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Abstract
Innovative aspects of Kenneth Hale’s study ‘Gaps in grammar and culture’ (Hale 1975) are discussed in the context of the paper’s contemporary setting to demonstrate that the reasons for the sidelining of his work stem from the transitional and fast-changing nature of syntactic theory of the time. Although Hale has been credited with the introduction of the typological and generative syntactic construct of the adjoined relative clause, his early nineteen seventies discussions of the concepts of reanalysis, grammaticalization and semantic explanations for syntactic change have not been widely acknowledged in historical accounts of developments in diachronic syntax. In terms of syntactic theory, Hale’s article was out of date by the time it was published; however, in terms of developments in the field of diachronic syntax, it was ahead of its time.
Notes
1 Hereafter referred to as ‘Gaps’. All page numbers are from this publication unless otherwise specified.
2 This paper does not, therefore, examine the trajectory of Hale’s work in more recent theoretical debates (e.g. Nevins et al. 2009), except to the extent that Hale’s thinking clearly fed into broad and influential trends arising from that period like the ‘principles and parameters’ model of cross-linguistic variation and ‘the grammaticalization of syntactic structure’. Indeed, one of the challenges for linguistic historiography is to disentangle it from the anachronistic viewpoint of present day theoretical debates and to ground it more rigorously in a chronological approach. I discuss this in more detail in Mackie (2008).
3 See Mackie (2008) for a more detailed account of Voegelin’s somewhat undervalued contribution to developments in typological linguistics.
4 Hale continued his explorations around the question of whether any Australian (or other) languages might be representative of a ‘fundamentally different language type’ throughout the 1970s, leading up to his proposal of a ‘nonconfigurational’ language type in Hale (1983). His evidence for this was based on clusterings of syntactic features in the central Australian language Warlpiri, as well as a number of other languages. As Keyser commented in an obituary notice, in this Hale ‘set an agenda that is still being explored’ (Keyser 2001).
5 With hindsight it is clear that this strategy represented an early effort to ‘[minimize] the transformational burden’, as Haumann (1997: 32) has put it. See also Harlow (1995: 331) and further discussion below.
6 Hale used the spelling ‘Walbiri’ when referring to this language during this period.
7 See Nordlinger (2006) for a recent exploration of this phenomenon.
8 In fact, she had published papers outlining her proposal earlier, as Annear (1967, 1970).
9 See Harlow (1995: 342): ‘[TG], as it had been envisaged originally, was about to evolve into a theory in which transformations themselves played a relatively minor role’. Ross (1967) and Emonds (1970) were important players in this emerging development — see Mackie (2008) for a historical account of their influence on analyses of clause combining.
10 See Allen (1980) for a discussion of this development. Under the universal base hypothesis it was assumed that ‘all languages have the same phrase structures’ and that therefore ‘change of phrase structure [was] not a possible change’ (Allen 1980: 8).
11 Langacker defined ‘reanalysis’ as ‘… change in the structure of an expression or class of expressions that does not involve any immediate or intrinsic modifications of its surface manifestation’ (1977: 58).
12 See also Kiparsky (1968) and King (1969), both cited in ‘Gaps’.
13 Closs [Traugott] (1965) was an interesting exception to this trend, proposing that changes to modals in the history of English could be accounted for by ‘restructuring’ of the phrase structure rules.
14 King (1969: 143) claimed ‘we would not expect change to result from alterations in the base rules of a language’.
15 See Traugott (1974: 162): ‘[in Lakoff 1965] we find the beginnings of a distinction that later came to be regarded by generative semanticists as central to any grammar: the distinction between what is asserted, questioned, etc., and what is ‘presupposed’ …’ Mackie (2008) includes an account of this development in studies of subordination.
16 Schachter (1973) also cited a 1970 talk given by Hale, so there was clearly some contact between the two linguists around that time.
17 See Lindström (2004) for an extensive discussion. She states: ‘I believe that grammaticalisation (in the 1970s) was not so much borrowed from Meillet and/or his followers, as reinvented or independently coined’ (Lindström 2004: 347).
18 As Lindström (2004: 348) points out, Givón’s statement ‘today’s morphology is yesterday’s syntax’ (1971: 413), is also strikingly similar to Hodge’s depiction of cyclical language change.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Sylvia Anne Mackie
Dr Sylvia Anne Mackie is based at Swinburne University of Technology, where she teaches English for Academic Purposes to engineering and science students. Her main research interests are in the history of twentieth century North American linguistics and the history of grammar teaching.
Correspondence to: ELICOS program, Swinburne College, Swinburne University of Technology, Wakefield Avenue, Hawthorn, Vic 3122, Australia; Email: [email protected]