Topic and Assertion in Yucatec Maya Attitude Reports Scott AnderBois [email protected] SSILA Annual Meeting

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January 6-9, 2011

Introduction

Yucatec Maya (YM) has two propositional attitude constructions, as in (1)1 : (1)

a. k-in tukl-ik-e’ yan u k’´aax-al ja’ IMP-A1 think-Stat-Top will A3 fall-Stat water ‘It will rain, I think.’ b. k-in tukl-ik yan u k’´aax-al ja’ IMP-A1 think-Stat will A3 fall-Stat water ‘I think that it will rain.’

Topic + Clause

Bare Clause

• In terms of their form, the two differ at least in the presence vs. absence of the morpheme -e’, which generally serves as a topic marker in YM as in (2). (2)

Juan-e’ t-u jantaj le puut-o’ Juan-Top Pfv-A3 eat Def papaya-Distal ‘As for Juan, he ate the papaya.’

Today, I will argue that this difference in form has (non-truth-conditional) semantic and pragmatic consequences. • I propose an analysis where: • The Bare Clause consists of: (i) a single at-issue assertion about the mental state of some attitude holder (e.g. ‘x thinks that p’). • The Topic + Clause consists of: (i) An at-issue assertion of the attitudinal object (e.g. ‘p’), made relative to (ii) a particular attitudinal source (e.g. what x thinks). 1 All Yucatec Maya examples are from my fieldwork unless otherwise indicated. Abbreviations used in glosses: A1: first person set A (≈ ergative) marker, B3: third person set B (≈ absolutive) marker, Def: definite, Imp: imperfective, Pfv: perfective, Q: polar question particle, Top: topic.

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Topic and Assertion in Yucatec Maya Attitude Reports

Road Map: §2 presents data distinguishing two kinds of attitude reports in Yucatec Maya; §3 develops an analysis of -e’ in attitude reports as a marker of non-at-issue content; §4 examines the predictions of the account for -e’ outside attitude reports and concludes.

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Attitude reports in Yucatec Maya • Some terminology: (3)

John ! "# $

holder

thinks ! "# $

predicate

(that) Maribel is bringing beer to the party. ! "# $ object

General landscape of attitude reports in Yucatec Maya

• As Verhoeven (2007) shows in detail, YM has very few commonly used lexical attitude predicates compared to Spanish or English. • For example, the most ubiquitous one, tukul, can be various translated with verbs like ‘think’, ‘believe’, ‘plan’, ‘expect’, ‘imagine’, ‘fear’, ‘dream’, etc. • Speakers of YM can still express a rich array of propositional attitudes, doing so in part through (i) modifying lexical attitude predicates and (ii) a variety of strategies for semantically incorporating the attitudinal object. In addition to the two options I focus on presently, tukul can also take a dependent clause or an irrealis clause headed by k´ aa as in (4a-4b) (Verhoeven (2007), p. 303) (4)

a. k-in tuklik u taal IMP-A1 think A3 come ‘I plan for him to come.’

Dependent Clause

b. k-in tuklik k´aa k’´aax-ak ja’ IMP-A1 think for rain-Subj water ‘I think/fear it could rain’

Irrealis Clause

I focus today on the ubiquitous tukul, though many other verbs (e.g. ojel ‘know’, a’al ‘say’, pa’at ‘await’) allow for both Topic + Clause and Bare Clause forms as well.

2.1

Truth-conditional equivalence

The first thing to note about the Topic + Clause variant and the Bare Clause one is that they have identical truth conditions. (5)

a. k-in tukl-ik-e’ yan u k’´aax-al ja’ IMP-A1 think-Stat-Top will A3 fall-Stat water ‘It will rain, I think.’ 2

Topic + Clause

Topic and Assertion in Yucatec Maya Attitude Reports

b. k-in tukl-ik yan u k’´aax-al ja’ IMP-A1 think-Stat will A3 fall-Stat water ‘I think that it will rain.’

