. 16 tedi: that’s great. 17 elsa: he is lying. don’t listen to him. -> 18 david: i think i said the same thing. in this excerpt, the expression ‘you too’ has been used inappropriately. having been accustomed to the habit of responding to wishes and appreciation made by their interlocutors, immigrants or speakers of english as a second language may use this expression in occasions where it may not be appropriate as a response of reciprocity. although this expression has been reportedly used by the female speaker, david admits that he had said the same thing (line 18). hence, these narratives often function as collaborative productions of a former self, with speakers and listeners jointly producing a former unsocialized self that they have now moved away from. 4 conclusion this study addresses two main issues in the narratives by ethiopian immigrants. the first is constructing the current self, which is a more socialized and assimilated individual, in contrast with the former-self, which was a less socialized one to the us way of life and was characterized by, among other things, linguistic insecurity, lower self-esteem, and nostalgia. this is done through humorous recall, laughter, codeswitching, and at times explicitly stating how one is currently different from who he/she was earlier. the second main issue is the identity that less socialized immigrants construct through negotiation with more socialized immigrants or citizens of the host country who are observed problematizing less socialized immigrants. thus these narratives are a collaborative enterprise, involving members of the community in a trajectory towards a mainstream american identity. constructed around a linguistic disfluency, these narratives work to project a more assimilated self who is fluent and capable, both linguistically and culturally. in her research on hispanic immigrants, anna de fina (2000) finds that humor is largely absent, especially in argumentative stories of immigrants. contrary to this, we find that humor, in so much as it is used to make a fun of a former self, is a crucial component of the narratives shared by ethiopian immigrants. 8 8 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 20 [2007] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol20/iss1/2 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/f4kj-bz84 narrative and identity construction among ethiopian immigrants references bucholtz, mary and kira hall. 2005. identity and interaction: a sociocultural linguistic approach. in discourse studies, 7: 585-614. __________. 2003. language and identity. in alessandro duranti (ed.), a companion to linguistic anthropology. malden, ma: blackwell. cobley, paul. 2001. narrative. london and new york: routledge/taylor & francis. de fina, anna. 2000. orientation in immigrant narratives: the role of ethnicity in the identification of characters. in discourse studies, 2: 2 (pp. 131-157). dittmar, norbert and christiane von stutterheim. 1985. on the discourse of immigrant workers: interethnic communication and communication strategies. in teun a. van kijk (ed.), handbook of discourse analysis, vol.4, discourse analysis in society (pp. 125-149). london: academic press. johnstone, barbara. 1996. the linguistic individual: self-expression in language and linguistics. new york and oxford: oxford university press. labov, william. 1972. language in the inner city. chapter 9: the transformation of experience in narrative syntax. philadelphia: university of pennsylvania press. linde, charlotte. 1993. life stories: the creation of coherence. new york: oxford university press. nesdale, drew and anita s. mak. 2003. ethnic identification, self-esteem and immigrant psychological health. in international journal of intercultural relations, 27: 23-40. ochs, elinor and lisa capps. 2001. living narrative: creating lives in everyday storytelling. cambridge: harvard university press. ochs, elinor and lisa capps. 1996. narrating the self. in annual review of anthropology, 25: 19-43. ochs, elinor and carolyn taylor. 1995. the ‘father knows best’ dynamic in dinnertime narratives. in kira hall and mary bucholtz (eds.) gender articulated. new york & london: routledge. ochs, elinor and bambi b. schieffelin. 1986. introduction. in schieffeling and ochs (eds). language socialization across cultures. new york: cambridge university press. redmond, mark v. (2000). cultural distance as a mediating factor between stress and intercultural communication competence. in international journal of intercultural relations, 24: 151-159. riessman, c. kohler. 1993. narrative analysis. newbury park: sage publications. schiffrin, deborah. 1996. narrative as self-portrait: sociolinguistic construction of identity. in language in society, 25: 2 (pp. 167-203). stevens, gillian. 1994. immigration, emigration, language acquisition, and the english language proficiency of immigrants in the u.s. in barry edmonston and jeffrey s. passel (ed.), immigration and ethnicity: the integration of america’s newest arrivals (pp. 163-185). washington, d.c.: the urban institute press. appendix transcription conventions: italics indicate amharic/tigrinya words in the narratives in english, and english words in the narratives in tigrinya. 9 9 weldeyesus: narrative and identity construction among ethiopian immigrants published by cu scholar, 2007 colorado research in linguistics, volume 20 (2007) 10 bold face indicates louder talk or words uttered with more stress or focus. : a colon indicates lengthening of segments (the more the colons, the longer the segment). (.) dots in parentheses mark pauses (more dots indicate longer the pauses). wia hyphen immediately following a letter indicates an abrupt cutoff in speaking. . a period indicates a falling contour. ? a question mark indicates a rising contour. , a comma indicates a fall-rise. “ ” quotation marks indicate somebody else’s speech stated directly by another. [ a left bracket marks the beginning of an overlap. / / slashes indicated phonetic transcription of some of the words uttered. { } curly brackets give english translation of amharic words uttered by the speakers. ( ) single parentheses enclose words that are not clearly audible (or best guesses). (( )) double parenthesis enclose transcriber comments. 10 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 20 [2007] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol20/iss1/2 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/f4kj-bz84 colorado research in linguistics 6-2007 narrative and identity construction among ethiopian immigrants weldu m. weldeyesus recommended citation 1 background 2 objective of the study 3 analyses of narratives 3 and then the lady was eh checking the amamətə mɨhrət 4 {year of salvation} ((this is to mean ad.)) and then 5 you know the year. 6 yosef: yea. 7 dawit: so she was comparing and at some point there was a big gap. 8 yosef: ehem ... 9 dawit: it’s 1988 in my country. she goes, “are you still in the --> 10 80s?” i said, “yes.” and then she said, “get out of here”. 11 hewan: ihihihi 1 dawit: may be you guys have heard this. i was working eh i was 2 working in san jose parking area again. so one guy came 3 early very early seven a.m. he was working for his boss for 4 his alek’a {boss}. he parked his car. he said, “what’s up 5 my friend.” i said, “good morning.” because i was very 6 ch’əwa {well mannered} at that time. ( ) i was honest i’m --> 7 like, “hei good morning.” he goes, “you know what? my boss --> 8 is late.” i said, ‘what number.’ i thought he said ‘bus.’ 9 you know. 10 tedi: woo::: ahaha ((exaggerated laughter)) 13 ((everybody laughs.)) --> 14 tedi: silly guy. 4 conclusion locative constructions in lakhota: evidence for/against “universal conceptual categories” in spatial topology colorado research in linguistics. june 2010. vol. 22. boulder: university of colorado. © 2010 by les sikos. locative constructions in lakhota: evidence for/against “universal conceptual categories” in spatial topology les sikos university of colorado at boulder although languages use a variety of methods to express spatial topological relations, it has generally been assumed that the underlying conceptual categories are universal. however, recent cross-linguistic research has challenged the universal conceptual categories hypothesis on a variety of levels. the goals of this paper are two-fold: first, to analyze and describe the basic locative construction in lakhota, a siouan language. second, since lakhota is often thought to break other typological universals, the lakhota data are evaluated against three versions of the universal conceptual categories hypothesis. the preliminary results seem to indicate that neither the strong view nor its successively weaker versions can account for the lakhota data described here. 1. introduction when we use language to describe spatial topological relations, it may appear as if the language maps directly to fundamental physical distinctions that exist in the world. for example, the english terms “in” and “on” seem to correspond to clear distinctions in spatial relations. we use “in” to describe containment relationships like, “a letter in an envelope” and “an apple in a bowl.” on the other hand, we use “on” for contact relationships like, “a cup on the table” and “the cap on the pen.” however, languages can differ considerably in the ways they partition the same semantic domain. korean, for example, uses the term kkita to describe both “a letter in an envelope” and “a cap on a pen,” but nohta for “a cup on the table” and nehta for “an apple in a bowl” (bowerman & choi 2001). a crucial question that arises from this kind of cross-linguistic comparison is whether or not the underlying conceptual categories for spatial topological relations are universal. 1 sikos: locative constructions in lakhota published by cu scholar, 2010 colorado research in linguistics, volume 22 (2010) 2. the objective of this study is two fold. the primary goal is to analyze and describe locative constructions in lakhota.1 although little has been written to date on this particular construction, it appears that the language does not have a simple locative and instead describes spatial configurations by using a more complex system. the secondary goal is to determine, in at least a preliminary sense, how lakhota expressions of spatial topology might contribute to recent cross-linguistic research on universal conceptual categories in the spatial topological domain. since lakhota is often thought to break other typological universals (rood & taylor 1996; van valin 2001), the locative construction may provide specific evidence against the universal conceptual categories hypothesis (landau & jackendoff 1993; li & gleitman 2002; cf. levinson & meira 2003). three variations of this hypothesis will be discussed below. 1.1. overview of the lakhota locative construction in general, lakhota appears to describe spatial configurations by combining two different kinds of elements in an adverbial phrase: 1. a small contrastive set of “posture/positional verbs” (e.g. »he ‘exist’; »na)z&i ‘stand’; »ja)ke ‘sit’; »ju)ke ‘lie’)2 2. an elaborate adpostional system (e.g. a»ka)l ‘on top of’; ma»hel ‘inside’; i»sakhib ‘beside’) for example, the following utterance describes the spatial relationship between a cup and table via a combination of the general positional verb »he (‘exist’) and the adpostion a»ka)l (‘on top of)’: (1) wi»jatke ki »waglijutapi (ki) ) el a»ka)l »he cup the table (the) there on top of exists npfigure npground the cup is on the table 1 lakhota (also known as teton sioux) is one of five closely related dialects of the siouan language family, and is spoken on the plains of the northern united states and central canada. lakhota can be further divided into regional or reservation-based subdialects: southwest – pine ridge and rosebud; missouri river area – cheyenne river, lower brule, standing rock (rood & taylor 1996). 2 lakhota utterances are transcribed using the international phonetic alphabet, with the following modifications: s, z, and ts are transcribed as s&, z&, and c&, respectively. 2 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 22 [2010] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol22/iss1/5 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/06db-m579 locative constructions in lakhota 3 the system is complex in that speakers must select from both categories based on some interaction of multiple variables, including: 1. the spatial relationship between the figure (the object being described) and the ground (the reference point) 3 2. the physical characteristics of the figure 3. the physical characteristics of the ground 4. animacy of the figure and/or ground 5. relative distance of the figure from speaker 6. whether or not the speaker identifies himor herself as being “at” the figure 1.2. overview of the universal conceptual categories hypothesis4 generally speaking, studies of spatial language tend to assume that simple piagetian spatial conceptions are both topological and universal. in other words, concepts like containment, contiguity, and proximity are thought to be represented cognitively by semantic primitives like in, on, and near. furthermore, it is generally assumed that individual languages then directly code these primitive concepts in small, closed classes like adpostitions. if this universal conceptual categories hypothesis is correct, crosslinguistic comparisons of spatial adpositions should provide important evidence linking semantic categories to conceptual categories in a way that is relatively uniform across languages. however, several studies done since the mid-90s have begun to challenge certain aspects of the hypothesis, leading to subsequently weaker and weaker formulations (brown 1994; levinson 1994; bowerman 1996 and 2003; ameka & levinson 2003). in a groundbreaking multi-language study, levinson and meira (2003) compared nine unrelated languages and found that there are significant cross-linguistic differences in how the semantic space is partitioned. although levinson and meira acknowledge that their study is more exploratory than conclusive, they state: 3 throughout the paper, i will use italic capitals to represent the figure and simple capitals for the ground. 4 this overview is drawn largely from levinson and meira (2003). 3 sikos: locative constructions in lakhota published by cu scholar, 2010 colorado research in linguistics, volume 22 (2010) 4. the differences between the languages turn out to be so significant as to be incompatible with stronger versions of the universal conceptual categories hypothesis. rather, the language-specific spatial adposition meanings seem to emerge as compact subsets of an underlying semantic space, with certain areas being statistical attractors or foci. (2003: 485) clearly, this is not an outright refutation of the universal conceptual categories hypothesis. instead, levinson and meira suggest that spatial conceptions may best be treated as hierarchical divisions of semantic space, similar to recent models used to describe the variation seen in basic color terms across languages (see kay & maffi 1999 for more on this model). levinson and meira convincingly argue that cross-linguistic research in semantic typology would be better served by utilizing a consistent set of stimuli depicting a variety of spatial topological relations (see appendix a and appendix b). since lakhota has been argued to challenge several theories of typological universals (rood & taylor 1996; van valin 2001), the data from lakhota locative constructions may offer evidence for or against levinson and meira’s new hypothesis. therefore, i have adopted much of levinson and meira’s methodology for the current study. as will be shown below, the preliminary results described here indicate that neither the strong view nor its successively weaker versions can account for the lakhota data analyzed in this paper. 2. data analyzed and methods used 2.1. elicitation method in order to elicit data for this project, i followed the general methodology used by levinson and meira (2003). over a period of several months, i showed my consultant, della badwound5, a series of line-drawings from melissa bowerman’s topological relations picture series,6 each depicting a topological 5 i am indebted to della badwound, a native speaker of both lakhota (pine ridge dialect) and english, for providing the data that made this study possible. 6 the drawings are originally from bowerman and pederson (2003). through the assistance of dr. david rood, i was able to receive a complete set of drawings from dr. stephen levinson at the 4 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 22 [2010] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol22/iss1/5 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/06db-m579 locative constructions in lakhota 5 spatial relation with a designated figure (marked with an arrow) and ground (see appendix a). the set of drawings includes a range of relations that are coded in english by a variety of prepositions like on, in, above, under, and beside, as well as complex prepositions such as inside of, on top of, and on the side of. for each drawing, i asked badwound in english: ‘where is the [figure]?’ she then responded in lakhota. variations were often volunteered by badwound, while others i actively probed for. for example, several of the images represent prototypically western cultural objects which lack lakhota translations (or at least badwound did not know of their translations in lakhota). in such cases, we verbally sketched a parallel scenario using other well-known elements. in addition, i often explored variations of images by replacing either the figure, the ground, and/or the spatial configuration, in an attempt to tease out some of the significant patterns. all of our sessions were recorded in digital audio (mp3 format) and transcribed. 2.2. operational definitions languages not only vary in the kinds of markers they use to code topical relations, but also in the way in which they combine different types of markers into more complex systems. for example, certain languages rely strictly on adpositions (e.g. tiriyó), others also use spatial nouns to varying degrees, with or without locative case markers (e.g. basque, trumai), while some incorporate positional verbs (e.g. dutch, ewe, yélî) (levinson & meira 2003: 492). finding ways to compare these kinds of forms and their combinations across languages can be quite problematic. to further complicate the matter, there does not seem to be much consensus in the literature for characterizing many of these markers. ayano (2001) notes that adpositions have not been clearly defined in part-of-speech research. baker (2003) even goes so far as to say that there is a fundamental disagreement in whether adpositions should be considered functional or lexical categories. therefore, before diving into the details of this paper, i will establish some operational definitions. the lakhota locative construction appears to use a combination of two distinct kinds of markers. for the purposes of this study, i have adopted two of levinson and meira’s working definitions to refer to these two kinds of elements: language and cognition group of the max planck institute for psycholinguistics. although the full set includes 71 drawings, this project only covered 47 scenes. 5 sikos: locative constructions in lakhota published by cu scholar, 2010 colorado research in linguistics, volume 22 (2010) 6. first, i will use the term adpostion as a combination of both semantic and syntactic criteria such that “a spatial adposition is any expression that heads an adverbial phrase of location in the basic locative construction (answers to where-questions)” (levinson & meira 2003: 486). second, the term locative/positional verb (lpv) will be used to refer to a relatively small set of contrasting verbs of location or position. like many other languages, lakhota makes use of verbs like sit (»ja)ke), stand (»na)z&i), and lie (»ju)ke) to express something about the spatial relation between figure and ground. as can be seen from these examples, lpvs are often derived from posture verbs. both of these definitions will be fleshed out in section 3. 2.3. extensional map finally, elicitation drawings that badwound described using a particular adposition were mapped onto a fixed arrangement of the complete set of drawings used in this study (see section 3.2). this method is helpful in two ways. first, it provides a general idea of how lakhota partitions the conceptual realm of spatial topology. a key assumption here is that a set of drawings referred to by a particular adposition represents the extensional category for that adposition. second, the lakhota mappings can then be compared to the mappings of other languages to see where their boundaries converge or diverge. the fixed arrangement of drawings used in this paper is based on one utilized by levinson and meira (2003).7 however, levinson and meira’s array contains 71 drawings. since this study could not cover all of the scenes, i removed the images that did not appear in the data and left the remaining drawings in their original fixed positions. therefore, a comparison of the lakhota pattern to patterns established for other languages may only give us a rough idea of any cross-linguistic similarities or differences in extensional categories. 7 this method was originally used by bowerman (1996). 6 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 22 [2010] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol22/iss1/5 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/06db-m579 locative constructions in lakhota 7 3. results of the analysis 3.1. lakota locative construction lakhota expresses spatial configurations with a combination of adpositions and locative/positional verbs (lpvs). based on the utterances that were collected in this study, the basic structure of the locative construction is as follows: (np) (np) (np) (d-adv) (adposition(s)) lpv/pred the parentheses indicate that certain elements can be omitted — only the lpv/pred element is obligatory. the (s) indicates that there is no limit (at least in theory) to the number of adpositions. evidence for this basic ordering will be given throughout section 3.1. some possible variations and exceptions to this order will be discussed in section 3.1.5. the following sections look at each of the elements in detail. 3.1.1. the noun phrase (np) in the locative construction8 due to the very specific way in which the data were elicited, the vast majority of utterances contained two noun phrases. for example, for drawing 1 i asked badwound, where is the cup? she responded with: (1) wi»jatke ki »waglijutapi (ki) ) el a»ka)l »he cup the table (the) there on top of exists npfigure npground the cup is on the table here, both the np representing the figure as well as the np representing the ground are present. on the other hand, several examples show that the np that refers to the ground may be omitted: 8 for an in-depth description of lakhota nouns and noun phrases, see rood and taylor (1996). 7 sikos: locative constructions in lakhota published by cu scholar, 2010 colorado research in linguistics, volume 22 (2010) 8. (2) »wowapi wa) a»ka)l »he book a on top of exists npfigure a book is up there (on the shelf) (3) »wowapi ki c&ha)»blaska wa) a»ka)l »he book the shelf/board a on top of exists npfigure npground the book is up there on a shelf although both (2) and (3) are grammatically correct, the ground (shelf) is assumed in the former while explicitly stated in the later. the following examples, in contrast, require that the ground be omitted: (4) »ogle ki o»tke coat the hangs the coat is hanging (5) »wowapi »eja i»phaxlog »he paper some pierced through exist some sheets are stuck/pierced there in english, the likely constructions would be, the coat is hanging on the wall and some sheets are stuck on the spike. however, it appears as if the lakhota lpvs o»tke (‘hangs’) and i»phaxlog (‘pierced through’), are incompatible with an explicitly stated ground. i n a later example using o»tke, i attempted to get badwound to express the ground explicitly: (6) »hapi »eja o»tke clothes some hang some clothes are hanging (on a line) (7) »hapi »eja ta)»ka)l o»tke clothes some outside hang some clothes are hanging outside (8) ? »hapi »eja wi)»ka el o»tke ? clothes some rope/line there hang ? some clothes are hanging there on a line first badwound gave a ground-less expression in (6), but when pressed she inserted a location (ta)»ka)l, ‘outside’) in (7). we might call ‘outside’ a pseudoground, but it was not the ground depicted in the drawing. finally, i asked her if it was possible to say (8), a literal translation of the english some clothes are hanging there on a line. her feeling was that it may be “grammatically correct,” 8 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 22 [2010] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol22/iss1/5 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/06db-m579 locative constructions in lakhota 9 but it “sounded funny” because the “line is a given.” in other words, a native speaker would not describe the scene that way.9 the following set of examples shows how the particular spatial relation of an item being worn by someone can be expressed via one, two, or three nps: (9) pe/i»juskic&a ki »u) headband the (she is) wearing (using) npfigure (she is) wearing a headband (10) »wi»c&i)c&ala ki pe/i»juskic&a wa) na»ta el »u) girl the headband a head there wearing (using) np npfigure npground the girl is wearing a headband on her head (11) »wipiaka ki pa»ƒe el »u) belt the waist/abdomen there worn (used) the belt is worn on the waist the »u)-construction seems to be the preferred way to express the concept of items being worn.10 (9) shows the prototypical form, using only a single np. a better translation might be ‘the headband is worn,’ because both the wearer and the ground are assumed. however, with some coaxing i was able to get badwound to explicitly state the figure, ground, and wearer in (10). finally, (11) shows that both the figure and ground can be used without expressing the wearer. clearly, there is a range of acceptable variation, although within certain constraints, as demonstrated by (4) and (5). rood and taylor state that the only obligatory slot in a lakhota sentence is the verb (1996: 453). however, since there were no instances in this dataset where all the nps were omitted, i cannot say for certain whether or not the locative construction requires at least one np. 9 see section 4.1 for limitations of this study, including the possibility that this elicitation tool is the linguistic equivalent of forcing a square peg into a round hole. 10 see non-spatial predicates in section 3.1.4 for more on why lakhota does not describe certain scenes using the basic locative construction. 9 sikos: locative constructions in lakhota published by cu scholar, 2010 colorado research in linguistics, volume 22 (2010) 10. 3.1.2. deictic adverbs (d-adv) it appears that the locative construction can use the deictic adverb slot to express the spatial relationship that exists between the speaker and the scene she is describing. for example, when i asked badwound to describe drawing 7, she first said: (12) i)»ktomi wa) tic&e) (el) i»jaje spider a ceiling/roof (there) going/moving a spider is going along on the ceiling the deictic adverb badwound originally used was »el, (‘there’). however, when she repeated the sentence, she omitted the »el. in trying to tease out the meaning of this word, i asked her to imagine that the spider was further and further away from her (i also physically moved the drawing up and away). badwound then answered using different d-advs: (13) i)»ktomi wa) tic&e) hel i»jaje spider a ceiling/roof over there going/moving a spider is going along up there on the ceiling (14) i)»ktomi wa) tic&e) »kakhja i»jaje spider a ceiling/roof to way over there going/moving a spider is going along to (a place) way up there on the ceiling the only element that changes between these utterances is the d-adv. since the spatial relationship between the figure and ground did not change, i assume that it was badwound’s perception of her position in relation to the figure that prompted her to use the different d-advs. although this is a relatively simple example, the implications for the role of introspection in locative constructions may be much more complex.11 four d-advs appeared in the data: 11 rood (2003) outlines a hypothesis wherein the choice of certain adpositions is dependent on whether the speaker imagines the scene to be at the speaker’s own location or someplace away from it, giving rise to complex variations. 10 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 22 [2010] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol22/iss1/5 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/06db-m579 locative constructions in lakhota 11 lel ‘here’ »el ‘there’ (neutral, default term) »hel ‘over there’ (further away than »el) »kakhja ‘to (a place) way over there’ (telic; further away than both »el and »hel) of these, the most common by far was »el, which appears to be a general default term in addition to simply meaning ‘there.’ this is not particularly surprising if we consider the roots of d-advs, which are formed by adding a demonstrative to an adverb or adposition. lakhota has three demonstrative roots: »le ‘this’ »he ‘that’ (a general, default term) »ka ‘that over there’ (further away than »he) according to rood and tayor, »he is the most semantically neutral of these roots, and is the general term that is used once the location of an np has been identified — either by gesture, by using one of the three demonstratives, or periphrasitcally (1996: 456). therefore, it seems likely that the d-advs work in much the same way as demonstratives. once the spatial relationship between the speaker and the scene has been established, the speaker can default to »el, or even omit it completely. 3.1.3. adpositions lakhota has no prepositions or circumpositions, only postpositions. however, in keeping with the operational definitions outlined in section 2.2., i will continue to call the category by the more general term adposition. although some scholars distinguish between spatial nominals, spatial adverbials, basic adpositions, and derived adpostitions, i have chosen to group them all together for two reasons. first, as mentioned in section 2.2, the crosslinguistic boundaries of these categories are quite fuzzy. levinson and meira make a point of including spatial nominals (e.g. ‘top,’ ‘bottom,’ ‘side’) because even though on top of can be separated from the more complex locative adpositional on the top of, the general spatial relation they both express can tell us something about an underlying concept they may share (2003: 486). the second reason i group all spatial-relation terms under the category of adpostion is specific to lakhota itself. many of its adpositions are derived from verbal stems. an even larger number are derived from an adverb with a related meaning, by simply prefixing an i-. ingham states, “in a sense this type of postposition is infinitely derivable, since potentially any adverb, especially one relating to time or space, can form a postposition by means of the prefix i-” (2003: 41). 11 sikos: locative constructions in lakhota published by cu scholar, 2010 colorado research in linguistics, volume 22 (2010) 12. furthermore, rood and taylor write, “the line between adverbs and postpositions is sometimes difficult to draw, chiefly because the same words are often used both ways” (1996: 452). in short, for the purposes of this paper, adpostion will be used to describe markers for specific spatial relationships that exist between the figure and ground. this is not to say, however, that subtle distinctions between adpositions are not important for this study. as we shall see, we may be able to establish some taxonomic relationships (at least in a preliminary way) among adpositions (see section 3.2.3). the majority of adpositions that appeared in the data are listed below, organized into broad conceptual categories (e.g. in, on, over): in ma»hel ‘inside,’ ‘within’ on a»ka)l ‘on top of’ a»kaxpa ‘covers’ over i»wa)kab ‘above’ (above “head level,” but not necessarily above a ground) under o»xlathe ‘under’ (contact not allowed) i»oxlathe ‘under,’ ‘right under’ (contact ok) i»hukhul ‘down there’ (below “head level,” not necessarily beneath a ground) near khi»jela ‘near’ i»sakhib ‘beside,’ ‘next to’ around o»homni ‘around’ attached i»phaxlog ‘pierced through’ e»ta) ‘from there’ in an attempt to delineate the boundaries of each term, let’s look at some of the more common and/or interesting examples of how lakhota adpositions describe certain spatial relations. in · ma»hel. the adposition ma»hel is used in two somewhat different ways: (15) tha»spa) wa) »wijatke ma»hel »he apple a cup/bowl inside exists an apple is in the cup (16) »s&u)ka ti ma»hel »xpaje dog house inside lies a dog is lying inside the house 12 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 22 [2010] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol22/iss1/5 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/06db-m579 locative constructions in lakhota 13 (17) c&i»ska wa) wa»ks&ic&a-pha»xi)te ma»hel »u) spoon a dish towel inside exists a spoon is under the towel examples (15) and (16) show the adposition being used in a way that is quite similar to english. both the apple and the dog are described as being within some container (ground). sentence (17), on the other hand, uses ‘inside’ where english would prefer ‘under’ (lakhota can also use ‘under.’ see next section). perhaps one can think of the lakhota term ma»hel as covering a broader semantic space than the english term in. we will come back to this notion in section 3.2. under · o»xlate, i »oxlate, i »hukul . the following example shows that the same spatial arrangement shown in drawing 24 can be expressed with only two of the three adpositions that can be glossed as under: (18) c&i»ska wa) wa»ks&ic&a-pha»xi)te i»oxlate »u) spoon a dish towel under exists a spoon is under the towel (19) c&i»ska wa) wa»ks&ic&a-pha»xi)te i»hukhul »u) spoon a dish towel down there exists a spoon is under the towel (20) * c&i»ska wa) wa»ks&ic&a-pha»xi)te o»xlate »u) * spoon a dish towel under exists * a spoon is under the towel note that o»xlate cannot be used here. what is particularly interesting is that the two constructions that are most similar in form are the least compatible. i was unable to determine why this was so until i compared these utterances to another set of ‘under’ sentences. badwound used all three adpositional forms in describing drawing 1612: (21) tha»pha wa) »waglijutapi o»xlate »he ball a table under exists a ball is under the table 12 badwound had trouble recalling the lakhota word for ‘chair’ so we substituted ‘table.’ 13 sikos: locative constructions in lakhota published by cu scholar, 2010 colorado research in linguistics, volume 22 (2010) 14. (22) tha»pha wa) »waglijutapi i»oxlate »he ball a table under exists a ball is under the table (23) tha»pha wa) »waglijutapi i»hukhul »he ball a table down there exists a ball is down there (under) the table according to badwound, there is no difference in meaning between (21) and (22), and both are grammatical. perhaps this can be explained as the effect of the adposition-derivation chain mentioned above. however, there may be another explanation that also accounts for the examples that describe drawing 24. i recalled that badwound made certain hand gestures while describing drawing 16 which gave the impression that i»oxlate was somehow “closer” to her than o»xlate. it did not make sense to me at the time, but later reflection lead me to reinterpret i»oxlate as refering to something that might better be translated as ‘right under the table.’ this explanation would also solve the puzzle of sentence (20). since the towel makes contacts with the spoon, ‘right under the towel’ would make perfect sense. an implication of this solution is that o»xlate cannot be used if there is contact between figure and ground. although i have not been able to test this prediction, the notion of contact will become an important feature in section 3.2.3. according to badwound, o»xlate and i»hukul are not perfect synonyms either. when comparing examples (22) and (23), badwound said that the latter does not necessarily imply that the figure is beneath any kind of ground, while the former does. i interpret badwound’s description as meaning that the utterance in (23) sets up the scene almost as a list: “there’s a ball and a table, and the ball is down there (in relation to the speaker, rather than in relation to the table).” on the other hand, (22) seems to specifically describe the fact that the ball is beneath the table. on · a»ka )l, a»kaxpa. the lakhota adposition for ‘on top of’ is used to describe a figure in contact with a flat horizontal ground. again, the notion of contact is significant (see section 3.2.3). the following example is representative of a great many sentences in the data: (24) »wowapi ki c&ha)»blaska wa) a»ka)l »he book the shelf/board a on top of exists the book is on a shelf a variation, however, can occur by adding a second adposition in series with a»ka)l to express the concept of ‘covering’: 14 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 22 [2010] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol22/iss1/5 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/06db-m579 locative constructions in lakhota 15 (25) mni»huha wa) »waglijutapi a»ka)l »he linen/cloth a table on top of exists a tablecloth is on the table (26) mni»huha wa) »waglijutapi a»ka)l a»kaxpa »he linen/cloth a table on top of covers exists a tablecloth covers the table although we may be tempted to label the term a»kaxpa in (26) as simply an adverb, there is some evidence in support of grouping it with adpostions. rood and taylor note: the line between adverbs and postpositions is sometimes difficult to draw, chiefly because the same words are often used both ways. english adverbs and prepositions show the same kind of interchangeability. ‘come on out from down in under there!’ has six adverb/prepositions in this kind of ambiguous function. (1996: 452) it seems that a»kaxpa in (26) acts as a serial adposition in the same way as the english down in under there, and carries additional spatial information — namely, that the figure completely covers the top of the ground. we have seen that a»ka)l can be used to express the relationship between a figure and a flat horizontal ground, but it can also describe other types of grounds as well: (27) zi)»tkala wa) »wikha) (el) a»ka)l »ja)ke bird a rope (there) on top of sits a bird is sitting on the line (28) wi»c&has&a wa) ti»-aka)l »naz&i man a roof-on top of stands a man stands on the rooftop (29) wi»c&has&a wa) ti»c&he a»ka)l »naz&i man a roof on top of stands a man stands on top of a roof sentence (27) shows a»ka)l being used with a linear (rather than planar) ground, and (28) and (29) show a flat but angled ground. another notable phenomenon in this set of examples is how adpositions can often combine with nouns to form compounds. the form ti»-aka)l (‘roof-on top of’) in (28) is such a compound. 15 sikos: locative constructions in lakhota published by cu scholar, 2010 colorado research in linguistics, volume 22 (2010) 16. around · o»homni. at first glance, it may appear that the adposition o»homni is used in the same way that around is used in english: (30) mni»huha wi»jakpa phe»tiz&a)z&a) wa) o»homni i»jakas&kab material shiny lamp/fire a around they tied around they tied a ribbon around the candle (31) »c&hu)kas&ke ti o»homni »he fence house around exists the fence is around the house (32) »wipiaka ki pa»ƒe o»homni »u) belt the waist/abdomen around worn (used) the belt is worn around the waist the three examples above show a wide variation in kinds of ground, from small and large inanimate objects (candle, house) to animates (a woman’s waist). in fact, o»homni was the only adposition that appeared in the »u)-construction (the preferred way to express the concept of items being worn) in this dataset. on the other hand, o»homni is not used in certain situations where english uses around: (33) nu)»psioxli wa) »na)pe el »u) ring a hand/finger there (she is) wearing (using) she is wearing a ring on her finger (34) * nu)»psioxli wa) »na)pe o»homni »u) * ring a hand/finger around (she is) wearing (using) * she is wearing a ring around her finger sentences (33) and (34) show that while one can say ‘she is wearing a ring on her finger’ in lakhota, it is ungrammatical to say ‘she is wearing a ring around her finger.’ what is the rationale behind this categorization? according to badwound, sentences (30), (31), and (32) are all grammatical because the figure “goes around” the ground in each. i interpret this as meaning that each of the figures has two ends, one of which traverses space around the ground to meet the opposite end. even the ‘fence’ in (31) can be thought of in this way (as we can also do in english). conversely, a ring is a solid object that does not have this same property. therefore, corresponding english and lakhota adpositions clearly carve out different areas of spatial conceptualization. attached · i »phaxlog, e»ta ) . there are two lakhota adpostions that carry the concept of attachment. the first is i»phaxlog: 16 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 22 [2010] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol22/iss1/5 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/06db-m579 locative constructions in lakhota 17 (35) »wowapi »eja i»phaxlog »he paper some pierced through exists some sheets are stuck/pierced there (36) wa»hi)kpe wa) tha»spa) wa) i»phaxlog ja)»ke arrow an apple an bore through sits (and is still there) an arrow bore through an apple and is still there (37) wa»hi)kpe wa) tha»spa) wa) i»phaxlog i»jaje arrow an apple an bore through going (and left a hole) an arrow bore through an apple and left a hole i»phaxlog may best be translated as ‘pierced,’ but can be used in two slightly different senses (as can ‘pierce’ in english). in (35) and (36), the figures were pierced and remain stuck to/on the ground.13 i»phaxlog in this sense can be thought of as having a feature of +attachment. on the other hand, the sense of i»phaxlog in (37) is not one of attachment. instead, the figure pierced the ground, passed on through, and left only a hole. this sense of the adpostition does not share the feature of attachment. another adposition that implies attachment is e»ta) (‘from’). it is particularly interesting because (at least in this dataset) it is only found in association with animate figures that grow from a particular ground: (38) c&ha) wa) pa»ha e»ta) i»c&haƒe tree a hill from grows a tree is growing from the hill (39) tha»spa) wa) c&ha) e»ta) o»tke apple an tree from hanging an apple is hanging from a tree (40) tha»spa) wa) c&ha) e»ta) i»c&aƒe apple an tree from growing an apple is growing from a tree apple and tree in the above examples both ‘grow from’ and are ‘attached at’ a particular place on the ground. 13 the word order difference does not seem to be relevant, perhaps because the instrument and undergoer are obvious from the context. 17 sikos: locative constructions in lakhota published by cu scholar, 2010 colorado research in linguistics, volume 22 (2010) 18. let’s now turn to the final element in the basic locative construction, the predicate. 3.1.4. lpv/predicate levinson and meira note that many languages can encode topological relations with a contrastive set of locative predicates (2003: 486). lakhota appears to be such a language — it uses various kinds of verbs to express something about the spatial relationship, with or without utilizing the adpositions discussed above. a wide range of predicate types appeared in the data: posture verbs, default verbs of existence, positional verbs, and non-spatial predicates. let’s look at each of these in turn. posture verbs. a subset of the verbs that appeared in the data can be categorized as posture verbs: »ja)ke ‘sit’ »na)z&i ‘stand’ »ju)ke ‘lie’ (used with animate figures only) »xpaje ‘lie’ (used with both animate and inanimate figures) o»tke ‘hang’ although many languages use grammaticalized posture verbs to express something about the axial geometry between the figure and ground, they can be utilized in different ways. for example, germanic languages appear to exhibit a continuum: at one end, dutch and german require posture verbs to express the location of an entity, while at the other end, english rarely utilizes posture verbs (see lemmens 2006). before looking at any specific examples, let’s first identify another type of verb. default verbs of existence. lakhota is similar to english in that the posture verb is not usually a required element and can often be replaced with a more general predicate of existence. lakhota speakers, however, must chose between two general predicates depending on the animacy of the figure: 18 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 22 [2010] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol22/iss1/5 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/06db-m579 locative constructions in lakhota 19 »he14 ‘exist’ (a general default term, used with inanimate figure) »u) 15 ‘exist’ (a general default term, used with animate figure) some examples of how the posture and animacy of figures interact in the locative construction can be seen in the following set of utterances: (41) »mni »ognake ki »waglijutapi a»ka)l »he water bottle the table on top exists the water bottle is on the table (42) »mni »ognake ki »waglijutapi a»ka)l »na)z&i water bottle the table on top stands the water bottle is standing on the table (43) »mni »ognake ki »waglijutapi a»ka)l »ja)ke water bottle the table on top sits the water bottle is sitting on the table (44) »mni »ognake ki »waglijutapi a»ka)l »xpaje water bottle the table on top lies the water bottle is lying on the table (45) * »mni »ognake ki »waglijutapi a»ka)l »ju)ke * water bottle the table on top lies * the water bottle is lying on the table (46) * »mni »ki »waglijutapi a»ka)l »xpaje * water the table on top lies * the water is lying on the table example (41) shows that »he can be used as the general default term for inanimate objects. sentences (42-44) show some of the various posture verbs that can be used with »mni »ognake (‘water bottle’), depending on what axial geometry it has in relation to the ground (e.g. standing on its base, lying on its side). however, the ungrammaticality of (45) indicates that »ju)ke (‘lies’) cannot be used with inanimate objects. 