Describing
the overt order of words within a sentence may appear to be a simple matter.
To begin with, a combination of units may permit interruption by a break
of some kind or by units from some other combination; alternatively the combination
will demand contiguity and not tolerate interruption. Sentences are necessarily contiguous combination
of words (rather than of formatives) within a sentence. Both words and sentences
are, so to say, solid units.
Next,
the combination may be thought of as a permutation with a specified sequence.
A given language may permit any permutation of a given combination of words
into a sentence. The word order may be
free, fluid, with maximal randomness or entropy, as a mathematician would
say, Thus, in Sanskrit with the combination naraya Nah (male given name)
(nominative), rasam juice (accusative), pibati drinks,
any of the six mathematically possible permutations are permissible.
(1) (a) nārāya
No rasam pibati.
(b)
nārāya Nah$
pibati rasam.
etc.
All
of these six mean Narayan drinks juice. Alternatively, the word order may be
fixed, rigid, with minimal randomness or maximal predictability, thus,
in English with a similar combination, John, juice, drinks only a single
permutation is permissible.
(2) John drinks
juice.
In
between, only some of the permutations may be permissible but not all. Thus, in Sindhi with combination hU he,
AmbUmango khai eating, tho is
only a subset of seven permutations are permissible out of the mathematically
possible twenty-four. This is semi-fluid
order.
(3) (a) hU ambU khai tho
(b) hU AmbU tho khai
(c)
hU khai tho ambU
(d)
hU tho AmbU khai
(e)
AmbU hU khai
(f)
AmbU khai tho hU
(g)
khai
tho
hU AmbU
All
of these mean He is eating a mango.
This
account seems to coincide with the common sense view.
But at once doubts begin to assail us that things are not so simpleespecially
to someone not knowing a language and asking for explicit instructions on proper
word order.
The first question that may strike us is whether the word
and the sentence are the only necessarily contiguous or solid combinations in
an utterance. What about the phrase? (A
phrase built around a finite verb is only a special case we shall call such phrases
clauses.) Some phrases do not appear to be wholly solid: khai tho in Sindhi seems
to be only partially solid in that it gets interrupted in 3rd. But what about ῑtam rasam cold juice in Sanksrit? At least in highly
literary Sanskrit the combination nārā yaḥ
Nah, ītam,
rasam, pibati appears to be as fluid as the shorter combination
we considered earlier and permit separation of ῑtam
from rasam. But cold juice
in English (possibly juice cold in poetic diction) and miṭho AmbU sweet
mango in Sindhi are quite solid. even
in Sanskrit clauses will be solid. (of
course phrases within a clause need not be solid and the order within a clause
may be fluid.) The wiser policy seems to be that we should inquire into the overt
order of solid phrases within a sentence rather than into the order of words with
in a sentence. A good empirical test for
identifying solid phrases may be based on looking for potential points in a sentence
for pauses or for parenthetical insertions.
The second question
concerns the assumption that the combination has a specific grammatical structure.
Think of the combination in English, a man, a dog, bites. Obviously the two following permutations are far from meaning the
same thing. (Compare example-2 with2.)
(4)
(a) A dog bites a man.
(b) A man bites a dog.
Surely
this is not to be thought of as a departure from rigidity in English.
The word order is fixed, but it is also distinctive; thats all. Actually we are dealing with two different
grammatical combinations of the same grammatical combination.
(5) (a) a man (subject),
a dog (object), bites
(b) a dog (subject),
a man (object), bites
The
English words here do not show overt formatives (as in Sanskrit) to mark the grammatical
functions, thats all. We are dealing here with the overt order of a combination
of solid phrases that together constitute a grammatical structure (the covert
order, so to say) within a sentence.
