VOICE AND VALENCE

VOICE AND VALENCE

 Theoretical and conceptual framework of the study 

Different theories exist in linguistic study. Among which functionalism, distributionalism, structuralism etc… the study will be adopted a distributionalism theory, for the distribution of different elements of the clause. This theory appeared in about 1930, developed by Leonard Bloomfield (1887-1949). He was inspired by psychologic behaviourism which he applied to linguistics. Distributionalism could be considered as a variety of structuralism, as it bears some similarities with the latter. It rather focuses on language instead of speech. Its method of study is based on observation of corpus that serves as sample of one language. Besides distributionalism, we will also resort to the linguistics theory of semantics to calculate the number of arguments or participants present in a clause or a scene. It is a linguistic theory that investigates in word meaning. This theory shows that the meaning of a word is fully reflected by its context. The meaning of a word constitutes by its contextual relations; therefore a distinction between degrees of participants as well as modes of participation that are made. That‟s why it is fundamental in this study to resort the semantic method of linguistics to describe relations between semantic and syntactic roles of arguments of a clause.

Statement of the study

 In this cross-linguistic study, it is obvious that the research raises a certain number of statements. English and Mandinka are derived from very distant ancestor and then more distantly related. English an international is language that has strongly benefited from relevant studies whereas Mandinka is a local language which most of its studies were based on genetic classification. The two languages have different basic structure; English is an SVO while Mandinka is generally been assumed to be an S.O.V language. Moreover, Mandinka like other sub-Saharan and Niger-Congo languages differs from Indo-European family for not to quote only English language in structure even some way in syntax. In voice and valence operations, their core arguments such as subject, object can be arranged in different ways.

 Objective of the study

 The main concern of this description is to describe and examine different voice and valence operations that exist in English and Mandinka by displaying their similarities and dissimilarities. And then, another aim is to follow the paths of contrastive linguistics which deals with a contrastive analysis. Consequently, we hope this research will be a contribution to the research on language universals. That is to support the view that the world wide languages share certain features be it syntactic, morphological, even if they do not belong to the same genetic affiliation. We hope that this contrastive study of English and Mandinka will also serve as support for other researchers who will be interested in the same field. 