14 not to be confused with its homonym, the demonstrative root »he (‘that’) 15 not to be confused with its homonym, the lpv »u) (‘wear,’ ‘use’) 19 sikos: locative constructions in lakhota published by cu scholar, 2010 colorado research in linguistics, volume 22 (2010) 20. example (46) is ungrammatical for a different reason. it appears that lakhota differs from english in that it cannot use a posture verb to describe a situation where water has been spilled on a table. in contrast, compare the english sentence be careful, there’s (pooled) water standing on that table. according to badwound, liquids that are not in some kind of container must be expressed as “running or flowing,” even if it is just pooled on a table. animate objects require a slightly different pattern. none of the following figures allows the use of »he as a general default term: (47) * ha»xa) wa) mni (el) »he * fish a water (there) exists * a fish is (there) in the water (48) * zi)»tkala wa) »wikha (el) a»ka)l »he * bird a rope (there) on top of exists * a bird is standing on the line (49) * ho»ks&ila ki »pheta (el) i»sakhib »he * boy the fire (there) beside exists * the boy is beside a fire (50) * i»gmu wa) o»wi)z&a a»ka)l »he * cat a material/rug on top of exists * a cat is sitting on the material/rug on the other hand, compare the above examples with the following set: (51) zu»zec&a wa) c&ha) el »u) snake a stump/wood there exists there is a snake on the stump (52) zu»zec&a wa) c&ha) el aka)l »ja)ke snake a stump/wood there on top of sits a snake is sitting there on top of the stump (53) zu»zec&a wa) c&ha) el aka)l »ju)ke snake a stump/wood there on top of lies a snake is lying there on top of the stump (54) zu»zec&a wa) c&ha) el aka)l »xpaje snake a stump/wood there on top of lies a snake is lying there on top of the stump (55) * zu»zec&a wa) c&ha) el »he * snake a stump/wood there exists * a snake is there on the stump (56) * zu»zec&a wa) c&ha) el aka)l »he * snake a stump/wood there on top of exists * a snake is there on top of the stump 20 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 22 [2010] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol22/iss1/5 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/06db-m579 locative constructions in lakhota 21 the direct contrast between (51) and (55-56) indicates that animate figures must take »u) rather than »he as a general default verb. another animacy criteria can be seen by comparing sentences (53) and (54). in contrast with an inanimate object like water bottle, here we can see that animate objects like snake can take either »ju)ke (‘lies’) or »xpaje (‘lies’) and still be grammatical. some lexical items also seem to have specific constraints on which posture verb they can select. the constraint appears to have something to do with the physical dimensions of the figure. for example: (57) i)»ktomi wa) tic&e) (el) »ja)ke spider a ceiling/roof (there) sits (if not moving) a spider is sitting on the ceiling (58) * i)»ktomi wa) tic&e) (el) »na)z)i * spider a ceiling/roof (there) stands (if not moving) * a spider is standing on the ceiling (59) tha»pha wa) »waglijutapi (el) i»hukhul »ja)ke ball a table (there) down there sits a ball is sitting down there (under) the table (60) * tha»pha wa) »waglijutapi (el) i»hukhul »naz&i) * ball a table (there) down there stands * a ball is standing down there (under) the table it appears that both i)»ktomi (‘spider’) and tha»pha (‘ball’) can take »ja)ke (‘sit’) but not »na)z)i (‘stand’). comparing these examples to the data for water bottle on table, snake on stump (drawing 23), and boy beside fire (drawing 38), paints the following picture: sit stand lie water bottle x x x snake x - x boy x x x spider x - - ball x - - one possible conclusion that can be drawn from this is that the height-to-width dimension of a figure combines with the “natural” spatial orientations it tends to take in the real world. it appears that this combination plays a key role in which posture verbs can be selected. figures that are long and thin, but have a multiple natural orientations to ground (i.e. water bottles and boys can often be found upright or on their sides), appear to be able to take any of the posture verbs. snakes, on the other hand, are also long and thin but are rarely found completely upright. spiders and balls seem to form another class of objects that can be 21 sikos: locative constructions in lakhota published by cu scholar, 2010 colorado research in linguistics, volume 22 (2010) 22. thought of as having approximately equal height and width. furthermore, their orientation does not tend to change much in relation to ground. therefore, this combination may preclude the use of either ‘standing’ or ‘lying.’ positional verbs. some of the predicates that appeared in the data provide important spatial or positional information, but cannot be categorized as posture verbs: i»jaskape ‘sticks (to/on something)’ o»kawiƒe ‘floats (on water)’ ka»xwoke ‘floats (in/on air)’ o»wapi ‘imprinted (on something)’ i»kwqke ‘tie (to something)’, ‘attached (to something)’ i»jakas&kab ‘tie around (something)’ the following comparison shows how scenes that we can describe in english using a single positional verb (floats), require two different verbs in lakhota: (61) tha»spa) wa) »wijatke el o»kawi)ƒe apple a cup/bowl there floats16 an apple is floating inside the cup (62) ma»xpija wa) pa»z&ola (el) i»wa)kab ka»xwoke cloud a pointed little hill (there) above floats a cloud is floating (there) above the pointed little hill non-spatial predicates. levinson and meira note that several languages in their sample (e.g. lao, yukatek) did not use locative constructions when describing certain kinds of scenes. instead, they express these relationships in some other way (either utilizing the resultative or some other descriptive mode) “suggesting that languages perhaps differ in what they consider a fundamentally spatial arrangement” (2003: 495). 16 alternate translations include ‘floating, ‘sailing,’ and/or ‘bobbing up and down (in some liquid)’ 22 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 22 [2010] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol22/iss1/5 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/06db-m579 locative constructions in lakhota 23 similarly, lakhota appears to prefer non-spatial constructions for several scenes. since these expression evoke a construction other than the basic locative, i will only list the verbs here and indicate which scenes they described: i»jaje ‘goes’ 7, 11, 19, 30 i»c&haƒe ‘grows’ 17, 27, 41 o»nuwe ‘swims’ 32 »u) ‘wears’ (‘uses’) 5, 10, 21, 42, 46 »os&ta ‘put on (clothing)’ 21 i»juthe ‘tried on (clothing)’ 21 c&ha)»nu)pe ‘smokes a cigarette’ 39 »u)pe ‘smokes’ 39 wa»je ‘i did’ 9 as we shall see in the following section, all of the predicates discussed here in section 3.1.4 seem to be able to fill the same slot in the locative construction; therefore i have labeled the slot lpv/pred for locational, postural, and positional verbs (lpvs) , as well as other predicates. 3.1.5. ordering of elements clearly, much more data from multiple speakers will eventually be required to get a more complete picture of the overall patterns that lakhota allows. however, we can make a preliminary summary of the basic locative construction as seen in this data: (np) (np) (np) (d-adv) (adposition(s)) lpv/pred throughout section 3.1 we have explored the multiple patterns that are represented in the formula above. we have looked at each of the elements in detail, as well as identified which are optional and which are obligatory. we have also noted the acceptable combinations of adposition + lpv, acceptable orderings, and identified multiple animacy criteria. a couple of questions still remain, however. for example, the set of responses for drawing 17 (tree on hill) show an interesting variation on the basic pattern. the default verb »he (‘exists’) appears to be able to fill either the adposition slot or the lpv/pred slot: (63) c&ha) pa»ha wa) »he »naz&i) tree hill a exists stands the tree is standing on a hill 23 sikos: locative constructions in lakhota published by cu scholar, 2010 colorado research in linguistics, volume 22 (2010) 24. (64) c&ha) pa»ha wa) el »naz&i) tree hill a there stands the tree is standing there on a hill (65) c&ha) pa»ha wa) a»ka)l »he tree hill a on top of exists the tree is there on top of a hill (66) c&ha) pa»ha wa) a»ka)l »naz&i) tree hill a on top of stands the tree is standing there on top of a hill (67) ?? c&ha) pa»ha wa) »naz&i) »he ?? tree hill a stands exists ?? the tree is standing on a hill in (63), »he (‘exists’) seems to fill the adposition slot, while in (65) it appears in its “normal” lpv/pred position (i.e. where it appears in all the other data). it is almost as if »he and »na)z&i have switched places in (63). i was unable to elicit a sentence like (67), so i do not know if the variation seen in (63) is simply another ordering possibility, or if there is something more going on. nevertheless, a possible explanation is that both terms are functioning as lpvs, except they now work in series (similar to the serial adpositions discussed above). another interesting anomaly in the data can be seen in the following sentences describing drawing 28. badwound interpreted the image as picture of woman on stamp17 and described it as follows: (68) »wi)ja) wa) »wiaskab el i»towapi (»ja)ke) woman a stamp there picture (sits) a picture of a woman sits on a stamp (69) * »wi)ja) wa) »wiaskab el i»towapi (»na)z&i) * woman a stamp there picture (stands) * a picture of a woman stands on a stamp (70) * »wi)ja) wa) »wiaskab el i»towapi (»ju)ke) * woman a stamp there picture (lies) * a picture of a woman lies on a stamp 17 badwound did not know the word for ‘stamp’ and therefore created one. 24 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 22 [2010] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol22/iss1/5 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/06db-m579 locative constructions in lakhota 25 the first thing that caught my attention is that the lpv appears to be optional. this clearly challenges the notion that the only obligatory element in a lakhota sentence is a predicate. however, when i asked badwound to translate the lakhota phrase back to me in english, she said, “it is a picture of a woman that lies on the stamp.” this sounds like an embedded clause construction, so the mystery may simply be the result of a different type of construction. 3.2. results of lakhota data in relation to the universal conceptual categories hypothesis several previous studies have challenged the universal conceptual categories hypothesis at various levels of analysis, including implications that concepts like in and on may not be holistic primitives (brown 1994), that languages may partition the conceptual space in other ways which are learned just as early (bowerman 1996 and 2003), that precise (rather then general) axial geometry must often be expressed (levinson 1994), and that some languages code topological relations with (either completely or in combination with) contrastive locative verbs rather than adpositions (ameka & levinson 2003). the levinson and meira study approaches the debate by breaking down the overarching universal conceptual categories hypothesis into three progressively weaker hypotheses: hypothesis 1: all languages agree on basic categories like in, on, under, near, etc., in such a way that these notions form uniform, shared coremeanings for adpositions across languages. hypothesis 2: languages may disagree on the ‘cuts’ through this semantic space, but agree on the underlying organization of the space — that is, the conceptual space formed by topological notions is coherent, such that certain notions will have fixed neighborhood relations. hypothesis 3: the domain of topological relations constitutes a coherent semantic space with a number of strong attractors, that is, categories that languages will statistically tend to recognize even if some choose to ignore them. (levinson & meira 2003: 495-502) let’s see how the lakhota data compare to levinson and miera’s hypotheses. 3.2.1. hypothesis 1 this interpretation can be thought of as a “strong version” of the universal conceptual categories hypothesis. it includes what is sometimes referred to as prototype theory, where core concepts are considered to be universal but category boundaries can vary to some degree. 25 sikos: locative constructions in lakhota published by cu scholar, 2010 colorado research in linguistics, volume 22 (2010) 26. levinson and meira (2003) quickly refute this strong theory by comparing extensional maps for the multiple languages they studied. they found no evidence of prototype categories in the spatial topological domain. only a single grouping of three scenes was shared across all the languages they looked at: 53, 16, and 31 (under). similarly, the lakhota catagorizations seem to cut across boundaries identified for other languages. while lakhota does categorize 16 and 31 together (o»xlate), 53 was not part of the current study, so we cannot make any further inferences about a universal under category. 3.2.2. hypothesis 2 a weaker version of the universal conceptual categories hypothesis is based on comparative approaches that have been used in cross-linguistic exploration of basic color terms. for example, no language has been found that collapses purple and yellow into a single color category. instead, languages appear to build their color categories around foci that are “naturally salient” to human perception. cross-linguistic variations in color categories are explained by a combination of two factors: languages organize their categories around one or more of the six natural foci, and categories all have variable boundaries. levinson and meira state, “if the topological domain has a similar internal coherence, it should be possible to find a single fixed arrangement of the pictures such that those that are grouped together in one language remain contiguous even if they are separated by a category boundary in another language” (2003: 499). their best solution to such a fixed array is represented in figure 118, however it failed to meet the requirement for the languages they studied. no single arrangement could be found that did not result in some language-discontinuous categories. while this may seem to refute hypothesis 2, levinson and meira (2003) note that a perfect solution may eventually be found — unfortunately, it is an extremely difficult and computationally intensive problem to solve (71 factorial). therefore, before discounting this hypothesis, let’s see how the lakhota-specific extensional map shown in figure 2 compares with figure 1. as we can see, several lakhota categories seem to map well onto figure 1: ma»hel fits into the in region, i»wa)kab matches with over, and o»xlate fits within under. furthermore, i»sakhib provides a near match to near. the 18 figures are located in appendix b. 26 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 22 [2010] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol22/iss1/5 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/06db-m579 locative constructions in lakhota 27 boundary scene (17) is acceptable in this hypothesis because it is still contiguous to the other scenes in the category. unfortunately, the remaining categories are not so clean. while the majority of a»ka)l fits nicely into the category of on, scenes (33) and (17) are dispersed across the space. a different kind of problem is presented by the two lakhota adpositions that code some kind of attachment (i.e. i»phaxlog, e»ta)). they both fall completely outside of the attached region, although along its edges. an interesting solution to this problem is to include three lpvs that also carry attachment connotations (i.e. o»tke, i»kwqke, i»jaskape) (see figure 3). now we can see that these mappings criss-cross the larger attached region. it is still discontinuous, but the overall impression is that all the attachment-related means of coding in lakhota seem to fall within the attached region. therefore, given the fixed array used by levinson and meira (2003), the lakhota data are inconsistent with hypothesis 2 — extensions of lakhota adpositions do not map onto the optimized fixed array of scenes in a continuous way. 3.2.3. hypothesis 3 the weakest of the three versions of the universal conceptual categories hypothesis may be the most elegant. if certain topological relations do in fact act as semantic “attractors,”19 we should be able to see clusters appear on a euclidean distance model (a two-dimensional representation of multidimensional space). levinson and miera claim to have found evidence for such clusters (see figure 4). however, they also state, “a crucial consideration is whether this particular pattern is an artifact of the particular languages we happen to have selected. that is a question that we cannot answer definitively — we can say only that the patterns now showing seem quite stable when further languages are added” (2003: 504). since levinson and miera’s clusters seem stable over a wide range of languages, it would be extremely interesting to see if the lakhota data follows the same pattern or not. unfortunately, the data analysis methodology required for 19 attractor is a term used in dynamical systems theory (complexity theory) to refer to a particular state towards which a complex system will tend to evolve, given enough time (see gleik, 1987; lorenz, 1996). 27 sikos: locative constructions in lakhota published by cu scholar, 2010 colorado research in linguistics, volume 22 (2010) 28. such an analysis (multidimensional scaling and cluster analysis) is beyond the scope of this project. we may, however, be able to get a general idea of how the lakhota data compares to levinson and miera’s cluster analysis by checking to see if any of the lakhota adpositions and/or lpvs fall outside of levinson and miera’s clusters.20 for example, figure 5 shows an enlargement of the attachment cluster region. of the 13 scenes that lakhota describes using attachment adpostions or lpvs, fully six of them are not represented in any of the clusters (i.e. 9, 20, 27, 30, 44, 41). it is possible that this may be due to including lpvs as well as adpositions in order to flesh out the attachment category. however, i believe that it instead shows that lakhota organizes its attachment category somewhat differently than the other languages represented in the cluster analysis. on the other hand, if we look at the two clusters that concern on (i.e. ontop and on-over), we find the lakhota organization largely follows the cluster analysis. lakhota uses a single adposition (a»ka)l ) for on, but its meaning can span three of the clusters. of the nine scenes for which a»ka)l is used, four fall into the on-over category, three into on-top, and two into attachment. levinson and miera state, “note that the ‘conflation’ of on/over suggests that on simpliciter is not a primitive (as on the orthodox view) but is composed of superposition plus or minus contact” (2003: 508). since the use of a»ka)l requires contact, it is broad enough in meaning to be used in all the scenes represented by the three different clusters. these two rough comparisons between the lakhota data and levinson and miera’s cluster analysis seem to point in different directions. some aspects of lakhota data may not fit into their model, while others seem to accord well. unfortunately, this study does not provide the kind of analysis that would be more conclusive. 20 a true cluster analysis of the lakhota data would plot each scene in the multidimensional space. any differences noted in this rough estimation may not in fact be significant (see section 4.1 for limitations of this study.). 28 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 22 [2010] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol22/iss1/5 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/06db-m579 locative constructions in lakhota 29 4. discussion of results 4.1. limitations of the study clearly, a study of this size (utilizing only a single consultant) has many limitations. first and foremost, generalizing from a specific individual’s utterances to the structure of a language is a significant leap of faith. without comparing this dataset to responses from other native speakers, we cannot know to what extent badwound’s patterns indicate preferences of the language itself or are instead idiosyncratic. further study utilizing a larger subject pool and statistical methodologies will eventually be needed to fully understand the extent of any variability. another major limitation of this project concerns cross-linguistic studies in general. research designs attempting to understand something about “universal” conceptual categories may be inherently problematic. various types of researcher bias (e.g. linguistic, cultural, philosophical) are difficult if not impossible to avoid, even when they are acknowledged. furthermore, human cognition is a socially embodied process rather than the abstract, disembodied form of “reason” proposed by most semantic typologists (hutchins 1995). therefore, attempting to abstract purely conceptual information from decontextualized drawings may provide a skewed picture (see goodwin 1997 for an excellent critique of basic color term studies.) in other words, it is possible that the very methodology used in this project is the linguistic equivalent of forcing a square peg into a round hole. finally, i cannot offer any reliable analysis or conclusion for the comparison between the lakhota data and levinson and miera’s hypothesis 3 because the kind of data analysis required is beyond the scope of this project. given these limitations, there are still some observations that we can make. 4.2. conclusion although languages use different means to express spatial topological relations, it has been generally assumed that the underlying conceptual categories are universal. consequently, it was thought that individual languages simply map their particular coding means onto the underlying categories. recent crosslinguistic research in the spatial topological domain, however, has challenged the assumptions of this universal conceptual categories hypothesis on a variety of levels. this project has analyzed and described the basic locative construction in lakhota. it has explored each of the elements in detail, identified which are optional and which are obligatory, noted the acceptable combinations and orderings of elements, and identified multiple animacy criteria. since lakhota is a language that has called into question universal theories in other areas of 29 sikos: locative constructions in lakhota published by cu scholar, 2010 colorado research in linguistics, volume 22 (2010) 30. linguistics, a comparison was made between the lakhota data and the conclusions from levinson and meira’s groundbreaking cross-linguistic study (2003). levinson and meira break the universal conceptual categories hypothesis down into successively weaker hypotheses, and conclude that there is only evidence for the third and weakest version. the lakhota data analyzed here confirms that hypothesis 1 (strong view) is unfounded — there is no evidence of prototype categories in the spatial topological domain. the lakhota data also confirms that hypothesis 2 is unsupportable. extensions of lakhota adpositions do not map onto the optimized fixed array of scenes in a continuous way. therefore, languages neither agree on the ‘cuts’ through semantic space, nor their underlying organization. finally, lakhota provides some evidence to challenge levinson and meira’s proposed solution, hypothesis 3 (strong attractors in semantic space create a tendency for languages to code certain categories in certain ways). consequently, we may be forced to formulate an even weaker version of the universal conceptual categories hypothesis, or instead, simply discount the idea of universal categories in the domain of spatial topological relations. 30 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 22 [2010] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol22/iss1/5 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/06db-m579 locative constructions in lakhota 31 references ameka, felix and stephen levinson. 2003. “positional and postural verbs.” in special issue of linguistics, to appear. ayano, seiki. 2001. the layered internal structure and the external syntax of pp. durham: university of durham dissertation. baker, mark. 2003. lexical categories: verbs, nouns, and adjectives. cambridge: cambridge university press. bowerman, melissa. 1996. “learning how to structure space for language: a cross-linguistic perspective.” in language and space, bloom, peterson, nadel, and garrett (eds.), 385–436. cambridge, ma: mit press. bowerman, melissa. 2003. “space under construction: language-specific spatial categorization in first language acquisition.” in language in mind, gentner and goldin-meadow eds., 387–427. cambridge, ma: mit press. bowerman, melissa and soonja choi. 2001. “shaping meanings for language: universal and language-specific in the acquisition of spatial semantic categories.” in language acquisition and conceptual development, bowerman and levinson (eds.), 475-511. cambridge: cambridge university press. bowerman, melissa and eric pedersen. 2003. cross-linguistic perspectives on topological spatial relationships. eugene: university of oregon, and nijmegen: max planck institute for psycholinguistics, ms. brown, penelope. 