Competing strategies of expressing reciprocity in English - CiteSeerX

Competing strategies of expressing reciprocity in English Florian Haas Freie Universit¨at Berlin Otto-Friedrich-Universit¨at Bamberg, 29.05.2008

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Reciprocity and reciprocal constructions (1)

A [reciprocal] situation can be defined as a situation with two or more participants (A, B, . . . ), in which for at least two of the participants A and B, the relation between A and B is the same as the one between B and A. (Haspelmath, 2007)

(2)

Reciprocal constructions are grammatical means for the expression of symmetrical relations for any n-ary predicate and for at least one set of arguments A. (K¨onig and Kokutani, 2006)

How is reciprocity expressed in Present-day English? (3)

a. You help us, we help you. We got a deal? Let’s shake hands. [McEwan, Saturday, 105] b. How come you don’t understand me, and how how come I don’t understand you?1 c. Our managers sued us, and we sued them.2

(4)

Juliet was a sex object to Romeo, and vice versa. (AE0 2724)

(5)

Men understand men, mechanisms with very few levers — a few earthly appetites, an atavistic warrior pride and stoicism. [Updike, Villages, 212]

(6)

In the early morning, they sat face to face in the restaurant car, with their fingers entwined beneath the table, . . . [Lodge, Small World, 220]

(7)

Older people from the Caribbean, China, Asia, and India meet together and have a chance to discuss their culture and their memories. [B3G 269]

(8)

They passed the wine between them as they went along. [McEwan, Atonement, 257]

(9)

Hadn’t they always told each other everything? [Eugenides, Middlesex, 27]

(10)

Each glanced surreptitiously at the other’s reading matter. [Lodge, Small World, 118]

1 Source: 2 Source:

Dream Theater ‘Lifting shadows of a dream.’ Awake. East West America, 1994. Bruce Dickinson, Interview on the DVD “Anthology”, Sanctuary Music 2006.

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(11)

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We looked at each other and – almost unheard of between us – we hugged. [Eugenides, Middlesex, 301]

Research on reciprocity Formal semantics • Fiengo and Lasnik (1973); Langendoen (1978); Dalrymple et al. (1998); Beck (2000, 2001); Mari (2006) investigate the different readings that sentences involving each other can have and how these readings can be formally represented and related to each other: (12)

The neighbours all know each other. (STRONG RECIPROCITY)

(13)

Five Boston pitchers sat alongside each other. (I NTERMEDIATE PROCITY )

(14)

“The captain!” said the pirates, staring at each other in surprise. (ONE WAY WEAK RECIPROCITY )

(15)

Countless stones [. . . ] are arranged on top of each other and are held in place by their own mass and the force of flying buttresses against the walls. (INTERMEDIATE ALTERNATIVE RECIPROCITY)

(16)

He and scores of other inmates slept on foot-wide wooden planks stacked atop each other like sardines in a can in garage-sized holes in the ground. (INCLUSIVE ALTERNATIVE ORDERING)

(17)

a. They [two children] were chasing each other down the street. (Evans, in pressb) b. There were two beds on top of each other.

RECI -

• Hurst and Nordlinger (to appear) on English and Evans et al. (to appear) on a number of other languages: empirical investigation of reciprocal situation types with the help of video clips (in cooperation with MPI for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen).

3.2

Derivational analyses • Gleitman (1965); Dougherty (1970, 1974); Heim et al. (1991) and many followup studies (e.g. Sauerland, 1994; Sternefeld, 1998) have tried to derive the distribution and meaning of each other from its parts. • Heim et al. (1991), despite serious objections brought up in the literature, has remained the starting point for many recent studies in the generative tradition. Their basic idea: “[R]eciprocal expressions have no properties peculiarly their own and [. . . ] their meaning instead arises from the compositional interactions of the meanings that their constituent parts have in isolation.” (1991:67) • Functional differences between reciprocal strategies are ignored; a comprehensive analysis is not aimed at.

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3.3

Functional-typological studies on reciprocity • K¨onig and Kokutani (2006); Nedjalkov (2007); Evans (in pressb): the typology of reciprocal constructions. • Polysemy (especially reflexive-reciprocal and collective/sociative-reciprocal) as a recurring topic: Lichtenberk (1985); Kemmer (1993, 1997); Maslova and Nedjalkov (2005); Nedjalkov (2007); Gast and Haas (in press).

