Interspecies Identification in Nature Observations: Modal Expressions and Open Reference Constructions with Non-Human Animate Reference in Finnish

Rea Peltola

doi:10.1515/opli-2018-0023

Abstract

Abstract This paper deals with the intermediate position of non-human animates on semantic prominence scales and illustrates the complexity and the context-driven aspect of linguistic animacy. The focus is on deontic and dynamic modals, as well as the zero person and passive constructions, in Finnish. These types of structures have been described as reserved for human reference. The corpus of this study is collected from a radio program where listeners call in to present questions arising from their nature observations. It consists of 263 occurrences of modal and open reference constructions with non-human animate reference. The paper aims to determine the properties that make non-human animates acceptable referents in the constructions under study and shows that prioritizing human reference is not a grammatical property of these constructions. Rather, they encode shared intersubjective, interspecies experience. Seeking to understand the behavior of the other animate being, speakers display recognition of non-human beings’ concerns and interests: they use linguistic constructions that engage them and all other interlocutors as potential participants of the situation, even when the situation described is not typical of humans. The nonhuman animates’ capacities, environment and life span are unfamiliar to the interlocutors and motivate their questions and explanations, but there are physical states and processes as well as mental experiences common to all animates that allow for the interlocutors to adopt the non-human viewpoint.

Highlights

1.1 Objectives of the studyThis paper addresses the human/non-human interface on the linguistic animacy scale, from a cognitivefunctional perspective
Non-human animate reference was placed under focus
Taking as a point of departure the intermediate position of non-human animates on the scales of semantic prominence, my aim was to account for non-animate reference in Finnish modal and open reference constructions, associated with human reference in linguistic literature

Summary

Introduction

This paper addresses the human/non-human interface on the linguistic animacy scale, from a cognitivefunctional perspective. The analysis illustrates the complexity and the context-driven aspect of the linguistic animacy category (see Taylor 2003: 28) and the problematics of classification of entities within it (see Comrie 1989: Chapter 9; Yamamoto 1999; 2006; Dahl 2008). The semantic category of non-human animates is rarely treated in linguistic literature, as the main line of division in analysis is drawn between. Non-human animates, if mentioned, have the status of a peripherical category somewhere between the two, qualified through the negation of the human category (see the discussion on the extensions of animacy and personhood in Dahl & Fraurud 1996: 62–63)

Objectives

Discussion

Conclusion