This article is a revised version of Chapter 6 from Wenze Hu's Ph.D dissertation. For detailed discussion on some of the terms and notions in this article, please refer to Hu (1995). All English glosses for Chinese examples are taken away for the convenience of HTML format. To view this article, you must have a GB environment.

"INVERTED" SENTENCES, PRAGMATICS AND

THE EMERGENT GRAMMAR

Wenze Hu

(C) Copyright 1996 All Rights Reserved
1.Introduction

1.1 Preliminary

From a functional viewpoint, word order is a system governed by principles at different levels of grammar. It is constrained not only by conceptual, functional, and syntactic principles, but also regulated by pragmatic factors. One of the important pragmatic factors is the speaker's communicative intent in the immediate communicative context. I point out in Hu (1995) that Chinese grammar is pragmatically oriented in a sense that it is more sensitive to pragmatic factors, such as contextual environments and pragmatic inferences. I also point out that in certain communicative environments, structures of sentences may vary due to the active manipulation of information structure by speakers to satisfy speakers' communicative purposes in those contexts. In this study, I shall focus on what impact pragmatic factors, such as speakers' communicative intents and immediate communicative environments, will have on the output of word order of Chinese sentences. I have found that the best examples of such impact are the so called "inverted sentences" in Beijing conversational discourse. In the following, I will demonstrate step by step in a detailed manner that in live conversational communications, functional and pragmatic motivations are the dominant factors determining word order.

1.2Inverted Sentences

In Chinese, inverted sentences are syntactic phenomena found exclusively in the conversational discourse.

It is characteristic of inverted sentences to place various pre-verbal elements, for example, subject, auxiliary, and adverb to the end of the sentence:

		(1)	来了, 您!

		(2)	吃什么, 你要？

		(3)	找什么呢, 你又？
The early mention of "inverted sentences" can be found in Li (1924: 31). Although such phenomena may be found across Chinese dialects, those in Beijing dialect have caught special attention from many linguists. The phenomena are documented by Chao (1968: 69). Chao refers to the following sentences as "inverted sentences," in that the normal order of subject-predicate of these sentences is reversed.1

		(4)	进来吧，你!

		(5)	要睡了，我。

		(6)	可笑极了，这个人。
At the same time, Chao also treats sentences (7)-(10) as containing "inverted subjects" (1968: 323, 673-674), regarding grammatical objects in these sentences as logical subjects.

		(7) 	下雨了。

		(8)	来了三只大狗 。

	 	(9)	跑掉了两个贼。

		(10) 	墙上挂着一幅画。
However, a clear distinction between (1)-(6) and (7)-(10) should be made. There are several reasons for this distinction. First, sentences (7)-(10) belong to a specific syntactic category, which I have identified in Hu (1995) as presentative sentences, with the specific functional sentence orientation to fulfill the task of presentation. Their syntactic structure is determined by conceptual principles in relation to the spatial relationships in the real world, and the functional principles with regard to presentation. Second, because of the presentative function of these sentences, usually, and in fact most often, the seemingly "inverted" subjects in these sentences are indefinite. However, this is usually not the case with sentences like (1)-(6). Third, due to the functional conditions on presentative sentences, the verbs in sentences like (7)-(10) are limited to a set of verbs denoting either state, or change of state, compatible with the presentative function of presentative sentences. Therefore, the structural and semantic characteristics of these sentences are explained in terms of conceptual principles of spatial relationship in conjunction with Vendler (1967) and Dowty's (1979) theory about verbal semantics. Fourth, as pointed out by Tai and Hu (1991), while sentences like (1)-(6) occur almost exclusively in informal, spontaneous conversations, presentative sentences such as (7)-(10) occur in both formal and informal discourse.

Apart from presentative sentences, some other sentences should also be distinguished from "inverted" sentences, including sentences as follows:

		(11)	您来了, 您。

		(12)	他七十了, 他。
It is typical for these sentences to have subjects repeated at the end of the sentence. In Hu (1989), I pointed out that these sentences have an emphatic function which is different from that of inverted sentences.

There are some other sentences that structurally seem the same as inverted sentences. However, they cannot be restored to the "normal" order as can the "inverted sentences." 

		(13)	好啊，你! 

