english posture verbs an experientially grounded approach john newman university of alberta...

English posture verbs An experientially grounded

approach

John NewmanUniversity of Alberta

Conference on “Expressions of posture and motion in Germanic languages”

Facultés universitaires Saint-Louis, Brussels, BelgiumOctober 24, 2008

Structure of Talk

• Preliminaries - experiential realities• SIT, STAND, LIE as cardinal posture

verbs• Action vs. state meanings• Inanimate subjects, including

locative use• Final remarks – experiential realities

Basic-level categories

• Basic-level categories of things (cf. Lakoff 1987)

– ‘dog’ and ‘chair’ • Basic-level categories of events?

– ‘come’, ‘go’– ‘see’, ‘hear’– ‘eat’, ‘drink’– ‘sit’, ‘stand’, ‘lie’– ‘give’, ‘take’

Sit, Stand, and Lie (2004), clay sculptures by Francis O. Cuyler

Sitting, standing, lying

• The spatio-temporal domain– a strong contrast between the spatial

configurations involved: • a compact shape associated with sitting• an upright, vertical elongation with standing• a horizontal elongation in the case of lying

– a strong sense of the extension of a state through time


• The force-dynamics domain – the states are typically entered into

through relatively brief movements– the states themselves are typically

maintained for longer periods– there are clear differences between

these states in terms of the sensorimotor control which is needed in order to maintain the position.


• The socio-cultural domain – sitting is a relatively comfortable

position– standing allows a greater exercise of

physical power, vision over a greater distance and is a prerequisite for walking, running etc.

– lying is the least compatible with physical action and is associated with rest, sleep, sickness, and death

Posture verbs and locatives

• Posture verbs are the prototypical verbs which define a language type in the MPI-based research on “basic locative constructions”

“Revised” typology Ameka and Levinson (2007)

• Type 0: No verb (Saliba)

• Type I: Single locative verb

– Ia: Copula (English)

– Ib: Locative verb (Japanese)

• Type II: A small contrastive set of locative verbs

– IIa: Postural verbs (Dutch)

– IIb: Ground space indicating verbs (Tidore)

• Type III: Multiverb Positional verbs (German)

‘sit’, ‘stand’, ‘lie’

• Posture verbs are the prototypical verbs which define a language type in the MPI-based research on “basic locative constructions”

• Among the posture verbs, the set {‘sit’, ‘stand’, ‘lie’} can have a special status in a language

SIT, STAND, LIE in English

• Corpora allow us to study usage• Corpus-based study of posture verbs:

– ‘tell a lie’ sense found with lie(s) and lying

– transitive vs. intransitive lay– both stand and lie are used as nouns– numerous idiomatic uses

Two corpora

• SemCor 3.0: – 700,000 words of the BROWN corpus – all verbs lemmatized and sense-tagged according

to Princeton WordNet 3.0– written usage of American English

• The Princeton WordNet Gloss Corpus: – more than 1.6 million words of the glosses of the

WordNet 3.0 dictionary– a “gloss” is understood as the definition of a word

and any example sentences

VERB WORDNET MEANING SEM

COR

GLOSS

CORPUS STAND ‘be standing, be upright’ 133 169SIT ‘be sitting’ 124 134LIE ‘be lying, be prostrate, be in a

horizontal position’46 58

HANG ‘be suspended or hanging’ 27 35LEAN ‘incline or bend from a vertical

position’19 24

SQUAT ‘sit on one’s heels’ 8 8

KNEEL ‘rest one’s weight on one’s knees’ 7 9

CROUCH ‘sit on one’s heels’ 4 7

STOOP ‘bend one’s back forward from the waist on down’

4 7

SPRAWL ‘sit or lie with one’s limbs spread out’ 4 8

PERCH ‘sit, as on a branch’ 4 6

BEND ‘bend one’s back forward from the waist on down’

3 3

LOUNGE ‘sit or recline comfortably’ 2 2

‘sit’, ‘stand’, ‘lie’ in Mbay

• In Mbay (Nilo-Saharan), locational and existential constructions typically involve one of the three verbs ‘sit’, ‘stand’ and ‘lie’ (Keegan 2002)

• Mbay also has a set of adverbs translating as ‘here’ and ‘there’ which are derived from ‘sit’, ‘stand’ and ‘lie’.

‘sit’, ‘stand’, ‘lie’ in Mbay

‘sit’, ‘stand’, ‘lie’ in Kxoé

• Kxoé (Khoisan), it is precisely ‘sit’, ‘stand’, and ‘lie’ which function as present tense markers (Köhler 1962; Heine and Kuteva 2002)

‘sit’, ‘stand’, ‘lie’ in Euchee

• Euchee (Amerindian isolate) ‘sit, stay’, ‘stand’, and ‘lie’ form the basis of a three-way noun-classification system (Wagner 1933-1938; Watkins 1976; Linn 2000)

• The three forms function as articles/demonstratives occurring with singular inanimate nouns

‘sit’, ‘stand’, ‘lie’ in Euchee

‘sit’, ‘stand’, ‘lie’

• SIT, STAND, LIE are the cardinal posture verbs in English

• ‘sit’, ‘stand’, ‘lie’ can be a distinctive set of verbs in other languages– Mbay locational/existential constructions– Kxoé tense marking– Euchee noun classification system

• Preliminaries - some experiential realities

• SIT, STAND, LIE as cardinal posture verbs

• Action vs. state meanings• Inanimate subjects, including

locative use• Summary

From state to location

• Posture verbs which are used with essentially static, at-rest meanings are more likely to lead to locative functions

Dunn, Michael, Anna Margetts, Sergio Meira, and Angela Terrill. (2007). Four languages from the lower end of the typology of locative predication. Linguistics 45.5/6: 873–892.

