151 Monika Kavalir* UDK 81'342.9:[811.111'367.623:811.163.6] University of Ljubljana DOI: 10.4312/linguistica.57.1.151-160 PROSODY AND ABSOLUTE VS. RELATIVE USES OF ENGLISH AND SLOVENE ADJECTIVES 1 INTRODUCTION The paper takes inspiration from Rastislav Šuštaršič’s work on the contrastive analy- sis of English and Slovenian (Šuštaršič/Kocijančič-Pokorn 1998; Kocijančič-Pokorn/ Šuštaršič 1999, 2001), and especially from his investigation into the differences and similarities between the two languages in terms of stress and accent (drawing primarily from his doctoral research as presented in Šuštaršič 1993, 1994, 1995). The concept of absolutely and relatively used adjectival structures in English and Slovene, presented in Section 2 and developed in Kavalir (2014), is investigated through the lens of prosody in the following sections, which focus on adjectival structures in the base (positive) degree, and the comparative and superlative degrees, respectively. 2 ABSOLUTELY AND RELATIVELY USED ADJECTIVAL STRUCTURES The concept of absolutely and relatively used adjectival structures in English and Slo- vene brings together previously disparate ideas about the comparison and intensifica- tion of adjectives, proposing two parallel systems within the framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics (Kavalir 2014). In both languages, adjectives (and adjectival structures) can be used in all three degrees, base (positive), comparative, and superlative, with reference to two different standards, internal and external. The subsystem of standard has at its core the ques- tion whether the meaning of the adjective depends crucially on the nominal referent (or some other external circumstance), yielding what is termed the relative use of ad- jectives, or whether the meaning of the adjective is contained within the adjectival structure, i.e. whether the adjective is used absolutely. The two options are a matter of use and not an inherent feature of adjectives, although some adjectives will be pre- dominantly used with one standard rather than the other. For reasons which are beyond the scope of the present paper, the systems can be shown to pertain to the interpersonal metafunction in the Hallidayan theory of language. Table 1 shows examples of all possible combinations for both English and Slovene.1 Semantically, the most important difference between relative (external standard) and ab- solute (internal standard) uses is the fact that relative uses do not entail the positive: when * monika.kavalir@ff.uni-lj.si 1 Due to important distinctions in the strategies employed by the two languages, the examples of comparative and superlative degrees with an internal standard represent uses typical of each language rather than direct counterparts of each other. Linguistica_2017_FINAL.indd 151 12.3.2018 13:08:25 152 we say that she chose a nicer ring than he originally suggested, this does not entail that the ring was actually nice. Such an implicature can be struck down explicitly, e.g. She chose a nicer ring than he originally suggested, although it was still pretty darn ugly.2 Table 1: Adjectives in English and Slovene, according to degree and standard (Kavalir 2014) Base degree Comparative degree Superlative degree External standard Eng: Mary has a big dog. Slo: Marija ima velikega psa. Eng: She chose a nicer/more extrava- gant ring than he originally suggested. Slo: Izbrala je lepši/ bolj ekstravaganten prstan, kot ga je pred- lagal on. Eng: Luxembourg is the richest/most ad- vanced EU country. Slo: Luksemburg je najbogatejša/najbolj napredna država EU. Internal standard Eng: His grandfather is a kind man. Slo: Njen stari oče je prijazen človek. Eng: All better hotels offer self-service. He explained some of his more radical ideas about the afterlife. Slo: Vsi boljši hoteli nudijo samopostrežne obroke. Njegove ideje o posmrtnem življenju so bolj temačne. Eng: Alan bought her the cutest little bouquet. Alan bought her a/the most wonderful little bouquet. Slo: To bom storila z največjim veseljem. Kupila je obleko iz najbolj finega žameta. In the case of absolute uses, entailment is present in all three degrees. In the compara- tive degree, the positive is present but modulated, yielding the meaning ‘quite x,’ and the superlative has an elative meaning ‘very x’. The shading in Table 1 also suggests that, although both uses are present in both languages, absolute comparatives are more produc- tive in Slovene and absolute superlatives are considerably more productive in English.3 2 Implication can be strengthened or entailment added using various lexicogrammatical means, such as premodification by even/še (e.g. Catherine, made less thin by candlelight, had put on a blue dress which made her look even younger than her age; Na sliki imaš še lepšo frizuro kot v resnici), comparative reduplication (e.g. Things got better and better between them as weeks passed), or using the non-neutral member of the antonymic adjectival pair specific to a dimension or noun related to so-called inherentness (e.g. Peter is the shorter of the two (neutral for size: tall); The red towel is a little bit wetter than the blue one (neutral for dryness: dry); cf. Cruse 1991: 214–222; Frazier/Clifton/Stolterfoht 2008). 