English posture verbs An experientially grounded approach

1
English posture verbs An experientially grounded
approach

• John Newman
• University of Alberta
• Conference on Expressions of posture and motion
  in Germanic languages
• Facultés universitaires Saint-Louis, Brussels,
  Belgium
• October 24, 2008

2
Structure of Talk

• Preliminaries - experiential realities
• SIT, STAND, LIE as cardinal posture verbs
• Action vs. state meanings
• Inanimate subjects, including locative use
• Final remarks experiential realities

3

• Preliminaries - experiential realities
• SIT, STAND, LIE as cardinal posture verbs
• Action vs. state meanings
• Inanimate subjects, including locative use
• Final remarks experiential realities

4
Basic-level categories

• Basic-level categories of things (cf. Lakoff
  1987)
• dog and chair
• Basic-level categories of events?
• come, go
• see, hear
• eat, drink
• sit, stand, lie
• give, take

5
Sit, Stand, and Lie (2004), clay sculptures by
Francis O. Cuyler
6
Sitting, standing, lying

• The spatio-temporal domain
• a strong contrast between the spatial
  configurations involved
• a compact shape associated with sitting
• an upright, vertical elongation with standing
• a horizontal elongation in the case of lying
• a strong sense of the extension of a state
  through time

7
Sitting, standing, lying

• The force-dynamics domain
• the states are typically entered into through
  relatively brief movements
• the states themselves are typically maintained
  for longer periods
• there are clear differences between these states
  in terms of the sensorimotor control which is
  needed in order to maintain the position.

8
Sitting, standing, lying

• The socio-cultural domain
• sitting is a relatively comfortable position
• standing allows a greater exercise of physical
  power, vision over a greater distance and is a
  prerequisite for walking, running etc.
• lying is the least compatible with physical
  action and is associated with rest, sleep,
  sickness, and death

9

• Preliminaries - experiential realities
• SIT, STAND, LIE as cardinal posture verbs
• Action vs. state meanings
• Inanimate subjects, including locative use
• Final remarks experiential realities

10
Posture verbs and locatives

• Posture verbs are the prototypical verbs which
  define a language type in the MPI-based research
  on basic locative constructions

11
Revised typology Ameka and Levinson (2007)

• Type 0 No verb (Saliba)
• Type I Single locative verb
• Ia Copula (English)
• Ib Locative verb (Japanese)
• Type II A small contrastive set of locative
  verbs
• IIa Postural verbs (Dutch)
• IIb Ground space indicating verbs (Tidore)
• Type III Multiverb Positional verbs (German)

12
Revised typology Ameka and Levinson (2007)

• Type 0 No verb (Saliba)
• Type I Single locative verb
• Ia Copula (English)
• Ib Locative verb (Japanese)
• Type II A small contrastive set of locative
  verbs
• IIa Postural verbs (Dutch)
• IIb Ground space indicating verbs (Tidore)
• Type III Multiverb Positional verbs (German)

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sit, stand, lie

• Posture verbs are the prototypical verbs which
  define a language type in the MPI-based research
  on basic locative constructions
• Among the posture verbs, the set sit,
  stand, lie can have a special status in a
  language

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SIT, STAND, LIE in English

• Corpora allow us to study usage
• Corpus-based study of posture verbs
• tell a lie sense found with lie(s) and lying
• transitive vs. intransitive lay
• both stand and lie are used as nouns
• numerous idiomatic uses

15
Two corpora

• SemCor 3.0
• 700,000 words of the BROWN corpus
• all verbs lemmatized and sense-tagged according
  to Princeton WordNet 3.0
• written usage of American English
• The Princeton WordNet Gloss Corpus
• more than 1.6 million words of the glosses of the
  WordNet 3.0 dictionary
• a gloss is understood as the definition of a
  word and any example sentences

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VERB WORDNET MEANING SEM COR GLOSS CORPUS
STAND be standing, be upright 133 169
SIT be sitting 124 134
LIE be lying, be prostrate, be in a horizontal position 46 58
HANG be suspended or hanging 27 35
LEAN incline or bend from a vertical position 19 24
SQUAT sit on ones heels 8 8
KNEEL rest ones weight on ones knees 7 9
CROUCH sit on ones heels 4 7
STOOP bend ones back forward from the waist on down 4 7
SPRAWL sit or lie with ones limbs spread out 4 8
PERCH sit, as on a branch 4 6
BEND bend ones back forward from the waist on down 3 3
LOUNGE sit or recline comfortably 2 2
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sit, stand, lie in Mbay

• In Mbay (Nilo-Saharan), locational and
  existential constructions typically involve one
  of the three verbs sit, stand and lie
  (Keegan 2002)
• Mbay also has a set of adverbs translating as
  here and there which are derived from sit,
  stand and lie.