1994. “the ins and ons of tzeltal locative expressions: the semantics of stative descriptions of location.” linguistics, 32 (4/5): 743–90. gleick, james. 1987. chaos: making a new science. new york: penguin books. goodwin, charles. 1997. “the blackness of black: color categories as situated practice.” in discourse, tools and reasoning: essays on situated cognition, b. burge (ed.), 111--140. new york: springer-verlag. hutchins, edwin. 1995. cognition in the wild. cambridge, ma: mit press. ingham, bruce. 2003. lakota: languages of the world/materials 426. germany: lincom europa. kay, paul and luisa maffi. 1999. “color appearance and the emergence and evolution of basic color lexicons.” american anthroplogist, 101: 743-760. lemmens , maarten. (2006). “caused posture: experiential patterns emerging from corpus research.” in stefan gries and anatol stefanowitsch (eds.) corpora in cognitive linguistics. vol. ii: the syntax-lexis interface. berlin: mouton de gruyter. levinson, stephen. 1994. “vision, shape and linguistic description: tzeltal bodypart terminology and object description.” in john b. haviland and stephen c. levinson (eds.) space in mayan languages (special issue of linguistics 32.4), 791–855. berlin: mouton de gruyter. 31 sikos: locative constructions in lakhota published by cu scholar, 2010 colorado research in linguistics, volume 22 (2010) 32. levinson, stephen and sergio meira, s. 2003. “‘natural concepts’ in the spatial topological domain — adpositional meanings in cross-linguistic perspective: an exercise in semantic typology.” language, 79 (3): 485-516. lorenz, edward. 1996. the essence of chaos. seattle: university of washington press. rood, david and allan r. taylor. 1996. “sketch of lakhota, a siouan language.” in handbook of north american indians. washington dc: smithsonian institution. vol. 17, 440-482. rood, david. 2003. “two lakhota locatives and the role of introspection in linguistic analysis.” in motion, direction, and location in language, seibert and shay (eds.), 255-58. amsterdam: john benjamins. van valin, robert, d. 2001. an introduction to syntax. cambridge: cambridge university press. 32 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 22 [2010] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol22/iss1/5 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/06db-m579 locative constructions in lakhota 33 appendix a – subset of bowerman’s topological relations picture series 33 sikos: locative constructions in lakhota published by cu scholar, 2010 colorado research in linguistics, volume 22 (2010) 34. 34 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 22 [2010] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol22/iss1/5 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/06db-m579 locative constructions in lakhota 35 appendix b – figures figure 1. notional areas in fixed array (from levinson & meira 2003: 502). 35 sikos: locative constructions in lakhota published by cu scholar, 2010 colorado research in linguistics, volume 22 (2010) 36. figure 2. lakhota adpositions mapped onto fixed array. 36 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 22 [2010] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol22/iss1/5 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/06db-m579 locative constructions in lakhota 37 figure 3. lakhota adpositions and lpvs of attachment mapped onto fixed array. 37 sikos: locative constructions in lakhota published by cu scholar, 2010 colorado research in linguistics, volume 22 (2010) 38. figure 4. alscal plot for tiriyó, yélî, dnye, ewe, lavukaleve, trumai, yukatek, lao, dutch, and basque (from levinson & meira 2003: 505). figure 5. enlargement of attachment cluster region (from levinson & meira 2003: 508). 38 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 22 [2010] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol22/iss1/5 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/06db-m579 colorado research in linguistics 6-2010 locative constructions in lakhota: evidence for/against “universal conceptual categories” in spatial topology les sikos recommended citation cril_sikos_v5 a multifactorial analysis on the syntactic variations in one kind of chinese verb-direction construction (vdc) a multifactorial analysis on the syntactic variations in one kind of chinese verb-direction construction (vdc) tao lin university of colorado boulder this research investigates the linguistic features that can predict native speakers’ choice of three word order alternations of one kind of verb-direction constructions (vdcs) in mandarin chinese, i.e., object initial, middle, and final types. previous work on the contributing features is done through qualitative observations, and the direction of some predictions is unclear. this paper provides corpus based quantitative studies on both monofactorial and multifactorial analyses, which clarify the effectiveness of most of these parameters. in addition to the discussed features, some new features, such as the use of certain classes of verbs and imperatives, are also introduced in order to enhance the model; further directions and improvements are also. keywords: multinomial logistic regression, word order, constructions, chinese 1. introduction like many languages, such as english and arabic, word order variation in chinese is a common device in syntactic alternations. english verbal particle constructions (vpcs) can allow different placements of the verbal particles, which are realized in prepositions (dehé 2002, jackendoff 2002 & wasow 2002). (1) a. john took out a book. b. john took a book out. in the chinese translation of sentence 1, instead of using the preposition ‘out,’ chinese can take two verbal particles: chu ‘exit’ and lai ‘come’ marked as particle 1 and 2 (p1 and p2) in the examples. their origins all came from directional verbs (lamarre 2007). there are three possible alternations. (2) a. (object initial type) ta na yi ben shu chu lai he take one cl book exit(p1) come(p2) 1 lin: a multifactorial analysis on the syntactic variations in one kind of chinese verb-direction construction (vdc) published by cu scholar, 2019 b. (object middle type) ta na chu yi ben shu lai he take exit (p1) one cl book come(p2) c. (object final type) ta na chu lai yi ben shu he take exit(p1) come(p2) one cl book ‘he took out a book.’ these three alternations share the same meaning in example 2. the only difference is the placement of the object ‘a book.’ this study aims at adopting a quantitative approach to discover how native chinese speakers prefer one alternation over another. in chinese there are 28 directional particles (liu 1998). however, in this research, i focus only on one combination (chu lai), because the linguistic factors related to it different orders have been well studied. to further narrow down the searching scope, i only choose one verb, na ‘to take,’ as the target verb. next, i will introduce some linguistic factors that are believed to affect the choice of alternations, and use it to make up the first hypothesis (model a). i collect the data in section 3. based on my observation on the corpora data, i discuss more possible factors in section 4. i build up the second hypothesis (model b) by adding these factors to model a, which contains a set of hypotheses to be tested in factorial analysis. i identify the statistical techniques in section 5. the results in section 6 suggest that model b is statistically well supported. while the results have many implications for future work, expanding to other kinds of vdc-related phenomena would be an obvious next step. 2. variables that purportedly govern the alternations a lot of work on the syntactic alternations of vdcs has been done within the last twenty years. mostly using introspective data, researchers believe that the emergence of the three alternations can result from features in syntactic (2.3 & 2.4), semantic (2.2), phonological (2.1), and discursive (2.5 & 2.6) domains. 2.1. the length of noun phrases (nps) sun (2012) argues that the syllable/character length is related to the use of the three alternations. the object-initial alternation tends to exclude long objects, and the object-final ones are less likely to have short objects. 2 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 24 [2019] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol24/iss1/3 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.33011/cril.24.1.3 (3) a. na chu banfa lai take go.out (p1) method come (p2) ‘to come up with a plan’ b. na chu lai yi ge feichang bianjie de caomiaoyi take p1 p2 one cl very convenient assoc scan.machine ‘to take out a very user-friendly scanner’ the bolded parts are the object nps. the object-middle example 3a contains a two-syllable np, while the object-final example 3b has ten syllables. 2.2. concreteness of nps when the object is an abstract item, the object-middle alternations are more common (liu 1998). in this condition, an object-final alternation can usually be replaced by an object-middle one, but it is not true for an object-initial alternation. (4) men-feng-li chuan chu lai yi zhen ge-sheng door-gap-inside pass p1 p2 one cl song-sound ‘sounds of music came from the gap in the door.’ in example 4, it is grammatical to transform the object-final alternation into an object-middle one by putting the object ‘a song’ between particle 1 and 2. however, the placement does not work for an object-initial alternation. 2.3. definiteness of nps in chinese, a definite np can be indicated by demonstratives (i.e., zhe ‘this,’ or na ‘that’), proper nouns as genitive (i.e., fuermosi de shu ‘holmes’ book’), and personal pronouns (i.e., ta de ‘his’). compared to the non-object-final alternations, nps in object-final ones are less likely to be definite (zhang 1991 & niu 2002). my pilot search on google shows that there are only 12 results for the object-final alternation na chu lai zhe ben shu ‘to take out this book,’ while the other two alternations with demonstratives zhe ‘this’ have much more results. 2.4. the aspect marker le after the verb the influence of the post-verb aspect marker le on the choice of the alternations is controversial. based on introspection, lu (2002) concludes that there is no alternation preference 3 lin: a multifactorial analysis on the syntactic variations in one kind of chinese verb-direction construction (vdc) published by cu scholar, 2019 for the aspect marker. chen (1982) believes that le only appears in the object-initial alternation. zhang (1991) argues that the other two alternations can also have le. his corpus study shows that the object-initial alternation tends to have the post-verb aspect marker le and that the other alternations have much less use of le. (5) ta na le zhi chu lai he take asp paper p1 p2 ‘he takes paper out.’ the object-initial type in example 5 can be replaced by an object-middle type, but cannot be replaced by an object-final one. 2.5. old and new information of nps if an np is definite or has a referent in the previous clauses, then i call it old information. an np that has never been introduced before is new information. the object-final and objectmiddle alternations tend to introduce new information (zhang 1991). (6) wo yiwei ta hui na chu yi feng xialüdi de xin lai, i think she will take p1 one cl charlotte assoc letter p2 danshi bingbu jian ta na xin chu lai but neg see she take letter p1 p2 ‘i thought she would take out charlotte’s letter, but i didn’t see that she took out any.’ in example 6, there are two verb-direction constructions with the object xin ‘letter.’ although the second ‘letter’ is indefinite, it is old information because of its prior mention. 2.6. zero-anaphora zero-anaphora means a gap in a clause whose referent is the object of a vdc in the previous clause. object-final alternation is more highly correlated to the use of zeroanaphoras (sun 2012), as in 7. 4 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 24 [2019] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol24/iss1/3 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.33011/cril.24.1.3 (7) fuermosi na chu lai yi xiao pian qianbi mu-xie, holmes take p1 p2 one small cl pencil wood-dust, shangmian you zimu ‘n’ top have alphabet ‘n’ ‘holmes takes out a small piece of pencil shaving. it has the alphabet ‘n’ at the top.’ in the second clause, there is no subject, but one can recover the omitted subject by using the object in an object-final alternation (the bolded part). to summarize section 2, i synthesize model a: the alternation choice of verbdirection construction depends on length, concreteness, definiteness, and information type of an object np, the use of aspect marker le, and zero-anaphora. 3. data collection this study aims at measuring how linguistic variables of interest can contribute to the alternation choice for vdcs. 350 tokens were collected and annotated with linguistic factors for each alternation. only one verb na ‘to take’ and one direction combination chu lai ‘come out’ are searched in the corpora. i planned to use chinese treebank 6.0 (ctb) (xue et al. 2005) and chinese gigaword (huang 2009) as the main source of corpora. however, they did not have enough data for this specific search task. for example, i found only 20 tokens of object-middle alternation in chinese gigaword, and no result of object-initial alternation in ctb. in order to find plenty of instances, other modern chinese corpora/search engines were used, as in table 1. table 1. corpora and search engines used in this study name size genre corpus in center of chinese linguistics in beijing university (ccl) (zhan et al. 2003) 477 million characters written chinese national broadcast language media resource 241 million characters spoken chinese national corpus (xiao 2012) 19 million characters written central china normal university corpus 44 million written corpus zhtenten11 (jakubíček 2013) 1 billion words written google, baidu, & sougou 5 lin: a multifactorial analysis on the syntactic variations in one kind of chinese verb-direction construction (vdc) published by cu scholar, 2019 the collected 1,050 tokens came from different genres and formats, and are not balanced corpus data. for example, some tokens do not have a minimal context for the discursive annotation, which may have influence on the analysis of features in section 2.5 and 2.6. 4. revised set of variables based on my observation, five more factors complementary to those in section 2 are considered in my hypothesis. i augment the original six factors in model a by adding the following five new factors (4.1-4.5), and in so doing i tailor model a to model b. 4.1. location/source (thematic role) according to the argument structure of the verb ‘to take,’ the typical thematic role assignment is ‘agent take p1 p2 theme.’ however, other thematic roles, such as location and source, also appear in the alternations. the expressions of location or source are usually featured in the preposition cong ‘from,’ postposition li/limian/zhong ‘inside,’ or both. when p1 and p2 are not adjacent (the object-middle alternation), location and source are less likely to appear. 4.2. quantification the object can be modified by quantifying expressions, such as classifiers (i.e., ge ‘the general classifier’), quantifiers (i.e., xuduo ‘many’ or yixie ‘some’), and numbers, or the object itself is conceptually a quantity such as certain amounts of money (i.e., ji qian wan yuan ‘ten million yuan’). in our data, the object-final alternation is most likely be quantified. 4.3. imperatives imperatives are ‘verb forms or construction types that are used to directly command the addressee to perform some action’ (payne 1997: 303). lü (1992) predicts that only the object-final type prevents imperatives, while the other two can have imperative functions. if there is no imperative for objective-final alternation in the data, then it is likely that this statement is true. 4.4. modal verbs modal verbs are (auxiliary) verbs that can deal with judgments and evidentials, and so on (palmer 2001: 100). like english, chinese also has a relatively close set of modal verbs, such as ying/gai/yinggai/yingdang ‘should,’ bixu ‘must,’ and neng/nenggou ‘can,’ as in 8. 6 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 24 [2019] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol24/iss1/3 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.33011/cril.24.1.3 (8) taiwan dang-ju yinggai na chu shiji xingdong lai taiwan current-government should take p1 practical action p2 ‘taiwan government should take out practical action.’ it is possible that object-middle alternation is more correlated to modal verbs than the other two types. i use the wordlists from peng 2005 and fan et al. 1987 as a matching guideline to find possible modal verbs. 4.5. request verbs like modal verbs, if there is a verb for request in the main clause, then the objectmiddle alternation is more likely to appear. there are two semantic sub-classes for request: verbal and non-verbal. if an imperative speech act is realized in the complement clause, a verbal request in the main clause is expected, such as ‘to order’ and ‘to require.’ (9) ta-men yaoqiu pingguo na chu yixie shuju lai 3p-pl require apple take p1 some data p2 ‘they require that apple take out some data.’ the non-verbal request class includes verbs like ‘to hope’ and ‘to expect,’ in which a speaker has a will to change other people’s action. the english translation of chinese request verbs is roughly mapped to classes order-60-1, urge-58.1, and wish-62 in english verbnet (kipper et al. 2008). 5. hypotheses, variable assignment and statistical techniques the hypotheses of this study is based on the eleven predictions in the alternation preference in model b. compared to model a which has fewer parameters, i hope model b can have a better explanation on the variation of the 1,050 tokens in our data. before any factorial analysis is performed, i need to translate various linguistic factors into variable types and values that are computable. 7 lin: a multifactorial analysis on the syntactic variations in one kind of chinese verb-direction construction (vdc) published by cu scholar, 2019 table 2. variable assignment variables variable type value alternation type nominal 1=‘obj-initial,’ 2 =‘obj-middle,’ and 3=‘obj-final’ syllable length of object interval any positive integer concreteness of object nominal 0=‘concrete,’ 1=‘abstract’ definiteness of object nominal 0=‘indefinite,’ 1=‘definite’ aspect marker nominal 0=‘no marker le,’ 1=‘marker le’ information structure nominal 0=‘old,’ 1=‘new’ zero-anaphora nominal 0=‘no,’ 1=‘yes’ thematic role nominal 1=‘source,’ 2=‘location,’ and 3=‘neither’ quantifying expression nominal 0=‘no,’ 1=‘yes’ imperative nominal 0=‘no,’ 1=‘yes’ modal verb nominal 0=‘no,’ 1=‘yes’ request verb nominal 0=‘no,’ 1=‘yes’ after the collected tokens were annotated with standards in table 2, i use ibm spss software to make monofactorial and multifactorial analyses (morgen et al. 2012; sweet et al. 1999). the correlation coefficients are lambda and eta, which separately deal with the relationship between nominal variables and the alternation types, and that between nominal variables and interval variables. multinomial logistic regression analysis will tell us how one factor value predicts the choice of an alternation type. 6. results 6.1. descriptive statistics table 3 includes the counts and their percentage in the sample tokens. i tested whether our sub-hypotheses (2.1-2.6 & 4.1-4.5) are well indicated in the counts and recorded the results in the last column. it is obvious that the function of zero-anaphora is rejected and that imperatives do not apply to the object-final alternation. however, counts are easily affected by extreme values, and cannot tell us any correlationship, which makes monofactorial and multifactorial methods necessary. 8 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 24 [2019] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol24/iss1/3 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.33011/cril.24.1.3 table 3. basic counts i obj-initial obj-middle obj-final good match? thematic roles source (1) 4%(13/350) 1%(4/350) 5%(18/350) y location (2) 11%(38/350) 3%(11/350) 7%(25/350) y abstract obj (1) 15%(54/350) 63%(222/350) 8%(27/350) y definite obj (1) 7%(23/350) 4%(14/350) 5%(18/350) ? asp marker (1) 15%(51/350) 0%(1/350) 1%(4/350) y old information (1) 27%(94/350) 3%(12/350) 11%(38/350) ? zero anaphora (1) 9%(31/343) 3%(9/348) 4%(13/348) n quantifying expression (1) 61%(212/350) 34%(120/350) 87%(306/350) y imperative (1) 8%(28/350) 5%(19/350) 0%(0/350) y modal verb (1) 15%(52/350) 47%(163/350) 2%(8/350) y request verb (1) 7%(24/350) 22%(76/350) 0%(2/350) y counts for the length of objects alternations is in table 4. table 4. basic counts ii (syllable length of objects) alternation 1 to 5 6 to 10 11 to 15 more than 16 total obj-initial 326 23 0 1 350 obj-middle 259 70 17 4 350 obj-final 248 81 15 6 350 total 833 174 32 11 1050 the distribution pattern supports sun’s observation on the influence of the object length in section 2.1. almost all the objects for object-initial alternation (349 out of 350) have less than five syllables, while object-middle and final alternations can allow some objects longer than 11 syllables. 6.2. monofactorial result the first monofactorial technique i use is lambda, which computes the correlation between any of the nominal linguistic factors and the alternation type. pr(>|z|) shows whether the correlation is significant. if it is less than 0.001or 0.01, the correlation is reliable. table 3 indicates that except for thematic roles (location and source) and definiteness, other linguistic factors do have a low correlation with the choice of alternations. the second monofactorial technique is eta, which is not included in table 5. the eta value for syllable length is 0.35, which means that there is an intermediate correlation between the syllable length of objects and the alternation choice. 9 lin: a multifactorial analysis on the syntactic variations in one kind of chinese verb-direction construction (vdc) published by cu scholar, 2019 table 5. results of monofactorial analysis lambda pr(>|z|) significance good match? abstract obj 0.279 0.000 ***(<0.001) y quantifying expression 0.266 0.000 ***(<0.001) y old information 0.122 0.000 ***(<0.001) y request verb 0.106 0.008 **(<0.01) y asp marker 0.072 0.000 ***(<0.001) y thematic roles 0.059 0.111 ns n modal verb 0.037 0.000 ***(<0.001) y zero anaphora 0.032 0.000 ***(<0.001) y definite obj 0.011 0.756 ns n although monofactorial analysis establishes a steady relationship between alternation choice and linguistic factors, it has weaknesses too. first, lambda only works for any single factor and alternation preference. that being said, it is likely that the interrelationship between two factors (i.e., the correlation between concreteness and quantifying expressions) may be underestimated (gries 2001 & 2003). since abstract nouns rarely combine with quantifying expressions, the correlation between quantifying nouns and alternation choice may not be reliable. i need a multifactorial method that can rule out the effect of possible meditators and support a cognitively realistic account of alternations. 6.3. multifactorial result following the tradition of using regression models (bresnan et al. 2007), multinomial logistic regression (mnr) is used as a multifactorial method in this study, and shows the logistic coefficient between each linguistic factor (independent variable) and alternation preference (dependent variable) in an interrelation. mnr usually assumes ‘one outcome category as a default case against which other categories are contrasted’ (mari-sanna et al. 2012: 5). all significant results are shown in table 6. 