3 Unfortunately, this research question does not lend itself well to corpus investigations, but Kavalir (2014) investigates it qualitatively and shows that, for instance, absolute comparatives in Slovene are so productive that they exhibit a specialization whereby synthetic comparison pairs up with positive evaluation, and analytic comparison with negative evaluation; no such significant tendencies have been observed in English. Linguistica_2017_FINAL.indd 152 12.3.2018 13:08:25 153 What is also obvious from Table 1 is that both kinds of comparison, synthetic (with -er and –est in English, and -ši and naj- + -ši in Slovene) as well as analytic (with more and most in English, and bolj and najbolj in Slovene), are possible with both absolute and relative uses. Kavalir (2014) has shown, however, that there is a link between these systems, and that corpus investigations (focusing on the construc- tion “X couldn’t be more Y/Y-er,” for instance) prove that absolute uses feature ana- lytic patterns significantly more frequently compared to their distribution in general. While this is an important morphosyntactic reflex of the semantic difference between absolute and relative uses, this paper shows how this grammatical phenomenon in- teracts with prosody. 3 THE PROSODY OF ADJECTIVAL STRUCTURES IN THE BASE DEGREE In the base degree (usually called the positive, but the term is avoided here to ensure clarity), there is only one form, so even if it can be shown that absolute and relative uses have an effect on the type of comparison in the comparative and superlative degrees, this does not in any way prove that the distinction is justified in the base degree as well. Halliday’s take (1998/1985: xx) on Occam’s razor is very much applicable here: [A]ll the categories employed must be ‘there’ in the grammar of the language. They are not set up simply to label differences in meaning. In other words, we do not argue: ‘these two sets of examples differ in meaning; therefore they must be systematically distinct in the grammar’. They may be; but if there is no lexico- grammatical reflex of the distinction, they are not. Syntactically, there appears to be some link to the position of the adjective. Let us consider English first. When an adjective is used predicatively, the fact that it is more distant from the referent noun can promote an absolute interpretation, and the proxim- ity of the referent noun in attributive use increases the likelihood of a relative (scalar) interpretation. If the sentences He’s a clever dog, isn’t he? and I never realized our dog was so clever! are compared, attributive use of the adjective clever means it is more likely to be interpreted relatively as ‘intelligent compared to other dogs,’ while predica- tive use makes us think the dog is ‘absolutely smart’.4 This is by no means universally true, and sentences like It’s a big universe and That puppy is still very small are good examples of combinations attributive + absolute and predicative + relative. It is prosody, therefore, that provides the strongest evidence that a grammatical distinction between absolute and relative uses in the base degree is indeed justified. As mentioned before, both kinds of uses combine with both adjectival positions, attribu- tive and predicative, but what changes the situation is if the adjective becomes the focus of the intonation unit: putting tonic stress on the adjective and prolonging the vowel re- stricts the interpretation to an absolute one, e.g. There was a big cat. While the context of interaction may prioritize other factors and yield other options in terms of neutral 4 Possibly ‘so smart he can be compared to a human,’ as the internal standard often seems to be anthropocentric. Linguistica_2017_FINAL.indd 153 12.3.2018 13:08:25 154 and marked tonicity (cf. Halliday 1967, 2005), what is at the core of the argument here is that it is indeed possible for prosody to do away with the inherent structural ambigu- ity present in such constructions. The use of the above-mentioned prosodic cues is crucial especially when the more likely interpretation would be a relative one, with adjectives of size, which tend to be scalar and describe a nominal referent with reference to other members of the same category, e.g. There was a big cat. It was big. It is worth noting that saying the same of a grain or a flea would only be acceptable in two cases: (i) if the grain/flea really is big in terms of internal standard, i.e. from the point of view of humans; or (ii) if the speaker suggests this as a hyperbole – in this case the addressee knows (i) is impos- sible and infers that the referent was extremely big compared to other members of the same group. What is important, though, is that in the later case the process is not straightforward going from ‘for grains/fleas, this is a large one; actually, for grains/ fleas, this is a very large one,’ but passes through a stage where the addressee rec- ognizes that the speaker is relating the size of the grain/flea to human standards and expressing an exaggeration. This mechanism can be related to Cruse’s (1991: 217) account of “prosodic grada- tion” in “implicit superlatives”, i.e. adjectives which do not exhibit the category of comparison: “[A]lthough [implicit superlatives] cannot be lexically or morphologically graded, they can be prosodically graded, that is to say by means of stress and intonation […] Thus, the ‘hugeness’ of something can be indicated by the pitch range of the fall- ing tone on huge in It’s hùge!” These patterns show that the matter of absolute vs. relative uses of adjectives in the base degree goes beyond semantics. The same prosodic tools do not work with merely semantic phenomena, and placing the focus of intonation on an ambiguous lexeme with several possible meanings cannot elucidate the intended interpretation, so that emphasizing It was a crane cannot make it clear whether the crane mentioned was a bird or a machine. Finally, it is an interesting question why, in examples like the ones above, a focus on the adjective should yield the absolute interpretation rather than a relative one. While this is hardly an empirical issue, it can be hypothesized that placing the focus on the adjective automatically relegates the noun to less prominence in the prosodic hierar- chy. Brazil (1997/1985: 18) states that “[t]he allocation of prominence to a word can be shown to be consistently the result of a speaker-decision over and above that which resulted in the choice of the particular lexical item. It is, therefore, independently mean- ingful.” When intonation cues suggest the nominal referent is less important, it is not difficult to imagine that the interpretation will obviate it as well. There is nothing in these suggestions that would tie them to a particular language, and indeed it turns out that Slovene adjectival structures in the base degree function in exactly the same way as in English. The two languages are therefore a very good match in this area, with both absolute and relative uses possible (cf. Table 1), and with the pos- sibility of using prosody to bring absolute interpretations to the foreground (e.g. Imela je velikega psa with the same characteristics as She had a big dog). Linguistica_2017_FINAL.indd 154 12.3.2018 13:08:25 155 4 THE PROSODY OF COMPARATIVE AND SUPERLATIVE ADJECTIVAL STRUCTURES When it comes to comparative and superlative adjectival structures, synthetic com- parison by means of comparative inflections -er and -est as well as -ši and naj- + -ši does not allow for any choice when it comes to word stress, which must obligatorily fall on the lexical morpheme. Mondorf (2003) claims that the cause-consequence relationship here might be reversed, arguing that when the word that follows begins with an initial stressed syllable, preference is normally given to synthetic comparison as opposed to analytic comparison, with the affixes -er and -est used to establish a ‘buffer’ between the stresses, e.g. a fresher salad vs. a more fresh salad. Hilpert’s (2008) quantitative analysis of suggested factors on the choice of comparison in the British National Corpus (using only adjectives that are attested with both kinds of comparison) did not show this circumstance to have a significant impact on the type of comparison. The situation is very different when it comes to adjectival structures exhibiting ana- lytic comparison. Many authors (e.g. Biber et al. 2000: 522) suggest the choice of ana- lytic rather than synthetic comparison in English can be conditioned by the desire to stress the comparison for emphatic reasons. Making the words more or most prominent (i.e. accented) thus does away with structural ambiguity and singles out the relative interpretation as the only one applicable, or in Curme’s (1931: 504) words, speakers “stress the more or most when we desire to emphasize the idea of degree: ‘She is indeed béautiful, but her sister is still móre beautiful.’” The same reasoning is again valid in the case of Slovene: Tina je bolj inteligentna od sestre. There is, however, an important difference between the two languages in how the extent to which more (bolj) and most (najbolj) are stressed in connected speech affects the interpretation. In general, the literature reports similar findings for degrees of stress in both languages. Šuštaršič (1993: 118ff; 1995: 159ff) adapts Varga’s (1975; also re- lated to Kingdon 1966/1958: 8; O’Connor/Arnold 1973; Wells 2007/2006: 228–229) system of four degrees of stress, and finds that it described both English and Slovene well. The four categories he distinguishes are: 1. Syllables with primary stress – syllables with primary stress are the only ones that can be dynamically accented. 