Iwona Kokorniak and Karolina Krawczak

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1 Iwona Kokorniak and Karolina Krawczak
BeReEm (Belief, Reason, Emotion) Thinking about THINKING: Constructions of Polish mental verbs in discourse Iwona Kokorniak and Karolina Krawczak

2 Presentation outline Introduction into the project
Cognitive grammar assumptions Corpus data The adopted methodology Results Conclusions Research perspectives

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4 Aim of the project selected abstract concepts – investigation of meaning cross- linguistically and diachronically syntactic-semantic analysis of examples from the PWN Corpus of the Polish language to start with

5 Cognitive Grammar (CG) assumptions: Construal vs. coding
the unpredictability of grammar arises from the objectivist approach to semantics cognitive grammar finds “semantic value in every one of its uses” (Langacker 1991: 294) event can be construed in many ways; a number of lexical items and grammatical constructions can be used to convey these construals

6 Construal vs. coding in CG
“construal is partly a matter of linguistic convention and partly of the speaker’s communicative objectives” (Dąbrowska 1997: 115) it bears objective as well as subjective meaning: it refers to the role of a substantive; it encodes the speaker’s interpretation of that role (1) a. Peter has bought a red bike from his friend Tom. b. His friend Tom has sold Peter a red bike. c. A red bike has been sold to Peter (by Tom). d. *Peter has been bought a bike from Tom.

7 CG assumptions about construals
“every verb defines a distinct set of participant roles that reflects its own unique semantic properties” (Langacker 1991: 284) characteristics of the entities designated to interact with one another in the relations contribute to the construal of the event case markers depicting the relationships between the participants involved in the processes are semantically motivated the meaning assigned by the verbs is distributed across the sentence, which is concordant with the Langackerian conceptualisation of the whole event, and also with the theory of ‘distributed semantics’ by Shina and Kuteva (1995)

8 Construal of mental verbs
mental verbs represent what originates in the subject’s mind, the ‘internal reality’ (Shinzato 2004: 862) THINK treated as one of semantic primes (Wierzbicka 1996) Danielewiczowa (2002: 35-38) warns against putting all mental verb uses into one category: X myśli, że…’X thinks that…’, X myśli, co/kto/kiedy…’ ‘X thinks wh-’, X myśli o…’X thinks about’, X myśli coś zrobić ’intend to do sth’, X myśli. ‘X thinks’, etc. formal linguistic differences reflect semantic differences, i.e. each verb use refers to a different mental state each epistemic verb constitutes part of a whole (Danielewiczowa 2000a, 2000b, 2002) hardly ever does language use two linguistic units to express exactly the same ideas

9 Myśleć o vs. sądzić o ‘to think about’
What’s the difference between the two lexical items? Both are mental verbs Both can be combined with o+LOC: (2) Co myślisz/sądzisz o wysyłaniu polskich żołnierzy do Iraku? o+LOC – the mental experience is not directly focused on the object of thinking but rather it takes an indefinite constant circular movement round the focal point (Radden and Dirven 2007)

10 The Polish PWN Corpus data
extracts from 386 books, 977 issues of 185 newspapers and magazines, 84 recorded conversations, 207 websites and several hundred promotional leaflets 40 million words; demo online version of the corpus used – 7.5 million words 239 random hits of myśleć o 139 total hits of sądzić o

11 Coding schema categories
Sentence tense: Pr, Pt, Ft, Not Applicable Verb form: Finite, Infinite, Participle Mood: Conditional, Indicative, Imperative Interrogative: Interrogative, Noninterrogative, Indirect Question Transitivity: Intransitive, Transitive, Complex Transitive Negation: Negative, Positive Aspect: Imperfect, Perfect, Aspect Not Applicable Impersonal Constructions: Reflexive, -ono_participle, Non- Impersonal Construction, Infinitive Person: V1, V2, V3, VNA (e.g. należałoby się domyślać) Number: VSg, VPl Subject form and semantics Object form and semantics

12 Subject Form: NP, Pronoun, Numeral, Adjective, Proper name:
Krawiec, On, Sześciu, Niewidomi, Adam Visibility: Overt, Nonovert Sołtys myślał chwilę o swojej córce i nagle ożywił się… myślał wtedy o znaku krzyża… Subject competence: Specialist, Nonspecialist: Komisarz vs. Nikt Semantics: Human, Metonymic, Personified Dyrektor vs. Ministerstwo Finansów vs. pan Osiełek