10 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 24 [2019] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol24/iss1/3 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.33011/cril.24.1.3 table 6. results of the multifactorial analysis reference dependent variable independent variable weight pr(>|z|) odds ratio c a information (0) 1.567 <0.001*** 4.794 quantifying expression (0) 1 <0.001*** 2.717 length of np -0.384 <0.001*** 0.681 modal verb(0) -2.477 <0.001*** 0.084 request_verb(0) -2.53 <0.01** 0.08 asp marker (0) -3.137 <0.001*** 0.043 imperative(0) -17.68 <0.001*** 2.10e-08 b quantifying expression (0) 2.09 <0.001*** 8.082 request_verb(0) -0.395 <0.001*** 0.019 concreteness(0) -1.724 <0.001*** 0.178 modal verb(0) -3.776 <0.001*** 0.023 b a information (0) 2.064 <0.001*** 7.878 request_verb(0) 1.419 <0.001*** 4.135 modal verb(0) 1.299 <0.001*** 3.666 concreteness(0) 1.248 <0.001*** 3.483 quantifying expression (0) -1.09 <0.001*** 0.336 asp marker (0) -2.763 <0.01** 0.063 length of np -2.95 <0.001*** 0.745 c request_verb(0) 3.95 <0.001*** 51.928 modal verb(0) 3.776 <0.001*** 43.632 concreteness(0) 1.724 <0.001*** 5.61 length of np 0.089 <0.05* 1.093 quantifying expression (0) -2.09 <0.001*** 0.124 a b asp marker (0) 2.763 <0.01** 15.852 information (0) 2.064 <0.001*** 1.27e-01 quantifying expression (0) 1.09 <0.001*** 2.975 length of np 0.295 <0.001*** 1.343 concreteness(0) -1.248 <0.001*** 0.287 modal verb(0) -1.299 <0.001*** 0.273 request_verb(0) -1.419 <0.001*** 0.242 c asp marker (0) 3.137 <0.001*** 23.033 request_verb(0) 2.53 <0.01** 12.558 modal verb(0) 2.477 <0.001*** 11.902 length of np 0.384 <0.001*** 1.468 quantifying expression (0) -1 <0.001*** 0.368 information (0) -1.567 <0.001*** -0.209 11 lin: a multifactorial analysis on the syntactic variations in one kind of chinese verb-direction construction (vdc) published by cu scholar, 2019 the ‘reference’ contains different alternations as a baseline for comparison. for example, ‘reference = c’ and ‘dependent variable = a’ mean that relative to c, a has a certain tendency. also, in this table, if the odd ratio is bigger than one, then the weight should a positive number, which tells us the dependent variable has a positive effect on the alternation choice. otherwise there would be a negative effect. the full interpretation of table 6 is shown in section 7 as the conclusion. 7. conclusion this study first introduces model a (including eleven factors), and improves model a into model b by adding five more linguistic features. the basic aim is to use factorial analysis to testify the hypotheses in model b. the monofactorial analysis shows that when there is no variable interrelationship, all linguistic factors correlate with the alternation preference, except for definiteness and the co-occurrence of location and source. however, multifactorial analysis gives us much more information about the weight of linguistic variables when any two of the three alternations are compared. the influence of zero-anaphora is rejected. based on table 6, i can draw a conclusive sketch for this study. first, the object-initial and middle alternations are compared relative to the object-final alternation. the distinguishing factors of an object-initial alternation are: a shorter object, the aspect marker le, new information in the object, imperative, no quantifying expression, modal verbs and request verbs. the distinguishing factors of an object-middle alternation are an abstract object, no quantifying expression, modal verbs, and request verbs. second, the object-initial and final alternations are compared relative to the object-middle alternation. the distinguishing factors of an object-initial alternation are: a shorter and more concrete object, the aspect marker le, old information in the object, quantifying expression, and no modal verbs or request verbs. the distinguishing factors of an object-final alternation are longer and more concrete objects, quantifying expressions, and no modal verb or request verb. third, the object-middle and final alternations are compared relative to the object-initial alternation. the distinguishing factors of object-middle alternation have longer and more abstract object objects, no aspect marker or quantifying expression, old information in the object, modal verb, and request verb. the distinguishing factors of an object-final alternation are a longer 12 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 24 [2019] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol24/iss1/3 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.33011/cril.24.1.3 object, the aspect marker le, new information in the object, quantifying expressions, modal verb, and request verb. in general, i find that most linguistic factors in model b (eight out of eleven) can help us discriminate the three verb-direction alternations. 8. further directions the main contribution of this study is to firstly use statistical correlation and regression methods to discover how each syntactic, semantic, discursive, or phonological factor contributes to the choice of a verb-direction alternation, which is commonly believed to be interchangeable among three alternations. there are several directions i can improve this study and apply the result to other linguistic studies. first, i plan to apply the same method to other types/senses of vdcs. according to liu (1998), there are other directional verbs which involve multiple motion types such as ‘raising,’ ‘moving into,’ and ‘moving up/down.’ object displacement can work for some of them. also, vdcs can not only encode special movement, they can also express different resultative and aspectual interpretations. it is highly likely that even for the same direction particle(s), different meanings will bring different results in factorial analyses. second, the role of verb semantics in this study is not fully discovered. in order to get an indepth analysis of alternation choice, i just choose one verb na ‘to get’ for neutralization. it is well known that different verbs conceptually evoke different argument structures. for example, the chinese verb zou ‘to walk’ can also combine with p1 and p2, but the thematic role of its object can be an agent, which na ‘to get’ can never do. more verbs need to be collected in order to testify the effect of thematic roles in alternation choice. also, semantic classification of verbs remains another question. for example, i can compare the factorial analysis results among verbs in various unrelated classes, using verbnet. also, there exists an interrelationship between verb’s semantic classes. synsets with prototypical verbs like ‘to hope’ or ‘to ask’ do have a restriction on the alternations. these classes are positively correlated to the emergence of an object-middle alternation. it is still unknown how this interrelationship can improve the designing work of a computational lexicon, such as chinese verbnet. third, i disprove three factors in model b, resulting in the development of model c. model c can be further used to discriminate more alternations related to vdcs, such as those carrying 13 lin: a multifactorial analysis on the syntactic variations in one kind of chinese verb-direction construction (vdc) published by cu scholar, 2019 passive marker bei and disposal marker ba. more interestingly, in our search of the ccl corpus, there is a new alternation whose form is ‘verb p1 object p2 p3,’ which appeared in low frequency and was not discussed by the previous references. it is likely that this alternation will be acquired and used by more chinese speakers. factorial analysis will help us discover how one language evolves by looking at the change in alternation choice. finally, from the perspective of natural language processing (nlp), our statistical method in multifactorial analysis needs to be improved. the output of regression in spss is a comparison between two alternations. this ‘two against one’ technique should be changed so it can be compatible with the standard multi-class classification in nlp. additionally, the frequency distribution of vdcs is equally important as the coefficients in this study. references chen, xinchun. 1982. tong fuhe buyu bingjian de quxiang buyu de weizhi (the position of object in co-occurrence with compounding direction particles), newsletter of chinese language 5. dehé, nicole. 2002. particle verbs in english: syntax, information structure and intonation (vol. 59). john benjamins publishing. fan, xiao; du, gaoyin; and chen, guanglei. 1987. han yu dong ci gai shu (an investigation on chinese verbs). shanghai: shanghai education press. huang, chu-ren. 2009. tagged chinese gigaword version 2.0, ldc2009t14. linguistic data consortium. gries, stefan. 2001. a multifactorial analysis of syntactic variation: particle movement revisited. journal of quantitative linguistics 8(1). 33-50. gries, stefan. 2003. multi-factorial analysis in corpus linguistics. continuum international publishing group. jackendoff, ray. 2002. english particle constructions, the lexicon, and the autonomy of syntax. verb-particle explorations. 67-94. kipper, karin; anna korhonen; neville ryant; and martha palmer. 2008. a large-scale classification of english verbs. language resources and evaluation journal 42(1). 21-40. lamarre, christine. 2007. the linguistic encoding of motion events in chinese: with reference to cross-dialectal variation. typological studies of the linguistic expression of motion events 1. 3-33. 14 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 24 [2019] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol24/iss1/3 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.33011/cril.24.1.3 liu, yuehua. 1998. quxiang buyu tongshi (chinese directional particles: an investigation). beijing: beijing language and culture university press. lu, jianming. 2002. dongci hou quxiang buyu de weizhi wenti (on the positions of the directional particles after the verbs). chinese teaching in the world 1.5-17. lü, shuxiang. 1992. tongguo duibi yanjiu yufa (using comparison to study chinese grammar). chinese language teaching and research 2.4-18. jakubíček, m., kilgarriff, a., kovář, v., rychlý, p. and suchomel, v., 2013, july. the tenten corpus family. in 7th international corpus linguistics conference cl. 125-127. mari-sanna, paukkeri; väyrynen, paukkeri,; and arppe, antti. 2012. exploring extensive linguistic features sets in near-synonym lexical choice. computational linguistics and intelligent text processing: 13th international conference, cicling 2012, new delhi, india, march 11-17, 2012, proceedings ii. 1-12 morgan, george a., nancy l. leech, and karen c. barrett. 2012. ibm spss for introductory statistics: use and interpretation. routledge. niu, yanmin. 2002. a word order study on chinese verb-direction construction. (master's thesis). china capital normal university (beijing, china). palmer, frank robert. 2001. mood and modality. cambridge university press. payne, thomas e., and thomas edward payne. 1997. describing morphosyntax: a guide for field linguists. cambridge university press. peng, lizhen. 2005. on modality of modern chinese. (doctoral dissertation). fudan university (shanghai, china). sun, yanling. 2012. a study of order of compound directional complements and objects in teaching chinese as a second language. (master's thesis). beijing university. sweet, stephen a., and karen grace-martin. 1999. data analysis with spss. allyn & bacon. wasow, thomas. 2002. postverbal behavior. center for the study of language and inf. xiao, hang. 2012. guojia yuwei xiandai hanyu yuliaoku jieshao (an introduction of modern chinese corpus by the institute of applied linguistics of ministry of education in prc). online: http://corpus.zhonghuayuwen.org/resources/corpusintroduction2012.pdf xue, naiwen, fei xia, fu-dong chiou, and marta palmer. 2005. ‘the penn chinese treebank: phrase structure annotation of a large corpus.’ natural language engineering 11 (2). 207-238. zhan, weidong., guo, rui., chen, yirong., 2003. the ccl corpus of chinese texts: 700 million 15 lin: a multifactorial analysis on the syntactic variations in one kind of chinese verb-direction construction (vdc) published by cu scholar, 2019 chinese characters, the 11th century b.c. present, available online at the website of center for chinese linguistics (abbreviated as ccl) of peking university. online: http://ccl.pku.edu.cn:8080/ccl_corpus zhang, bojiang. 1991. dongqushi li binyu weizhi de zhiyue yinsu (on the restricting factors of objects in chinese verb-direction constructions). chinese learning 6. 4-8. 16 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 24 [2019] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol24/iss1/3 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.33011/cril.24.1.3 appendix – abbreviations 3p: the third person asp: aspect assoc: associative de cl: classifier neg: negation pl: plural pn: the n-th directional particle 17 lin: a multifactorial analysis on the syntactic variations in one kind of chinese verb-direction construction (vdc) published by cu scholar, 2019 colorado research in linguistics 6-2019 a multifactorial analysis on the syntactic variations in one kind of chinese verb-direction construction (vdc) tao lin recommended citation microsoft word lin-cril2019-final.docx polysemy in the mental lexicon colorado research in linguistics. june 2008. vol. 21. boulder: university of colorado. © 2008 by susan windisch brown. polysemy in the mental lexicon susan windisch brown university of colorado the semantic ambiguity of lexical forms is pervasive: many, if not most, words have multiple meanings. for example, one can draw a gun, draw water from a well, or draw a diagram. despite the frequency of this phenomenon, how human beings store and access these meanings is an open question. do we have a separate representation in our mental lexicon for each “sense,” or do we store only one very generalized or core meaning for each word? if the latter, do we generate the nuances of each separate sense by rule or by accessing subrepresentations? to even speak of senses in this way implies that we can clearly identify the separate senses of a word. in this study, we use priming in a semantic decision task to investigate the effect of different levels of meaning relatedness on language processing. both response time and accuracy followed a linear progression through four categories of meaning relatedness. these results suggest that the distinction between a single phonological form with unrelated meanings (homonyms) and a single form with related meanings (polysemes) may be more one of degree than of kind. they also imply that related word “senses” may be part of a continuum or cluster of meanings rather than discrete entities. in addition, results from specific comparisons between groups do not support the theory that each sense of a word has an entirely separate mental representation. 1. introduction pinning down how people store and process words with multiple meanings has proven difficult to do, and the wide variety of theories currently in contention illustrates how little consensus has been reached. at one end of the spectrum lie theories in which each phonological form is connected to one complex semantic representation, with precise senses of a word only realized in context (kintsch 2001, 2007; ruhl 1989). in these theories, the unrelated meanings of homonyms coexist in the single semantic representation and are resolved in context by the surrounding words in the utterance. at the other end lies the theory that each sense of the same form, whether unrelated (homonyms) or related (polysemes), i would like to thank my advisors on this project, martha palmer and walter kintsch, for their support and assistance in designing and executing this project, and their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper. i would also like to thank al kim for his assistance. i gratefully acknowledge the support of the national science foundation grant nsf0415923, word sense disambiguation. susan windisch brown 1 windisch brown: polysemy in the mental lexicon published by cu scholar, 2008 colorado research in linguistics, volume 21 (2008) 2 has its own semantic representation, with nothing but the phonological form in common (klein & murphy 2001). in the middle of the spectrum lie several popular theories, all of which suggest that related senses share a general or core semantic representation. for some, this core is the only thing stored in long-term memory. individual senses are generated online through some combination of pragmatics, general patterns of extension, and reasoning, given the context of the word (nunberg 1979; pustejovsky 1995). for others, individual senses may be stored, but related ones share a core representation or occupy overlapping areas of semantic space (klepousniotou & baum 2006; pylkkänen, llinás & murphy 2006; rodd, gaskell & marslenwilson 2002, 2004). these theories can be compared to many dictionaries, in which homonyms have separate entries but polysemes are listed as a single entry, with subentries for each sense. many researchers have investigated this question with lexical decision tasks, in which subjects decide whether a word they are seeing is a real word. response times are thought to indicate how easily a subject has accessed the word. several such studies were designed to compare homonymy and polysemy. azuma and van orden (1997) used words rated for the number of their senses and the relatedness of the senses. they found that, after controlling for number of senses, words with related senses had faster reaction times than words with unrelated senses, suggesting that polysemy facilitated lexical access as compared to homonymy. other studies suggested that polysemous words are identified in lexical decision tasks more quickly than single-meaning words (beretta, fiorentino, & poeppel, 2005; klepousniotou 2002; rodd, gaskell, & marslen-wilson, 2002, 2004). in addition, rodd, gaskell and marslen-wilson (2002) found the opposite effect for homonyms; namely, that homonymy slows response times. these two effects, the authors argue, reflect different processing methods for homonyms and polysemes, which stem from different mental storage architectures. the slower response times for homonyms are attributed to competition between separate mental “entries” or representations, whereas the faster response times for polysemous words are attributed to the ease of accessing a single, broad mental representation. a different pattern emerged, however, when subjects were forced to make judgments about meaning. klein and murphy (2001) used a “sensicality” decision task, in which subjects were asked to judge whether short phrases “made sense” or not. subjects saw one phrase, such as “daily paper”, then saw another phrase with the same noun, either with the same meaning, “liberal paper”, or with a different meaning, “lined paper”. (nonsense foils, such as “angry plate”, were interspersed with the target pairs.) the authors found that with this task, reaction time differences between homonyms and polysemes disappeared. that is, after processing one meaning of a word, the processing of another related meaning was inhibited rather than facilitated, compared to processing the same meaning again. the inhibition resulting from unrelated meanings (homonyms) was not reliably 2 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 21 [2008] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol21/iss1/2 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/s1d0-gj21 polysemy in the mental lexicon 3 different from that from related meanings. klein and murphy conclude that every sense of a word, related or unrelated, must have a separate mental representation, with no shared core meaning between them. pylkkänen et al. (2006) used a similar semantic judgment task for homonyms, polysemes, and semantically related separate words. while subjects performed the task, the authors used the neuroimaging technique magnetoencephalography (meg) to look for any differences in brain activation between the homonym condition and the polyseme condition. the response time results were similar to those in the klein and murphy (2001) study. however, meg measurements taken during the task found brain activation differences between homonyms and polysemes in both the left and right hemispheres, especially as compared to semantically related separate words. in the left hemisphere, polysemes elicited shorter m350 latencies, which has been hypothesized to index lexical activation. conversely, simultaneous activity in the right hemisphere peaked later for senserelated than for unrelated targets, which the authors suggest may be caused by competition between related senses. furthermore, they propose that these patterns of activation could result from separate mental representations for homonyms, but a single representation for a polysemous word, with separate subrepresentations for the related senses. in trying to discover the shape of our mental lexicon, these researchers have focused on comparing homonyms and polysemes. their materials have primarily consisted of nouns, with individual items falling fairly cleanly into one of those categories. however, in order to test those theories that postulate a clear distinction between homonyms and polysemes, one must look at the border between those two categories. verbs are in general more complex than nouns since they perform the task of relating various other items in an utterance. they often have numerous senses. in fact, the more frequent a verb is, the more senses it is likely to have, with some verbs listed in dictionaries with 50+ senses. for this reason, verbs provide an excellent arena for examining the mental representation of word meaning. verbs may provide us with some insight into whether there is a sharp distinction between meanings that are related and those that aren’t. the oxford english dictionary (2002) lists the senses of draw in ‘he drew his gun’ and ‘he drew a picture’ as related, although most people would see these as unrelated. historically, the sense in ‘drew a picture’ developed from the sense in ‘he drew a line in the sand’, itself from ‘he drew the stick through the sand.’ these senses are distantly related to senses of pulling, such as ‘the ox drew the cart,’ which are related to senses of pulling toward, as in ‘he drew the cup toward him’ or extraction, ‘he drew the gun.’ the overlaps in meaning with this verb are quite complex, and it is difficult to say which would have separate mental representations and which would not. in addition, some senses that may have been seen as related by the average person at some point in the past would now be seen as homonyms, with no shared meaning whatsoever. 3 windisch brown: polysemy in the mental lexicon published by cu scholar, 2008 colorado research in linguistics, volume 21 (2008) 4 similarly, those theories that advocate separate mental representations for each word sense, related or unrelated, must look at the border between one sense and two distinct senses. for example, wordnet (2005) considers the senses of draw in the following sentences as separate. 1. he drew a knife during the fight. 2. he drew a gun during the fight. 3. he drew a card from the pack. 4. he drew water from the well. would all of these have separate mental representations? would the representations of draw in the following two senses be different as well? 5. he drew his colt .45. 6. he drew his smith and wesson .22. many scholars (hanks 2000; kilgariff 1997; krishnamurthy & nicholls 2000) have discussed the difficulty in determining which usages represent the same sense and which different senses. assuming this problem could be solved, a theory of word meaning that assumes different senses are represented separately would predict quite different behavior for recall of same-sense usages (recall of a single mental representation) versus different-sense usages (recall of distinct mental representations). in addition, this theory would predict that accessing closely related senses would be just as difficult as accessing distantly related senses or unrelated senses. if polysemes and homonyms have the same storage and method of processing, degree of meaning relatedness should have no effect on response times or accuracy. if they each have a separate representation, they should behave similarly. understanding how people connect form and meaning is fundamental to understanding language processing and has implications for lexicography, foreign language learning, and computer processing of natural language. in order to discover the nature of these connections, we must look at the full range of meaning relatedness for a single word or form. in this study, we investigated meaning relatedness by looking at the facility with which people move between senses of a word. given the rich meaning nuances of verbs, we focused on this lexical category, choosing verb senses with varying degrees of relatedness, from homonymy through to nearly indistinguishable senses. 