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Functional differentiation between available strategies in PDE

4.1

Previous research • Examples repeatedly discussed in the literature (e.g. Kemmer, 1993; Safir, 2004): (18)

a. They kissed. b. They kissed each other.

• Similar observations have been made on the contrast between each other and each. . . the other (Fiengo and Lasnik, 1973; Bolinger, 1987):

4.2

(19)

a. Each of the cars bumped into the other; the Pontiac bumped into the Plymouth on Monday, and the Plymouth bumped into the Pontiac on Tuesday. b. The cars bumped into each other; *the Pontiac bumped into the Plymoth on Monday, and the Playmouth bumped into the Pontiac on Tuesday.

(20)

a. Each of the men stared at the other; John stared at Bill for 3 hours and the Bill stared at John for 3 hours. b. The men stared at each other; *John stared at Bill for 3 hours and the Bill stared at John for 3 hours.

(21)

a. Two men each believing the other to be in a higher position. b. ?Two persons believing each other to be in a higher position.

Further evidence

4.2.1 each other vs. each. . . the other • The analytic strategy is preferred in situations not compatible with a single-event interpretation (22)

3 Source:

a. In the early Middle Ages, no real effort was made to go beyond the stereotypes entertained by Christians and Muslims alike. Each saw the other’s religion as a menace; and their mutual polemics were really a branch of theology.3

http://www.literaryreview.co.uk/pryce-jones 03 06.html, accessed 1/08/2007.

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Figure 1: Relative frequency of the analytic reciprocal strategy b. My own impression is that in both India and China there is a growing recognition, not only of the potential role of their own countries and economies, but also one of the other. They each see the other as already being a major player and one which is likely to become even more so in the future.4 • With verbs that can be described as ‘hostile’ in the widest sense, the analytic strategy is much more frequent, compared to the proportion of this strategy with other verbs (e.g. 3x each accused the other vs. 7x each accused the other in the BNC): (23)

a. There followed a swingeing series of letters between Rodrigo and Berenguer, in which each accused the other of treachery and cowardice. [ASW 309] b. What really happened is anyone’s guess but afterwards each accused the other of cheating. [EFW 1572] c. The government and the Farabundo Mart National Liberation Front (FMLN) in early March each accused the other of failing to comply with the peace agreement formally signed in January to end 11 years of civil war; [. . . ] [HLH 661]

• The less easily a reciprocal situation can be conceptualized as a single, collective event for a given verb, the more frequently this verb is combined with the analytic strategy (cf. Figure 1). • The complex verb hold x responsible for y can have two meanings, roughly: negative (cf. [24a]) and positive (cf. [24b]): (24)

a. Paul held Bill responsible for the mess in the kitchen.

4 Source: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200607/cmselect/cmfaff/55/7012312.htm, accessed 1/08/2007.

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b. I’ll hold you responsible for the clan while I’m away. [APW 776] These two readings systematically correlate with the two available with the analytic and the basic reciprocal strategy respectively: (25)

a. Each side continues to hold the other responsible for this ongoing conflict.5 b. In the traditional fashion, each assumes the other responsible, and conflict ensues for a while until things are partially cleared up.6 c. Generally, however, you are right that “hold harmless” means that one party agrees not to hold the other responsible for certain acts or under certain [. . . ]7

(26)

a. Train children to do the same. Review the safety guidelines often with other coaches and hold each other responsible for following the safety rules.8 b. . . . participating in floor meetings and activities, getting to know the other residents and looking out for them, and holding each other responsible for behavior [. . . ]9 c. Students are invited into a process of holding each other responsible for the choices they make, under the guidance of CMU faculty and staff.10

Explanation: A group cannot collectively consider each of its members responsible for a (negatively evaluated) past event or present situation, but individual members of a set can. A collective interpretation of the negative meaning would imply a set of contradictions (as many as there are possible pairs of individuals). This does not hold for distributive predication, where each participant acts independently of what the others are doing. In this way, the case of hold x responsible for y confirms that the two reciprocal strategies under discussion are semantically distinct. 4.2.2 each other vs. intransitive realization • Subset ambiguities (27)

