The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics Part 90 docx

subject exerting a high degree of (mental) control and the shorter, middle form marks
spontaneous situations involving the subject acting as an undergoer or experiencer.
This contrast is common in Dutch (pronoun zichzelf vs. the light pronoun zich),
Hungarian (pronoun magat vs. the verbal suffix -kod- or -koz), Turkish (pronoun
kendi vs. affix -in-), Latin (clitic se vs. suffix -r), Greek (reflexive pronoun afto vs.
inflected middle), and many other languages. An eloquent example from Dutch
illustrates the lower degree of subject control in the middle construction (57b):
(57)a.Jan zag zichzelf naast zijn ouders staan op de foto.
Jan saw hrm next his parents stand on the picture
‘Jan saw himself [i.e., he conjured up a picture of himself] standing
next to his parents in the picture.’
b. In gedachten zag Jan zich in de gevangenis belanden
in thoughts saw Jan lrm in the prison land
‘Jan saw himself [i.e., had a mental picture of himself] ending up in
prison.’ (based on van der Leek 1991: 455)
Given the previous contrasts, the idea that the middle develops from the re-
flexive has commonly been accepted (Faltz 1985; Fagan 1988; Givo
´
n 1990; Kemmer
1993b, 1994). On that view, the middle occupies a position one stage down the cline
from the position occupied by reflexives; in other words, just like reflexives reduce
transitive subject/object differentiation by having subject and object co-refer,
middles further reduce the split representation to the point where the two co-
referring participants are no longer distinguishable.
Now, the commonly accepted assumption that middles necessarily develop
from reflexives has been misguided by the idea that all languages have the transitive
action-chain model as their base line. According to cognitive analyses, however,
languages may start construing an event from the dominion of the subject such
that interaction with another participant and action involving no other participant
are simply two alternative, equally natural conceptualizations (Manney 1998, 2000;
Maldonado 1999; Nava and Maldonado 2004; Nava 2005). As pointed out by Tuggy

(1981) in reference to Nahuatl reflexives, the way we interact with ourselves differs a
great deal from the way we interact with others. While routine self-care, mental or
emotional interactions may be natural, what is really awkward is to have a partic-
ipant interacting with the ‘‘self’’ as if it where a different participant. Reflexives are
thus conceptually marked in opposition to middle and transitive constructions.
5
The nature of the middle construction as independent from the reflexive is also
observable in other languages. As Manney (2000) has shown, in Modern Greek the
Figure 32.10. Kemmer’s distinguishability hypothesis
860 ricardo maldonado
middle is separate and distinct, both synchronically and diachronically, from the
reflexive. While the (inflected) middle depicts one-participant events with a high
degree of affect and a low degree of volition, the use of the reflexive involves
marked situations with a higher degree of volition. In a typical agentless middle
situation (the case of hitting oneself unintentionally, as when bumping against the
edge of a table), the middle construction constitutes the unmarked coding (57a);
when the action is intentional, the reflexive prefix afto- is added (57b), while the use
of the periphrastic reflexive (57c) is either marginal or ungrammatical:
(57)a.Travmat

ııs-tike.
injure-3sg.mid.pst
‘He injured himself /was injured.’
b. Afto-travmat

ııs-tike.
self-injure-3sg.mid.pst
‘He injured himself (intentionally).’
c. ?/*Travma
´

-tise ton eaft

ootu.
injure-3sg.act the.acc self.acc gen.3sg
‘He injured himself.’ (strange or unacceptable)
In Modern Greek as well, there are many basic contrasts between the middle and
the active without implying the reflexive construction:
(58)a.Stenaxori-

eeme me tin iy

ııa tu.
Worry-1sg.mid.prs with the.acc health 3sg.poss
‘I am worried about his health.’ (I am very worried)
b. iiy

ııa tu me stenaxor

ıı.
the.nom health 3sg.poss 1sg.acc worry.3sg.prs.act
‘His health worries me.’ (I am less worried)
Other unrelated languages illustrate the basic nature of the middle in even
more dramatic terms. In Tarascan (Mesoamerican), middles and reflexives con-
trast iconically in the way pointed out by Haiman for Russian (see example 56): the
short form in (59) designates the middle, which is the unmarked situation, while
the long, reflexive form in (59b) conveys the emphatic meaning:
(59)a.Dora kwata-ra-s-Ø-ti.
Dora soft-mid-perf-prs-ind.3
‘Dora is/got tired.’
b. Dora kwata-kurhi-s-Ø-ti.