		(14)	得了吧，你!
The order of both sentences cannot be reversed. In the case of (13), the sentence is produced with a sarcastic meaning. If it is reversed to the "normal" order, the resulting meaning will be, "How are you?" which is a greeting. As for (14), the order is conventionalized. Thus, the scope of the current study will cover only those sentences exemplified by (1)-(6).

1.3 Previous Studies of Inverted Sentences

Both Li (1924) and Chao (1969) give only very brief descriptions about inverted sentences, and include no detailed analyses. Chao's description indicates his recognition of inverted sentences as a spoken phenomenon. He basically treats inverted sentences as a result of "afterthought" in the speech activities. His major concern is on the syntactic characteristics of such phenomena.

Along the line of the afterthought treatment comes Chen's (1984) analysis. Considering pragmatic factors exclusively associated with informal spoken language, he argues that "inverted" sentences are due to the phenomenon of zhuijia 'afterthought appendage' by speakers after their expressing what are in their minds first.

The most comprehensive structural description of "inverted sentences" comes from Lu (1980). From a structuralist standpoint, Lu has not only offered a detailed characterization of the syntactic features of the inverted sentences, but also provided a list of patterns between the "normal" sentences and their inverted counterparts. Lu concludes that inverted sentences are the results of structural "transposition," which involves not merely a single directional movement of certain sentential elements, but rather a transposition of two constituents. Thus in (15), the subject and the predicate have exchanged their positions:

		(15a)	你哥哥来了吗？------------------------>

		(15b)	来了吗, 你哥哥？
Against the afterthought treatment, Packard (1986) offers a "Left Dislocation"2 analysis, arguing that the sentence-initial elements are moved to that position due to focusing purpose.

Basically, all these analyses are more concerned with the structural descriptions of the syntactic patterns in terms of the canonical word order of SVO and its possible variation within the sentence-grammar. Despite the important descriptive value of these studies, they have offered very few theoretical explanations of this common linguistic phenomenon in spontaneous spoken Chinese. Although here and there, some of them have touched upon some motivations for the occurrences of inverted sentences, they generally lack of any detailed and systematic analyses of those aspects. As a result, what is missed is a full account of the relationship among the syntactic pattern in question, its motivating factors and Chinese grammar. However, the understanding of such relationship is key to the understanding of the important pragmatic-sensitive characteristic of Chinese grammar.

To fill in this gap in the study of inverted sentences, Hu (1989), and Tai and Hu (1991) concentrate their efforts mostly on the pragmatic motivations of "inverted" sentences in terms of the characteristics of conversational discourse. Although the two studies differ in perspective, the main results can be summarized as follows:

The occurrence of "inverted" sentences are pragmatically motivated in the environment of informal conversation discourse. They are conditioned by conversation structure such as the local management systems, namely, turn taking, adjacency pairs, and repairs (Sack, Schegloff and Jefferson 1974; Levinson 1983). They are also constrained by the organization of the information structure unique to the spontaneous conversational speech such as idea units (Chafe 1979, 1982). Thus, the occurrences, and the structuring of inverted sentences are in fact called upon to fulfill various oral communicative tasks by the characteristics found exclusively in the spontaneous conversational environment, rather than determined by autonomous sentence-internal rules.

The above discovery demonstrates again that rather than arbitrary, self-contained and autonomous, Chinese grammar is sensitive to functional and pragmatic factors. It allows within the scope of convention a maximum degree of freedom to negotiate various regularities in different communicative environments. This relationship between Chinese grammar and the contextual environments is the focus of this study.