Bare Clause

• This has led previous authors to claim that -e’ in such examples is “an empty placeholder, used . . . to mark off topicalized elements and to signal relations across clauses” (Hanks (1990)) or something like free variation (Bohnemeyer (2002), Verhoeven (2007)). • While true at the level of truth-conditions, the following sections will show that the two forms nonetheless exhibit subtle differences in how this information is packaged.

2.2

Question Under Discussion effects

The two forms most felicitously to different questions under discussion (QUDs) in the sense of Roberts (1996), B¨ uring (2003), and others. • This distinction is not readily seen in translation tasks and is quite subtle, so a word is in order about how the data were obtained. • 7 speakers were presented with a set of YM sentences including the two target sentences (e.g. 6a-6b) • . . . and a question under discussion, presented in Spanish (to avoid having to choose between the two forms in the question itself). • Speakers were then asked to identify which sentence(s) were possible responses and which sentence(s) were the most natural response. For example, in (6), the QUD is about the attitudinal object itself. • The speaker’s attitude w.r.t. to the attitudinal object is only relevant insofar as it sheds light on the truth or falsity of this proposition itself. • Here, the Topic + Clause form is the best response with the Bare Clause form being dispreferred. (6)

Scenario: The speaker is responding to the question ‘Will it rain?’ a. k-in tukl-ik-e’ yan u k’´aax-al ja’ IMP-A1 think-Stat-Top will A3 fall-Stat water ‘It will rain, I think.’ b. # k-in tukl-ik yan u k’´aax-al ja’ IMP-A1 think-Stat will A3 fall-Stat water ‘I think that it will rain.’

• In (7), the QUD is about the attitude holder’s mental state itself. 3

Topic + Clause

Bare Clause

Topic and Assertion in Yucatec Maya Attitude Reports • Here, the Bare Clause is the best response, with the Topic + Clause form being dispreferred.2 (7)

Scenario: The speaker is responding to the question ‘Do you think it will rain?’ a. #? k-in tukl-ik-e’ yan u k’´aax-al ja’ IMP-A1 think-Stat-Top will A3 fall-Stat water ‘It will rain, I think.’ b. k-in tukl-ik yan u k’´aax-al ja’ IMP-A1 think-Stat will A3 fall-Stat water ‘I think that it will rain.’

2.3

Topic + Clause

Bare Clause

Implication of speaker distancing

With a 3rd person attitude holder: • The Topic + Clause readily lends itself to the inference that the speaker also believes the object of the attitude report to hold, • Whereas the Bare Clause often serves to distance the speaker from the attitudinal object. Consider, for example, (8) with a third person attitude holder: a meteorologist. (8)

Scenario: The question being discussed is whether it will rain. The speaker reports based on what the weatherman, Antonio, thinks. a. k-u tukl-ik-e’ yan u k’´aax-al ja’ Imp-A3 think-Stat-Top will A3 fall-Stat water ‘According to what he thinks, it will rain.’ b. #? k-u tukl-ik yan u k’´aaxal ja’ Imp-A3 think-Stat will A3 fall-Stat water ‘He thinks that it will rain.’

• In (8), the speaker presumably takes the meteorologist to be an authority on the weather forecast, and therefore has no reason to doubt his belief. • However, if we change the context as in (9), the Bare Clause form is preferred, since it conveys a greater sense of doubt on the part of the speaker. (9)

Scenario: The question being discussed is whether it will rain. The speaker reports based on what the weatherman thinks, though the speaker believes the weatherman is bad at his job. a. #? k-u tukl-ik-e’ yan u k’´aax-al ja’ Imp-A3 think-Stat-Top will A3 fall-Stat water ‘According to what he thinks, it will rain.’

2 A few speakers indicated that the Topic + Clause form was possible in nearly all contexts, though with a preference for the Bare Clause in this scenario.

