Re: Fronting & Point of Departure

From: clayton stirling bartholomew (c.s.bartholomew@worldnet.att.net)
Date: Mon Apr 17 2000 - 16:33:22 EDT


Randall,

It has taken me a while to begin to sort this out. I have been reading your
article* which addresses, among other topics, pragmatic functions, what they
are and how they are marked.

Using slot and filler terminology, I understand that the pragmatic slot for
point of departure (contextualizing function) is always clause initial by
definition. According to Levinsohn** the pragmatic function of a fronted
constituent is to give continuity/discontinuity information. The point of
departure constituent tells the reader what has changed (topical, temporal
or participant changes) and what is the same, i.e., how this new clause is a
development of the previous one.

If I understand your scheme correctly, the notion of a fronted constituent
is determined by the "default" word order of the language. So if we take
English as a SVO language the fronted constituent would be in position P,
prior to SVO, thus PSVO. If we take NT Greek as a VSO language. The
pragmatic slot (P) would appear before the default pattern thus PVSO.

The thing that makes it a little hard to grasp this approach to pragmatics
is that the model seems to be imposed from without. Not having read all the
literature on language universals one has to more or less take someone's
word for it that the pragmatic slot is going to be clause initial.

One physical analogy that I have used to help me grasp this is thinking of
NT Greek paragraphs as blocks of wood that need to be joined by gluing. If
you want to join two blocks of wood the glue must be applied between the
surfaces which are to be joined. Glue on non-joining surfaces will not do
the job. The clause initial position is the surface between the blocks of
text. So in that sense it is the best place to position pragmatic
information about continuity/discontinuity.

Anyway, thanks again for the help with this. Your article* was a big help as
well.

Clay

--
Clayton Stirling Bartholomew
Three Tree Point
P.O. Box 255 Seahurst WA 98062

*"Functional Grammar, Hebrew and Aramaic: An integrated, Textlinguistic
Approach to Syntax (page 77ff, Bodine, W. R., ed. Discourse Analysis of
Biblical Literature: What it is and What it Offers. Atlanta: Scholars,
1995).

**Levinsohn, Stephen Discourse Features of New Testament Greek,
 SIL 1992 222 pp. (paper)

****previous discussion ******

on 04/09/00 12:19 PM, yochanan bitan wrote:

> shalom Clayton, EGRAYAS:

>> On page 21 of this book Randall Buth is cited* as
>> suggesting that establishing the point of departure is the UNMARKED purpose
>> for fronting and that we should not consider that a constituent has been
>> fronted for highlighting unless it cannot be interpreted as a point of
>> departure.
>>
>> OK, here is my question. Can we ever find a case in NT Greek where the point
>> of departure is NOT fronted.
>>
> No. [Because a 'point of departure' is a pragmatic function, thus requiring
> pragmatic positioning and not normal word order. See below.]
>
>> If not, is there a slim possibility that there is some infinitesimal hint of
>> circular reasoning in this whole discussion. If we define fronting as the
>> standard means of indicating point of departure (this is not exactly what
>> Randall Buth said) have we not essential defined our model such that a point
>> of departure which was not fronted will never be discovered?
>>
> Yes, we have defined the model in a way that a non-fronted 'point of
> departure' would not exist. And No, this is not circular. See distinction
> below between pragmatic and semantic functions in interpreting clauses.
>
>> What sort of independent criteria can we use to discover the point of
>> departure, that is criteria independent of clause order?
>>
> 'Point of departure' is a pragmatic function signalled by word order and does
> not have an independent semantic or morphological criterion. So the question
> is a non-sequitur. See below.
>
>> Some of you may remember my previous questions about post-positive
>> participles. This question is a continuation on the same theme but it has
>> been expanded to include all post-positive constituents which would be
>> understood as as indicating point of departure if they were pre-positive.. In
>> other words I am questioning what seems to be an established universal rule
>> that point of departure is marked by position within the clause.
>>
> .. . . * Levinsohn indicates that his citation form Buth is taken from
> "personal communication" not from a published source. I picture them arguing
> about this over a late dinner taken in the Menachem Begin wing of the King
> David Hotel.
>
> Well, it might help to rephase and put the above in a context. Historically,
> those discussions with Stephen either occurred in Cameroon 1989 or in Dallas
> 1991. Maybe both, in one way or another. (Nothing as historic or expensive as
> a dinner in the King David. I even avoid KD for coffee.) The wording is
> Stephen's, not my own.
>
> The universality of 'point of departure' is already incorporated within
> linguistic theory in Functional Grammar, where Topic (a.k.a. 'point of
> departure') and Focus (a.k.a. 'highlighting') are proposed as two universal
> pragmatic functions that may relate to any language that has a pre-field
> (i.e., [post-conjunction] clause initial), pragmatically-marked position.
>
> The item is not circular, in that it is an interpretation/function of an
> observed word order. That is, it is a subset of functions causing/explaining
> fronted constituents and not a category of its own. So, yes, there would be no
> such thing as an 'unfronted' point-of-departure, though perhaps embedded,
> parenthetical, afterthoughts could be added and included. "Point of departure"
> (a.k.a. "Topic" in functional grammar, "pivot" in Foley/VanValin,
> "Contextualizing Constituent" in my own nomenclature) is not a semantic
> relationship but a pragmatic one within linguistics. Thus, "I got up in the
> morning." is a default, English sentence where 'in the morning' is part of the
> salient communication. "...in the morning" is interpreted according to the
> semantics of its 'predicate frame' and lexical context.
>
> "In the morning I got up." is marked in the sense of fronting 'in the
> morning'. "In the morning..." is interpreted both according to its semantic
> relationship to the predicate frame and as signalled as the point with which
> to relate the clause to the larger context. Hence, the names: 'Pivot'
> Foley/VanValin, 'Topic' Dik, 'point of departure' Levinsohn, 'Contextualizing
> Constituent' Buth.
>
> Whenever a pragmatically marked constituent appears, it needs interpretation,
> processing, by the audience. The English example above would almost always be
> a 'contextualizing constituent', that is, serving as a point of relationship
> to the greater context. A Focus construction of this same semantic content in
> English would normally be 'I got up in the MORNING' (using intonation for
> pragmatic Focal marking), or simply a non-focal clause with only the salient
> information: 'In the morning.'. This deletes the rest of the sentence as
> non-salient, presupposed information, like when aswering a question orally.
> Focal constructions typically present information that the speaker assumes to
> need rhetorical emphasis as probably "surprising", "contrasting", or otherwise
> too easily forgotten or missed.
>
> Now Greek has a tendency to multiply pragmatically-marked pre-field
> constituents. The common pattern is to put CC's (a.k.a. 'point of departure's)
> before Focus constituents when more than one constitutent is marked by
> fronting, and, relating to the point quoted by Stephen, that if only one
> constituent is marked by fronting, the default and most common function is CC
> ('point of departure'). This becomes a helpful 'rule of thumb' or processing
> strategy for a Greek listener or Greek audience.
>
> A qualifier to this is that within subordinate clauses, Focus constituents may
> become more commonplace because the subordinated status has already provided a
> syntactical relationship to the context and there is less need for
> pragmatically marking a 'point of departue'. This principle is most easily
> seen in a more fixed word-order language like Hebrew where the similar
> pragmatic tendencies occur with CC/Topic in main narrative clauses and where
> Focus is the 'rule of thumb' for fronted constituents within subordinating
> 'ki' clauses and 'asher' clauses.
>
> Returning to Clayton's question: a 'point of departure' that is not fronted
> would not be a pragmatic 'point of departure', it would be part of the
> semantic base template that is generating the clause and would only carry its
> semantic relationship, not an additional pragmatic function. Thus, if a
> constituent is not signalled as having a pragmatic function to interpret (that
> is, if it was not fronted), it would not be a candidate to be a pragmatic
> 'point of departure'. It will be handled within normal semantic relations. But
> if a constituent is fronted, then it is more probably a 'point of departure'
> and less commonly a 'Focus'. A reader would be better off not assuming Focus.
>
> Hope the above helps. Fuller explanations lead into Prague school Theme-rheme
> distinctions and the distinctions of pragmatic, semantic and syntactic
> functions within a linguistic theory of grammar. For further reading you might
> try Simon Dik, Functional Grammar, 1980, and the one chapter summary in Dik,
> Studies in Functional Grammar, 1981. Also, Foley and VanValin, [Grammar?],
> 1985?.
>
> errwso Randall Buth Jerusalem
>

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