2. Syllables with secondary stress – the vowel in such a syllable is a strong, loud and long one compared to unstressed syllables, but when following the primary stress, the syllable does not have tonic prominence. 3. Syllables with tertiary stress – the vowel in such a syllable is a strong one, some- what louder and longer compared to unstressed syllables, but the syllable does not have tonic prominence even in a position before the primary stress. 4. Unstressed syllables – pronounced with minimal volume; in English, they most- ly contain vowels of centralized and reduced quality. Linguistica_2017_FINAL.indd 155 12.3.2018 13:08:25 156 The difference in unstressed syllables is discussed as follows in Collins, Šuštaršič and Komar (2014: 100–101):5 It has been claimed that English, as well as some other European languages, are stress-timed. This means that sentence stresses seem to occur at roughly regular intervals in connected speech. To achieve this stress-timed rhythm, unstressed syl- lables are shorter, while their ‘full’ vowels are usually replaced by /ə/, /ɪ/ or /ʊ/. Since the occurrence of stressed syllables remains regular, i.e. at more or less equal inter- vals, the reduced unstressed syllables can be squeezed in between the stressed ones. They BOUGHT a CAR. They BOUGHT a NEW CAR. They’ve just BOUGHT the FASTest SPORTS car. They’ve just BOUGHT the very FASTest and MOST expensive SPORTS car. Other languages, including Slovene, are considered to be syllable-timed. In these languages the length of stressed and unstressed syllables remains roughly the same (i.e. unstressed syllables are not noticeably reduced) and the vowel quality of unstressed syllables is maintained. While stress is of course not a discrete variable and “innumerable gradations of stress” (Kingdon 1966/1958: 8) could be distinguished if desirable,6 Šuštaršič’s account is detailed enough to point out a number of differences in the degree of stress for various construc- tions in English and Slovene. Although not discussed at length in his work, the general conclusion that can be drawn (cf. Cruttenden 1997: 17–18, 44; Komar 2008: 19, 113–114; Ladefoged 2001: 91–93) is that many elements that are unstressed in English tend to receive some degree of stress in Slovene. Some of Šuštaršič’s examples comprise, for instance, de- monstratives (e.g. these people vs. ti ljudje with tertiary stress on these and secondary stress on ti), greetings (e.g. good morning, with no stress on good, vs. dobro jutro, where dobro can receive anything between secondary and no stress), and some constructions where the English version allows unstressed syllables but the Slovene does not (e.g. titles – Mr Smith vs. gospod Smith; pronouns preceding emphatic reflexives – I myself vs. jaz sam).7 5 This of course has important implications for Slovene-produced English, where connected speech phenomena such as loss of stress and vowel reduction are missing. The same tendencies have been noticed in L2 English speakers coming from several different languages (although Sönning (2014) surprisingly reports no significant differences in terms of vowel reduction in German L2 speakers of English) but they cannot be generalized to all Slavic languages as Russian, for instance, has been shown to produce exactly the opposite transfer effects with speakers lacking secondary stress and over-reducing unstressed vowels in English (Banzina/Dilley/Hewitt 2016). 6 Cf. Brazil (1997/1985: 18) for a critique suggesting only primary and secondary stress are useful in the identification of “meaningful contrasts.” 7 What Šuštaršič (1993, 1995) himself notes in his experimental work is that realizations may vary across different speakers of the same language, and as one of the reviewers suggests, good in good morning may actually be both stressed and accented. Linguistica_2017_FINAL.indd 156 12.3.2018 13:08:25 157 On a side note, a tendency that, according to Šuštaršič (1993: 142; 1994: 34; 1995: 174), causes many differences between the two languages in the realisation of intona- tion is the fact that in English the last lexical item in the intonation unit will usually be the focus, whereas Slovene will often have the focus prior to the last lexical item. As it happens, synthetic comparatives are a typical example of this and Šuštaršič (1993: 127; 1995: 165) points out in particular that in cases like I still think his car is better than mine vs. Še vedno mislim, da je njegov avto boljši od mojega it is often more appropriate in Slovene to place the primary stress on the adjective – so it could well be that in Slovene intonation patterns contribute to the link between relative uses and synthetic comparison. What can be