The
third question concerns the observation that the various permutations in a non-rigid
order (examples 1,3) mean the same thing (namely, Narayan drinks juice,
He is eating a mango) Now do they
really mean the very same or do they merely mean roughly the same thing? Obviously
the differences between la, lb, etc. or between 3a, 3b, etc. are negligible meaning
differences while the differences between 4a, 4b are far from negligible, they
are major meaning differences. In other
words, the different formations may weakly or strongly contrastive. As early as1957, Joos underlined the importance
of this distinction between major and negligible meaning differences for the purposes
of grammatical analysis. Items 5a, 5b
are different grammatical combinations precisely because they lead to major meaning
differences. The same grammatical combination
is said to underlie permutations in fluid order examples la, lb etc.)
or in semi-fluid order (examples 3a, 3b etc.) precisely because the resulting
mean in differences are negligible. Consider
the following ---
(6) (a) John is
ready.
(b)
Is John ready?
In
some sense, the difference between a statement and a question is a major meaning
difference. But what about the underlying grammatical combination? Is it the same
combination, namely, John, ready, is or are there two different combinations
here? Again, there is some plausibility in saying that there is the same
combination. This seems to suggest that
it will be wiser to recognize that major differences may be carried by overt order
(as in 6) no less than by grammatical structure (as in 4).
The
fourth question concerns the carries of negligible meaning differences.
We have identified one such carrier, namely, fluidity in overt order. Whether
all mathematically possible permutations are admissible (example 1) or only a
subset of them is admissible (example 3) is not all that important. But there are other carriers too besides overt
order and grammatical structure. There
are special formatives---Hindi has to, nA, hi, bhi and others;
Marathi has tAr, na, aplA, ka, c, hi and others: German has doch,
also auf and others. We shall call
them sentence particles. And of course there are features of sentence accent, sentence
tone, and sentence juncture. We
shall together call such features sentence prosodies. In conclusion, it will note unreasonable to
look for an at least loosely unified system of all these carriesovert order,
sentence particles, sentence prosodies, and certain grammatical functions that
we call sentential functions-conveying a family of negligible meaning difference,
and at least some kind seen in example 6. The different carries often tend to
support or even replace one another.
The
fifth and last question concerns the correlation between the carriers and the
meaning differences. It is not enough to say, for example, that in a given language with
a given grammatical structure one meets with some grammatical structure one meets
with some fluidity in overt order. Thus,
in example 3 even A superficial knowledge of fifth language will reveal that a
specific order is the normal, colorless, unmarked order, the rest being
in some sense deviant, colourful, marked orders. Only a more intimate knowledge
of the language will enable one to sort out which order is associated with which
sentence particles and sentence prosodies and with which specific color or meaning
difference. Only then the answer to the
question, namely, which subset of permutations, holds any interest for us.
In
an earlier presentation (Kelkar 1982), I offered grounds for recognizing two sets
of grammatical functions at the rank of a sentence in Marathi: (i) a set of dietetic
functions, namely, Agent, Tenant, and Object that are closely associated with
selection of the verbal: (ii) a set of sentential
function, namely, Subject, Substrate, and Theme that in some ways parallel
the dietetic functions but that are distinct from them:
(iii) a set of the remaining sentential functions, namely, Circumstantial,
Manner, and Verbal. The relevance of these
considerations to the present concerns stem two facts, namely
(i)
The unmarked overt can be set out in terms of the sentential
functions as follows: Circumstantial, Subject, Substrates, Theme, Manners,
Verbal
(ii)
The marked overt orders can be seen sometimes as the assignment
of given constituents variably to different sentential functions and sometimes
As playing around with the sentential functions themselves.
Some
illustrations are called for at this point.
(7)
cora ni
mitra la
pivi; bAkSis dili:
theif by friend to bag
gift
gave
Agent
Tenant Object Complement verb
Subject
Substrate
verbal
the thief
gave the bag to the friend as a present
(8) (a) Cora ni
pivi: mitra la dIli:
thief by bag friend to gave
Subject Theme
Verbal
(b) pivi: cora ni mitra
la dili:
bag
thief by friend to gave
Subject Substrate Substrate Verbal
(source) (goal)
(9) tikDe cor jhopla
there thief
slept
Circum Subject Verbal
(10) cor tikDe jhopla
thief there
slept
Subject
Manner Verbal
Whether
the thief (the Agent) is cast in the
rle of the Subject (as in 7, 8a) or the source-Substrate (as in 8b), whether
to the friend (the Tenant) is cast in the role of the Substrate (as in 7, 8b)
or as a part of the Verbal Subtle and therefore negligible difference between
The thief gave the bag to the friend and The thief gave the friend the bag),
whether there is cast in the rle of the Circumstantial (as in 9) or the Manner
(as in 10)all these depend not so much on the facts of the case but on the way
they are construed or interpreted in the speakers intent.