Through the country’s long years of repression, artists, intellectuals and students met (each other) in the cafes, to swap ideas and information and to give each other solidarity. [AAX 121]

(i) all three groups are construed as forming one set and all the members of this large set enter into a meeting relation (UNION READING). (ii) artists, intellectuals and students are construed as separate groups and a meeting relation holds between the groups (INTER - GROUP READING). 5 Source:

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0105/18/bn.03.html, accessed 31/07/2007. http://www.spiderfan.org/comics/reviews/spiderman amazing/162.html, accessed 02/06/2004. 7 Source: http://www.proz.com/kudoz/820938, accessed 31/07/2007. 8 Source: http://www.lifeway.com/lwc/article main page/0,1703,A%253D150267%2526M%253D50026,00.html, accessed 02/06/2004. 9 Source: http://hrl.tulane.edu/intro/community.php, accessed 31/06/2004. 10 Source: http://www.cmu.ca/pdfs/a200304application.pdf, accessed 2/06/2004. 6 Source:

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(28)

a. When should our kids meet each other? We’re divorced and we’re dating — when and how to introduce the offspring?11 b. They choose to meet each other, on the neutral ground of a summer camp in Maine, for a few weeks of coexistence. Coexistence between Israelis, Palestinians, Jordanians, Egyptians, and more [. . . ]12

• Marrying each other (29)

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a. These rows, which had become frequent of late, frightened him, not so much because of the aggression they released in Miriam but because they made him wonder whether they should ever have married each other. [Lodge, How Far Can We Go, 201] b. [. . . ] and Bakermans-Kranenburg’s (in press) study showing that secure men and women (assessed via the AAI) marry each other more often than expected by chance.13 c. Any tendency for individuals from similar social backgrounds to marry each other will also lead to a positive marital correlation.14

Competition between three, not two, strategies • There is basically one functional parameter, and the two values of the parameter correspond to two ways of formally expressing the reciprocal situation at issue. Which of the forms corresponds to which value, in turn, depends on the availability of competing forms.

symmetric/prot. rec. verbs ordinary transitive verbs

intransitive X —

V each other X X

each. . . the other — X

Table 1: Competition among three reciprocal strategies

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Conclusions • The reciprocal constructions at issue display subtle meaning contrasts related to the interpretation of the reciprocal situation as either a unitary event or a set of two or more distinct events. • Since reciprocal situations in general tend to be interpreted as single events to some degree (see Evans, in pressa), there is no balanced distribution of the analytic and the basic reciprocal strategy in the data. Yet, when the analytic strategy occurs its motivation seems to be a distinct events interpretation.

11 Source: http://dir.salon.com/story/mwt/col/tenn/2005/08/11/kids point of view/index.html, accessed 24/08/07. 12 Source: http://www.worldtrek.org/odyssey/mideast/012600/012600monliat.html, accessed 24/08/07. 13 Source: Bretherton, Inge (1995) A communication perspective on attachment relationships and internal working models. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, Vol. 60, No. 2/3. 14 Source: Heath, A. C. and L. J. Eaves (1985) Resolving the effects of phenotype and social background on mate selection. Behavior Genetics 15(1).

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• The history of the reciprocal each other (and one another) is compatible with the synchronic account. The lexicalization and grammaticalization of the reciprocal, having as its source the analytic strategy, lead to a loss of universally distributing force that each contributed to the relevant sentences (cf. Haas, 2007, 2008). • Derivational analyses, in which one reciprocal construction is derived from the other synchronically, cannot account for meaning differences between the constructions (apart from other problems). Each construction has to be analysed in its own right.