observed is that in both English and Slovene the independent mor- phemes more, most, and bolj (absolute superlatives are so rare in Slovene that it is dif- ficult to produce judgements for najbolj) will generally be unstressed and often reduced in absolute uses (for Slovene already noted in Toporišič 2004/2000: 327; cf. Tomšič 1956/1957: 123). Some examples from the spoken part of the BNC corpus and GOS, the corpus of spoken Slovene, testify to this: I’ve TAKen one of the more OBvious ones the more ausTERE TYPES of the more proGREssive ones bl slaBU JE za JEST k ponaVAD je v BISTvu bl brezPLAČno ne TU je bl težKU no The crucial distinction is, however, that in Slovene the difference between the more or less stressed relative bolj and the unstressed absolute bolj is very salient, so that loss of stress guides the addressee to favour an absolute interpretation. It is important to point out, of course, that prosody is a matter of spoken language and the context of interaction will include many additional factors that may prevail over this lexicogrammatical consideration. In English, on the other hand, it is quite common for the relatively used more and most to be unstressed as well (e.g. Lecumberri/Maidment 2000: 83, 90, 95), which means that the difference in prosodic prominence does not have the same power of dif- ferentiating meanings as in Slovene. Following the spirit of Brazil’s (1997/1985) work on the role of speaker-decision and meaningful contrasts expressed through prosody, it could be said that the contrast presented by the Slovene speaker not allocating promi- nence to the comparative adjective is in some ways more meaningful than the one pre- sented by the English speaker. It would go beyond the scope of this paper to attempt a diachronic investigation into the development of absolute and relative adjectival uses and their prosodic patterns, but the synchronic characteristics of these constructions suggest the current state of affairs might be related to the process of subjectivisation/subjectification in language, which would postulate the evolution of absolute uses from relative ones. In this respect it may Linguistica_2017_FINAL.indd 157 12.3.2018 13:08:25 158 be of interest that early literature on the development of intensification (e.g. Stoffel 1901 in Traugott 2006: 335 for adjective-intensifying adverbs) already mentions some typical, and not unfamiliar, prosodic traits of such semantic change, for instance when it comes to modalised subjective uses and a reduction of stress. 5 CONCLUSION The paper builds on Rastislav Šuštaršič’s seminal work on the contrastive analysis of English and Slovene, especially in the field of their prosodic patterns, and applies it to the notion of absolute and relative uses of adjectival structures. It turns out that, in the base degree, intonation works in the same way in both languages and can perform the function of disambiguating between the two sets of interpretations. 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In both languages, adjectival structures can be used with an internal standard, yielding an absolute interpretation, or with an external standard (typically comparing the nominal referent to other members of the same cat- egory), giving rise to a relative interpretation. It is shown that, in the base degree, a focus on the adjective provides disambiguation by making it clear that the construction is an instance of absolute use. In the comparative and superlative degrees, however, structural differences in the intonation patterns of the two languages come into play in the case of analytic comparison, so that in Slovene reduction in stress signifies absolute use, but in English relatively used comparatives and superlatives can be unstressed as well. Keywords: adjectives, English, intonation, prosody, Slovene Povzetek PROZODIJA TER ABSOLUTNA IN RELATIVNA RABA PRIDEVNIKOV V ANGLEŠČINI IN SLOVENŠČINI V prispevku analiziramo vlogo, ki jo prozodija igra pri razlikovanju med dvema tipoma pridevniških rab v angleščini in slovenščini. V obeh jezikih lahko pridevniške zgradbe uporabljamo z notranjim standardom, kjer se razvije absolutna interpretacija, ali z zunanjim standardom (tu gre tipično za primerjavo samostalniškega referenta z drugi- mi primerki iste kategorije), kjer pa pride do relativne interpretacije. Članek pokaže, da pri osnovni stopnji poudarek na pridevniku omeji interpretacijo, tako da je takšna zgradba lahko samo primer absolutne rabe. V primerniških in presežniških zgradbah pa se po drugi strani strukturne razlike med intonacijskimi vzorci obeh jezikov pokažejo za pomembne v primeru opisnega stopnjevanja, saj v slovenščini nenaglašenost kaže na absolutno rabo, medtem ko so lahko v angleščini nenaglašeni tudi relativno rabljeni primerniki in presežniki. Ključne besede: pridevniki, angleščina, intonacija, prozodija, slovenščina Linguistica_2017_FINAL.indd 160 12.3.2018 13:08:25