18
sit, stand, lie in Mbay
19
sit, stand, lie in Kxoé

• Kxoé (Khoisan), it is precisely sit, stand,
  and lie which function as present tense markers
  (Köhler 1962 Heine and Kuteva 2002)

20
sit, stand, lie in Euchee

• Euchee (Amerindian isolate) sit, stay, stand,
  and lie form the basis of a three-way
  noun-classification system
• (Wagner 1933-1938 Watkins 1976 Linn 2000)
• The three forms function as articles/demonstrative
  s occurring with singular inanimate nouns

21
sit, stand, lie in Euchee
22
sit, stand, lie

• SIT, STAND, LIE are the cardinal posture verbs in
  English
• sit, stand, lie can be a distinctive set of
  verbs in other languages
• Mbay locational/existential constructions
• Kxoé tense marking
• Euchee noun classification system

23

• Preliminaries - some experiential realities
• SIT, STAND, LIE as cardinal posture verbs
• Action vs. state meanings
• Inanimate subjects, including locative use
• Summary

24
From state to location

• Posture verbs which are used with essentially
  static, at-rest meanings are more likely to lead
  to locative functions

Dunn, Michael, Anna Margetts, Sergio Meira, and
Angela Terrill. (2007). Four languages from the
lower end of the typology of locative
predication. Linguistics 45.5/6 873892.
25
Action and State (German)

• German sich hinsetzen is an action predicate
• German sitzen is usually a state predicate
• The state meaning is nevertheless often
  contextually salient with sich hinsetzen

26
German sich hinsetzen

• Es kommt vor, daß ich mich dann für einige
  Augenblicke hinsetze und zu erraten versuche, was
  gerade passiert.
• So I sit down action predicate for a few
  moments then and try to guess what just
  happened.
• Mannheimer Morgen, 30.04.2002 Lo und Lu Roman
  eines Vaters

27
German sich hinsetzen

• Es kommt vor, daß ich mich dann für einige
  Augenblicke hinsetze und zu erraten versuche, was
  gerade passiert.
• So I sit down action predicate for a few
  moments then and try to guess what just
  happened.
• Mannheimer Morgen, 30.04.2002 Lo und Lu Roman
  eines Vaters

28
German sich hinsetzen und..

• keinen freien Augenblick, um sich hinzusetzen und
  nachzudenken
• no free moment to sit down and reflect
• dachte, die Kinder würden sich hinsetzen und
  malen
• thought that the children would sit down and
  paint

29
German sich hinsetzen und..

• keinen freien Augenblick, um sich hinzusetzen und
  nachzudenken
• no free moment to sit down and reflect
• dachte, die Kinder würden sich hinsetzen und
  malen
• thought that the children would sit down and
  paint

30
German sich hinsetzen, um...zu

• habe sich der jetzige Präsident hingesetzt, um
  sich auszuruhen
• the current president sat down to rest
• jeden Tag, wenn ich mich hinsetzen will, um etwas
  zu schreiben
• every day, if I want to sit down to write
  something 

31
German sich hinsetzen, um...zu

• habe sich der jetzige Präsident hingesetzt, um
  sich auszuruhen
• the current president sat down to rest
• jeden Tag, wenn ich mich hinsetzen will, um etwas
  zu schreiben
• every day, if I want to sit down to write
  something 

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The sitting frame
Action is profiled sich hinsetzen
State is profiled sitzen
33
Action and State (English)

• Is SIT an action or a state verb?

34
State SIT in Bible
The neighbours therefore, and they which before
had seen him that he was blind, said, Is not this
he that sat and begged? John 98 Then Martha, as
soon as she heard that Jesus was coming, went and
met him but Mary sat still in the house.
John 1120 But to sit on my right hand and on
my left hand is not mine to give but it shall be
given to them for whom it is prepared. Mark 1040
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O.E. SITTAN gt SIT in state sense
John 9.83Sg. Past John 11.203Sg. Past Mark 14.543Sg. Past
West Saxon Gospels c.990 sæt sæt sæt
West Saxon Gospels c.1175 sæt sæt set
John Wycliffe Bible c.1384 sat sat sat
William Tyndale NT 1530-1534 sate sate sat
Great Bible 1540 sat sate sat
King James Bible 1611 sate sate sate
36
Action SIT in Bible