4 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 21 [2008] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol21/iss1/2 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/s1d0-gj21 polysemy in the mental lexicon 5 2. method 2.1. participants participants were native english speakers over the age of 18. one group of 20 participated in the preparation of materials, and another group of 33 acted as subjects in the judgment task. 2.2. materials four groups of materials were prepared, each consisting of 11 pairs of phrases. each phrase in a pair contained the same verb. the groups comprised (1) homonymy, (2) distantly related senses, (3) closely related senses, and (4) same senses (see table 1 for examples). placement in these groups depended both on the classification of the usages by the lexical resources wordnet and the oxford english dictionary and on the ratings given to pairs of phrases by a group of undergraduates. the raters placed the relatedness of the verb senses in each pair on a scale of 0 to 3, with 0 being completely unrelated and 3 being the same sense. a pair was considered to represent the same sense if the usage of the verb in both phrases was categorized by wordnet as the same and if raters gave the pair an average rating greater than 2.7 (condition avg. 2.87). closely related senses were listed as separate senses by wordnet and received a rating between 1.8 and 2.5 (avg. 2.26). distantly related senses were listed as separate senses by wordnet and received ratings between 0.7 and 1.3 (avg. 0.92). because wordnet makes no distinction between related and unrelated senses, the oxford english dictionary was used to classify homonyms. homonyms were listed as such by the oed and received ratings under 0.3 (avg. 0.26). interestingly, pairs that the oed considered as having related senses were often seen as homonyms by the raters. although this phenomenon pertains directly to the questions addressed here, we eliminated these pairs to maintain the clarity of the categories. as much as possible, arguments of the verbs were chosen to have minimal semantic overlap within pairs. for example, in the same sense condition, broke the window would be paired with broke the plate rather than broke the glass so that the objects were not from the same semantic field. in addition, phrases were placed in past tense in order to avoid the implication of an imperative in some of the phrases (e.g., break the glass!). table 1: stimuli. prime target unrelated banked the plane banked the money distantly related ran the track ran the shop closely related broke the glass broke the radio same sense cleaned the shirt cleaned the cup 5 windisch brown: polysemy in the mental lexicon published by cu scholar, 2008 colorado research in linguistics, volume 21 (2008) 6 the stimuli from these four conditions were balanced and randomized with pairs containing semantically anomalous, or “nonsense” phrases. these nonsense pairs contained either two nonsense phrases with the same verb (e.g., hugged the juice/hugged the fund ) or one semantically coherent phrase and one semantically anomalous phrase (e.g., coherent then anomalous: scared the fox/scared the dash, or anomalous then coherent: joined the cliff/joined the team). 2.3. procedure we used a one-way repeated measures design in which every subject saw all 11 pairs in each of the four levels of relatedness. the stimuli from the four levels and the anomalous foils were randomized for each subject. subjects viewed the materials on a computer screen connected to buttons for yes and no. subjects were instructed to press the yes button when a phrase was semantically coherent, or “made sense,” and to press no when the phrase was semantically anomalous, or “difficult to make sense of.” they were instructed to answer as quickly but as accurately as possible. a phrase appeared on the screen and remained in view until the subject responded yes or no. after a 300 ms pause, the next phrase appeared. participants responded to all phrases, both prime and target. both response time and accuracy were measured for target phrases. because all target phrases were semantically coherent, the correct response to these phrases was always “yes.” accuracy was measured as the percentage of target phrases receiving a “yes” response. although participants responded to the “nonsense” pairs, response times and accuracy for these phrases were not included in the analysis, as these pairs did not constitute one of the conditions of study. they were included as foils to the test pairs to encourage participants to fully access the meaning of all phrases. 3. results the following results are based on one-way anovas using planned, orthogonal contrasts. response times differed significantly between the groups (f3,30=18.4; p<.0001), as did accuracy (f3,30=50.5; p<.0001). more focused contrasts reveal interesting facilitation or inhibition effects among the groups. when comparing response times between same sense pairs and different sense pairs (all the other conditions, including closely related, distantly related, and unrelated conditions), we found a reliable difference (same sense mean: 1056ms vs. different sense mean: 1272ms; t32 =6.33; p=.0002). we also found better accuracy for same sense pairs (same sense mean: 95.6% correct vs. different sense mean: 78%; t32=7.49; p<.0001). when moving from one phrase to another with the same meaning, subjects were faster and more accurate than when moving to a phrase with a different sense of the verb, whether that sense was related to the first or not. 6 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 21 [2008] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol21/iss1/2 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/s1d0-gj21 polysemy in the mental lexicon 7 moving between closely related senses also proved quicker and more accurate than moving between distantly and unrelated senses. closely related sense response times were reliably faster than the mean of distantly related and unrelated pairs (t32=5.85; p<.0005), and accuracy was higher (t32=8.65; p<.0001). a distinction between distantly related pairs and homonyms was found as well. response times for distantly related pairs was faster than for homonyms (distantly related mean: 1253ms, homonym mean: 1406ms; t32=2.38; p<.0001). accuracy was enhanced as well for this group (distantly related mean: 81%, unrelated mean: 62%; t32=5.66; p<.0001). in this case, polysemy did seem to facilitate access to meaning when compared to homonymy. a final planned comparison tested for a linear progression from completely unrelated senses, through distantly related senses, then closely related senses to same senses. although somewhat redundant with the other comparisons, this test did reveal a highly significant linear progression for response time (f1,32=95.8; p<.0001) and especially for accuracy (f1,32=100.1; p<.0001). these results show a smooth progression, with response time fastest for same sense pairs and then increasing at a regular rate as meaning relatedness decreased. accuracy decreased at a regular rate as meaning relatedness decreased. 0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400 1600 same close distant unrelated figure 1: mean response time (ms). 0 20 40 60 80 100 same close distant unrelated figure 2: mean accuracy (% correct). 7 windisch brown: polysemy in the mental lexicon published by cu scholar, 2008 colorado research in linguistics, volume 21 (2008) 8 4. discussion the results have implications for various theories of lexical storage and processing, which i will address in turn. the theory that all senses have separate representations, with polysemes and homonyms represented in the same way, receives its strongest support from the comparison of same sense pairs to different sense pairs. this theory would predict this to be a fundamental distinction, with same sense pairs strongly facilitated compared to all different sense pairs. the confirmation of this, however, does not eliminate a theory in which related senses share a core representation. such a theory would be entirely compatible with this result. the separate representation theory also predicts that response time and accuracy for closely related pairs should be similar to distantly related pairs and unrelated pairs. if they all have separate representations, access to meaning should proceed in the same way for all. for example, if one is primed with the phrase ‘fixed the radio,’ response time and accuracy should be the same whether the target is ‘fixed the vase’ or ‘fixed the date.’ we found, however, a significant difference between these two groups, with closely related pairs accessed more quickly and accurately than the distantly related and unrelated pairs. a direct comparison of response times for homonyms and distantly related polysemes revealed a facilitory effect for the polysemes. the increased accuracy and faster response times indicate that moving between one sense and a distantly related sense is easier in some way than moving between two unrelated senses. this suggests some sort of difference in representation between polysemes and homonyms, an implication contrary to the separate representation theory. our results are more compatible with shared representation or “single entry” theories, but not conclusively so. these theories postulate a fundamental difference between homonyms and polysemes. unrelated senses (homonyms) are seen as having distinct semantic representations or “entries” in the mental lexicon. related senses (polysemes) are seen as sharing a portion of a semantic representation, with nuances of meaning diverging from that shared portion. this sort of structure is also described as one “entry” for a polysemous word, with “subentries” for different related senses. as stated above, the fact that the meanings of same sense pairs were accessed more quickly and accurately than the meaning of different sense pairs is compatible with this theory. one would expect accessing a single “entry” or full representation to be easier than accessing different “subentries” of a single “entry” or accessing different extensions of a core sense. the strongest support for this theory, however, comes from the significant difference between distantly related senses and homonyms. if homonyms have completely separate representations, one would expect them to be accessed more slowly and less accurately than senses that share a core representation or “entry,” and this is indeed what we found. this finding in particular calls into question the 8 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 21 [2008] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol21/iss1/2 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/s1d0-gj21 polysemy in the mental lexicon 9 separate representations theory while supporting a shared representation or “single entry” theory. the discovery of a linear progression among the groups tested suggests a slight alteration or extension of the “single entry” theory. a linear progression could fit with this theory if, in addition to polysemes being housed in different subentries of a single representation, we picture subentries of subentries, or a hierarchy of sense distinctions. in this way, people might access closely related senses more quickly than distantly related senses. they would have a shorter distance to travel in the hierarchy, so to speak, or have less of an already activated semantic representation to overcome. in this case, however, postulating a qualitatively different representation between polysemes and homonyms is less appealing. homonyms show a similar degree of inhibition to distantly related senses as distantly related senses do to closely related, which suggests that the difference between homonyms and polysemes is only a matter of degree, not of kind. in addition, when people rated the phrase pairs for how related the verb senses were, there was a definite lack of consensus on which senses were distantly related and which were completely unrelated. this supports the notion that the distinction between homonyms and polysemes may not be so clear-cut. nevertheless, there may indeed be a fundamental difference between polysemes and homonyms, with different causes for the similar degree of inhibition we saw between groups. the variations in brain activation found by pylkkänen et al. (2006) seem to support the theory that there is a basic difference between polysemes and homonyms. it would be interesting to see if there is further variation in right and left hemisphere activation when polysemes of different degrees of relatedness are tested. the linear progression through meaning relatedness is also compatible with a theory in which the semantic representations of polysemes overlap. rather than polysemes being discrete entities attached to a main “entry”, they could share a general semantic space. various portions of the space could be activated depending on the context in which the word occurs. this structure allows for more coarse-grained or more fine-grained distinctions to be made, depending on the needs of the moment. 5. conclusion the results of this study refine our understanding of the connection between form and meaning. often a single form is used to represent multiple meanings. these meanings can be semantically unrelated or show different degrees of relatedness. several theories have been proposed as to how people store and process the meanings of these words. one theory holds that every sense of a word has a separate semantic representation in the mental lexicon. another influential 9 windisch brown: polysemy in the mental lexicon published by cu scholar, 2008 colorado research in linguistics, volume 21 (2008) 10 theory holds that related meanings share a portion of their semantic representation, whereas unrelated meanings have separate representations. these theories have been primarily tested by comparing differences in processing time between noun homonyms and polysemes. we used a semantic judgment task to assess the ease with which people move between senses with four degrees of meaning relatedness. in addition, we used verbs rather than nouns because of the variability of verb meaning when the item is placed in context with different arguments. we found that priming differences between the conditions do not support a theory in which each meaning connected to a form has a separate mental representation. such a theory would predict no difference in semantic processing time when moving from one sense to another that is related or one that is unrelated. however, we found significant differences in processing time and accuracy between processing related meanings and unrelated meanings. even distantly related meanings were processed more quickly and accurately than unrelated meanings. theories that postulate separate representations for homonyms and single but subdivided representations for polysemes were compatible with our findings. in addition, the significant linear progression through meaning relatedness that we found most strongly supports theories in which related meanings share varying portions of their semantic representation, or in which related meanings overlap in semantic space. one can imagine varying portions of shared meaning among different degrees of relatedness. closely related senses could share a large portion of their semantic representations, while distantly related senses would have minimally overlapping representations. the sharing of semantic representations may dwindle until no semantic overlap remains, as in the case of homonyms. as we saw with the verb draw, there may be a sequence of meaning relations that one can trace from “they drew close to the fire” to “they drew water from the well” without the connection being obvious when looking at just those two utterances. this sort of structure is compatible with cognitive linguistics theories of family resemblances and fuzzy boundaries in word meaning and concepts (lakoff 1987; rosch 1975). these theories reject the notion that a category can be defined with necessary and sufficient conditions. instead, members of a category (and polysemes can be seen as members of a category) can be more or less prototypical of the category. also, the boundaries between categories can be fuzzy or indeterminate. several analyses have been done of polysemous words that demonstrate these qualities of overlap, extension, and fuzzy boundaries among the words’ senses (brugman 1981). a structure in which the semantic representations overlap allows for the apparently smooth progression from same sense usages to more and more distantly related usages of a word. it also provides a simple explanation for semantically underdetermined usages of a word, a pervasive phenomenon we have not yet addressed. although separate senses of a word can be identified in different contexts, in some contexts, both senses (or a vague meaning 10 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 21 [2008] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol21/iss1/2 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/s1d0-gj21 polysemy in the mental lexicon 11 indeterminate between the two) seem to be represented by the same word. for example, “newspaper” can refer to a physical object: “he tore the newspaper in half,” or to the content of a publication: “the newspaper made me mad today, suggesting that our committee is corrupt.” the sentence “i really like this newspaper” makes no commitment either way. one can equally well imagine the following sentence to be “it has nice large print,” or “it always covers local events.” linguists have attempted to discriminate varying degrees of ambiguity in lexical items (cruse 1986) and to develop criteria for determining when ambiguity indicates either simple vagueness or different senses. geeraerts (1993) revealed the inconsistency and unreliability of such tests, suggesting that a sharp distinction between vagueness and distinct senses may not exist. a theory of semantic representations that allows for overlapping representations or shared core representations helps explain this phenomenon. when encountering a word, one can simply access the core representation or activate the center of the semantic space, and only access further nuances if it is necessary. references azuma, t., and g. van orden. 1997. “why safe is better than fast: the relatedness of a word’s meaning affects lexical decision times.” journal of memory and language 36: 484-504. beretta, a., r. fiorentino, and d. poeppel. 2005. “the effects of homonymy and polysemy on lexical access: an meg study.” cognitive brain research 24: 57-65. brugman, c. 1981. “story of over.” m.a. thesis, university of california, berkeley. cruse, d. a. 1986. lexical semantics. cambridge: cambridge university press. geeraerts, d. 1993. “vagueness’s puzzles, polysemy’s vagaries.” cognitive linguistics 4: 223-272. hanks, p. 2000. “do word meanings exist?” computers and the humanities 34: 205-215. kilgariff, a. 1997. “i don’t believe in word senses.” computers and the humanities 31: 91-113. kintsch, w. 2001. “predication.” cognitive science 25: 173-202. ------. 2007. “meaning in context.” in t. k. landauer, d. s. mcnamara, s. dennis, & w. kintsch (eds.), handbook of latent semantic analysis. new york: psychology press. klein, d., and g. murphy. 2001. “the representation of polysemous words.” journal of memory and language 45: 259-282. klepousniotou, e. 2002. “the processing of lexical ambiguity: homonymy and polysemy in the mental lexicon.” brain and language 81: 205-223. 11 windisch brown: polysemy in the mental lexicon published by cu scholar, 2008 colorado research in linguistics, volume 21 (2008) 12 klepousniotou, e., and baum, s. r. 2007. “disambiguating the ambiguity advantage effect in word recognition: an advantage for polysemous but not homonymous words.” journal of neurolinguistics 20: 1-24. krishnamurthy, r. and d. nicholls. 2000. “peeling an onion: a lexicographer’s experience of manual sense-tagging.” computers and the humanities 34: 8597. lakoff, g. 1987. women, fire and dangerous things. chicago: university of chicago press. nunberg, g. 1979. “the non-uniqueness of semantic solutions: polysemy.” linguistics and philosophy 3: 143-184. oxford english dictionary. 2002. the oxford english dictionary on cd-rom. oxford: oxford university press. pustejovsky, j. 1995. the generative lexicon. cambridge: mit press. pylkkänen, l., r. llinás, and g. l. murphy. 2006. “the representation of polysemy: meg evidence.” journal of cognitive neuroscience 18: 97-109. rodd, j., g. gaskell, and w. marslen-wilson. 2002. “making sense of semantic ambiguity: semantic competition in lexical access.” journal of memory and language, 46: 245-266. ------. 2004. “modeling the effects of semantic ambiguity in word recognition.” cognitive science 28: 89-104. rosch, e. 1975. “cognitive representations of semantic categories.” journal of experimental psychology: general 104: 192-233. ruhl, c. 1989. on monosemy: a study in linguistic semantics. albany: state university of new york press. wordnet. 2005. wordnet, version 2.1. princeton, n.j.: princeton university. retrieved from world wide web: http://wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=word-you-want. 12 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 21 [2008] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol21/iss1/2 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/s1d0-gj21 colorado research in linguistics 6-2008 polysemy in the mental lexicon susan windisch brown recommended citation microsoft word cril_paper_brown.doc semantic representations of english and german motion verbs semantic representations of english and german motion verbs cover page footnote this work was supported by a student research grant from the institute of cognitive science at the university of colorado, boulder. we thank dr. bhuvana narasimhan, dr. gary mcclelland, jill duffield, les sikos, michael thomas, alison hilger, shaw ketels and david harper for support, advisement and discussion. german data collection was made possible by our contact in germany, brigitte ulbricht. this working paper is available in colorado research in linguistics: https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol23/iss1/3 https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol23/iss1/3?utm_source=scholar.colorado.edu%2fcril%2fvol23%2fiss1%2f3&utm_medium=pdf&utm_campaign=pdfcoverpages colorado research in linguistics. june 2012. vol. 23. boulder: university of colorado. © 2012 by katherine s. phelps and steve duman. semantic representations of english and german motion verbs katherine s. phelps university of colorado at boulder, department of linguistics steve duman university of colorado at boulder, department of linguistics it has been argued that real-world structure constrains the semantic representations of verbs, resulting in cross-linguistic convergence of naming patterns for motion events. this study explores the nature of this real-world structure by manipulating individual features of human locomotion in video stimuli and comparing the responses of english and german speakers in an elicitation task. we show that individual features influence naming patterns and that languages encode these features differently. furthermore, the semantic representations of several german motion verbs sharply contrast with their english equivalents. 