Cognitive, Social, and Individual Constraints on Linguistic Variation by Jeroen Claes

Author:Jeroen Claes
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: De Gruyter
Published: 2016-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

6.4Implicit nominal arguments and adverbial phrases

As noted in Section 2.1 the POINTING-OUT Idealized Cognitive Model implies that without proper context, the noun phrase argument cannot remain implicit, as it carries virtually the entire conceptual import of the clause (Goldberg 2005a: 29, 2005b: 232). Nevertheless, under specific discourse conditions, it need not be made explicit again. As observed in Section 2.1.2, in my corpus this is especially common for indefinite noun phrases that introduce hearer-new tokens of hearer-old types, as shown in example (113).

(113) Participant: Niños en la calle, yo creo.

Interviewer: ¿Antes no?

Participant: Hay más.

Interviewer: ¿No habían tantos?

Participant: Habían, siempre han habido (SD19M12/RD2513-RD2514).

Participant: ‘Children on the streets, I think.’

Interviewer: ‘Before not?’

Participant: ‘There are more.’

Interviewer: ‘There weren’t as many?’

Participant: ‘There were, there have always been.’

Similarly, the fact that the adverbial phrase is profiled and sets up a mental space in which presentational haber locates the referent of the noun phrase implies that the adverbial can only be omitted felicitously when it is recoverable (Goldberg 1995: 58–59, 2006a: 39), that is, when it refers to the base space or a previously evoked mental space. Isolated examples such as (114) and (115), which leave us wondering against which setting we have to interpret the utterances, suggest that this is the case.

(114) Podrían haber días en que yo tenía dos horas libres entremedio (SJ13H11/SJ1566).

‘There could bePL days that I had two hours of free time in between.’

(115) Claro, sí hubo muertos (SD20H12/RD2682).

‘Of course, yes, there was casualties.’

In contrast, examples such as (116) and (117) are conceptually complete, because they locate the referent of the noun phrase in the current base space. Let us now resume the most important results of this chapter.

(116) Habrán gentes que lo hagan (SD05H11/RD594).

‘There will bePL people that do it.’

(117) El racismo muchas veces viene porque muchos blancos ignoran de que hay blancos que s, negros que son tesoros (SD05H11/RD562).

‘Often, racisms comes because many whites are unaware that there is whites that a, blacks that are treasures.’

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