We have thus illustrated how the deviant order (examples 8, 10) may differ
from the normal order (respectively examples 7, 9) in the assignment of certain
features of the event or the state of affairs being presented (the agency of the
thief, the object hood of the bag, the tenancy of the friend, the location of
the sleep) to this or that sentential function.
Now we shall illustrate the other alternative, namely, the playing around
with the sentential functions themselves.
(11)
(a) cora ni mitra la pivi: dili:║
the thief gave the bag to the friend.
(b)
cora ni | mitra la pivi dili:║
(c) cora ni mitra la|
pivi: dili:║
(c)
cora ni mitra la pivi:
| dili:║
Here
the overt order (to gather with the sentential functions) is maintained intact,
but the medial sentence juncture is placed differently in separating the presupposed
background (absent in 1la)) from the offered foreground. (The placement
of the sentence tone and accents also shifts concurrently.
One may observe in passing that Marathi television news readers tend to
make eye contact with the viewer in uttering the first constituent of the offered
foreground that bears also a sentence accent and the beginning of the tone nucleus.)
Any global question or negation affects the offered foreground.
(12)
(b)
tyani mitra la | pivi: dili:║
(c)
tyani tyala | pivi: dili:║
(d)
tyani tyala ti| dili:║
One
or more elements of the presupposed background is liable to situation-dependent
pronominalization or even to situation-dependent ellipsis (that is, tyani,
tyala, ti in 12 may be left understood).
In contrast to these modes of de-emphasis, there are modes
of emphasis of different kinds. Any focal
question or negation affects the emphasis-bearing constituent. Apart from contrastive
sentence accents and sentence particles, departures from the normal covert order
of sentential functions also act as carriers of emphasis. There are four such
departures:
(i)
Front-shift of the emphasized element which is then separated
by a sentence juncture.
(ii)
End-shift of the emphasized element which is then separated by
a sentence juncture.
(iii)
Shift near the Verbal with which the emphasized element forms
a solid constituent.
(iv)
Front-shift of the solid constituent (made up of the emphasized
element and the Verbal ) which is then
separated by a sentence juncture.
Some
examples follow. The emphasized element is always chosen from the offered foreground.
(13)
(a) cora ni | mitra la pivi dili:║
(b) mitra la | cora ni pivi dili:║
(c)
pivi | cora ni mitra la dili:║
(d)dili:
| cora ni mitra la pivi:║
(14)
(a) mitra la pivi dili: | cora
ni║
(b) cora ni pivi:
dili: | mitra la║
(c)
cora ni mutra la dili: pivi:║
(d)
cora ni mitra la pivi| dili: ║
Note that the front-shift of the normally
first element and the end-shift of the normally last element are not wholly vacuous
(examples 13a, 14d, ) in that sentence prosodies still mark the shift.
(15)
(a) mitra la pivi |cora ni dili: ║
(b) cora ni pivi | mitra la dili:
║
(c) cora ni mitra la| pivi dili: ║
Note that the shift of the element normally adjacent to the Verbal to the
Verbal-adjacent position is not wholly vacuous (example 15ac) in that sentence
prosodies stil mark the shift.
(16)
(a) cora
ni dili: | mitra la pivi ║
(b)
mitra la dili: | cora ni pivi ║
(c)
pivi dili:|cora ni muitra la║
It
will be noticed that the medial sentence juncture separating the emphasized element
chosen from the offered foreground obliterates the medial juncture separating
the offered for-ground from the presupposed background. Other details concerning
the associated sentence prosodies need to be worked out.