1.4 Conversational Discourse and Inverted Sentences

In Chinese, the informal conversational discourse is drastically different from formal written as well as formal spoken discourses. However, so far, most of the grammatical descriptions of word order in Chinese are results from studies of formal Chinese, despite the fact that great discrepancies in terms of informational and structural organizations can be found between the informal spontaneous conversations and formal written and spoken Chinese. Therefore, very often, and not uncommonly, analysts are ignoring linguistic phenomena found in the former situation regardless of their persuasiveness and naturalness in the specific contextual environment in question and their importance to the understanding of Chinese grammar as a whole. For example, in the description of Chinese word order, the canonical view is that the subject is before the predicate, and the verb is before its object. This conclusion is obviously based upon the observation of patterns of active sentences in formal Chinese. Though there is nothing wrong with this observation itself, it covers only part of what is going on in Chinese language with respect to word order. Very often people tend to view generalizations based on formal written Chinese as absolute governing rules over the entire Chinese language system, instead of a trend of regularities associated with that particular discourse in question. I believe that if one takes a closer examination of patterns actually occurring in different genres of discourse, he would arrive at a quite different conclusion. Differences among various genres of discourse are far greater than we might think of from a pure sentence grammar standpoint. As for this respect, Chafe (1979) identifies four types of discourse genres in terms of formal vs. informal distinction, namely informal spoken, informal written, formal spoken, and formal written. Since the focus of the current study is not to characterize the distinctions among the corresponding Chinese discourse types, I will only concentrate on the features of naturally occurring conversations which belong to the informal spoken discourse.

One striking difference between informal spontaneous conversations and formal Chinese is word order, which seems much more flexible in the former than in the latter. One apparent piece of evidence to show for this difference is that while inverted sentences permeate daily conversations, they can be rarely found in formal written and spoken Chinese. This is largely due to the characteristic differences in informational as well as organizational structures between naturally occurring conversations and formal written and spoken language. To fully understand these differences, it is necessary to distinguish some major functional and structural differences between naturally occurring spontaneous conversations and formal spoken language such as classroom lectures, public speeches on the one hand, and formal written language such academic papers, reports and newspaper editorials on the other. Tai and Hu (1991:79) have the following observation:

Conversation is constructed through social interaction, and is itself a form of social interaction. In conversation, human beings utilize language to make inquiries for information, to make requests, to negotiate, to react to different speech acts and social actions (Geis 1989), and to "create the self" through the eyes of other participants (Mead 1962).

Such functional characteristic of conversation requires participants in conversation not only to co-ordinate with each other in the process of conversation in terms of its organizational structure such as topic selecting, turn-taking, but also follow a set of co-operative principles such as described by Grice (1975), so that successful communications can be achieved within given contextual environments. It also requires participants of conversations to negotiate certain norms of regularity in terms of the syntactic patterns adopted in accordance to the intended communicative purpose in the full range of interactive contexts. This latter point can be better understood in terms of Hopper's (1988) Emergent Grammar, which I will further discuss in section 2.4.

Considering all these characteristics of conversations, we see that instead of being marginal and irregular instances, linguistic patterns generated from conversations are required and conditioned by features unique to the conversational communication.

As observed by Sack, Schegloff and Jefferson (1974) in their work on conversation analysis, rather than bulks of randomly occurring sentences by interlocutors, conversations are orderly structured.

This orderly structured organization of conversation is reflected in its local management system turn-taking and adjacency pairs. It is characteristic of conversations to follow the format of an A-B-A-B-A-B distribution of talks across two participants, and to develop in paired exchanges of question-answer, greeting-greeting, offer-acceptance, apology-minimization, and the like (Levinson 1983). Another two important notions of the local management system are transition constructional units and transition relevance place which are closely associated with the mechanism of turn-taking. The former refers to the minimal units over which turns of talk are constructed and the latter refers to the ending point of such units, at which the transition of speakers may take place. It is observed by Tai and Hu (1991) that in Beijing conversational discourse, inverted sentences signal transition relevance places more clearly than non-inverted sentences both intonationally and syntactically. Therefore it is reasonable to hypothesize that such linguistic phenomena are closely linked to the organizational mechanism of turn-taking in naturally occurring conversations.

Different from formal written language, which is produced in highly integrated sentences, conversation, like all forms of spontaneous spoken language, is produced with idea units. As for idea units, Chafe (1982: 37) has the following observation:

Idea units typically have a coherent intonation contour, they are typically bounded by pauses, and they usually exhibit one of a small set of syntactic structure.

Another feature of naturally occurring conversations is their unplanned nature. Unlike formal written and spoken language, whose organizations are well pondered upon, informal conversations are impromptu. Like all forms of spontaneous spoken language, conversations are limited by contextual settings, such as the pressure to compete with others to take turns, and the limitation of the time available to each speaker. Many linguists have observed that in actual speech, speakers frequently, though not always, loose control due to the lack of preparation, the pressure of the speech environment, and the problem of linearization. Therefore, communicative breakdowns and repair due to mishearing and misunderstandings occur frequently in naturally occurring conversations.

