Trusting the narrator
In her 2003 article in Linguistics and Philosophy, Craige Roberts presents a theory of definite noun phrases (i.e., those noun phrases with a the). She presents a (hearer-oriented) description of the distribution of the, as follows:
Given a context C, use of a definite NPi presupposes that it has as antecedent a discourse referent xi which is: (a) weakly familiar in C, and (b) unique among discourse referents in C in being contextually entailed to satisfy the descriptive content of NPi.
What I care about now is part (a), regarding the concept of weak familiarity. Some referent is weakly familiar if “the existence of the entity in question is entailed in the context.” She uses the concept of weak familiarity to explain some uses of the definite article:
- John was murdered yesterday. The knife lay nearby.
- I remember the beginning of the war very well.
- The car has a statue on the dashboard.
In the second case, “wars, like other protracted events, are known to have a beginning, making the beginning of the war weakly familiar via entailment based on knowledge in the common ground. In the third case, mention of a (typical) car in the discourse entails the existence of a dashboard in the common ground. In the first case,
We need to accomodate that John was killed by stabbing [since there is no default means associated with murdering] … once we do this … the common ground will entail the existence of a knife as the murder weapon, licensing a weakly familiar discourse referent. (300)
It’s interesting that she chose murder as the verb for the first sentence. She could have chosen stab and not have to dealt with the extra step of accommodation, since stab entails “sharp object,” whereas murder entails “weapon” (so, conversely, she could have stuck with murder and used the weapon to illustrate the point about w.f.). I would explain this as: the discourse referent event: murder entails murder instrument (weapon). The use of a definite the knife is licensed by accommodating that knife fills the role of weapon, which means that the knife was weakly familiar after all. But, you see, she’s pulled a bit of a trick in all this by choosing to introduce the knife as as a Theme role of a locative verb lie. I contend that such a verb in some way asserts, rather than presupposes the existence of its Theme argument. Why? Consider these sentences:
- #Sue walked into the motel room to find that Felicia had been stabbed to death in her bed. She stepped closer, and picked up the knife.
- Sue walked into the motel room to find that Felicia had been stabbed to death in her bed. She stepped closer, and upon closer inspection, found the knife.
If you’re a moral, ethical human like me, you’ll find the first sentence odd, but the second rather natural (in a cheesy mystery novel, that is). If you’re not, then think about it this way: let’s say you’re reading a cheesy mystery novel, and read the second sentence. You’ll think the knife is the murder weapon. If later the (omniscient) narrator reveals to you that in fact the knife she found was not the murder weapon, you’d feel as though you’d been deliberately lied to. On the other hand, if instead you had read the second sentence, and later it was revealed that the knife was not the weapon, you might feel manipulated into jumping to a conclusion. But you couldn’t deny that it was you who made the jump, and at the suggestion (not the insistence) of the text.
Again, the difference (I contend) is presupposition vs. assertion. Verbs of manipulation like pick up presuppose the existence of the Theme, whereas verbs of becoming-aware do not – they instead depict an event where the subject adds to their model of the world (the existence) of some Phenomenon.
In cases where the narrator uses a definite NP in order to introduce some entity with the expectation that the reader will (first accomodate its existence, and then) infer a relationship between the entity and some weakly familiar discourse referent, the reader must trust the narrator. More specifically, the reader must trust that that the narrator knows all the facts about the situation; otherwise, the definite NP is degraded. The narrator can elicit this trust, even if they don’t know all the facts, by admitting just that:
- Sue walked into the motel room to find that Felicia had been murdered/stabbed to death in her bed. She stepped closer, and picked up what must have been the knife.
I think that this sentence is an improvement over (2). By taking an epistemic stance with respect to the knife, the narrator says: “hey, I don’t know that it was the murder weapon, but I’d say it probably was, and if I’m wrong later, it’s my fault – not yours.” Note that in (2) above if a is used then there is no suggestion as to if the knife was the murder weapon. OTOH, if we have …what must have been a knife, well, we just get something very funny. I think (though I’m no expert on modals and such) that this says something about the “scope” (?) of must here, and that it’s talking about the probability of the knife being the weapon, not about the thing being a knife.
Maybe you think it has to do with the knife being in subject position. Well, how about these:
- I walked into the room, and saw it: Felicia had been murdered. The knife lay nearby.
- I walked into the room, and saw it: Felicia had been murdered. The knife was still stuck in her side.
- #I walked into the room, and saw it: Felicia had been murdered. The knife was rusty/sharp.
Thumbs down all the way on that last one.
And a final consideration (again, think about this in terms of presupposition vs some definition of assertion):
- #Felicia was murdered last night. The knife was used.
And one more thing. I guess the editors of L&P might not have felt it necessary to point it out to Roberts, or found it irrelevant, but seriously: I wouldn’t want to mention weak familiarity and other types of “null anaphora” without talking about some concept of frame, or at least the scripts of Schank and Abelson. For shame.
Comments(2)
Hmmm. Just wandered by via your comment over at HeiDeas, the capitalization of which I can never quite remember. A few, random thoughts, if you’ll allow me.
What seems odd about (1), to me, is not the presupposition that the knife exists, but the strange narrative structure. For Sue to pick up the knife, she has to have seen the knife, and that fact has been left out of the narrative. What if we make it a little more Hemingwayesque, or perhaps James Ellroyesque?
1′. Sue walked in. She gasped. There, on the bed: Felicia. Stabbed brutally. Sue wandered through the room in shock. Who could do such a thing? She picked up the knife. Who hated Felicia that much?
Here, I think it sounds much better, because–in a narrative this choppy–you aren’t expecting all of the details to be mentioned.
And consider another verbs of manipulation, again in the mystery-novel context.