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Topic and Assertion in Yucatec Maya Attitude Reports

b. k-u tukl-ik yan u k’´aaxal ja’ Imp-A3 think-Stat will A3 fall-Stat water ‘He thinks that it will rain.’ Generalization: (i) the Topic + Clause form potentially suggests that the speaker also believes the proposition denoted by the attitudinal object, (ii) the Bare Clause variant can be used to distance the speaker from the proposition denoted by the attitudinal object.

Summary: • Attitude reports using the Topic + Clause form and the Bare Clause form are truthconditionally equivalent, but the Bare Clause form3 : 1. is a better response to QUDs about the attitude itself. 2. often suggests the speaker believes the proposition in question not to hold.

2.4

Different Syntax?

Before moving on the the semantic analysis, I present two pieces of evidence suggesting a syntactic difference and sketch a possible syntactic analysis. • First, Topic + Clause forms, unlike Bare Clause forms, regularly have a significant intonational break following the attitude predicate. • Second, the two forms behave differently in the polar question construction. • In polar questions with no focus/clefted element, the position of the polar question particle w´ aa follows the first prosodic word of the main clause (AnderBois (to appear)). In Bare Clause attitude reports like (10), w´ aa most naturally attaches to the attitude predicate itself. (10)

k-a tukult-ik-w´aa yan u k’´aax-al ja’ ? Imp-A2 think-Stat-Q will A3 fall-Stat water ‘Do you think it will rain?’

In Topic + Clause attitude reports like (11), w´ aa attaches to an element in the attitudinal object (here, the AM marker, yan). (11)

k-a tukult-ik-e’ yan-w´aa u k’´aax-al ja’ ? Imp-A2 think-Stat-Top will-Q A3 fall-Stat water ‘According to what you think, will it rain?’

Since most other uses of -e’ appear to involve what Aissen (1992) terms external topics, I tentatively follow her proposal that such elements are base-generated adjoined to CP: 5

Topic and Assertion in Yucatec Maya Attitude Reports

(12)

k-in tukl-ik-e’ yan u k’´aax-al ja’ IMP-A1 think-Stat-Top will A3 fall-Stat water ‘It will rain, I think.’

(13)

Topic + Clause

CP CP kin tuklike’ TP

(14)

T0

vP

yan

u k’´ aaxal ja’

k-in tukl-ik yan u k’´aax-al ja’ IMP-A1 think-Stat will A3 fall-Stat water ‘I think that it will rain.’

(15)

Bare Clause

CP TP

T0

vP

kVP V

proi CP

tuklik

3

TP T0

vP

yan

u k’´ aaxal ja’

At-issue content and attitude reports

In this section, I develop an analysis where: • The Bare Clause consists of: (i) a single at-issue assertion about the mental state of some attitude holder (e.g. ‘x thinks that p’). • The Topic + Clause consists of: 6

Topic and Assertion in Yucatec Maya Attitude Reports

(i) An at-issue assertion of the attitudinal object (e.g. ‘p’), made relative to (ii) a particular attitudinal source (e.g. what x thinks).

3.1

Two types of assertions

Consider an English example containing an appositive relative clause in (16): (16)

John, who met someone in the coffee shop, bought them a drink.

Building on Potts (2005), much recent work holds that (16) consists of two types of asserted content: Non-at-issue: John met someone in the coffee shop. At-issue: John bought them a drink. Following Stalnaker (1978)’s foundational work on assertion, we can consider both components to be asserted in the following sense: ‘Provided that there are no objections from the other participants in the conversation’, both components are to be added to our shared body of knowledge, the Common Ground (CG). • While both components of (16) ultimately enter the CG, they do so in different ways. • The at-issue component makes a proposal to update the CG in a particular way (Farkas & Bruce (2010) and references therein). • In Farkas & Bruce (2010)’s terms, the at-issue content is placed on the discourse Table, and is therefore readily subject to confirmation, denial, or other negotiation on the part of other discourse participants. • In contrast, the non-at-issue component is imposed on the CG with little room for negotiation (AnderBois et al. (2010)). Beyond appositives, Murray (2010) argues that the core contribution of (certain) evidentials is a non-at-issue update in this sense (see Davis et al. (2007) for a related view). • The evidential component imposes on the CG the restriction that the speaker has a particular kind of evidence for p . . . • . . . and the at-issue assertion proposes to add p to this newly restricted CG.

