Causative, Agent-Deprofiling, and Resultative Constructions in English and Urdu

1.1. Objectives

This book is concerned with the cross-linguistic analysis of three types of constructions, i.e., causative, agent-deprofiling, and resultative. The discussion is carried out within the framework of the Lexical Constructional Model (LCM) (Mairal & Ruiz de Mendoza, 2008, 2009; Ruiz de Mendoza & Mairal, 2008, 2011; Ruiz de Mendoza, 2013). The bases for this framework lie in the vast literature devoted to Construction Grammar (CxG) or what Goldberg (2009) includes under the broad rubric of ‘constructionist approaches’ to language. The LCM encompasses the general premises of these approaches offering a fruitful single theoretical model. The focus is on core grammar characterization (i.e., argument structure constructions), with the aim of providing a cross-linguistic descriptive and explanatory analysis from the point of view of the theory adopted in this study (i.e., LCM).

Broadly speaking, one of the main objectives of the present research is the description and explanation of the constructions under analysis in two languages: English and Urdu. Interestingly, although both languages belong to the Indo-European family of languages, they are typologically very distant. One of the basic distinctions is based on the structure of their sentences, since Urdu is an SOV (i.e., Subject-Object-Verb) language and English is an SVO (i.e., Subject-Verb-Object) language. Placing the verb at the end of a sentence may suggest that the language already offers morphological information in the S and the O, which may help to predict the upcoming verb. The verb in the middle suggests a balance between the S and the O. This typological distinction, which helps to draw some generalizations about the languages under analysis, is descriptive in nature. However, typology is not confined to descriptive analysis. According to Moravcsick (2013, p. 2), linguistic typology revolves around two main questions:

1. (a) How are languages different from each other and how are they similar?
2. (b) What is the reason for their differences and similarities?

The first question addresses the distribution of structural properties among languages: what occurs and where? The second question demands an explanation of distributional facts: why does a structural property occur where it does?

The first question opens the door for a descriptive analysis of languages in order to fit them into specific groups. Once languages are gathered under different labels, the typologist has to deal with the second question, which consists in ascribing reasons to why some languages are different to others. Song (2018, p. 4) states that this is ‘the most fruitful part of linguistic typology’ since questioning the structure of languages ‘may provide useful insights into the way the human mind shapes language or, more generally, how the human mind works’ (p. 5). The purpose of this study is to make a contribution to this second question of typological studies, which is possible through fine-grained cross-linguistic analysis. In this vein, we follow Slobin (1993) when he argues that ‘[u]‌niversal principles cannot be unfailingly derived from languages of a particular type’ and for this reason ‘[i]t is important to pay attention to overall typological features of a language’ (Slobin, 1993). Thus, the present work is not solely confined to a mere theoretical discussion of various related constructions and how two typologically different languages integrate them, but it also aims for the conceptual explanation of intra-linguistic and interlinguistic (or cross-linguistic) features of the constructions under analysis. Let us now dwell on the notion of conceptual explanation and how it contributes to typological studies.

Going back to the initial example on the distinction between SVO and SOV languages, typologists remark that the difference in word order correlates with the use of prepositions or postpositions in a language. Thus, SOV languages tend to use postpositions, whereas SVO languages use prepositions. This is true for Urdu and English, respectively. Correlations like these are the first step in answering the second question proposed by Moravcsick (2013). After this departure point, there is a need to propose a ‘why’, which has to be based on the motivation of the phenomena. By a closer look at our examples, we came to the conclusion that the overall difference in structure between both languages is motivated by iconicity, albeit from different perspectives. In this regard, English, which is an SVO language, is iconic with respect the action scenario, which underpins the idea of transfer, whereas, Urdu, which is an SOV language, is iconic in terms of the arguments of the predication, which follows the principle of iconic proximity (Givón, 1995; see also Croft, 2008; Haspelmath, 2008). This latter principle accounts for the greater tightness of the conceptual relationship between proximal elements of form (i.e., the closer the formal distance the closer the conceptual distance). This initial assumption has to be corroborated by examples from a large sample of languages, which is ultimately made possible by the availability of in-depth studies of individual languages complemented by cross-linguistic analysis. Although the purpose of our study is not to study the general syntactic layout of the languages under analysis and their motivation, this explanation sheds light on how cognitive cross-linguistic analysis can contribute to typological studies. In the view defended here, a major factor in this regard is the adequate explanation of the conceptual underpinnings of form. Thus, the explanation of a linguistic phenomenon revolves around ‘why’ something happens. This issue has been rightly described by Arppe et al. (2010, p. 19):

The ultimate goal of construction-based empirical research should not be to prove that the analysis of a given phenomenon requires the postulation of a particular construction in combination with a statistical identification of attendant entrenchment patterns. In addition, such studies should also seek to provide an account of why these patterns are the way they are.

The ‘why’ that we aim to resolve in this study is supported by three main research questions:

1. 1) To what extent does the analysis of English constructions apply to the analysis of Urdu constructions?
2. 2) What does constrain or license the possibility (or impossibility) of a given construction in each language?
3. 3) Taking into account the constraining and licensing factors, why is a given construction possible or not possible?

The ‘why’ may remain unresolved unless a cognitive cross-linguistic analysis is carried out while taking into account internal grammatical features of each language. In order to analyze grammatical features and then elucidate their conceptual motivation, there is a need to use a powerful explanatory framework that has the necessary methodological tools and analytical categories that linguistic analysis requires. To this end, we have used the LCM, which is an integrative proposal that levels out many of the differences among competing accounts. The LCM balances the equation between the importance of constructions and lexical entries on the basis of internal and external constrains. The former constraints have to do with conceptual compatibility issues at all levels of description, while the latter concern reconstrual phenomena such as metaphor and metonymy, where by ‘reconstrual’ is meant any domain-external or domain internal reinterpretation of a conceptual item on the basis of the logic (metaphor) or perspective (metonymy) provided by another conceptual item (cf. Ruiz de Mendoza, 2021, pp. 85–97). This account thus acknowledges the role of metaphor and metonymy as motivating or licensing factors for linguistic phenomena, a topic that has been studied by LCM proponents and some of their collaborators independently of the explicit formulation of the LCM (e.g., Ruiz de Mendoza & Pérez-Hernández, 2001; Ruiz de Mendoza, 2007, 2008; Ruiz de Mendoza & Mairal, 2007, 2008; Ruiz de Mendoza & Peña, 2008). This study focuses on the core-grammar layer (argument structure constructions) and it explains the reasons behind a selection of grammatical phenomena, first from a language-internal perspective and then also cross-linguistically.