13 Direct Object Form: NP, Proper name, Pronoun, Not Applicable, Clause
Case: o+LOC Person: Obj1, Obj2, Obj3 Number: ObjSg, ObjPl, ObjNA (nie myślał o niczym) Semantics NP: Human, Concrete, Abstract, Activity Clause: Accomplishment, Achievement, State, Activity, Hypothetical

14 Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA) for Verb Person, Subject Visibility & Object Semantics

15 MCA for Object form and Object semantics

16 MCA for Subject form and semantics, Interrogative sentences, Negation and Mood

17 Results: examples (3) Myślałem o Makowskim, o Waliszewskim, o Czyżewskim, o Cybisie, o naszej walce o stosunek bardziej zdecydowany, bardziej surowy wobec ocen qualité malarskiej obrazów. V1/Nonovert (4) A co pan sądzi o tym dziś... V3/Overt/SubjHUM/Inter (5) Co jednak dziś należy sądzić o owych podobieństwach, dziś - to znaczy późnym wieczorem niedzielnym, na kilkanaście godzin przed planowanym na poniedziałek ósmym zabiegiem? Inter/SubjVisibilityNA (6) Nie myśl o autobusach zagranicznych typu neoplan. NonInter/Neg/Imp (7) Przez cały czas gry Adelka myślała o martwych zwierzętach na stole w przedpokoju. Obj2CONCR (8) Chcę zadzwonić do mojej najlepszej przyjaciółki, by powiedzieć jej dokładnie, co sądzę o jej nowym chłopaku. Obj2HUM/IndirQ (9) A co sądzi o tym wszystkim policja? Inter/SubjMETO

18 Results: summary Wh- Subj sądzić o+LOC (139) Co pan sądzi o pomyśle Pawła Piskorskiego? ‘What do YOU think about Paul Piskorski’s idea?’ Subj myśleć o+LOC (231) Z przerażeniem myślę o tym, co mnie teraz czeka. ‘With terror I’m thinking about what awaits me’ Wh- Subj myśleć o+LOC (8) Co myślicie o tym? ‘What do you think about it?’

19 Conclusions Polysemy of myśleć o+LOC: ‘opinion’ vs. ‘activity of thinking’ Synonymous forms for ‘opinion’: myśleć o+LOC vs. sądzić o+LOC, but different in language formality

20 Reserch perspectives Cross-linguistic analysis:
Polysemy of think about in English - reflected by aspect (10) What do you think about…? ‘Co myślisz o…? vs. (11) What are you thinking about? ‘O czym myślisz? Other criteria to be examined and compared with the Polish data

21 References Danielewiczowa, Magdalena. 2000a. “Główne problemy opisu i podziału czasownikowych predykatów mentalnych” [Main problems in the description and classification of mental verb predicates], in: Renata Grzegorczykowa – Krystyna Waszakowa (eds.), Danielewiczowa, Magdalena. 2000b. “W związku z artykułem Galiny Kustovej ‘Niektóre problemy opisu predykatów mentalnych’ głos polemiczny” [On Galina Kustova’s ‘Some problems in description of mental predicates], in: Renata Grzegorczykowa – Krystyna Waszakowa (eds.), Danielewiczowa, Magdalena Wiedza i niewiedza: Studium polskich czasowników epistemicznych. Warszawa: Katedra Lingwistyki Formalnej UW. Dąbrowska, Ewa Cognitive semantics and the Polish dative. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Grzegorczykowi, Renata – Krystyna Waszakowa (eds.) Studia z semantyki porównawczej [Studies in comparative semantics] Vol. 1. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo UW. Janda, Laura A geography of case semantics: The Czech dative and the Russian instrumental. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Langacker, Ronald Foundations of cognitive grammar: Descriptive application. Vol. 2. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Radden, Günter and René Dirven Cognitive English grammar. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Sinha, Chris and Tania Kuteva “Distributed spatial semantics”, Nordic Journal of Linguistics 18: Shinzato, Rumiko “Some observations concerning mental verbs and speech act verbs”, Journal of Pragmatics 36: Wierzbicka, Anna Semantics, primes and universals. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

22 THANK YOU! 