3.2

At-issueness in Yucatec Maya attitude reports

Returning to Yucatec Maya attitude reports, we propose the following: (17)

yan u k’´aax-al ja’ k-u tukl-ik-e’ Imp-A3 think-Stat-Top will A3 fall-Stat water ‘According to what he thinks, it will rain.’ 7

Topic + Clause

Topic and Assertion in Yucatec Maya Attitude Reports

Non-at-issue: k-u tukl-ik-e’ • A (relatively) non-negotiable restriction4 of the CG to a subset meeting the attitude holder’s beliefs (i.e. ‘According to what he/she believes, . . . ’) At-issue: yan u k’´aaxal ja’ • A proposal to update this new (temporary) CG with the information that it will rain. (18)

k-u tukl-ik yan u k’´aaxal ja’ Imp-A3 think-Stat will A3 fall-Stat water ‘He thinks that it will rain.’

Bare Clause

At-issue: k-u tukl-ik yan u k’´aaxal ja’ • A single proposal to update the CG with the information that the attitude holder believes it will rain.

3.3

Questions Under Discussion

Following Roberts (1996), B¨ uring (2003), it is common to assume that discourse is organized, at least in part, by the Question Under Discussion (QUD). • While the QUD is often an implicit question that discourse participants aim to address, it can alo be an explicit question, as in (6-7). • Farkas & Bruce (2010) argue that accounting for the possible responses to at-issue assertions (e.g. ‘yes’, ‘no’, and related particles in other languages) requires reference to the QUD. • That is, the negotiability of at-issue content is directly related to the fact that it is presented as addressing the QUD. In contrast to at-issue content, Simons et al. (2010) posit that the class of projective meanings (≈ presuppositions + non-at-issue assertions) are orthogonal to the QUD. • AnderBois et al. (2010) argue that this is indeed the case for (at least clause-medial) English appositive relative clauses — the appositive’s content is presented to the addressee as orthogonal to the QUD. • For example, while (19) contains the appropriate truth-conditional information to answer A’s question, it is quite odd compared to (20). 4

Whether or not this update in fact yields a restriction of the input CG will depend on the lexical semantics of the verb in question. Since I presently concerned primarily with tukul ‘think, believe’, this update will indeed be a restriction rather than simply creating a temporary CG possibly disjoint with the actual CG.

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Topic and Assertion in Yucatec Maya Attitude Reports

(19)

a. A: Who had prostate cancer? b. B: ??Tammys husband, who had prostate cancer, was being treated at the Dominican Hospital.

(20)

a. A: Who was being treated at Dominican Hospital? b. B: Tammys husband, who had prostate cancer, was being treated at the Dominican Hospital.

Given the analysis of YM attitude reports in §3.2, we capture the contrast between the Topic + Clause and Bare Clause in (21-22). (21)

Scenario: The speaker is responding to the question ‘Will it rain?’ yan u k’´aax-al ja’ a. k-in tukl-ik-e’ IMP-A1 think-Stat-Top will A3 fall-Stat water ‘It will rain, I think.’ b. # k-in tukl-ik yan u k’´aax-al ja’ IMP-A1 think-Stat will A3 fall-Stat water ‘I think that it will rain.’

(22)

Bare Clause

Scenario: The speaker is responding to the question ‘Do you think it will rain?’ a. #? k-in tukl-ik-e’ yan u k’´aax-al ja’ IMP-A1 think-Stat-Top will A3 fall-Stat water ‘It will rain, I think.’ b. k-in tukl-ik yan u k’´aax-al ja’ IMP-A1 think-Stat will A3 fall-Stat water ‘I think that it will rain.’