1. introduction languages divide the world in different ways. moreover, the boundaries between semantic categories within a particular language are not necessarily fixed. these two factors contribute to a complicated picture in any cross-linguistic comparison of naming patterns. still, such research has yielded strong evidence of convergent naming patterns across languages in domains such as color (berlin & kay 1969; kay et al. 1997), emotion (eckman 1972), body terms (majid, enfield & van staden 2006) and events (majid, boster, & bowerman 2008; malt et al. 2008). there are at least two major factors contributing to this convergence. first, cognitive biases shared by humans may result in similar construals. second, there are salient discontinuities in the world to which humans attend, and it is this real-world structure that constrains naming patterns. this paper will focus on how real-world structure constrains the semantic representation of motion verbs. this work was supported by a student research grant from the institute of cognitive science at the university of colorado, boulder. we thank dr. bhuvana narasimhan, dr. gary mcclelland, jill duffield, les sikos, michael thomas, alison hilger, shaw ketels and david harper for support, advisement and discussion. german data collection was made possible by our contact in germany, brigitte ulbricht. 1 phelps and duman: semantic representations of english and german motion verbs published by cu scholar, 2012 colorado research in linguistics, volume 23 (2012) 2 malt et al. (2008) show that structure in the world has a strong influence on the naming patterns of motion events. in a cross-linguistic study in which participants were asked to describe human locomotion, the researchers demonstrate that dutch, english, japanese and spanish speakers uniformly mark a biomechanical distinction between ‘walking’ and ‘running’ gaits when naming these events. however, gait is a cluster of co-occurring features and malt et al.’s (2008) data do not indicate which of these features are encoded by motion verbs. also, their study is limited to four languages and should be augmented with data from more languages. the research we report here manipulates cadence independently from other gait features and shows that it is the latter that influence the category boundary between ‘walking’ and ‘running’ terms, but cadence influences naming on either side of the boundary. second, it incorporates naming patterns from a german dialect that suggest malt et al.’s (2008) claim may be too strong. though some german verbs of human locomotion do encode the biomechanical distinction between ‘walking’ and ‘running’, the term ‘laufen’ (translated variously as walk or run) does not. this runs contrary to prior predictions. moreover, the extent to which cadence influences naming may be languagedependent, as some german verbs appear to be less sensitive to manipulations of cadence than their english counterparts. the present study therefore contributes to research of event categorization in two ways. first, it adds to our understanding of the semantic representations underlying motion verbs by providing a concise picture of the gait features speakers attend to when naming human locomotion. second, it compares naming patterns of human locomotion in english and german, revealing unexpected patterns not present in previous cross-linguistic comparisons. 2. naming human locomotion events continuous human locomotion is particularly interesting due to its biomechanical complexity; it is composed of many co-occurring features. these biomechanical features include but are not limited to stride length, knee and elbow bend, foot contact with the ground, and cadence, i.e., the number of steps per unit of time (kiss, kocis & knoll 2004). combined, these features can be described as a person’s gait, or their manner of motion. a speaker may draw on several of these gait features when naming a human locomotion event. importantly, at a particular speed there is a dramatic switch between the clusters of features often categorized as a ‘walking’ gait—a pendulum-type body motion where at least one foot stays in contact with the ground at all times—and a ‘running’ gait—characterized by more elastic, springing movement (alexander 1992), in which both feet are off the ground at once. malt et al. (2008) demonstrate how this real-world structure—namely the dramatic shift in gait—informs the semantic representations of motion verbs in 2 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 23 [2012] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol23/iss1/3 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/8awt-1f35 semantic representations of english and german motion verbs 3 dutch, english, japanese, and spanish. while viewing stimuli of a woman on a treadmill at varying speed settings and inclines, participants were asked to fill in the blank in the sentence: “what is the woman doing? she is _____.” the striking finding of this study was the uniformity in responses with regard to the 4.5 to 5.5 mph treadmill settings. for each language, ‘walking’ terms always appeared from 4.5 mph and slower (and never over 4.5 mph) whereas ‘running’ terms always appeared from 5.5 mph and faster (and never under 5.5 mph). as mentioned above, this distinction marks an important gait difference. the authors argue that this crosslinguistic convergence is the result of structure in the world exerting strong influence over naming patterns. this cross-linguistic convergence does not appear to the same extent on either side of the 4.5/5.5 mph boundary. in english, e.g., much more withinlanguage variation for lexemes such as ‘jog’ and ‘run’ was found, where use of the latter increases with an increase in treadmill speed (between 5.5 and 8.5 mph), but it is never used 100% of the time. while the authors acknowledge that there are many features to which speakers may attend, they admit that “the data do not tell us exactly what cues our participants were responding to” (malt et al. 2008, p. 239). through a small manipulation of the video stimuli in study 1and the addition of a german dialect in study 2, we demonstrate the detailed nature of speakers’ semantic representations of gait terms and show how individual features, particularly cadence, can be a driving force behind naming patterns. we suggest that naming on either side of the 4.5/5.5 mph boundary is quite sensitive to cadence. thus, individual features may significantly affect naming patterns in some circumstances (on either side of the 4.5/5.5 mph boundary) and not others (at the boundary marked by other gait elements). 3. study 1: english the first study had two primary goals. the first was to replicate the english findings of malt et al. (2008). for this reason, we created stimuli as similar as possible to their original human locomotion study. the second goal was to explore the nature of the semantic representations that may underlie naming patterns in terms of relevant features encoded by motion verbs. this required a manipulation of the video stimuli so as to manipulate cadence while controlling other gait features. cadence was the manipulation of choice because its manipulation with digital tools was tractable. 3.1. stimuli stimuli consisted of 21 videos of a college student on a treadmill at varying treadmill settings (1 mph increments from 2.5 to 8.5 mph), in three 3 phelps and duman: semantic representations of english and german motion verbs published by cu scholar, 2012 colorado research in linguistics, volume 23 (2012) 4 different playback conditions. seven of the videos were unmanipulated and shown at normal playback. using final cut express video editing software, the remaining 14 videos were digitally manipulated to be in either ‘slow motion’ or ‘fast motion’. seven videos were manipulated to slow playback, or 20% slower than normal playback. the remaining 7 videos were manipulated to fast playback, or 20% faster than normal playback. 1 the slow and fast playback conditions are the critical manipulation in this study. in the normal playback condition, all features of human locomotion are coordinated. digital manipulation disrupts this coordination by altering cadence, i.e., the number of steps per unit of time, while controlling other gait elements. (we recognize that cadence is a sub-parameter of gait, but for the purposes of this study we refer to cadence as separate from gait, where the latter remains a collection of co-occurring features such as stride length, knee and elbow bend, ground contact, etc.). for example, with the 6.5 mph treadmill setting at normal playback, gait (stride length, knee and elbow bend, ground contact, etc.) and cadence are in sync. in the slow playback, all of these elements except for cadence remain constant. the stride length, knee and elbow bend, and ground contact are all identical to the normal playback condition. however, the cadence is different. there are fewer steps in the same amount of time. in the fast playback condition, there are more stride revolutions than the normal playback condition. in other words, this manipulation allows us to ‘mismatch’ cadence with other gait elements. 3.2. methods stimuli were shown to 30 native english-speaking undergraduates at the university of colorado at boulder. all undergraduates were monolingual in english with limited experience in a foreign language. videos were randomized to prevent order biases from previous videos and were displayed using the online survey system qualtrics. the videos were mixed with 8 distracters featuring the same actor on a treadmill engaging in activities such as crawling and skipping. upon presentation of each video, participants were asked to respond to the following question: “what is the man doing? he is ______.” participants were asked to use as few words as possible when describing the motion, but using more than one word was allowed. moreover, they were instructed to repeat any word 1prior to the study, naturalness ratings for manipulated videos were obtained. nine undergraduates at the university of colorado at boulder were shown video stimuli and asked to answer the question “how natural is this motion?” by providing a rating on a scale from 1 (not natural) to 5 (very natural). the mean naturalness rating for manipulated videos was 2.8, indicating that while the manipulations were noticeable, they were not unnatural. 4 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 23 [2012] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol23/iss1/3 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/8awt-1f35 semantic representations of english and german motion verbs 5 they used as many times as they liked. all participants viewed all videos and the data from all participants was included in the final analysis. all responses were grouped based on the head verb. responses such as ‘running’ and ‘running quickly’ were all grouped as ‘running’. the ‘other’ category includes responses that appeared infrequently (five or fewer times) within a treadmill setting, such as ‘meandering’ or ‘moseying’. 3.3. results the results of the first study reveal two important findings. first, the normal playback condition replicates the results of malt et al.’s (2008) study. ‘walking’ terms are used from 2.5 to 4.5 mph and ‘running’ terms are used from 5.5 to 8.5 mph. second, playback condition is shown to influence naming patterns on either side of the 4.5/5.5 mph boundary, such that some videos are named differently depending on playback condition. the overall effect of playback condition was confirmed by a binomial test (p < .005). 2 across all treadmill settings (2.5 to 8.5 mph), playback speed influences naming patterns. for example, at the treadmill setting of 6.5 mph, the term ‘jogging’ is preferred by 83% of the participants for the slow playback condition, 40% for normal playback, and only 5% for fast playback. a comprehensive view of the data can be seen in figure 1. figure 1 provides a very clear picture of the structure that informs these english motion lexemes: cadence seems to be a critical feature in many terms of human locomotion. even when other gait features remain constant, a change in cadence can result in a change of the most common lexeme for that event. indeed, the manipulation causes additional semantic categories to appear such as ‘power walking’ 3 , which is the most common response for 4.5 mph, but only in fast playback. at the very slowest cadence (2.5 mph, slow playback), participants are 2 to conduct the binomial test, 12 undergraduates from cu boulder were asked to provide a speed ranking of the lexemes from study 1 (e.g., ‘running’ was rated as faster than ‘jogging’ by the majority of participants). these speed rankings were then compared to the data in study 1. across treadmill settings, videos in slow playback were more often paired with lexemes that were rated slower than the most common lexemes in normal playback (e.g., ‘jogging’ < ‘running’), while videos in fast playback were more often paired with lexemes that were rated faster than the most common lexemes in normal playback (e.g., ‘running’ < ‘sprinting’). the binomial test compared the number of times the lexeme changed in the predicted direction (e.g. ‘jogging’ < ‘running’ < ‘sprinting’) to the total number times there was a lexeme change due to playback condition. 3 ‘power walking’ was not considered a modified form of ‘walking’, but rather a compound lexical term, in part because ‘power’ in this case does not pattern with other adverbial modifiers of ‘walking’, e.g., ‘quickly’, which can occur preor post-verbally. 5 phelps and duman: semantic representations of english and german motion verbs published by cu scholar, 2012 colorado research in linguistics, volume 23 (2012) 6 compelled to use a term other than ‘walking’, though there is less agreement as to what that term should be. this accounts for the large ‘other’ category here, consisting of words such as ‘meandering’, ‘sauntering’, and ‘moseying’. figure 1: the english data from study 1. treadmill settings from 2.5 mph to 8.5 mph and playback conditions are slow (s), normal (n), and fast (f). despite their attendance to the playback manipulation, participants did not use the same lexical item to refer to stimuli on either side of the 4.5/5.5 mph boundary. rather, at this boundary, other gait features seem to be more critical than cadence. if cadence alone were a determining feature, we might expect to see ‘running’ terms applied to 4.5 mph in fast playback, but this is not the case. increased cadence in this condition did not ‘override’ the category boundary, nor did decreased cadence in the 5.5 mph slow playback condition. in the english data, this is without exception. study 1 teases apart cadence from other gait elements and shows that a change in cadence influences naming patterns on either side of the biomechanical boundary. while malt et al. (2008) indicate that strong structure in the world influences naming patterns, they are agnostic in terms of which features are attended to. our results indicate that there is clearly ample structure to which speakers can selectively attend, and that a single feature can play a central or peripheral role in driving naming patterns. 6 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 23 [2012] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol23/iss1/3 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/8awt-1f35 semantic representations of english and german motion verbs 7 4. study 2: german by manipulating cadence while controlling other gait elements, study 1 provides a concise picture of what external structural elements of human locomotion influence naming patterns. it also opens up the possibility that speakers of other languages will draw upon these structural features differently than english speakers. to explore this possibility, study 2 replicates study 1 in a german dialect. 4.1. stimuli study 2 used the same stimuli as study 1. 4.2. methods the videos were shown to 28 speakers of a bavarian dialect of german known as rieserisch. this dialect is spoken in the ries area, the capital of which is the town of nördlingen. rieserisch is closely related to the more common german dialect of schwäbisch, spoken primarily in the state of badenwürttemberg (schmidt 1898). though there are several important differences between the grammar and lexicon of rieserisch, schwäbisch, and standard german, specific contrasts between semantic representations of human locomotion verbs in these dialects remain largely unexplored. it is possible that study 2’s results could extend to speakers of more standard german, but this hypothesis requires further investigation. speakers ranged in age from 17 to 48. participants viewed the videos on their own computers through the use of the survey system qualtrics. data from 4 speakers were discarded due to incompleteness. of the remaining 24, all but 2 claimed to have relatively good knowledge of english. an additional 13 claimed knowledge of a third language, and 4 claimed knowledge of a fourth. therefore, only 2 or the 24 participants could be described as monolingual. all, however, identified themselves as native speakers of the rieserisch dialect. upon presentation of each video, participants were asked to respond to the following question: “was macht der mann? er _____.” (what is the man doing? he is _____.). again, participants were asked to use as few words as possible when describing the motion, but using more than one was allowed. they were instructed to repeat any word they used as many times as they liked. all participants viewed all videos. again, all responses were grouped based on the head verb. the ‘other’ category includes responses that appeared infrequently (five or fewer times within a treadmill setting), such as ‘spazieren’ (stroll) and ‘bummeln’ (saunter). 7 phelps and duman: semantic representations of english and german motion verbs published by cu scholar, 2012 colorado research in linguistics, volume 23 (2012) 8 4.3. results to begin, use of the term ‘laufen’ gives rise to three noteworthy observations. first, contrary to malt et al.’s (2008, p. 239) predictions, the term ‘laufen’—translated as either walk or run—was used to refer to stimuli on either side of the 4.5/5.5 mph boundary (see figure 2). close analysis indicates that 6 speakers used ‘laufen’ across the boundary, 14 used ‘laufen’ but did not cross the boundary, and 4 speakers did not use the lexeme at all. therefore, usage of ‘laufen’ across the 4.5/5.5 mph boundary does not seem to be idiosyncratic or limited to one speaker. second, the use of ‘laufen’ seems to be most common at 5.5 mph. figure 2: comparison of english ‘walking’ and ‘running’ with german ‘laufen’ in normal playback. third, ‘laufen’ is used at every treadmill setting. while never the most frequent term in any given condition, ‘laufen’ is used with high frequency overall, equal to that of terms such as ‘gehen’ and ‘joggen’. hypotheses concerning these observations will be addressed in the general discussion. the effect of playback condition for verbs other than ‘laufen’ was confirmed by a binomial test (p < .05), indicating that a change in cadence affected the choice of lexeme. 4 the verb ‘gehen’ (translated as go or walk) seems to behave differently than english ‘walk’. at 2.5 mph, the change in cadence did 4 lexical rankings for the binomial test were provided by 3 additional native rieserisch speakers who did not contribute to the elicitation task in study 2. 8 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 23 [2012] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol23/iss1/3 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/8awt-1f35 semantic representations of english and german motion verbs 9 little to change naming patterns (as seen in figure 3). the same is true for 4.5 mph: where english speakers designate a category of ‘power walking’ for 4.5 mph in the fast playback condition, german speakers do not seem to agree on a motion lexeme in this same condition. this suggests that ‘gehen’ may not encode cadence in the same way ‘walk’ does, and therefore its underlying representation may be qualitatively different. figure 3: the german data from study 2. treadmill settings from 2.5 mph to 8. 5mph and payback conditions are slow (s), normal (n), and fast (f). cadence effects for other verbs were similar to their english counterparts. the verbs ‘joggen’ (jog), ‘rennen’ (run), and ‘sprinten’ (sprint) were sensitive to the change in cadence. for example, at 6.5 mph, ‘joggen’ was used by 58% of the participants in the slow playback condition, 42% of participants in normal playback, and 17% in fast playback. with the exception of ‘laufen’, german naming patterns align with those in other languages that mark the biomechanical distinction between ‘walking’ and ‘running’. the term ‘gehen’ only appears at 4.5 mph and slower; terms such as ‘joggen’ and ‘rennen’ only appear from 5.5 to 8.5 mph. as in english, the cadence manipulation did not cause speakers to break this boundary. 9 phelps and duman: semantic representations of english and german motion verbs published by cu scholar, 2012 colorado research in linguistics, volume 23 (2012) 10 5. general discussion both study 1 and study 2 bring relevant observations to bear on the nature of the real-world structure that informs semantic representations of human locomotion. they also help support and inform the findings of previous studies. we show that cadence is a structural feature to which english and german speakers attend and that this salience is reflected in naming patterns. presumably, underlying concepts of these verbs will also highlight cadence in this way. both studies show the relative roles of cadence and other gait elements in naming patterns of continuous human locomotion. first, previous hypotheses that the biomechanical distinction between a ‘walking’ and ‘running’ gait (the 4.5/5.5 mph boundary) is the primary structure influencing speakers’ lexeme choices are strongly confirmed. the manipulation of playback (and thus cadence) did not cause any speakers to use a ‘walking’ term from 5.5 mph higher or a ‘running’ term from 4.5 mph and lower. clearly, the biomechanical gait distinction is a critical aspect of speakers’ semantic representations of these human locomotion verbs at this point in the continuum of motion. however, results also indicate that english and german lexemes are extremely sensitive to the manipulation of cadence. in other words, digitally manipulating playback causes people to change the lexeme they use to describe the event (with respect to normal playback). this has important implications. first, it demonstrates that, though the 4.5/5.5 mph biomechanical distinction is of great importance, so too are cues of cadence. moreover, the relative weight given to these features when naming depends on where individual events occur in the continuum of motion. at the 4.5/5.5 mph boundary, motion verbs are distinguished by gait features rather than cadence. on either side of this boundary, however, cadence is driving naming patterns to some extent. this is not to say that only cadence drives naming patterns in these regions. rather, it seems that the conjunction between cadence and gait elements (e.g., stride length, knee and elbow bend, ground contact, etc.) is important in the encoding of motion verbs. that is, the semantic space is multidimensional, with cadence (perhaps perceived as speed) set against other gait elements. the combinatory nature of these dimensions gives rise to particular semantic categories, e.g., ‘jog’ is the conjunction between self-propelled, bounce-and-recoil gaits at medium cadence (see malt et al. 2011 for similar treatments of this multidimensional space). furthermore, contextual dimensions are undoubtedly critical (see labov 1973). for example, people may also attend to the weight of the person (under, average, or overweight), where the locomotion is taking place (indoors, outdoors, on a treadmill), or what they are wearing (casual or sports clothes, etc.). therefore, subsequent studies in this domain should take into account the complicated nature of semantic representations. rather than assume a priori that certain structure in the world will determine naming patterns, we suggest that descriptions of semantic representations should proceed by induction, testing how the possible dimensions of semantic space may be encoded in a given language. 