Dora soft-refl-perf-prs-ind.3
‘Dora is fed up (tired herself of doing something).’
In Tarascan middles, two patterns can be distinguished: (i) the middles either show
up in equipollent contrast with active transitive constructions, or (ii) they simply
constitute the base form for deriving active transitive constructions (Nava 2005)—
the reflexive is a marked construction deriving either from a transitive or from
a middle construction. In the second case, the reflexive is in contrast with
grammatical voice in cognitive grammar 861
the transitive as will be shown below (Nava and Maldonado 2004). With regard to
the first pattern, Tarascan has a number of middle/active duplets that desig-
nate the trajector’s location/position or a variety of the trajector’s properties. The
complex stem k

ee-nti ‘move angle’ must take either the middle -ku or the transitive -
ta, whereby no form is more basic than the other:
(60)a.Dora k

ee-nti-ku-s-Ø-ti.
Dora move-angle-mid.angle-perf-prs-ind.3
‘Dora hid in the corner.’
b. Marcos€ı Dora-ni k

ee-nti-ta-s-Ø-ti.
Marcos Dora-obj move-mid.angle-act-perf-prs-ind.3
‘Marcos made Dora hide in the corner.’
In the second pattern, a causative morpheme must be added to the middle-
marked stem to obtain an active-transitive construction. The middle marker -pi
designates attributes such as color, texture, shape, and consistency. The active-
transitive preserves the middle marker as it is derived by means of a causative -ra,
as in (61). The same is true for locative situations, change of body posture, and

spontaneous events.
(61) Its€ıs€ıranta-ni ch’era-pe-ra-s-Ø-ti.
water paper-obj wrinkle-mid-caus-perf-prs-ind.3
‘The water wrinkled the paper.’
Crucially, if a reflexive marker is used, it will take up the slot of the transitive
marker. Even more significantly, the reflexive may appear for emphatic purposes
after the middle, as in (62), thus contrasting with the basic middle construction in
(60a):
(62) Dora k

ee-nti-ku-kurhi-s-Ø-ti.
Dora move-angle-mid-refl-perf-prs-ind.3
‘Dora hid herself in the corner.’
While the reflexive -kurhi constitutes a marked construction contrasting with the
middle and the transitive, the middle constitutes a basic voice pattern. The basic
nature of the middle and the marked status of the reflexive can be attested in a variety
of unrelated languages: Balinese (Artawa 1994), Amharic (Shibatani 2001), Otomı
´
(Palancar 2004), and Toba (Messineo 2002). For all of them, there are middle stems
which contrast with transitive constructions. The reflexive may come as a marked
construction deriving either from the middle or from the transitive stem. There are
also languages like Otomi in which there is no reflexive construction at all. In order to
achieve a reflexive meaning, Otomi exploits the genitive construction.
We may conclude that, while the middle may evolve from the reflexive in some
languages whose base form is the transitive construction, in other languages it con-
stitutes a category in its own right, for it corresponds to a basic conceptualization of
862 ricardo maldonado
a vast variety of actions developing within the subject’s dominion and may in fact
be the source not only for reflexive but also for transitive constructions. This con-
ceptual pattern is represented in figure 32.11, where transitive and middle contrast

while the reflexive construction derives from the transitive having two coreferential
participants.
The last point to consider for the proper understanding of middle voice systems
is the fact that in languages with middle voice there is always a list of deponent verbs,
that is, verbs that only occur as middles (e.g., Latin: oblivisco-r ‘forget’, vereo-r ‘tear’;
Gugu Yimidhirr: daga-adhi ‘sit down’; Spanish: jactarse ‘brag’, quejarse ‘complain’).
Little needs to be said about deponent verbs given the approach suggested here.
Deponent middles correspond to situations that naturally fall in the subject’s do-
minion. Most situations refer to internal mental, psychological, or physical changes
or states for which the middle is the natural form. In principle there is nothing in
these situations to imply any type of interaction with another participant. To the
degree that the middle encodes ‘events in the subject’s dominion’, corresponding to
situations that involve only the subject, the middle may be as basic as a transitive
action-chain situation involving two participants.
8. Conclusions

Syntactic Voice has been defined as a complex category by which the arguments of the
verb may receive different prominence status in the clause. While I accept in general
terms Cooreman’s four-way voice contrast in terms of topicality, Cognitive Gram-
mar affords us further insights into the problem. I have proposed that voice alter-
nations depend crucially on the starting point from which languages construe basic
events. Accusative languages take the active as the base form and use the passive to
Figure 32.11. Nonderived middle
grammatical voice in cognitive grammar 863
allow the Theme to become the event trajector. Ergative languages diminish the
natural prominence of the absolutive Theme to afford primary figure status to the
Agent. The inverse construction can have more than one starting point since there are
different realms in which the natural organization of a social community and its
conceptualization of the world can be reversed. For languages having verbs un-
specified for trajector, as is the case for the languages of the Philippines, voice is very

productive and flexible. Indeed, the selection of a particular participant as the tra-
jector determines the voice pattern in which the event is construed. In these lan-
guages, the selection of a participant as the trajector of the clause implies no de-
motion of other participants. In this respect, Philippine languages behave in a way
precisely opposite to languages having middle voice. In middle constructions, only
one participant is chosen for maximal prominence to the detriment of all other
nominal forms. From a cognitive perspective, then, syntactic voice can be defined as
the set of grammaticized patterns emerging from the speaker’s ability to construe
events in ways that differ from a language’s prototypical coding strategy.
NOTES

I would like to thank Enrique Palancar and Maura Vela
´
zquez for invaluable comments on
different versions of this chapter. I am also very thankful to Ken Cook and Matt Shibatani
for very fruitful discussions on different matters of voice.
1. With nonenergetic intransitive verbs, the rule applies by default since the subject will
be the only participant in the event. However, in languages with intransitive splits (Guaranı
´
,
Dakota, and Seneca), the energetic participant tends to align with a (the agentive subject
in Dixon’s 1980 notation) while the nonenergetic with O (the thematic subject).
2. The term ‘‘perfective’’ as referred to aspect contrasts with the term ‘‘imperfect’’
and denotes a situation seen as concluded. The event is conceptualized as a whole with-
out considering the internal temporal composition of the verb (Comrie 1976).
3. Reciprocals have been the attention of recent analyses (Kemmer 1993a; Evans
2004). Reciprocals show differences parallel to the ones found between reflexives and
middles. In simplex reciprocals the interaction between two participants is seen as one.
Complex reciprocals designate situations where separate actions by each participant can
be observed.

4. The example may be grammatical with an emphatic self-benefactive reading; for
further analysis, see Maldonado (2000).
5. Evidence from language acquisition of Spanish middle-reflexive se (Jackson, Mal-
donado, and Thal 1998) reveals that by 28 months of age children have mastered transitive,
intransitive, and middle constructions—the reflexive, however, is not available yet. The
use of the middle is distributed as follows: motion middles (se fue ‘he left’), 32%; sudden or
unexpected changes (se cay

oo ‘it fell down’, se mojo ‘it got wet’), 30%; change of state (se
va a dormir ‘she is going to sleep’), 10%; and impersonal standard procedures (se corta as

ıı
‘It is cut in this way’), 9%. These facts suggest that the middle is a basic, not a depen-
dent construal.
864 ricardo maldonado
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868 ricardo maldonado
chapter 33

MODALITY IN
COGNITIVE
LINGUISTICS

tanja mortelmans
1. The Notion of Modality
and Some of the Questions
It Raises

It is well known that the semantic category of modality is not as easily defined
as tense or aspect (Bybee, Perkins, and Pagliuca 1994: 176). Van der Auwera and
Plungian (1998: 80) hold that ‘‘modality and its types can be defined and named in
various ways,’’ and that ‘‘there is no one correct way.’’ Some linguists even question

the status of modality as an independent category. According to Lampert and
Lampert (2000: 296), for instance, modality ‘‘as a cognitively valid category is
simply gratuitous’’; the only incentive, they claim, to entertain a separate category
of modality is the fact that it provides a unitary semantic label for the formal cat-
egory of modal verbs.
Much of the research on modality within a cognitive linguistic framework
has indeed focused on modals, more specifically, on the English modals, and this
language bias has undoubtedly shaped the typical understanding of modality as
the cognitive semantic category roughly corresponding to the meanings expressed
by modal verbs. Cognitive linguistic studies of other ‘‘modal’’ expression types—
moods (e.g., Achard 1998, 2002; Mejı
´
as-Bikandi 1996; Mortelmans 2001, 2002,