The interactive nature, specific information structure, unique local management systems and frequent error-repairs compounding the communicative intents by speakers on each conversational occasion and physical communicative contexts constitute the triggering environment for the occurrences of inverted sentences. In the next section, I will demonstrate how these factors work together in the formation of the inverted sentences by some concrete cases in Beijing conversational discourse.

2. Case Analyses

2.1Data Base

The data base for this part of study consists of independently collected recordings of naturally occurring face-to-face conversations in daily speech in Beijing. The data includes excerpts from the corpus of recordings compiled by Robert Sanders, and recordings collected by the current author.

2.2 Some General Observations

Based upon the data collected, generally speaking, word order seems "freer" in conversational discourse than in formal written and spoken languages. However, at a closer scrutiny, one will find that this "freedom" is a result of interactive negotiation by participants in the conversational discourse to serve given communicative purpose, and is demanded and regulated by the information structure and various structural mechanisms of the conversational discourse. Thus, the linguistic patterns adopted in the conversational discourse as patterns found in formal written and spoken discourse follow a set of regularities to best serve their given purposes rather than occur arbitrarily and randomly. The significant informational and management differences between the conversational discourse and formal written and spoken Chinese give rise to different organizational strategies, which follow different sets of regularities. It is in this sense that I doubt whether the term "free," or "freedom" without specification of its implication would capture the real nature of what has been observed in the conversational discourse. But on the other hand, if we look upon Chinese grammar as a system regulating the structural organizations of that language, including patterns in all types of discourse genres, we will accept the fact that it serves all the communicative needs demanded by these different genres with its flexibility to vary its regularities in accordance to each of these genres. For example, to fit in with the integrated and succinct characteristics of formal written or spoken discourse, it tightens the rules for the patterning of word order, whereby no ambiguity and misunderstanding would occur, and information can be delivered most efficiently. With the conversational discourse, due to the rich contextual information functioning to secure correct understanding of the information communicated. Chinese grammar allows more variations in word order to meet the needs of social interaction in spontaneous spoken communication. Comparing with the rigidity of word order patterning in formal written and spoken Chinese, we can say that the word order in naturally occurring conversations is freer. However, it should be understood that such freedom is well within the scope of regularities negotiated by participants via their past experience and convention, and conditioned by the informational and organizational systems of the conversational discourse.

2.3Data Analyses

Different from formal written and spoken Chinese, sentences in conversational discourse allow subjects, adverbs, and in some cases subjects together with adverbs or main verbs to be placed at the sentence-final position. Here are some examples: 3

		(16a)	录音机怎么了？
			Subj      Predicate

		(16b)	怎么了, 录音机？
			Predicate    Subj

		(17a)	这小孩, 没辙。
			Subj        Predicate

		(17b)	没辙, 这小孩。
			Predicate Subj

		(18a)	您又找什么？
			Subj Adv    Verb  Obj

		(18b)	找什么, 您又？
			Verb       Obj  Subj Adv

		(19a)	你就拖着吧。
			Sub  Adv     Verb 

		(19b)	拖着吧，你就。
			Verb        Subj Adv

		(20a)	你想半傻不傻吧？
			Subj Verb  Subordinate Clause

		(20b) 	 半傻不傻吧，你想？
			Subordinate Clause Subj Verb

		(21a)	你就觉着习惯了。
			Subj        Verb  Subordinate Clause

		(22b)	习惯了，你就觉着。
			Subordinate Clause Subj         Verb

In (16)-(22), only the (a) order is permitted in formal written or spoken Chinese, while both (a) and (b) orders can occur in naturally occurring conversational discourse. As pointed out in section 2.2 and previous sections, such flexibility is systematically conditioned by the communicative function, the informational structure and the organizational mechanisms unique to the conversational discourse. Next, I will demonstrate that the (b) orders are on the one hand regulated by the functional principles of coherence and relevance in the management of information and on the other hand motivated by speakers' efforts to meet the requirements of the cooperative principles and local management systems in conversational discourse.

As for coherence, it is achieved on the basis of the assumption of relevance by the addressees, including the speakers' communicative intents and the shared socio-cultural knowledge by all the participants in the discourse. The assumption of relevance depends upon the contextual effect achieved in the immediate communicative context. For discussions of both notions, please refer to Hu (1995 Chapter II).

