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Communication Dans Un Congrès Année : 2016

Natural phenomena and spatio-temporal locatives

Résumé

Within various theoretical frameworks, it has often been emphasized that natural phenomena constructions contain a locative PP, either situated on the (sub)syntactic structure level or as a part of the information structure (cf. among others, Bolinger 1973, 1977, Erteshik-Shir 1997, Taylor 2001). However, the analysis of such expressions has been mostly limited to the domain of weather in general and precipitations in particular, while other natural phenomena, if mentioned at all, have been assumed to behave in the same way. The aim of the present contribution is (a) to investigate how spatio-temporal locatives function in the expression of weather, and (b) to verify whether the general class of natural phenomena is really homogeneous in this respect. Drawing on examples from three different languages, English, French and Russian, we argue that weather utterances, independently from their syntactic encoding, can convey both thetic and categorical judgments. In the case of a thetic reading, they either contain an explicit locative or establish a link with the speaker’s location, as in (1). This also applies to cyclic phenomena such as sunsets and tides, as in (2), and natural disasters such as earthquakes and volcano eruptions, as in (3). (1) RU Tuman / Vetrenno (v Tule). fog / windy (in Tula) ‘There is fog / It is windy (in Tula).’ (2) FR Le soleil se couche / C’est la pleine lune / C’est la marée haute (à Arcachon). (3) EN There is an earthquake / The volcano is erupting (in Italy). In the categorical reading, independently of the syntactic construction used, weather expressions have a true spatio-temporal topic which is characterized by a true predicate denoting a kind of climatological property of a given place or a seasonal time-span, as in (4). However, with cyclic phenomena, the habitual reading is pragmatically impossible, regardless of the spatio-temporal locative, as in (5). In the case of natural disasters, habitual sentences with an explicit locative function like weather expressions, but since the occurrence of natural disasters is by definition unpredictable, temporal locatives cannot denote a particular season, as in (6). (4) RU V Pariže // Vesnoj často tuman / vetrenno. in Paris // in-spring often fog / windy ‘In Paris // In spring there is often fog / it is often windy.’ (5) FR *C’est souvent la pleine lune (à Paris / en hiver). (6) EN There are often earthquakes in Japan / lately / ??in winter. The fundamental difference between thetic and categorical weather judgments can be made explicit through the use of adverbs meaning ‘outside’. Thetic weather judgments, as in (7), authorize these adverbs, which refer to the observer of the phenomenon. However, in habitual weather judgments, such adverbs can no longer appear, as illustrated in (8). In the case of other natural phenomena, the presence of an observer can be expressed in thetic judgments with cyclic daylight phenomena, but not with tides nor with natural disasters, as shown in (9). (7) RU Na dvore / na ulice/ zo oknom dožd’ / vetrenno. on yard / on street / behind window rain / windy ‘It is raining / windy outside.’ (8) FR ??A Paris il pleut souvent dehors. (9) a. EN Wake up ! The sun is already coming up outside. b. EN ??It is high tide outside. c. EN ??There is an earthquake / a volcano eruption outside. Thus, we argue that the linguistic expression of weather phenomena is characterized by the particular behavior of spatio-temporal locatives in both thetic and categorical weather judgments, at least in the three languages under study. Although other natural phenomena share some characteristics of weather events, we show that this semantic class should nevertheless be subdivided conceptually into those phenomena that are cyclic and non-cyclic, on the one hand, and atmospheric and non-atmospheric, on the other hand. References Bolinger, D. (1973) “Ambient it is Meaningful Too”, Journal of Linguistics 9, 261-270. Bolinger, D. (1977) Meaning and Form. London : Longman. Erteshik-Shir, N. (1997) The Dynamics of Focus structure. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Taylor, K. (2001) “Sex, Breakfast, and Descriptus Interruptus”, Synthese 128, 45-61.
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hal-04514380 , version 1 (21-03-2024)

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  • HAL Id : hal-04514380 , version 1

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Machteld Meulleman, Katia Paykin. Natural phenomena and spatio-temporal locatives. International workshop : Existential Constructions in Typological Perspective, Nov 2016, Paris, France. ⟨hal-04514380⟩
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