References Beck, Sigrid. 2000. Reciprocals and cumulation. SALT 9:16–33. Beck, Sigrid. 2001. Reciprocals are definites. Natural Language Semantics 9:69–138. Bolinger, Dwight D. 1987. Each other and its friends. In Another Indiana University Linguistics Club Twentieth Anniversary Volume, ed. Dwight D. Bolinger, Jeanette K. Gundel, and Stephen Cushing, 1–36. Bloomington/Indiana: Indiana University Linguistics Club. Dalrymple, Mary, Makoto Kazanawa, Yookyung Kim, Sam Mchombo, and Stanley Peters. 1998. Reciprocal expressions and the concept of reciprocity. Linguistics and Philosophy 21:159–210. Dougherty, Ray C. 1970. A grammar of coørdinate conjoined structures: I. Language 46:850–598. Dougherty, Ray C. 1974. The syntax and semantics of each other-constructions. Foundations of Language 12:1–47. Evans, Nicholas. in pressa. Complex events, propositional overlay, and the special status of reciprocal clauses. In Experimental and empirical methods in cognitive/functional research, ed. John Newman and Sally Rice. Stanford: CSLI Press. Evans, Nicholas. in pressb. Reciprocal constructions: towards a structural typology. In K¨onig and Gast (in press). Evans, Nicholas, Alice Gaby, and Asafa Majid, ed. to appear. Reciprocals across languages. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Fiengo, Robert, and Howard Lasnik. 1973. The logical structure of reciprocal sentences in English. Foundations of Language 9:447–468. Gast, Volker, and Florian Haas. in press. On reflexive and reciprocal readings of anaphors in German and other European languages. In K¨onig and Gast (in press). Gleitman, Lila R. 1965. Coordinating conjunctions in English. Language 41:260–293. Haas, Florian. 2007. The development of English each other — grammaticalization, lexicalization, or both? English Language and Linguistics 11:31–50. Haas, Florian. 2008. Reciprocity in English: historical development and synchronic structure. Doctoral Dissertation, Freie Universit¨at Berlin. 7

Haspelmath, Martin. 2007. Further remarks on reciprocal constructions. In Reciprocal constructions, ed. Vladimir P. Nedjalkov, 2087–2115. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Heim, Irene, Howard Lasnik, and Robert May. 1991. Reciprocity and plurality. Linguistic Inquiry 22:63–101. Hurst, Peter, and Rachel Nordlinger. to appear. Reciprocal constructions in English: each other and beyond. In Reciprocals across languages, ed. Nicholas Evans, Alice Gaby, and Asafa Majid. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Kemmer, Suzanne. 1993. The middle voice. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Kemmer, Suzanne. 1997. Collective and distributive marking, or: where unity meets multiplicity. In The twenty-third LACUS forum 1996, ed. Alan K. Melby, 231–250. Chapel Hill, NC: Linguistics Association of Canada and the United States. K¨onig, Ekkehard, and Volker Gast, ed. in press. Reciprocity and reflexivity: theoretical and cross-linguistic explorations. Berlin: de Gruyter. K¨onig, Ekkehard, and Shigehiro Kokutani. 2006. Towards a typology of reciprocal constructions: focus on German and Japanese. Linguistics 44:271–302. Langendoen, D. Terence. 1978. The logic of reciprocity. Linguistic Inquiry 9:177–197. Lichtenberk, Frantisek. 1985. Multiple uses of reciprocal constructions. Australian Journal of Linguistics 5:19–41. Mari, Alda. 2006. Linearizing sets: each other. In Empirical issues in syntax and semantics 6, ed. Olivier Bonami and Patricia Cabredo Hofherr. Paris: http://www.cssp.cnrs.fr/eiss6/. Maslova, Elena, and Vladimir Nedjalkov. 2005. Reciprocal constructions. In The World Atlas of Language Structures, ed. Martin Haspelmath, Matthew Dryer, David Gil, and Bernard Comrie, 430–433. Oxford University Press: Oxford. Nedjalkov, Vladimir P., ed. 2007. Reciprocal constructions. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Safir, Kenneth. 2004. The syntax of anaphora. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sauerland, Uli. 1994. The representation of reciprocals in grammar. In Proceedings of the Eastern States Conference on Linguistics (ESCOL ’94), ed. J. Fuller, H. Han, and D. Parkinson, 270–281. Ithaca, N.Y.: DMLL Publications, Cornell University. Sauerland, Uli. 1998. Plurals, derived predicates, and reciprocals. In The interpretive tract, ed. J. Fuller, H. Han, and D. Parkinson, 177–204. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press (MIT Working Papers in Linguistics). Sternefeld, Wolfgang. 1998. Reciprocity and cumulative predication. Natural Language Semantics 6:303–337.

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