3.4

Topic + Clause

Topic + Clause

Bare Clause

Speaker distancing

The implication of speaker distancing with third person attitude holders, discussed in §2.3 (i.e. the weatherman examples), arises pragmatically. • Consider again the ‘bad weatherman’ scenario from (9), repeated in (23). (23)

Scenario: The question being discussed is whether it will rain. The speaker reports based on what the weatherman thinks, though the speaker believes the weatherman is bad at his job. a. #? k-u tukl-ik-e’ yan u k’´aax-al ja’ Imp-A3 think-Stat-Top will A3 fall-Stat water ‘According to what he thinks, it will rain.’ b. k-u tukl-ik yan u k’´aaxal ja’ Imp-A3 think-Stat will A3 fall-Stat water ‘He thinks that it will rain.’

• The speaker in this scenario has a choice between two competing forms: 9

Topic and Assertion in Yucatec Maya Attitude Reports

1. The Bare Clause form, which publicly commits her to a claim about the weatherman’s mental state itself. 2. The Topic + Clause form, which commits the speaker to a claim about weather, albeit one which is made relative to a belief-dependent source. • By choosing the Bare Clause variant, the speaker goes out of her way to avoid making even a weakened claim about the weather itself. • Since the QUD is about the rain itself, the Topic + Clause claim would be more directly relevant and therefore preferred. • Since the Topic + Clause form would be more relevant, a rational speaker must have some other reason for instead uttering the Bare Clause report. • This reason is that the speaker lacks sufficient grounds to make the more relevant claim (i.e. that she doubts it or at least is not sure of it).

3.5

Cross-linguistic Comparison

Having seen how Yucatec Maya allows speakers to vary the at-issue content in attitude reports, we turn now to briefly compare this with English. • At first blush, it seems that English does not mark this distinction at all. • The same attitude report can be used to respond to QUDs about either the attitudinal object, or the attitude itself (Simons (2007) and works cited therein): (24)

a. QUD: Is it going to rain? b. I think (that) it’s going to rain.

(25)

a. QUD: Do you think (that) it’s going to rain? b. I think (that) it’s going to rain.

• Despite the different QUDs, there is no evidence that there is anything different about the syntax/semantics of (24b) and (25b) (see Simons (2007)). There is, however, a construction even in English which does seem to make exactly this distinction — what Ross (1973) terms ‘Slifting’ as in (26). (26)

a. It is, I think, going to rain. b. It’s going to rain, I think.

• While they contain the appropriate truth-conditional information, such examples are odd as responses to the question ‘Do you think it is raining?’. • Like YM Topic + Clause attitude reports, English slifting presents the attitude itself as non-at-issue content (see Davis et al. (2007), Simons (2007)). That said, there are (at least) two differences worth stressing: 10

Topic and Assertion in Yucatec Maya Attitude Reports

1. The YM Topic + Clause reports are quite common and ordinary. • English slifting is a fairly rare or marginal construction. • In contrast, YM speakers often provide Topic + Clause reports in translation tasks where no context is specified (Bare Clause reports are also common). • This is important since I argued that speaker distancing in Bare Clause reports arose via pragmatic competition with the corresponding Topic + Clause . 2. Topic + Clause reports do not have the same restrictions identified for slifting by Simons (2007). • Any verb (to my knowledge) which can occur in a Bare Clause report in YM can also occur in an Topic + Clause report. • Not all verbs can be slifted, even if they have pragmatically parenthetical uses as in (27) from Simons (2007): (27)

QUD: Will Jane be here next week? a. Jane emailed me that she’ll be here next week. b. *Jane’ll be here next week, she emailed (me).

