1. Introduction
1.1 Background and Motivation of the Study
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CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background and Motivation of the Study
SUBSTITUTE is an intriguing verb with two opposite meanings1. On the one hand, in (1.1a), SUBSTITUTE means ‘to replace someone or something’ with a replaced entity him (termed as NPOUT in this thesis). On the other hand, the verb could be comprehended in ‘to use someone or something new to replace the old ones’ when it precedes an entity new goals (NPIN) in (1.1b). In both cases, we can see that both NPs (i.e., him and new goals) occur as the direct object of SUBSTITUTE but play opposite roles if we understand as an entity replacing others (NPIN) and an entity being replaced (NPOUT).
(1.1) a. If a player’s fitness falls below 75% his performance is impaired - you may need to substitute him (NPOUT). (EB6-234)
b. They can modify or substitute new goals (NPIN) which are more readily obtainable.(CE1-1112)
Likewise, a similar situation is found in the passive use of SUBSTITUTE that the NP as the syntactic subject can be either NPIN or NPOUT.In (1.2a), Speed (NPOUT) was replaced in a soccer game, while in (1.2b) the poor churches use painted frescoes (NPIN) to replace the more expensive mosaic.
(1.2) a. Couldn’t see why Speed (NPOUT) was substituted but he wasn’t playing well. (J1J-765)
b. …in poorer churches painted frescoes (NPIN ) were substituted.
(HWB-1097)
1 SUBSTITUTE is in capitals, serving as a lemma which includes the word forms of substitute, substitutes, substituted, and substituting.
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In this thesis, we used ‘syntactic pattern’ for the pattern at the syntactic level, as in [NPSUBJ + Verb + NPOBJ], and ‘sentence pattern’ for the pattern where the NPs bear the roles at the semantic level, as in [NPAGENT + Verb + NPIN]. The phenomenon demonstrated above suggests that, in the same syntactic pattern, either NPIN or NPOUT
is plausible in the same syntactic position, which in turn gives rise to two distinct sentence patterns. More precisely, in the syntactic pattern [NPSUBJ + Verb + NPOBJ], the direct object NP (NPOBJ) could play the role as either the NPIN or the NPOUT in the two distinct sentence patterns [NPAGENT + Verb + NPIN] and [NPAGENT + Verb + NPOUT]. Since the syntactic position cannot predict the role of the NP in the syntactic patterns, readers need to count on the clues in the contexts to figure out the exact role of NP.
To have some initial understanding of SUBSTITUTE, four dictionaries (the Oxford Learner’s Dictionary, the Cambridge Dictionary, the Collins Dictionary, and the Merriam-Webster Dictionary) were consulted and the syntactic patterns were summarized below2.
First, in (1.3a), we found that the preposition for precedes the NPOUT butter and that the NPIN oil is the direct object of SUBSTITUTE. Taken together, they form the sentence pattern [NPAGENT + Verb + NPIN + for NPOUT] in (1.3a).
(1.3) a. You can substitute oil (NPIN) for butter (NPOUT) in this recipe.
b. Gas-fired power stations (NPIN) will substitute for less efficient coal-fired equipment (NPOUT).
c. Butter (NPOUT) can be substituted with/by margarine (NPIN) in this recipe.
d. Ronaldo (NPOUT) was substituted in the second half after a knee injury.
2 We changed the entities which represent NP in the syntactic patterns into NPIN and NPOUT. For example, [SUBSTITUTE + A + for + B] is replaced by [SUBSTITUTE + NP + for + NP ].
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Similarly, (1.3b) contains the preposition for preceding the NPOUT (less efficient coal-fired equipment); however, the NPIN (gas-fired power stations) is the syntactic subject which differs from that of (1.3a) in the direct object. Thus, (1.3b) demonstrates the second sentence pattern [NPIN + Verb + for NPOUT]. Then, in (1.3c), two distinct prepositions with and by precede the NPIN margarine. Although (1.3c) is expressed in passive voice, we followed the entry of the dictionary and formed [NPAGENT + Verb + NPOUT + with/by + NPIN]. Lastly, in (1.3d), Ronald is the NPOUT due to a knee injury.
However, as indicated above, the NP could be either NPIN or NPOUT, (1.3d) is presented in [NPAGENT + Verb + NPIN/OUT].
In addition to these sentence patterns, the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (OALD) importantly makes the observation below.
When for, with or by are not used, it can be difficult to tell whether the person or thing ‘discourse-old’ is being used, or has been replaced by somebody or
something else. The context will usually make this clear.3
The statement in the OALD is consistent with our observation that the preposition for precedes NPOUT and that both with and by precede NPIN. These prepositions capable of predicting the role of NP are termed the ‘role-predicting prepositions’ in this thesis.
Aside from the observation made by the dictionaries, the syntactic behaviors of SUBSTITUTE are also delineated in Levin (1993) and Croft (1991).