As
for the meaning differences associated with the four kinds of shifts of emphasized
element, only some general observations can be made pending a closer investigation:
(i) This emphasis is contrastive emphasis and should not be
confused with intensive emphasis conveyed in Marathi by drawl accent, clip accent,
and other carriers.
(ii) Front-shift strengthens the foregrounding effect; end-shift
may have the effect of an afterthought. Front-shift is the more frequent; end-shift is the more forceful.
Front-shift is analogous to cleft sentences in English. End-shift is analogous
to pseudo-cleft sentences in English. (It
is the thief that... versus The one who. is the thief)
(iii)
Verbal adjacencies is weaker than simple end-shift. Simple front-shift is weaker than front-shift
with Verbal adjacency.
While
this is by no means a full-scale presentation of Marathi word order or rather
Marathi phrase order, I hope I have presented enough material to substantiate
the approach to this problem proposed in the opening discussion of some of the
questions that need to be raised against the common sense view that is too often
uncritically accepted by Indian students of language whether traditional grammarians
or linguistically trained analysis.
References
| Ioos,
martin 1957. An axiomatic approach to English grammar. Talk, Linguistic Institute,
Ann Arbor. 6 August. |
Kelkar, Ashok R. 1982. Diathesis
in Marathi. Talk, 3rd International Conference of South Asian Languages
and Linguistics Mysore, Jan. |
|
Suggested Marathi terminology | ellipsis(n.) ָ |
|
adjacent (a) ֍֟ | emphasis (n.) ָ֬-ק |
| agent (n) | facts of the
case(n.) ֣, ßãן |
|
background (n.) ״ ; ״ | filler (n.) ã֭֯ |
|
circumstantial (n.) ßָ | fluid(free) (a.) ףֻ |
|
clause (n.) ־ | foreground (n.) ״ |
|
complement (n.) | function
(n.) ֵ |
|
constituent(n.) ֙ | goal(n.) ֭֬ |
|
contiguity (n.) ִ߯, ע | insertion(n.) ־֭ |
|
contrastive(a.) 1 (conveying difference)
־֓ 2 (conveying contrast or exclusion)
ֵ־֟ strongly c (major contrast) ï-־֓
weakly c (negligible contrast) ߝ-ֵ־֓ | interpretation(n.)ִ֕ |
|
covert(a.) ϓ | manner(n.) ֬ßָ |
|
de-emphasis(n.) ָ֬-ֵ | marked(a.) |
|
diathesis (n.) ֵ֭ | medial(a.) ֬ß |
|
overt (a.) ύ | object (n.) |
|
parenthesis (n.) 1 ֵָ2 ֵָ֟
| offered (a.) ß |
|
phrase (n.) ϤӬ | order (n.) |
|
presupposed (a.) ߟ | situs (n.) ֭֬ |
|
rank (n.) | slot (n.) ã֭ |
| rigid (fixed) (n.) | solid (n.) Ӭ |
|
sentence accent ֻ | source (n.) ֭֬ |
|
sentence juncture -ߴ֍ | speakers intent ց |
|
sentence particle -֯֟ | subject (n.) |
|
sentence prosody -ֻפ | substrate (n.) ָ֬, ֵ |
|
sentence tone - | tenant (n.) ָ̍ |
|
sentential (a.) ֟ | theme (n.) ֵ |
|
sequence (n.) ԯֵ, ԯָ | unmarked (a.) |
|
situation (n.) Ӑ | verbal (n.) ֬ |
|
| word (n.) 1(grammatical rank) ֤ 2 (phonological
rank) ֲword order(n.) ֤- |
COLOPHON
This paper was presented in the Symposium Linguistic aspects
of Marathi at the 14th All India Conference of Linguists held at Nagpur
on 5-6 July 1985. It was published in Professor R.G. Bhandarkar Commemoration
Volume, Bulletin of the Deccan College Postgraduate and Research Institute 47-48:
129-34, 1988-9, published January 1989. A
Marathi version appeared Bāhṣā
ān&i jīvan 3:4; Divati: 1985