• And he closed the book, and he gave it again to
  the minister, and sat down. And the eyes of all
  them that were in the synagogue were fastened on
  him. Luke 420
• For which of you, intending to build a tower,
  sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost,
  whether he have sufficient to finish it?
  Luke 142
• And he said, An hundred measures of oil. And he
  said unto him, Take thy bill, and sit down
  quickly, and write fifty. Luke 166

37
O.E. SITTAN gt SIT in action sense
Luke 4.203Sg. Past Luke 14.28 3Sg. Present Luke 16.6Sg. Imperative
West Saxon Gospels c.990 sæt sytt site
West Saxon Gospels c.1175 sæt sit site
John Wycliffe Bible c.1384 sat sittinge sitte
William Tyndale NT 1530-1534 sate doune sytteth doune syt doune
Great Bible 1540 sate downe sytteth downe syt doune
King James Bible 1611 sate downe sitteth downe sit downe
38
Two corpora

• The Wellington Corpus of Written New Zealand
  English (WWC)
• 1 million words of written New Zealand English
  (1986 to 1990), comparable to the Brown Corpus of
  written American English and the
  Lancaster-Oslo-Bergen corpus (LOB) of written
  British English
•  
• The Wellington Spoken Corpus (WSC)
• 1 million words of spoken New Zealand English
  collected in the years 1988 to 1994
•  

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Action SIT
40
State SIT
41
SITTING DOWN in the spoken corpus
42
Is English SIT action or state?

• sit (with or without down) occurs in clauses
  which range over action and state meanings
• stand and lie are probably similar
• The extension of English sit, stand, and lie to
  locative usage is presumably compromised by these
  facts

43

• Preliminaries - experiential realities
• SIT, STAND, LIE as cardinal posture verbs
• Action vs. state meanings
• Inanimate subjects, including locative use
• Final remarks - experiential realities

44
Global and local corpus methods

• Search for all the forms of the posture verbs and
  inspect all results, as in Schönefeld (2006)
  global Using a 3 million word newspaper
  subcorpus of the BNC.
• Schönefeld, Doris. (2006). From conceptualization
  to linguistic expression Where languages
  diversify. In Stefan Th. Gries and Anatol
  Stefanowitsch (eds.), Corpora in Cognitive
  Linguistics Corpus-based Approaches to Syntax
  and Lexis, pp. 297- 344. Berlin and New York
  Mouton de Gruyter.
• Search for a specific inanimate subject with a
  specific posture verb local.

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Schönefeld (2006)
SIT STAND LIE
HUMAN BEINGS 87 man, people, proper nouns 59.6 proper nouns, people, deputy, candidate 26.3 Proper nouns, people, man, child, girl
CONCRETE OBJECTS 3.9 house, journal, book, plant, building 8.8 car, machine, book, tanks, temple 29.5 village, ship, coal, clothes, boat
ABSTRACT OBJECTS 2.3 music, superstructure 19.1 case, deal, things, directive, conditions 42.1 blame, responsibility, problem, task
PERSONIFIED OBJECTS 5.6 government, court, pentagon 8.8 pronoun, world, Britain, army, firm 1.7 (sports) club, talent
ANIMALS 1.1 fox, mouse, owl 1.4 sheep, gelding, cat 0.4 dog
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Schönefeld (2006)
SIT STAND LIE
HUMAN BEINGS 87 man, people, proper nouns 59.6 proper nouns, people, deputy, candidate 26.3 Proper nouns, people, man, child, girl
CONCRETE OBJECTS 3.9 house, journal, book, plant, building 8.8 car, machine, book, tanks, temple 29.5 village, ship, coal, clothes, boat
ABSTRACT OBJECTS 2.3 music, superstructure 19.1 case, deal, things, directive, conditions 42.1 blame, responsibility, problem, task
PERSONIFIED OBJECTS 5.6 government, court, pentagon 8.8 pronoun, world, Britain, army, firm 1.7 (sports) club, talent
ANIMALS 1.1 fox, mouse, owl 1.4 sheep, gelding, cat 0.4 dog
47
A local approach

• Corpus of Contemporary American English, COCA
  (Mark Davies), 375 million words
• Restrict verbs to the forms sit, sits, sitting,
  sat and stand, stands, standing, stood
• The verbs occur within a window of three words to
  the left or right of HOUSE.
• HOUSE functions as the head of the subject of the
  verb
• This search yielded more than 500 hits which were
  subsequently inspected item by item

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Refining the search

• Excluded
• a. So the White House is sitting tight.
• b. Well, the White House is still standing by
  Rove and his comments.
• Included
• c. The 1758 Cupola House sits on South Broad
  Street in the heart of the business district.
• d. The hill on which the Santa Fe Opera House
  stands