Holding the view that “knowing the meaning of a verb can be a key to knowing its behavior” (p. 5), Levin (1993) proposed that “predictions about verb behavior are feasible because particular syntactic properties are associated with verbs of a certain
3 URL: https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/substitute_2
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semantic type” (p. 5). In other words, the verbs with a shared meaning may have certain syntactic behaviors in common. With the shared meaning of “exchanging one thing for another” (p.143), SUBSTITUTE was classified into ‘Verbs of Exchange’
with other semantically related verbs like barter, change, exchange, swap, and trade.
It follows that SUBSTITUTE should share some syntactic behaviors with the verbs in
‘Verbs of Exchange’. They will be explained below, mostly summarized from Croft (1991) and Levin (1993).
Firstly, the ‘Verbs of Exchange’ do not show the dative alternation where the to-phrase indicates the ‘goal’ as “the location or entity toward which something moves”
(Murphy & Koskela, 2010:150), as in (1.4a). Likewise, SUBSTITUTE, as a member in the verb category, is not compatible with the dative alternation either (see 1.4b).
(1.4) a. *Gwen exchanged/changed/bartered/swapped/traded the dress to Mary.
(Levin, 1993:143)
b. *Gwen substituted the dress to Mary.
Secondly, the for-phrases were found as one of the syntactic behaviors of the verbs, referring to “the object that the agent receives as part of the exchange” (Levin, 1993:144) (see 1.5). Every verb in ‘Verbs of Exchange’ except SUBSTITUTE demonstrates this syntactic behavior. In (1.5a), a shirt (i.e. NPIN) was received by Gwen (the agent) as the result of the exchange. However, according to the sentence patterns in the dictionaries, we found that the NP of the for-phrase in SUBSTITUTE refers to the NPOUT rather than the NPIN.In (1.5b), the NPAGENT (they) uses violence (NPIN) to replace dialogue (NPOUT). Unlike other verbs in the ‘Verbs of Exchange’, for SUBSTITUTE, the NP in the for-phrase is NPOUT rather than NPIN.
(1.5) a. Gwen exchanged/changed/bartered/swapped/traded the dress for a shirt
(NPIN). (Levin, 1993:143)
b. They were substituting violence for dialogue (NPOUT). (Collins Dictionary)
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Figure 1.1 Representation of substitution events (Croft, 1991, 225) The discrepancy of the for-phrases between SUBSTITUTE and other semantically related verbs was discovered and explained in Croft (1991). Croft (1991:225) suggested that SUBSTITUTE belongs to another lexical set, distinct from that of exchange and trade. The difference between these two lexical sets, Croft (1991) argued, resides in “a variation in the linguistic expression of old-new relation”
(p.225). The variation is illustrated in more detail below.
Croft (1991:225) argued that the variation derives from a more fundamental representation of substitution events (see Figure 1.1). As demonstrated in Figure 1.1, Croft (1991) explained that “the substitution situation consists of an initiator (i.e. the agent), the old entity, and a new entity” (p. 225). The ‘old entity’ and the ‘new entity’
correspond to the NPOUT and the NPIN of our terminology in this thesis, respectively.
In Figure 1.1, the agent could choose to initiate the action of substituting either to the old entity or to the new entity first. Croft (1991:225) argued that the two lexical sets choose differently by adopting two opposite “strategies” (p. 225). The “strategy” is the interaction between the entities (i.e. agent, new, and old), and it may be reflected in the linguistic expressions below.
In SUBSTITUTE, Croft (1991) argued that it chooses the new entity first by adopting the “new-first strategy” (p. 225) (see 1.6). The adoption of the “new-first strategy” is directly reflected in (1.6) that the direct object (Cindy) comes first as the new entity (NPIN), and thus the Jane in the for-phrase is the old entity (NPOUT).
(1.6) The director substituted Cindy for Jane in the Virgin’s part.
(agent) (new) (old) (Croft, 1991:225) Old
New Agent
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In contrast, the lexical set consisting of exchange and trade adopts the “old-first strategy” (p. 226) where the agent firstly chooses the old entity first in the
representation of substitution events, which in turn is reflected in the linguistic expression that the old entity comes first as the direct object of the predicate. In (1.7), the direct object my Volvo comes first as the old entity (NPOUT), and a Datsun in the for-phrase is the new entity (NPIN).
(1.7) I exchanged/traded my Volvo for a Datsun.
(agent) (old) (new) (Croft, 1991:226) In Croft’s point of view, the different strategies adopted by distinct verbs was reflected in their corresponding linguistic expressions, which in turn led to the semantic discrepancy in the role of NPs between SUBSTITUTE and other
semantically related verbs (i.e. exchange and trade). More precisely, SUBSTITUTE was argued to adopt the “new-first strategy”, in which the for-phrase represented the old entity. In contrast, exchange and trade adopted the “old-first strategy”, which designated the for-phrase to be a new entity.