Hypotheses

 Different hypothesis can be raised in this cross-linguistic study. Firstly, the hypothesis bases on English and Mandinka being from different genetic affiliations consequently, they are systematically different. English is an S.V.O (subject verb and object) language whereas Mandinka is an S.O.V.X (subject object verb oblique) language. For that effect, in trivalent verbs constructions, the two first arguments are considered as core arguments and the third one as an oblique(x) in Mandinka; contrary to English which admits three core arguments in the same case without distinction between arguments. Therefore Mandinka differs from English on that. Secondly as far as morphological process is concerned, Mandinka is a language which admits more changes in a verb stem in voice and valence adjusting operations than English. And lastly the study hypothesis is also a look on language universals. After all these differences: morphological, and syntactic, there are possibilities to contrast English and Mandinka in voice and valence adjusting operations. Indeed, even though the two languages are not genetically related they can have some similarities. I.5.Definition of the concepts Before going farther, we deem it necessary to provide the definition of some concepts in the context. They may not be unanimous. Among these notions are: 10 Argument: Is a term used in predicate calculus, and often found in the discussion of semantics (theory), to refer to the relationship of a name or other terms to the predicate with which it combines to form a simple proposition. For example, in the proposition, the boy is naughty; the boy is an „argument‟ of the proposition. „Often the term argument is used to refer to the participants and their semantic roles that are normally associated with a given verb‟. Payne (2004:47). Core argument: Is an argument that plays a central role in a clause. It can be a subject and a direct or an indirect object. In Mandinka it always precedes the verb. Oblique or peripheral argument: In linguistics, an oblique argument is a noun phrase (often a single noun or pronoun) that does not play an indispensable role in the clause. In some languages, it is known by its position after the verb. Syntactic role: In linguistics, a Syntactic role is an application of the general sense of this term to refer to the function of an element in a sentence. It is particularly used in the analysis of syntactic functions, such as subject and object. Semantic role: Is a term used in syntax and semantics to refer to the semantic relations that link a predicate to its arguments in the description of a situation. Thus in the sentence Musa milked the cow the entities are related by the action described by the verb: Musa as the volitional instigator is often termed the agent; and the cow as the affected entity, the patient. In other words, it „is a role that the participants play in message world situations, quite apart from the linguistic encoding those situations.‟ Payne (2004:47). Semantic roles are conceptual (agent, patient, instrument, force, experience, etc.). Adjunct: Is a term used in grammatical theory to refer to an optional or secondary element in a construction: an adjunct may be removed without the structural identity of the rest of the construction being affected. It has been used as an alternative term of oblique argument. 11 Agent: Is a term used in grammatical description to refer to a form or construction whose typical function in a sentence is to specify the means whereby a particular action came about. It is the „doer‟ of the action, the causer of the event that the verb expresses. In English, the term has especial relevance with reference to the passive construction, where the agent may be expressed or unexpressed (agentless), e.g. the man was bitten [by a snake]).Snake (agent) is optional. Patient: Is term used by some linguists as part of the grammatical analysis of a sentence: it refers to the entity which is affected by the action of the verb, e.g. the dog bit the man. The man is the affected; he is the patient. Goal and recipient or undergoer has been used as alternative terms of patient. Clitics: Is a term used in grammar to refer to a form which resembles a word, but which cannot stand on its own as a normal utterance, being phonologically dependent upon a neighbouring word in a construction. They are morphologically or syntactically bound morphemes. For instance the in the book is expensive; is syntactically bound, Crystal (2008). Grammatical relations: „Common terms used to refer to grammatical relations are subject,direct and indirect object, ergative, and absolutive‟. Payne (2004:129).According to Comrie (1978), Dixon (1994) and Silverstein (1976), in order to adequately define grammatical relations, it is convenient to identify three basic semantic-syntactic roles termed: S, A and P. these terms presuppose two prototypical clause types: – Single argument “Bob left”. S V – Multi-argument “Bob greeted Aileron”. Payne (2004) A V P The notion of voice: Voice is a grammatical aspect common in many of the world‟s languages. Without changing the meaning of the sentence, it “adjusts the relationship between semantic roles and 12 grammatical relations in clauses” (Payne 1997:169). The semantic roles have actor and undergoer while the grammatical relations have subject and object. The main distinction is between the active and passive, as illustrated bysentence (1): (1) a) The boy saw the man. (active) b) The man was seen by the boy. (passive) In sentence (1.a), the grammatical subject is also the actor; in sentence (1.b) the grammatical subject is the goal of the action. It is „acted upon‟, and thus „passive‟. In Mandinka, a verb that can be used transitively also has an intransitive construction interpreted as implying the same participants as the transitive construction. The subject of the intransitive construction encodes the same participant as the object of the transitive construction, whereas the participant encoded as the subject of the transitive construction is left unexpressed, Creissels (2011). This is illustrated by the example. (2) a) Mus-óo ye ñoó tuu. (active) woman-DEF PF.POS millet.DEF pound „The woman has pounded the millet.‟ b) Ñóo tuú-ta ka baŋ. (passive) millet.DEF pound-PF.POS INF finish „The millet has already been pounded.‟ It is like English sentences (1a&b), the subject of (2a) Musóo is the doer; in the second sentence (2b), the subject Ñoó is the goal too. It undergoes the action. The construction is a passive one. The notion of valence: As transitivity which counts the number of objects, valence counts the number of participants in a clause. “Valence can be thought of as a semantic notion, a syntactic notion or a combination of the two”, Payne (2004). On the one hand, “semantic valence refers to the number of participants that must be on “stage” in the scene expressed by the verb” (Payne 2004:169). For instance The English verb to eat and its equivalent dómo in Mandinka has a semantic valence of two, since for any given stage of eating there must be at least an eater and an eaten thing. 13 On the other hand, “syntactic valence or grammatical valence refers to the number of participants present in any given clause. A syntactic argument of a verb is a nominal element that bears a grammatical relation to the verb” (Payne 2004:170). To illustrate, if we consider the verb eat in English and dómo in Mandinka, we may have a syntactic valence of one or two depending on transitive or intransitive use of the verb. For instance phrases like: English (3) Have you eaten yet? Mandinka (4) Í dómori-ta le bǎŋ? You eat-PF.INT FOC have you „Have you eaten?‟ English (5) The baby ate the mango. There is neither what can be encoded as an object in sentence (3) nor in sentence (4); the only argument is the subject in both sentences, whereas sentence (5) has two arguments: baby the subject and mango the object. Consequently, the number of arguments of the verb to eat varies from one clause to another one syntactically by the use of transitive or intransitive constructions. However, valence in the clause varies from zero to three depending on the type of construction. A verb can be avalent, monovalent, divalent or trivalent. English (6) a) It is raining. (avalent) b) The boy is running. (monovalent) c) The man is eating a sandwich. (divalent) d) Our granddad gave us a present. (trivalent) In sentence (6a), the verb to rain has no participant, the subject is a dummy subject; it counts zero argument. As opposed to the sentence (6a), sentence (6b) has one argument boy the subject of the verb; run is a monovalent verb. Eat in the sentence (6c) has two participants, the subject the man and the object a sandwich, it is a divalent verb; while give in the sentence (6d) has three arguments, one subject and two objects respectively our granddad subject, us and a present. Give is a trivalent verb.