Action and State (German)

• German sich hinsetzen is an “action” predicate

• German sitzen is usually a “state” predicate

• The “state” meaning is nevertheless often contextually salient with sich hinsetzen

German sich hinsetzen

• Es kommt vor, daß ich mich dann für einige Augenblicke hinsetze und zu erraten versuche, was gerade passiert.

‘So I sit down [action predicate] for a few moments then and try to guess what just happened.’

[Mannheimer Morgen, 30.04.2002; Lo und Lu Roman eines Vaters]

German sich hinsetzen und..

• keinen freien Augenblick, um sich hinzusetzen und nachzudenken ‘no free moment to sit down and reflect’

• dachte, die Kinder würden sich hinsetzen und malen‘thought that the children would sit down and paint’

German sich hinsetzen und..

• keinen freien Augenblick, um sich hinzusetzen und nachzudenken

‘no free moment to sit down and reflect’

• dachte, die Kinder würden sich hinsetzen und malen‘thought that the children would sit down and paint’

German sich hinsetzen, um...zu

• habe sich der jetzige Präsident hingesetzt, um sich auszuruhen‘the current president sat down to rest’

• jeden Tag, wenn ich mich hinsetzen will, um etwas zu schreiben‘every day, if I want to sit down to write something’

German sich hinsetzen, um...zu

• habe sich der jetzige Präsident hingesetzt, um sich auszuruhen

‘the current president sat down to rest’

• jeden Tag, wenn ich mich hinsetzen will, um etwas zu schreiben‘every day, if I want to sit down to write something’

The “sitting” frame

Action is profiled: sich hinsetzen

State is profiled: sitzen

Action and State (English)

• Is SIT an ‘action’ or a ‘state’ verb?

State SIT in Bible

The neighbours therefore, and they which before had seen him that he was blind, said, Is not this he that sat and begged? John 9:8

Then Martha, as soon as she heard that Jesus was coming, went and met him: but Mary sat still in the house. John 11:20

But to sit on my right hand and on my left hand is not mine to give; but it shall be given to them for whom it is prepared. Mark 10:40

O.E. SITTAN > SIT in state sense

John 9.83Sg. Past

John 11.203Sg. Past

Mark 14.543Sg. Past

West Saxon Gospels c.990

sæt sæt sæt


sæt sæt set

John Wycliffe Biblec.1384

sat sat sat

William Tyndale NT 1530-1534

sate sate sat

Great Bible 1540

sat sate sat

King James Bible 1611 sate sate sate

Action SIT in Bible

And he closed the book, and he gave it again to the minister, and sat down. And the eyes of all them that were in the synagogue were fastened on him. Luke 4:20

For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it? Luke 14:2

And he said, An hundred measures of oil. And he said unto him, Take thy bill, and sit down quickly, and write fifty. Luke 16:6

O.E. SITTAN > SIT in action sense

Luke 4.203Sg. Past

Luke 14.28 3Sg. Present

Luke 16.6Sg. Imperative


sæt sytt site


sæt sit site

John Wycliffe Biblec.1384

sat [sittinge] sitte

William Tyndale NT 1530-1534

sate doune sytteth doune syt doune

Great Bible 1540

sate downe sytteth downe syt doune

King James Bible 1611

sate downe sitteth downe sit downe

Two corpora

• The Wellington Corpus of Written New Zealand English (WWC) – 1 million words of written New Zealand English (1986 to

1990), comparable to the Brown Corpus of written American English and the Lancaster-Oslo-Bergen corpus (LOB) of written British English

• The Wellington Spoken Corpus (WSC)

– 1 million words of spoken New Zealand English collected in the years 1988 to 1994

Action SIT

State SIT

SITTING DOWN in the spoken corpus

Is English SIT ‘action’ or ‘state’?

• SIT (with or without down) occurs in clauses which range over ‘action’ and ‘state’ meanings

• STAND and LIE are probably similar• The extension of English SIT, STAND,

and LIE to locative usage is presumably compromised by these facts



locative use• Final remarks - experiential realities

Global and local corpus methods

Search for all the forms of the posture verbs and inspect all results, as in Schönefeld (2006) – “global” [Using a 3 million word newspaper subcorpus of the BNC.]Schönefeld, Doris. (2006). From conceptualization to linguistic expression: Where languages diversify. In Stefan Th. Gries and Anatol Stefanowitsch (eds.), Corpora in Cognitive Linguistics: Corpus-based Approaches to Syntax and Lexis, pp. 297- 344. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

Search for a specific inanimate subject with a specific posture verb – “local”.