Croft’s explanation of the distinct strategies adopted by verbs may account for some of the sentence patterns of SUBSTITUTE in which the direct object NP refers to NPIN, as in [NPAGENT + Verb + NPIN + for NPOUT]. However, the explanation may not be compatible with other sentence patterns (e.g., [NPAGENT + Verb + NPOUT + with/by + NPIN]) in which the old entity (NPOUT) comes first. The occurrence of [NPAGENT + Verb + NPOUT + with/by + NPIN] suggests that not only the “new-first strategy” but the
“old-first strategy” is adopted by SUBSTITUTE. Therefore, Croft’s explanation concerning the role discrepancy of the for-phrases between SUBSTITUTE and the lexical set of exchange and trade cannot account for the phenomenon in
SUBSTITUTE, that is, the compatibility of both “new-first” and “old-first” strategies in the substitution events.
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Although Croft’s (1991) explanation only accounted for part of the event of substituting, it demonstrated that linguistic expressions are related to the conceptual representation of the event. For example, the linguistic expression that the verb substitute selects the new entity (NPIN) as its direct object reflects the event of
substituting in which the new entity is selected firstly in the conceptual structure. The variation of linguistic expressions of the verbs (for here, the verbs in ‘Verbs of
Exchange’) may reflect the distinct conceptual representations of the event adopted by the verbs, respectively. Yet, Croft (1991) is not the only scholar putting forward this argument. Fillmore and Baker (2010) and Langacker (2008) shared the similar notion.
Specifically, Fillmore and Baker (2010:330) used the term “perspective” in which
“different lexical items (e.g., buy and sell) evoke frames with different perspectives on an abstract event (commercial transaction)” (p. 330). As for Langacker (2008:43), the different selection of the event in the conceptual structure was one of the
manifestations of “construal” which represents “our manifest ability to conceive or portray the same situation in alternate ways” (p. 43).
In this thesis, we adopted the notion of “construal” (Langacker, 2008:43) and investigated the construals that SUBSTITUTE possesses through examining the sentence patterns of SUBSTITUTE in natural language use.
We briefly summarized the knowledge of SUBSTITUTE that we have so far and indicated the gap for research in this thesis as follows.
First, four distinct sentence patterns were collected from the dictionaries, namely: [NPAGENT + Verb + NPIN + for NPOUT], [NPIN + Verb + for + NPOUT], [NPAGENT + Verb + NPOUT + with/by NPIN], and [NPAGENT + Verb + NPIN/OUT].
Possibly, some others could be uncovered in natural-occurring language.
Second, although the role-predicting prepositions are able to predict the role of their following NPs, the proportion of these role-predicting prepositions in the
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sentence patterns of SUBSTITUTE remains unknown in natural-occurring language.
This knowledge matters in that the distribution of the prepositions reflects the
proportion which the readers (or hearers) could rely on to distinguish the role of NPs.
Another question relates to the ambiguous role of the NP in the sentence patterns without the ‘role-predicting preposition’, as in [NPAGENT + Verb + NPIN/OUT].
Although the OALD indicated that “the context will usually make this clear”, it remains unclear how the context could help the identification of the role. In this thesis, the management of information structure in the context is argued to be helpful in predicting the ambiguous role of the NP. Arnold et al. (2013) defined information structure that “[h]uman languages are organized in ways that reflect the content and purpose of utterances – that is, the information that is contained in the words and structures that make up sentences. This organization is called information structure”
(p. 403). In the information structure, the entity (usually NP) which represents the reader’s/hearer’s degree of familiarity to the NP was termed “information status” by Prince (1992:298).
In this thesis, information structure is argued to be helpful due to the two hypothesis of ours. First, the less familiar information (i.e. new information) is
predicted to show the preference for NPIN. What motivates this hypothesis is based on live experience that we seldom remove something which is newly introduced in the discourse context. For example, in (1.8) the NP thick oil is firstly mentioned in the context as new information. Being new information, the NP (thick oil) is the NPIN
used to reach the goal (to prevent further leakage) as a new method or alternative.
(1.8) I own a 1976 SWB Series III which is leaking oil from the seal round the offside swivel pin housing. As the housing is not pitted I cleaned it and replaced the seal, however it is still leaking some oil. Can I avoid renewing the housing by substituting thick oil to prevent further leakage? (AN2-652)
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The opposite interpretation of being the removed entity (i.e. NPOUT) can be hardly accepted because new information is seldom introduced to be the replaced entity (NPOUT) in our live experience.
In addition, we hypothesized that if the NP is old information, it would show the neutral preference for either NPIN or NPOUT. This hypothesis was based on the
intuition that something discussed or mentioned in the prior context could be reasonable to be either NPIN or NPOUT.
The two hypotheses demonstrate the potential of old/new information to
distinguish the role of NP if both of them were attested in the natural language use. In particular, the first hypothesis that new information prefers NPIN may help distinguish the ambiguous role of the NP in the sentence patterns without the role-predicting preposition, e.g., [NPAGENT + Verb + NPIN/OUT].
Lastly, since linguistic expressions may reflect the variant construals (Langacker, 2008) of the event in conceptual representation, we will uncover the different
construals of the substitution event by examining the sentence patterns of SUBSTITUTE in natural-occurring language.