Russell (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} kantol) wrote,@ 2004-07-16 02:04:00 |
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Territory of Information.
Well, it may be a bit premature, but I've got a few minutes before I pass out from exhaustion (it's 1:41 in the morning), so I'll write a bit about the Territory of Information.
Recently in a Pragmatics class we've been reading about a theory called Territory of Information. It's a theory widely advanced by a Japanese linguist named KAMIO Akio. The basic idea is that people (like many animals) have spacial territories that they claim as their own (that's what territories are ;-p). However, people also have information territories. When engaged in conversation, there is some information that people claim as theirs, and some information that they don't. And, whenever someone speaks, they base the way they speak on the answers to two major questions: (1) is the information I'm about to say in my own territory? and (2) does my interlocutor believe that the information I'm about to say is in their territory? Various combinations yeild various grammatical patterns (for instance, in English adding hedges like "isn't he" to the end of sentences, or including "maybe/I think/probably" to indicate unsureness).
Now, the framework is rather fleshed out, and (a rarity for Pragmatics) uses quantitative analysis to predict various grammatical patterns. Leaving that aside, I'll just say that determining whether some information lies within the speaker's or hearer's territory is for the most part clearly defined, and predicting sentence patterns based on that territorial information is also done in a rigorous manner.
In part of a 1998 book entitled 談話と情報構造 (Discourse and Information Structure), Kamio has written a section about the Territory of Information theory. As part of his argumentation for the theory, he presents several linguistic problems that seem to be unrelated to the ToI theory, but in fact can (according to him) be solved using it. One is the difference between shiru and wakaru in Japanese, both of which seem to correspond to English know (or understand). Particulary in the negative, though also in the positive, the distinction between these two words is often difficult for learners of Japanese, and even among native speakers there is some variation on acceptability in borderline cases. In this book, Kamio argues that shiru should be used in cases where the speaker does not think that the information is in his territory, where as wakaru can be used regardless the status of the information with regards to his territory.
As examples, he provides:
どんな人と結婚したいかはまだわかりません/*知りません
(I don't yet know what kind of person I want to marry)
（夏休みに何をするつもりかは）まだわからない/*知らない
(I don't yet know what I will do over summer break)
自分の体重が何キロあるかわかりません/知りません
(I don't know how much I weigh)
In the first two, the relevant information (who you want to marry, what your summer plans are) are clearly in the speaker's territory, so shiru is inappropriate. The third example is borderline, because although one's weight should probably be in one's own territory, it's not something that someone can know without measuring it with some special device (in other words, it's "hard-to-know information," which is a condition for non-entry into one's territory). In this case, both are acceptable (though some speakers may disagree).
My question is: where does the information that shiru should only be used with non-territorial information come from? Does it have to be registered in the lexicon? That seems undesirable - to have a lexical item refer to discourse structure. But it also seems unfortunate that we might have to derive pragmatic effects from lexical definitions - it would mean that Pragmatics would merely be a derivation of Lexical (or Syntactic, or whatever...) considerations, which doesn't seem ideal either. So anyway, I don't have an answer to this, but I did e-mail someone who might. So it's just waiting now...
[edit (2004.07.20): After noting Mark Liberman's blog entry regarding my comments on ToI, I realized that I had (in one place) attributed the ToI theory to a "TOSHIO Akio." The person I meant was of course KAMIO Akio (神尾昭雄). I am also reading material by a cognitive linguist at Tokyo U. named OHORI Toshio, so probably got the names mixed up there. Interestingly, I'm fairly sure that toshio 壽夫 cannot be a surname, and I probably should have realized that at the time.]
Well, it may be a bit premature, but I've got a few minutes before I pass out from exhaustion (it's 1:41 in the morning), so I'll write a bit about the Territory of Information.
Recently in a Pragmatics class we've been reading about a theory called Territory of Information. It's a theory widely advanced by a Japanese linguist named KAMIO Akio. The basic idea is that people (like many animals) have spacial territories that they claim as their own (that's what territories are ;-p). However, people also have information territories. When engaged in conversation, there is some information that people claim as theirs, and some information that they don't. And, whenever someone speaks, they base the way they speak on the answers to two major questions: (1) is the information I'm about to say in my own territory? and (2) does my interlocutor believe that the information I'm about to say is in their territory? Various combinations yeild various grammatical patterns (for instance, in English adding hedges like "isn't he" to the end of sentences, or including "maybe/I think/probably" to indicate unsureness).
Now, the framework is rather fleshed out, and (a rarity for Pragmatics) uses quantitative analysis to predict various grammatical patterns. Leaving that aside, I'll just say that determining whether some information lies within the speaker's or hearer's territory is for the most part clearly defined, and predicting sentence patterns based on that territorial information is also done in a rigorous manner.
In part of a 1998 book entitled 談話と情報構造 (Discourse and Information Structure), Kamio has written a section about the Territory of Information theory. As part of his argumentation for the theory, he presents several linguistic problems that seem to be unrelated to the ToI theory, but in fact can (according to him) be solved using it. One is the difference between shiru and wakaru in Japanese, both of which seem to correspond to English know (or understand). Particulary in the negative, though also in the positive, the distinction between these two words is often difficult for learners of Japanese, and even among native speakers there is some variation on acceptability in borderline cases. In this book, Kamio argues that shiru should be used in cases where the speaker does not think that the information is in his territory, where as wakaru can be used regardless the status of the information with regards to his territory.
As examples, he provides:
どんな人と結婚したいかはまだわかりません/*知りません
(I don't yet know what kind of person I want to marry)
（夏休みに何をするつもりかは）まだわからない/*知らない
(I don't yet know what I will do over summer break)
自分の体重が何キロあるかわかりません/知りません
(I don't know how much I weigh)
In the first two, the relevant information (who you want to marry, what your summer plans are) are clearly in the speaker's territory, so shiru is inappropriate. The third example is borderline, because although one's weight should probably be in one's own territory, it's not something that someone can know without measuring it with some special device (in other words, it's "hard-to-know information," which is a condition for non-entry into one's territory). In this case, both are acceptable (though some speakers may disagree).
My question is: where does the information that shiru should only be used with non-territorial information come from? Does it have to be registered in the lexicon? That seems undesirable - to have a lexical item refer to discourse structure. But it also seems unfortunate that we might have to derive pragmatic effects from lexical definitions - it would mean that Pragmatics would merely be a derivation of Lexical (or Syntactic, or whatever...) considerations, which doesn't seem ideal either. So anyway, I don't have an answer to this, but I did e-mail someone who might. So it's just waiting now...
[edit (2004.07.20): After noting Mark Liberman's blog entry regarding my comments on ToI, I realized that I had (in one place) attributed the ToI theory to a "TOSHIO Akio." The person I meant was of course KAMIO Akio (神尾昭雄). I am also reading material by a cognitive linguist at Tokyo U. named OHORI Toshio, so probably got the names mixed up there. Interestingly, I'm fairly sure that toshio 壽夫 cannot be a surname, and I probably should have realized that at the time.]