10 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 23 [2012] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol23/iss1/3 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/8awt-1f35 semantic representations of english and german motion verbs 11 the german verb ‘laufen’, a difficult term for english speakers, is of particular note. it is commonly translated as either walk or run. however, as can be seen in study 2, this translation is not accurate. there is little overlap in terms of the semantic space encoded by english ‘walk’ and ‘run’ in comparison to ‘laufen’. therefore, direct translation is problematic or even impossible. though such a verb is not present in their data, malt et al. (2008, p. 239) suggest that it may be “possible that some [languages] do not have separate words for walking and running gaits.” while german clearly does have words that mark the biomechanical distinction, ‘laufen’ is a frequent verb that crosses the 4.5/5.5 mph boundary. in fact, ‘laufen’ seems to be used most often at these treadmill settings, perhaps indicating a grouping of 4.5 and 5.5 mph to the exclusion of speeds such as 2.5 and 8.5 mph. this is in contrast to previous predictions regarding such a grouping. one possible interpretation of this finding is that ‘laufen’ is a term of general motion. there are at least two reasons why this explanation is not likely. first, use of ‘laufen’ seems to peak at 5.5mph. if it were a term of general motion, then it should be distributed evenly across all treadmill settings. second, ‘laufen’ features similar metaphorical extensions as the english manner verb ‘run’, not of general motion verbs such as ‘go’. this is demonstrated in (1) and (2): (1) die maschine läuft. the machine is running. (2) das wasser läuft. the water is running. these reasons are compelling evidence to dismiss the characterization of ‘laufen’ as a verb of general motion. a second response is that ‘laufen’ is not a manner verb at all. instead, it is aspectual, meaning “put into motion without delay” (cadiot et al. 2006, p. 182). again, the metaphorical extensions above argue against this treatment, as ‘laufen’ is used to denote a continuous state, rather than indicating the placement of the event in time. second, participants only viewed videos in which motion had already begun. the lack of transition from a non-motion state to a motion state in the videos runs counter to this aspectual reading. in other words, the videos do not indicate that the subject was ‘put’ into motion. we propose, instead, that ‘laufen’ is a specific manner verb of continuous human locomotion that simply draws upon different structure than verbs in english, dutch, japanese and spanish. however, due to the lack of response to the cadence manipulation, we are unable to posit which features in particular figure prominently in its semantic representation. these results also have important implications in regard to so-called ‘manner’ and ‘path’ languages (talmy, 1985). with these studies, we show that ‘manner of motion’ is not an unanalyzable primitive, as has been assumed in the 11 phelps and duman: semantic representations of english and german motion verbs published by cu scholar, 2012 colorado research in linguistics, volume 23 (2012) 12 linguistics literature (slobin 1996; talmy 1985) and the psychology literature (gennari et al. 2002; papafragou & selimis, 2010). rather, ‘manner’ has a finegrained structure, and the current studies are an attempt to tease apart this structure (following efforts of e.g., ikegami 1969). 6. conclusion as close follow-ups to previous studies of motion verbs, the two studies presented here have confirmed prior findings while adding to our understanding of the cues to which speakers may attend when naming human locomotion. by manipulating cadence while controlling for other gait elements, studies 1 and 2 demonstrate that cadence is a critical feature driving naming patterns in addition to the biomechanical distinction between ‘walking’ and ‘running’ gaits. the addition of german data provided unexpected results in the form of the lexeme ‘laufen’, which does not follow the trends found in previous literature. this finding highlights the importance of including as many languages as possible when analyzing semantic representations. this study has concentrated on the semantic representations of human locomotion verbs. we believe, however, that these semantic representations may have important implications for underlying conceptual representations, as defined by levinson (1997). it is possible that the differences in how people talk about human locomotion events may also influence how they think about these events. therefore, this work can inform current research (e.g., malt et al. 2011) on the relationship between semantic representations and underlying concepts. references alexander, r. m. 1992. the human machine. new york: columbia university press. berlin, b. and paul kay. 1969. basic color terms: their universality and evolution. berkeley: university of california press. cadiot, p., lebas, f., and visetti, y. 2006. “the semantics of motion verbs: action, space and qualia.” in m. hickman & s. robert (eds.), space in languages: linguistic systems and cognitive categories. amsterdam & philadelphia: john benjamins publishing company. ekman, p. 1972. “universals and cultural differences in facial expressions of emotion.” in j. cole (ed.) nebraska symposium on motivation, vol. 19. lincoln: university of nebraska press. gennari, s., s. a. sloman, b. c. malt, and w. t. fitch. 2002. “motion events in language and cognition.” cognition 83: 49-79. ikegami, y. 1969. the semiological structure of the english verbs of motion. new haven: yale university press. 12 colorado research in linguistics, vol. 23 [2012] https://scholar.colorado.edu/cril/vol23/iss1/3 doi: https://doi.org/10.25810/8awt-1f35 semantic representations of english and german motion verbs 13 kay, p., b. berlin, l. maffi, and w. merrifield. 1997. “color naming across languages.” in c.l. hardin and l. maffi (eds.), color categories in thought and language. cambridge: cambridge university press. kiss, r., l. kocsis, and z. knoll. 2004. “joint kinematics and spatial-temporal parameters of gait measured by an ultrasound-based system.” medical engineering & physics 26: 611-620. labov, w. 1973. “the boundaries of words and their meanings.” in c-j. n. bailey and r. shuy (eds.) new ways of analyzing variation in english. washington, d. c.: georgetown university press. levinson, s. c. 1997. “from outer to inner space: linguistic categories and non linguistic thinking.” in j. nuyts and e. pederson (eds.) language and conceptualization. cambridge: cambridge university press. majid, a. j. boster, and m. bowerman. 2008. “the cross-linguistic categorization of everyday events: a study of cutting and breaking.” cognition 109: 235 250. majid, a., n. j. enfield, and m. van staden, (eds.). 2006. “parts of the body: cross-linguistic categorization.” language sciences, 28(2-3) [special issue]. malt, b. c., e. ameel, s. gennari, m. imai, n. saji, and a. majid. 2011. “do words reveal concepts?” in l. carlson, c. hölscher, and t. shipley (eds.) proceedings of the 33rd annual conference of the cognitive science society: 519-524. austin, tx: cognitive science society. malt, b. c., s. gennari, m. imai, e. ameel, and n. tsuda. 2008. “talking about walking: biomechanics and the language of locomotion.” psychological science 19: 232-241. papafragou, a. and s. selimis. 2010. “event categorization and language: a cross-linguistic study of motion.” language and cognitive processes 25: 224-260. schmidt, f. g. g. 1898. die rieser mundart. munich: j lindauersche buchhandlung. slobin, d. 1996. “two ways of travel: verbs of motion in english and spanish.” in m. shibatani and s. thompson (eds.) grammatical constructions: their forms and meaning. oxford: carendon press. talmy, l. 1985. “lexicalization patterns: semantic structure in lexical forms.” in t. shopen (ed.) language typology and syntactic description: vol. 3. grammatical categories and the lexicon. cambridge: cambridge university press. 13 phelps and duman: semantic representations of english and german motion verbs published by cu scholar, 2012 colorado research in linguistics 6-2012 semantic representations of english and german motion verbs katherine s. phelps steve duman recommended citation semantic representations of english and german motion verbs cover page footnote cril style sheet you came here to get tacos, bro place references as argumentative resources jacob henry university of colorado boulder references to place are made in interactions to serve a variety of needs, including supporting an argument. however, unlike other ontological categories, place is less fixed as a given geographic location can be conceptualized as being many different places at once. this gives rise to competing notions of place and what a place might index. using case studies of language policing from the corpus of language discrimination in interaction (cldi), this paper examines the ways in which place references are invoked in arguments regarding language, belonging, and proper public conduct. place references in interaction seem strongly linked to ideas of institutionality and what behavior or practices are appropriate given the policies of the institution associated with a place. this paper shows evidence supporting a notion that place references can be broadly divided into categories of local and non-local place references, as both types of reference serve to introduce institutionality into an interaction, but they demonstrate different relationships between the speaker and the invoked institution. this paper also shows the ways in which place can serve to index ideas of racial membership and linguistic identity. keywords: language policing, place, reference, conversation, institutionality, conversation analysis 1. introduction reference serves as a powerful tool in interaction, allowing participants to situate themselves in relation to a specific person, time, location, or other ontological category. enfield 2013:433 calls the practice of reference “a matter of selection,” stating that participants have the option of selecting from several varying options when making a reference. thus, we can interpret the practice of making a reference as inherently agentive; if someone is making a reference in a specific way, there must be a reason as to why they have chosen that specific method of making said reference. in interactional studies, much attention has been paid to person references (enfield 2013, raymond 2016, but we can extend this conclusion of agency to other categories, including that of place. work on place reference in conversation has mostly focused on their mechanics: how are they formulated, how they play into the turn design of an interaction, etc. (schegloff 1972, williams 2016, dingemanse et al. 2017). however, there has been much less work done on how place references can covertly index other meanings or ideologies. references to other ontological categories can serve to indicate a stance or status, and i argue that place references similarly can be used to not only signal some ideology, but to effectively argue in support of said ideology. this paper seeks to better understand the use of place reference as an argumentative resource in the context of language policing incidents from the larger corpus of language discrimination in interaction (cldi). in these interactions, both participants (the “policer” and the “policed”) make place references to support their own stances and ideologies regarding appropriate language use. in presenting transcripts of these language policing events, i aim to elucidate how speakers orient to place in both making and undermining an argument. furthermore, i will show how place references can serve to signal other stances on issues related to language policing, such as nationality and ethnicity. 2. place reference in conversation the reasons why a speaker might choose a specific reference form over another are multitudinous (enfield 2013), ranging from indicating specificity (e.g., “some time last week” vs. “last tuesday at noon”) to assigning affiliation (e.g., “martha complained to me” vs. “your sister complained to me”). these examples also make it clear that a speaker can equally choose forms which obscure specific details or refuse to assign affiliation. many of these reference forms draw their specific meanings from the gricean idea of the cooperative principle; if it is assumed that a speaker is adhering to the cooperative principle, their utterances (and therefore their references) are taken as being relevant and well-formed, so we can draw meanings from their specific forms (grice 1975). however, we can see in conversation that certain forms are selected in ways that are not predicted by grice. for example, grice’s maxim of quantity predicts that speakers provide exactly the necessary amount of information in their speech, but speakers often purposefully avoid anaphoric references (thus providing more information than necessary) in conversation to demonstrate agency (raymond et al. forthcoming). what i call “place references” are possible answers to questions of “where” (levinson 2003). these can include references to specific named locations (e.g. country or city names), references to general institutions (e.g., “in this store”), and deictic references like “here” or “there.” schegloff 1972 proposes three broad analytical categories for what he calls “location references”: location analysis, membership analysis, and topic analysis (or activity analysis). location analysis allows speakers to identify or specify an object (“the rock to the left of the tree”), while topic analysis involves connecting a location to a specific activity (“where we ate lunch”). membership analysis arises in contexts where a place reference can be used to indicate something about the social statuses of interactants. however, unlike other ontological categories, place is multi-faceted, and a given geographic location can be conceptualized as being “multiple places” (schegloff 1972). this gives rise to sometimes competing ideas of a place and what that place might represent, meaning that place references serve as a kind of double-edged sword in argumentative interactions. 3. arguments as conversation as a specific form of interaction, arguments involve speakers making, supporting, and disputing claims. in the literature, arguments have been understood as “conflict talk” (grimshaw 1990). often there are competing claims, and speakers must use interactional resources to manage disagreement. arguments are thought to have a minimum of three turns, as the third position is where the original speaker can reject a conflicting stance from the second speaker (dersley 1998, muntigl & turnbull 1998). this third position is also where we begin seeing the original speaker’s face-saving work in response to a face attack from the speaker in second position. an original speaker’s will respond proportionately to the level of opposition from the second speaker: more direct or overt opposition in second position is seen as more damaging, and so the original speaker will respond with a stronger turn three act to support their original position (muntigl & turnbull 1998). we can see this sort of argument sequence in incidents of language policing. in addition to fitting the conventional definition of an argument or conflict, these interactions can easily be described using the claim-counterclaim framework. as we can see in the example below, there is a clear claim-counterclaim structure regarding what language is appropriate to use. at a restaurant, a customer (cha) asserts that the owner (tar) should speak english. (1) cldi 011 (‘i’ve lived in california for 20 years’)excerpt 01 ((overlapping voices)) 02 cha: (i’ve) lived in california for 20 years and you needeenglish 03 is theour first la:nguage. so you need to speak english. 04 tar: i’m sorry if i (didn’t) (.) you know [i’mi’m okay ] 05 cha: [we:ll i’m sorry about] 06 you too.= 07 tar: =i’mwhy? [i mean i’m] 08 cha: [get the fuck] out of my country. 09 ???: hey wha in line 02, the challenger clearly makes a claim regarding the use of english, and in the following turn, the target acquiesces on line 04. in response to this relatively weak opposition, the act by the challenger in line 08 is a weak, albeit somewhat rude, support of the original position. we can also see an overt place reference in the first turn, giving some credence to the idea that place references can serve as an argumentative resource in language policing incidents. 3.1. language policing we can define language policing as one actor regulating (or attempting to regulate) the language of another actor (blommaert et al. 2009). in the previous example, the language policing is overt and between individuals. however, the historical view of some scholars is that language policing occurs through the lens of regimented language policies. it was thought that while governments and governing bodies conduct language policing through specific policies and practices, “an individual’s right to simply to use a particular language in public or private discourse seems uncontroversial” (king 1997: 495). as we can see in all the interactions from the cldi, this is simply not the case. language policing occurs in all spheres of life and is often performed by individuals who are not acting in an official capacity. in fact, more contemporary work on language policing draws a natural connection between the ideologies of large social institutions, like the media, and the language policing actions of individuals (blommaert et al. 2009). the covert and overt policies of these organizations create and enforce normative language ideologies that individual actors can then internalize, leading to the language policing of individuals. the research on how language policing is conducted is largely tied to broad social institutions, such as schools (amir & musk 2013, cushing 2019) and workplaces (hazel 2015). we can also see language policing in specific communities, such as a group of players in the online game world of warcraft (collister 2014). in all of these situations, language policing is centered around ideas of what is or is not appropriate for the space in which an interaction takes place. “appropriateness” is often derived from normative language ideologies that valorize “standard” english (hazel 2015, cushing 2019). however, interactants can also orient to other goals when engaging in language policing, such as trying to enforce a language of study in a foreign language classroom (amir & musk 2013) or creating an inclusive environment by prohibiting certain slurs or derogatory language (collister 2014). in each case, participants are acknowledging and maintaining some sort of connection between their speech and the institution in which an interaction is taking place. speakers are helping to construct the space through their interaction (heritage & clayman 2010). while much language policing research has focused on institutions and specific communities, there does not seem to be much work on the mechanics of language policing in public spaces between strangers. interactants in a classroom or an online community collaboratively construct institutions, but how do interactants adhere to the rules of an institution when they aren’t building said institution? in many examples from the cldi data, we can see a disagreement about what institutions are relevant and what policies those institutions impose. in the following excerpt, we see a passerby (cha) harassing a group of younger people (tar and unk) as they wait at a crosswalk, ignoring their claim to invoke the institution of the “international city.” (2) cldi xx (‘this is an international city’)excerpt 01 cha then don’t speak so loud.= 02 tar no, it’s international ci[ty he:re.] 03 cha [o:h shut ]up. 04 (0.5) 05 tar [you shut up (goat).] 06 unk [o:h shut up you ]fucking racist. 07 cha fuck off (.) i’m in the () and there’s [just so: many ] of you. 08 unk [you are ra:cist] 09 tar oh, (i’m just) a: dinosaur: ok[ay. ] 10 cha [and you]
srpski mediji izvijestili su da su u subotu poslije 13 sati u selu dašincu, pokraj deča vj9901111 5863 55 mu se organiziraju takozvani razredni ispiti ako zaključi da su profesori dosadni, a program nepotrebno slušati. nar gk9625_58 4888 56 je amerikance pa sam ga čak dva puta pokušala nagovoriti da se preseli u sad jer sam sigurna da bio i tamo napravio n134_02 29125 57 o društveno pozitivnoj vrijednosti te se zalagao da ga se ne shvaća kao suvremeni društveni fenomen koji bi gk9714_f01 2655 58 pak, stavovi većine istraživača podudaraju se u shvaćanju da se tehnika odnosi na sredstva za rad, znanja proizvodnj mraovic 101815 59 elini napravi nužan i radikalan zaokret? dojam je, naime, da je oporba prilično mlako reagirala na aferu oko dubrova n134_03 12691 60 ebe svrstava izvan europe. čak je i albanija smogla snage da njihova vlada donese odluku da za školstvo iz bdp-a izd n135_03 11532 61 ije toliko pogodilo i toliko povrijedilo koliko činjenica da su oni koji su željeli uništiti svaki hrvatski trag na gk9710_28 561 62 romjenjljivosti republičkih granica, on bi tražio od mene da se u zaključak unese malo drukčija formulacija. umjesto n148_20 15289 63 om i washingtonskom sporazumu. tako bi izbjegli situacije da međunarodna zajednica umjesto nas mora donositi zakone n155_05 9400 64 nabroj>b)
mislim da su i dosadašnji vojni sporazumi davali rezultata, prije n155_05 18746 73 i u vremenu kad je u svijetu umjetniku bilo poželjno reći da je iz sarajeva nikad to niste istaknuli?
to mi n149_17 14214 74 m priznavanju hrvatske, premda je meni itekako bilo jasno da je to toliko dugo čekano priznanje, u stvari »debelo« k vj981209t 8717 75 dručju. također bi bio promašaj kad bi koji čovjek mislio da vanjskim svojim držanjem, poštivanjem drevnih običaja, gk9625_f02 4500 76 e i u duhovnoj obnovi društva. uvjeti za rad
s obzirom da ga nije bilo na programu, znali smo da će prvi dodatak biti obavezan valcer »na lijepom plavom vj990102k 5231 87 log za to šarinićevo odsustvo iz zagreba ili pak procjena da nakon političkog debakla u hercegovini ne može potpisat n132_08 5299 88 ina sršan.
više detalja podupire pretpostavku da je netko požar podmetnuo. u štaglju nije bilo električn me980311_c03 1543 89 e da je iskoristite na najbolji mogući način. zato tvrdim da u životu nije odlučujući talent, nego rad i volja. najv n135_05 17671 90 kog spota u programima hrvatske televizije u jednom danu. da hrvatska televizija nije pretjerala, uvjerili smo se i n146_r03 9505 91 f" width=12 height=12> trebat će ići posuđivati okolo. ma da sam to mogla znati i posljednju kunu bih dala za osigur me980311_c03 3190 92 d jedne do pet godina zatvora. kazneni zakon, naime, kaže da je za to kazneno djelo, odavanje poslovne tajne, predvi n154_08 6200 93 e. no, da bi se ovaj proces ispravno odvijao, potrebno je da preživači imaju dovoljno »voluminozne« hrane (trava, si eko_polj 631635 94 ta, a odredbe traže do to bude između 20 i 30 kandidata i da pri sastavljanju te liste župnik vodi računa o tome da gk9710_45 3657 95 duhovnom i u materijalnom pogledu, civilizacijski, radno, da sve što o hrvatskoj govorimo i sanjamo bude na novom pu gotovac 286576 96 aljka napravimo mali otvor i usmjerimo nakupinu elektrona da proleti kroz valjak. slučaj a: u rezonantnoj šupljini n radioter 146419 97 jačanje imunosti pridonijeti uništenju tumora, tek ostaje da se utvrdi. s druge strane, poticanje na proliferaciju t radioter 1133235 98 drug marko mu ovaj put ne dopusti.