As for the triggering factors for the occurrences of inverted sentences, Tai and Hu (1991) identified basically three major motivations, namely thematization, repair and afterthought appendage which are directly responsible for the occurrence of inverted sentences in Beijing conversational discourse.

2.3.1 Attentional Focus, Thematization, and the Implication Behind

In this section, I shall demonstrate that one of the important motivations for the occurrences of inverted sentences in Beijing conversational discourse is the factor of attentional focusing. One tactical strategy to materialize such a focus at the sentential level in naturally occurring conversation is thematization, whereby the focal information intended is placed at the sentence-initial position to serve as an ostensive stimulus to the addressee so that maximum contextual effect can be achieved, and the relevance of the utterance in question and the coherence of the discourse are sustained.

As pointed out in section 1.4, conversation is produced through active interactions among its participants in the full range of linguistic and non- linguistic contexts. The speaker has access to a quick feed-back from the context, but at the same time he is limited by the contextual settings, such as the pressure to compete with other speakers to take turns in conversation and the limitation of the time available to him due to the constraint of the linear property of time and speech. Therefore, the speaker actively adopts all kinds of linguistic and paralinguistic devices in his speech to drive home his intended meaning. One of the important devices in the informational organization is word order. Hu (1995) points out that in the information structure of a sentence, the initial point of a sentence is extremely important in that it functions both as the attentional focus to the addressee, and the informational base for further informational build-up to the addresser and its processing to the addressee. Thus, the starting point serves as the departure point of information structure in a sentence. In terms of these specific characteristics, Traugott and Pratt (1980), and Brown and Yule (1983) recognize the starting point as the theme, and treat it as a formal category of a sentence. The theme of a sentence can be any part of speech or any syntactic constituent. In terms of information structure, the theme should be understood as an information unit realized as the left-most constituent of a sentence. Thus, the process of organizing the information structure by making certain constituents the theme of a sentence is a process of thematization. In such process, a certain syntactic constituent, instead of being at its usual position in formal Chinese, is placed at the sentence-initial position as the theme of the sentence. In the process of choosing a theme, two factors are worth discussing. One is the speaker's communicative intent, and the other is the contextual environment, including the immediate communicative context and the physical environment. The first one involves the speaker's active manipulation of the information structure, and second one involves the speaker's response to the contextual constraints. Both of the factors are conditioned by the interactive nature of naturally occurring conversations.

As for the first factor, Brown and Yule (1983: 128) observe that "what is primarily at issue is the judgment that the speaker makes about what the hearer believes to be the case with respect to what he wants to talk about." Therefore the determination of the theme of a sentence is a choice by the speaker depending on what he wants to focus upon in his utterance. Traugott and Pratt (1980) also point out that the order of words in the surface structure communicates an emphasis or perspective being adopted by the speaker.

The second factor indicates that the determination of theme is also conditioned by the contextual environment, so that the utterance produced is relevance in that it achieves the largest contextual effect. In naturally occurring conversations, these factors work together in the process of thematization.

The following are some excerpts demonstrating how inverted sentences occur as a result of thematization in the conversational discourse. Excerpt (23) consists of one utterance produced by a younger participant of the discourse to an older one at the entrance of a school.

		(23)

 			A: 这边走, 您!

A's utterance is a typical imperative sentence in Beijing Mandarin. Here it is utilized to perform the social action of suggestion. One special characteristic of the Chinese imperative sentence is that it may or may not contain an actor. When the actor is mentioned, it may be put at the sentence-initial position or at the end of the sentence. As for its actual sentential position, I find that it is totally contextually determined rather than syntactic required. In the current case, (23) A thematizes the verbal expression because the information it carries is the most important message he tries to convey in that specific circumstance. As Firbas (1964), Halliday (1967), and Prince (1981) have noticed, speakers tend to begin with the most salient information and progress toward less salient information in their speech. By thematizing the verbal expression, Speaker A not only places an emphasis on the informational message of direction, but also catches the audience attention, because of the effect of the overlap of attentional focus and the informational focus the sentences inversion achieves.