Schönefeld (2006)SIT STAND LIE

HUMAN BEINGS

87%man, people, proper nouns

59.6%proper nouns, people, deputy, candidate

26.3%Proper nouns, people, man, child, girl

CONCRETE OBJECTS

3.9%house, journal, book, plant, building

8.8%car, machine, book, tanks, temple

29.5%village, ship, coal, clothes, boat

ABSTRACT OBJECTS

2.3%music, superstructure

19.1%case, deal, things, directive, conditions

42.1%blame, responsibility, problem, task

PERSONIFIED OBJECTS

5.6%government, court, pentagon

8.8%pronoun, world, Britain, army, firm

1.7%(sports) club, talent

ANIMALS 1.1% fox, mouse, owl

1.4%sheep, gelding, cat

0.4%dog

A “LOCAL” APPROACH• Corpus of Contemporary American English, COCA

(Mark Davies), 375 million words +

• Restrict verbs to the forms {sit, sits, sitting, sat} and {stand, stands, standing, stood}

• The verbs occur within a window of three words to the left or right of HOUSE.

• HOUSE functions as the head of the subject of the verb

• This search yielded more than 500 hits which were subsequently inspected item by item

Refining the search

Excluded:a. So the White House is sitting tight. b. Well, the White House is still standing by Rove

and his comments.

Included:c.The 1758 Cupola House sits on South Broad

Street in the heart of the business district. d. The hill on which the Santa Fe Opera House

stands…

HOUSE in five genres of COCA

HOUSE in five genres of COCA(= expected distribution of HOUSE + SIT/STAND)

HOUSE + SIT/STAND in five genres (observed)

Expected and Observed

expected observed

Modifers/Complements

zero And I don't even know if the house is standing.

locative They were building a house sitting next to the waterfall,…

manner The little houses sat hunched and still,…

temporal Their two-story town house was still standing,…

locative + manner

+ temporal

those houses sat under water for the longest amount of time

there in St. Bernard Parish and there…

Zero vs. single vs. multiple

SIT STAND

Zero modifier 0 9

Single modifier 167 107

Multiple modifiers 29 186

Total 196 292


• the majority of SIT uses (167/196) occur with single modifier types

• the majority of STAND uses (186/292) occur with multiple modifier types

• the zero modifier type is found only with STAND

zero modifier

a. Poor-white St. Bernard Parish had hardly a house standing.

b. Once they knew the houses were standing and no one had been injured, they talked on for half an hour

still

• When STAND occurs with a temporal modifier type, the most common recurring temporal expression is the adverb still.

big

• There is tendency for STAND, but not SIT, to occur in contexts where HOUSE is qualified by big, tall, large, sturdy

• No tendency for SIT to occur in contexts where HOUSE is qualified by small, tiny, etc.

big

a. At wide intervals in the valley stood big houses with white columns.

b. and the tall old houses standing in the sand on the shore looked like beached vessels.

high

a. She had pictured a big fine country house standing high over the ground on concrete pillars with a sunburst carving in the gable.

b. The market had started out as an adjunct to their shotgun house that stood high on brick pillars.

The house stands high The house sits high

Multiple factors with STAND

• and that big white house stood high in them dark rivers for the next half century.

BIG HOUSE + STAND


STAND + HIGH


STAND + LOCATIVE


STAND + TEMPORAL (especially persistence despite adversity)



SIT STAND

Zero complement 0 9

Single complement 167 107

Multiple complements 29 186

Total 196 292

Multiple factors

• With STAND (more than SIT), multiple factors within the clause are relevant to its use

• It’s not enough to look at head noun of the subject and prepositions to understand why the verb STAND is used in a clause (cf. Schönefeld 2006)

Simple vs. Other Tenses

• Simple tenses:– Simple Present sit, sits, stand, stands– Simple Past sat, stood

• Other tenses:– Progressive is sitting, is standing, etc.– Perfect has stood, have stood etc.– Participial –ing forms without any

accompanying auxiliary verb) sitting, standing

Tenses x Modifier x Verb

L = Locative

M = Manner

T = Time

Experiential grounding (1)

• An intuition that sitting, standing, and lying are “basic” experiential categories – helps us to appreciate why SIT, STAND, and LIE

are the most frequent posture verbs in usage-based data (from corpora)

– leads us to search for other data supporting the distinctiveness of these verbs in languages


• Reflecting on the whole experience (“frame”) associated with postures leads to– Understanding that ‘action’ and ‘state’ of

postures are closely interrelated, even in languages which formally distinguish such verbs

– In English, usage data reveal a persistent vagueness about ‘action’ and ‘state’ meanings of the posture verbs


• Reflecting on the spatio-temporal aspects and force dynamics of sitting vs. standing leads us to– Understand why SIT/STAND are associated with

particular subject phrases and other collocating phrases

Thank [email protected]

english posture verbs an experientially grounded approach john newman university of alberta...

Documents

mbay slide

lie sense

english posture verbs

language slide

euchee slide

prototypical verbs

sitting124134 lie

death slide