About the thought content

 

About the thought content via UNITYP to the individual language

Hansjakob Seiler

 

 

1. Prerequisites (partly repeated)

We assume that it is possible to mentally grasp facts of life as structured thought content. This puts us in contrast to Ferdinand de Saussure, who says: ″Prise en elle-même, la pensée est comme une nébuleuse où rien n'est nécessairement délimité.″ (Saussure, 1931: 155).

 

2.

Interpersonal communication begins with the transformation of thought content into a semiotic system. As such, a continuous order of functional roles is the first step.

The logic and economy of our further approach require that we limit ourselves to a specific corpus of data. We rely on the dimension of IDENTIFICATION [ID] discussed in chapter ″UNITYP further″ under point 2 and on the S3 schema there.

For easier orientation, we give here the sequence of the involved function roles with regard to schema S3

 

CHAR        LOC           QUAL          ©        ZUGEH        QUANT        DEIX

mappable to a grammatical category system

CHAR        LOC           QUAL          ©        ZUGEH        QUANT        DEIX

Rel.            Prep.Attr    Appos     Nominal    Adj               COUNT          Dem.Pron

Rel.Ptz      Adn. Adv    Adj                              Gen              Koll.Phr         Art

Appos       Appos         Gen

 

 

Abbreviations:

CHARacterization, LOCalization, QUALification, © Turning point. ACCESSIBILITY, QUANTificiation, DEIXis

 

3.

All structures of our dimension have a share of indicativity [ind] and a share of predicativity [präd] according to their position in the continuum. As the diagram S3 shows us, predicativity predominates in the 'left' half of the continuum and indicativity in the second half to the right of the inflection point ©.

As can be seen from the examples (section 5.), predicativity hardly requires any further comments.

In contrast, indicativity from the inflection to the endpoint requires additional additions that cannot be made without consulting the language data. A look at the grammatical entities in their sequence shows that their number decreases from 'left' to 'right'.

Indicativity primarily has a communicative function: 'to show'. Predicativity does not primarily have a communicative function, but primarily a semantic function: 'to represent'.

 

4.

What indicative communicative, non-segmental signals can we identify in our examples? They can be summarized under the term pragmatics: (The continuous behavior of pragmaticity as a partner of indicativity has been described in detail within the dimension of APPREHENSION (Seiler, 2009: 12 f.)).

(a) word order

(b) Opposite stress

(c) Instigator (requester of an ID)

These non-segmental sign-like functions are dominant in the right half of the field, recognizable as recessive in the left half, and verbalized in the explanations of the examples. The siglum [ind] is used for both.

 

5. Die Beispiele

(1)       CHAR

welchen ich küssen werde [präd], der ist’s [ind].

Clear distance [pred]-[ind]

(2)       LOC

wo gut (ist) [präd], da (ist) Heimat [ind].

Lat. ubi bene, ibi patria

Correlative: less distance

(3)       QUAL

Er hat [ind] eine Narbe auf der Stirn [präd]

Even less distance

(4) Nominal © Turning point

(4i) Hansjakob [pred] Seiler [ind]

Sequence: 'first' is selectable: more important

(4ii) Seiler [ind] Hansjakob [pred]

List-like: 'first' not eligible: more important in lists

(5)       ZUGEH

dér [ind] mit der Zipfelmütze [präd]

Instigator: ″Which one is it (among several)?'

(6)       QUANT

(6i)       die heiligen [präd] drei [ind-präd] Könige

Identification through marked word order: 'Drei-heit' belongs essentially to the ID 
of 'kings' (cf. Seiler, 2000: 44)

(6ii)     die drei heiligen Könige

Normal word order, not ID, but determination

(7)       DEIX

Wer da?          –  ich / der Wildhüter

[ind?]                  [präd?]

Instigator: who provokes ID?

distance [ind]-[pred]

(8)       DEIX-Amalgam

(8i)       díeser Láfontaine

[ind/präd]

Emphasis accent, ID in the sense of

″dieser schreckliche  oder tüchtige L.″

[präd]                     [präd]

(8ii)      dieser Lafontaine

unmarked tone ratios: not ID, but determination as

contrast:

″dieser (Oskar) L. vs. jener (Jean de…)″

 

Literature

Saussure, Ferdinand de. 1931. Cours de Linguistique Générale. Paris: Payot.

Seiler, Hansjakob. 2009. The Continuum of Pragmaticity: A Sketch. In Johannes Helmbrecht et al. (eds.), Form and Function in Language, 11–21. Papers in Honour of Christian Lehmann. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

Seiler, Hansjakob. 2000. Attribute Ordering in Modern Standard German Revisited. In Hansjakob Seiler, Language Universals Research: A Synthesis, 44–53. Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag.