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Introduction: impersonalization from a subject‐centred vs. agent‐centred perspective
Author(s) -
Siewierska Anna
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
transactions of the philological society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.333
H-Index - 26
eISSN - 1467-968X
pISSN - 0079-1636
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-968x.2008.00211.x
Subject(s) - subject (documents) , linguistics , philology , grammar , perspective (graphical) , pragmatics , philosophy , sociology , computer science , library science , artificial intelligence , feminism , gender studies
The notion of impersonality is a broad and disparate one. In the main, impersonality has been studied in the context of IndoEuropean languages and especially Indo-European diachronic linguistics (see e.g. Seefranz-Montag 1984; Lambert 1998; Bauer 2000). It is only very recently that discussions of impersonal constructions have been extended to languages outside Europe (see e.g. Aikhenvald et al. 2001; Creissels 2007; Malchukov 2008 and the papers in Malchukov & Siewierska forthcoming). The currently available analyses of impersonal constructions within theoretical models of grammar are thus all based on European languages. The richness of impersonal constructions in European languages, has, however, ensured that they be given due attention within any model of grammar with serious aspirations. Consequently, the linguistic literature boasts of many theory-specific analyses of various impersonal constructions. The last years have seen a heightening of interest in impersonality and a series of new analyses of impersonal constructions. The present special issue brings together five of these analyses spanning the formal ⁄ functional-cognitive divide. Three of the papers in this volume, by Divjak and Janda, by Afonso and by Helasvuo and Vilkuna, offer analyses couched within or inspired by different versions of the marriage of Construction Grammar and Cognitive Grammar as developed by Langacker (1991), Goldberg (1995, 2006) and Croft (2001). The paper by Kibort provides an analysis within Bresnan’s (2001) Lexical Functional Grammar and the paper by Mendikoetxea elaborates further the analysis of impersonals currently being developed with Chomsky’s (1995, 2000, 2005) Minimalist Program. The different theoretical orientations of the papers go hand in hand with somewhat different approaches to impersonality, which, while not radically divergent, do not overlap entirely and, significantly, T R P S 2 1 1 B Dispatch: 24.6.08 Journal: TRPS CE: Blackwell