One important point about thematization is that very often, a speaker places a certain sentential element at the sentence-initial position, not because he conscientiously tries to invert a given syntactic structure to achieve certain communicative effect, but because that the piece of information carried by that element occurs first to his mind due to its value of importance in the immediate communicative context. Thus, if we follow Chafe's (1979, 1982) observation about spontaneous spoken language, we may view an inverted sentence as consisting of two juxtaposed idea units in a linear order along the axis of real time. The one that occurs first to the mind of the speaker comes first, and the one that occurs second comes next. The order of their occurrences in the mind of the speaker is conditioned by the value of importance attached to the individual piece of information in the relevant context. In an action of suggestion of direction, nothing is more important than the suggestion itself. Therefore it is produced first. The occurrence of the second person pronoun is due to the social reason of politeness as it is indicated by the polite form of nin 'you.' I argued in Hu (1989) that that "nin" is placed after the verbal expression is due to its given status in the discourse. However at a closer scrutiny, I find that that conclusion is inadequate, because what we have here is not a mere second person pronoun, but a linguistic element attached with specific social meaning. That piece of information carried by "nin" is definitely not given in terms of either the speaker's assumption about the state of consciousness of the addressee, or its retrievability in that given context. Its latter placement is simply because it is not as important as the verbal expression of the sentence in the social action of direction (though it is necessary for the sake of politeness), and it is not urgent. The intended message delivered via sentence inversion by the speaker has fulfilled its communicative goal of direction, and has obtained its relevance in that it has achieved the maximum contextual effect in that circumstance. By maximum contextual effect, I refer to the fact that the addressee has processed that piece of information with the least effort in that given context, or in other words, the addressee has little difficulty in comprehending that message in that communicative environment.

Excerpt (20) is a conversation among three participants about going to hospital. An inverted sentence is indicated by a right arrow (-->).

	(24)	A: 去医院的时候, 你妈跟着吧？

		B: 今天我没让她跟着。。。

     		C: 粤耍这两天别让她去。

	     	    明天可能更够呛。冻冰了。

		B: 明天更够呛。。。

 	       --> A: 挂号麻烦着呢，那地方。

		B: 那倒不麻 常只要给钱就诊。

Excerpt (24) is a good example of ostensive communication, in which the participant utilizes an inverted sentence to change the direction of conversation following the principle of cohesion and relevance. As the excerpt shows, all the utterances before the inverted sentence indicated by the right arrow are about who is to go to the hospital and the weather and road condition relevant to that topic. After several exchanges of talk, A's utterance leads to a shift of attention to the hospital itself. This shift is initiated by A's placing a piece of unexpected information that "it is inconvenient to register " at the sentence-initial position. Effectively, this unexpected new information immediately catches the attention of the hearer. This is evidenced by B's following repair, "It is actually not inconvenient." Up till now the shift has been successfully accomplished. We see that this sentence inversion by Speaker A effectively gives out an ostensive stimulus to call on the attention from other participants in the discourse. In this sense it has achieved its largest contextual effect, and thus obtains the relevance of the information conveyed. To the speaker, in his attempt to shift the discourse direction, the verbal information is obviously the most important message, and therefore it occurs first in his mind. As for the hospital, since it is already known and is of little informative value at the moment. Therefore that piece of information is not something urgent and is squeezed to the end of the sentence.

The above two examples show how the process of thematization is utilized by addressers to call on attentions from addressees to their intended messages. Note that in both cases, exactly as argued in Hu (1995), the prominent informational status of the inverted elements is achieved by the status of the starting point of these inverted sentences. In above (32) and (24), the starting point of each of the inverted sentences functions not only as the attentional focus but also the informational load to the addressee. Therefore, they appear much more outstanding to the addressee than they are in normal non-inverted sentences.

2.3.2 Thematization and the Principle of Temporal Sequence

Now let us come to some theoretical implications of the relationship between the process of thematization and the conceptual principle of PTS. The above analysis of intentional focusing via the process of thematization seems against PTS, in that in many cases it puts what is new ahead of what is given as shown by (24). Citing Givon's re- statement of Jespersen's "principle of actuality" that "attend first to the most urgent task," Haiman (1993: 903) points out that there co-exist two universals. "The first universal puts topics at the beginning of their sentences, while the second puts focused elements there."