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HOUSE in five genres of COCA
50
HOUSE in five genres of COCA( expected
distribution of HOUSE SIT/STAND)
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HOUSE SIT/STAND in five genres (observed)
52
Expected and Observed
expected
observed
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Modifers/Complements
zero And I don't even know if the house is standing.
locative They were building a house sitting next to the waterfall,
manner The little houses sat hunched and still,
temporal Their two-story town house was still standing,
locative manner temporal those houses sat under water for the longest amount of time there in St. Bernard Parish and there
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Zero vs. single vs. multiple
SIT STAND
Zero modifier 0 9
Single modifier 167 107
Multiple modifiers 29 186
Total 196 292
55
Zero vs. single vs. multiple
SIT STAND
Zero modifier 0 9
Single modifier 167 107
Multiple modifiers 29 186
Total 196 292
56
Zero vs. single vs. multiple

• the majority of SIT uses (167/196) occur with
  single modifier types
• the majority of STAND uses (186/292) occur with
  multiple modifier types
• the zero modifier type is found only with STAND

57
zero modifier

• Poor-white St. Bernard Parish had hardly a house
  standing.
• Once they knew the houses were standing and no
  one had been injured, they talked on for half an
  hour

58
still

• When STAND occurs with a temporal modifier type,
  the most common recurring temporal expression is
  the adverb still.

59
big

• There is tendency for STAND, but not SIT, to
  occur in contexts where HOUSE is qualified by
  big, tall, large, sturdy
• No tendency for SIT to occur in contexts where
  HOUSE is qualified by small, tiny, etc.

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big

1. At wide intervals in the valley stood big houses
   with white columns.
2. and the tall old houses standing in the sand on
   the shore looked like beached vessels.

61
high

• She had pictured a big fine country house
  standing high over the ground on concrete pillars
  with a sunburst carving in the gable.
• The market had started out as an adjunct to
  their shotgun house that stood high on brick
  pillars.

62
The house sits high
The house stands high
63
Multiple factors with stand

• and that big white house stood high in them dark
  rivers for the next half century.

64
BIG HOUSE STAND

• and that big white house stood high in them dark
  rivers for the next half century.

65
STAND HIGH

• and that big white house stood high in them dark
  rivers for the next half century.

66
Stand locative

• and that big white house stood high in them dark
  rivers for the next half century.

67
STAND TEMPORAL (especially persistence despite
adversity)

• and that big white house stood high in them dark
  rivers for the next half century.

68
Zero vs. single vs. multiple
SIT STAND
Zero complement 0 9
Single complement 167 107
Multiple complements 29 186
Total 196 292
69
Zero vs. single vs. multiple
SIT STAND
Zero complement 0 9
Single complement 167 107
Multiple complements 29 186
Total 196 292
70
Multiple factors

• With STAND (more than SIT), multiple factors
  within the clause are relevant to its use
• Its not enough to look at head noun of the
  subject and prepositions to understand why the
  verb STAND is used in a clause
• (cf. Schönefeld 2006)

71
Simple vs. Other Tenses

• Simple tenses
• Simple Present sit, sits, stand, stands
• Simple Past sat, stood
• Other tenses
• Progressive is sitting, is standing, etc.
• Perfect has stood, have stood etc.
• Participial ing forms without any accompanying
  auxiliary verb) sitting, standing

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Tenses x Modifier x Verb
L Locative M Manner T Time
73

• Preliminaries - experiential realities
• SIT, STAND, LIE as cardinal posture verbs
• Action vs. state meanings
• Inanimate subjects, including locative use
• Final remarks experiential realities

74
Experiential grounding (1)

• An intuition that sitting, standing, and lying
  are basic experiential categories
• helps us to appreciate why SIT, STAND, and LIE
  are the most frequent posture verbs in
  usage-based data (from corpora)
• leads us to search for other data supporting the
  distinctiveness of these verbs in languages

75
Experiential grounding (2)

• Reflecting on the whole experience (frame)
  associated with postures leads to
• Understanding that action and state of
  postures are closely interrelated, even in
  languages which formally distinguish such verbs
• In English, usage data reveal a persistent
  vagueness about action and state meanings of
  the posture verbs

76
Experiential grounding (3)

• Reflecting on the spatio-temporal aspects and
  force dynamics of sitting vs. standing leads us
  to
• Understand why SIT/STAND are associated with
  particular subject phrases and other collocating
  phrases

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• Thank you!

john.newman_at_ualberta.ca