I find this sentence unremarkable, with no pragmatic oddity; but it’s exactly the same sort of sentence as your “Sue picked up the knife”. (Well, but the subject’s negative. Does that matter? I’m inclined to doubt it; I leave the contruction of a more exact minimal pair for future grad students.)
I agree with the judgment on “the knife was sharp”; but consider a similar statement from a coroner:
Doesn’t that sound much less strange?
A final thought or two: I like the “…what must have been the/?a knife” examples, but I think they end up proving Roberts’ point. Let’s pare it down a little, pun intended: suppose that you and Sue have walked into the room to find Felicia lying there. You gasp, “She’s been stabbed!” Sue picks up an object and says:
5a. This must be a knife! 5b. This must be the knife!
In 5a, you’re going to question Sue’s grasp of reality. The necessity that she’s asserting is that, in all worlds epistemically compatible with ours, x is “a knife”–to which one responds, “Uh, yeah?”
But in 5b, the necessity is that, in all worlds, x is “the knife”–that is, x is the antecedent necessary for the sentence to be felicitous (i.e. that it’s the murder weapon). Suppose you, with your keen eye for the details of serration, tell Sue, “That can’t be the knife.” Your use of “the knife”, like hers, presupposes that there is some object which is familiar and contextually relevant; you’re asserting that the object Sue’s holding isn’t that object. But there’s still some weakly familiar object described by “the knife”–i.e., the murder weapon. Which is, I think, what Roberts is saying.
None of which helps me finish my dissertation. Hope this wasn’t too rambling…
Thanks for the comments.
Let’s see, I must say that (1′) still sounds odd to me, but then I’m not much of a mystery novel reader, so maybe I just don’t have the right priors. However, I might then further say – could you have the appearance of all sorts of the X in a choppy enough narrative, even without weak familiarity (e.g., (1′) without any mention of stabbing or murdering, or anything like that)?
Next – I think it does in fact matter that the knife had not been moved. Now, I don’t know what thought processes you were going through when you made the sentence, but notice that you have both negation of movement and an explicit statement of location (in the non-restrictive relative clause). The entire sentence tells the reader exactly where the knife is – it could have been paraphrased as “the knife lay on the dresser, unmoved.” Granted, the structure of the sentence you gave has the verb of manipulation as the main verb; but I think this is similar to my “stuck in her side” sentence. (and I would stick to this argument even if something like someone had moved the knife! it was supposed to have been on the dresser!, if for no other reason than you are explicitly defeating an expectation (the location of the knife), rather than making further comments about an un-introduced discourse referent.
The coroner one is tough. Is she supposed to be giving a monologue (or giving dictation to an assistant), or is it in dialogue? Let’s say the latter, for fun. (How’d it happen, doc? -Multiple stab wounds. The knife was sharp. Sick bastard.) Uh…huh, I guess I don’t have anything to say. I would point out that this is an expert, and experts in general get to talk about things with more confidence than the rest of us (and the coroner’s statement here has much more rhetoric force than if she had just said the knife must have been sharp, though I suppose that still takes a strong stance on the identity of the weapon). This may be streching, but maybe the “knife” can take on the role of “default stabbing weapon.” How about something like: –(What happened?) –Well, apparent cause of death, multiple stab wounds to the torso. See the pattern here? The sword/pen/saw/screwdriver was [AP]. This is certainly more jarring, though I can’t tell if that comes from the mere unexpectedness of a non-knife entity, or the improper definite article – or maybe those are the same thing.
Finally, regarding (5): I agree that it proves Roberts’ point, but I think something must be pointed out: both Sue’s and my uses of the knife are fine if we assume that the other has made the assumption that the (1) a knife was the weapon and (2) the other thinks that the weapon is that knife which is in the room. If Sue doesn’t have expectation (2), she’s got some expaining to do after she says (5b). Let’s say I argue based on the evidence that in fact the weapon was not even a knife, but a screwdriver. I don’t think she can continue to talk to me about “the knife” without immediate qualification (Okay, and after she was stabbed with the knife that WAS, you FOOL, used to kill her, she crawled…). OR, she can, but it will only be used to refer to the actual knife in the room, and not the weapon used in the murder. Similarly, when I respond by saying that can’t be the knife, I use this only because I too believe that a knife was the weapon, and assume that Sue thinks the same. The point here is that I have a somewhat-informed addressee to my statements, so our common ground is different. (Aha! I knew there was a reason I chose “narrator,” rather than “conversant” or something…)
Well, I think that was far more rambling than your comments, which is generally an indication that my argument was poked (ahem) full of holes. Much appreciated, though. =)
[edit: I realize I may have said some stuff that seems contradictory or flaky. Let me sum up what I think as of 10/17 in the morning: -Mention of some event like stabbing or murder introduces (makes weakly familiar) some item, call it Weapon. Weapon is the name of a role. Anyone part of a discourse where stabbing/murdering has been mentioned can use the weapon. -Given such a discourse, someone may introduce an item that can fill the role of Weapon. E.g., knife, sword, pen. These are names of Role-Fillers. A narrator can introduce a Role-Filler with a the, provided that the method of introduction is about the assertion of existence. -With in ignorant addressee (i.e., one who only knows what the narrator has said so far), an utterance that presupposes the identity of the Role-Filler will result in a degraded utterance. -The introduction of a Role-Filler without previous mention of the Role will lead the listener to infer identity (bridging). Typical Role-Fillers will are more felicitous. The more specific the Weapon is (stab vs. murder), the easier the bridging inference will be, given a typical Role-Filler. A more trustworthy narrator can make stronger claims about the identity of the Role-Filler. -Common ground is important. A richer common ground can lead to more definite references (duh). -I am probably wrong. =) That is all]