• The parenthetical content of English slifting is semantically bleached. • Topic + Clause reports in YM do not display semantic bleaching of this sort. Empirically, we can categorize parenthetical attitude/source constructions as in (28): (28)

Scale of Source Grammaticalization: YM Topic + Clause ————— Eng. Slifting ———— (Cheyenne) Evidentials5 ←− Few restrictions ————– Fairly restricted ————— Closed class −→

• On the right side, evidentials encode a very restricted range of sources. • In the middle, Slifting allows for a significantly broader range of sources, but still imposes significant syntactic/semantic restrictions. • On the left side, YM Topic + Clause reports allow any attitudinal source to be encoded assuming that the attitude predicate is one which allows for the corresponding Bare Clause form. While this scale only compares these constructions along a single dimension, hopefully it helps situate the YM Topic + Clause reports cross-linguistically. 5

Not all evidentials will necessarily have a place on this scale at all. Given the facts and analysis presented by Murray (2010), Cheyenne evidentials share the same at-issue/non-at-issue division of labor that Topic + Clause reports in YM have and are therefore comparable.

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Topic and Assertion in Yucatec Maya Attitude Reports

4

Conclusion • Empirically, I have shown that the presence/absence of -e’ in Yucatec Maya attitude reports does have a semantic effect, though one which is non-truth-conditional. • Analytically, I have proposed that the two types of attitude reports in question are distinguished as follows: • The Bare Clause consists of: (i) a single at-issue assertion about the mental state of some attitude holder (e.g. ‘x thinks that p’). • The Topic + Clause consists of: (i) An at-issue assertion of the attitudinal object (e.g. ‘p’), made relative to (ii) a particular attitudinal source (e.g. what x thinks).

The conclusion, then, is that Yucatec Maya grammatically encodes a distinction between parenthetical and at-issue attitude reports. • While there are limited grammatical means to encode this distinction (Slifting) in English, the distinction is largely left to pragmatics. Finally, since the account holds that -e’ in attitude reports marks non-at-issue content, raising the possibility of a unified account of -e’ across many of its uses. • Clausal topics in YM have been described by Bohnemeyer (2002) as providing ‘background’ information, though not necessarily ‘given or old’ information. • As in the case of attitude reports, this ‘backgrounded’ status can plausibly be equated with non-at-issue content. • Such a view is confirmed by the following observation: – One way speakers translate material from non-restrictive relative clauses in Spanish is using a topic clauses, as in (29). (29)

Juan k-u b´aaxt-ik beisbol-e’ k-u b´aaxt-ik (xan) futbol. Juan Imp-A3 play-Stat baseball-Top Imp-A3 play-Stat (too) soccer ‘Juan, who plays baseball, plays soccer (too).’

• The topic clause provides background information, but does not assume prior knowledge of Juan’s baseball playing. • Furthermore, (29) is judged felicitous as a response to a question such as ‘Does Juan play soccer?’, but not ‘Does Juan play baseball?’ (c.f. English 19-20) Since -e’ in attitude reports is optional, we have been able to isolate its contribution, producing a plausible semantics for -e’ across (many of) its uses. 12

Topic and Assertion in Yucatec Maya Attitude Reports

Acknowledgements: First and foremost, many thanks to the native speaker consultants from the Universidad de Oriente in Valladolid, Yuc. for their hard work and willingness to share their language with me: Ricardo Caba˜ nas Haas, Samuel Canul Yah, Rosi Couoh Pool, Nercy Chan Moo, Alberto Poot Cocom, Aar´on Puc Chi, and Jael Vazquez Tuun. Thanks also to Michal Brody for helping make my visit to UnO pleasant and fruitful. Finally, thanks also to Judith Aissen, Grant Armstrong, Adrian Brasoveanu, Fidencio Brice˜ no Chel, Donka Farkas, and Robert Henderson for helpful discussion of the data and analysis discussed here and also to the audience at UCSC’s S-Circle. This work is supported by a UC-MEXUS dissertation research grant, as well as a year-long Dissertation Fellowship from the UCSC Institute for Humanities Research.

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Simons, Mandy, Judith Tonhauser, David Beaver, & Craige Roberts (2010) What projects and why. In Proceedings of Semantics And Linguistic Theory (SALT) 20. Stalnaker, Robert (1978) Assertion. In Syntax and Semantics 9. Verhoeven, Elisabeth (2007) Experiential Constructions in Yucatec Maya. John Benjamins Publishing Company.

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