It is true that there is a general trend to order the given before the new among languages, and it is also generally observable in languages that the most urgent is placed ahead of the less urgent as demonstrated in section 2.3.1, and pointed by many linguists such as Firbas (1964), Halliday (1967), and Prince (1981). However, I shall argue that these two observations are made at two different levels, at least in the case of Chinese.

The general trend to place the linguistic carrier of what is known before that of what is new is in line with the conceptual schema of Background-Foreground, which is an abstract extension of the percetual principle of Containing-Contained spatial relationship. It is at the conceptual level that I argue that the Background-Foreground schema is in line with PTS, since Background is always assumed to be known and the Foreground is always assumed to be new in a relative sense. This relationship can be illustrated by the following scheme:

	(25)	Development of Communication:  ---------------->
		Conceptual Information Structure: Background--Foreground
		Discourse Information Status:	   Given            New	
		PTS:			    	   First             Second

This scheme tells us that along the axis of the development of communication, the general trend in Chinese is to order background before foreground based on the Background- Foreground schema. At the discourse level, this ordering corresponds to the Given-New arrangement. Since the given occurs first and the the new occurs second long the development of communication, it is in line with PTS. This is an extended application of PTS at the concptual level. I would call the principles of Backgound-Foregound and the conceptual extension of PTS conception-based principles in terms of the following point. These principles are abstract extensions of perceptual-based principles such as Container-Contained and the perceptual core of PTS which are relatively transparent reflections of the phenomenal world. They deal with the patterning of word order in relation with the order of thoughts with respect to communicative environments in general, including all discourse genres.

The second trend occurs in a quite limited scope, generally in naturally occurring, unplanned, spontaneous, and informal speech, although I do not preclude artificial reproductions of what is going on in these mentioned environments in other genres of discourse. This second trend is triggered and conditioned by the characteristics of naturally occurring spontaneous speech. This second trend follows the perceptual core of PTS. I term this perceptual core of PTS as Perception-Based Real-Time Principle. It applies to the actual flow of thought of the speaker in the immediate communicative contexts at the moment of speaking along the development of real time within the time span of that single utterance. It is illustrated as follows:

	(26)	Development of Communication---> 
		Development of Real Time-------->
		Flow of Thought	--------------->
		Status of Urgency Urgent----Less Urgent
		PTS:		  First   Second

Following Chafe (1979, 1982), I view an utterance in unplanned spontaneous speech as consisting of a sequence of juxtaposed idea units along the axis of real time. The ordering of idea units is regulated by conception-based principles in terms of the informational status associated with each unit relative to others both before and after itself. It is also regulated by the actual emergence of thoughts stimulated by the urgency of the information due to the pressure of the immediate context. The status of urgency is in a different dimension from those of given and new, though what is urgent is usually new or unknown to the addressee in the discourse. The informational urgency usually, and very often is a direct reflection of the order of phenomena in the real world, including the socio-linguistic behavior of the participants of the discourse, as perceived by the speaker. Thus, no matter whether in the case of offering direction, calling attention to some immediate danger, or change of direction of conversation due to social or physical need, the status of urgency is associated with the relative status of urgency of each element in the entire chain of events perceived by the speaker. The status of urgency is not discussed in the same domain of information status of "given" and "new," the determination of which are based on the speaker's assumption of what is in the mind of the addresse at the moment of speaking. Therefore as illustrated in the analysis of (23) and (24), the order of inverted sentences symbolizes the actual sequence of emergence of chain of thoughts at the moment of speaking, rather than a reflection of the information status evaluated at the conceptual level. This order of the most urgent attended first is a transparent reflection of the mapping relationship between the real world and the corresponding linguistic form. Thus, it is in conformity with PTS.

The conception-based principles are responsible for the order of information structure at the conceptual level while the perception-based real-time principle functions at a different level in the organization of syntactic patterns in terms of a more direct relationship between word order and the real world. In communicative activities, when there is a conflict between conception-based principles and the real-time principle, the former give way to the latter due to the pressure of the immediate communicative requirements in terms of immediate communicative purposes. This is exactly what we have in (23) and (24).

In this sense, one may have a better understanding of the rare occurrences of inverted sentences in formal written and spoken Chinese, and their high degree of prevalence in spontaneous speech. The differences are in great part determined by the former's detachment from the rich and ever changing contextual environment and the latter's close association with interactive and complex or even "unfriendly" communicative contexts. The former is able to evade the linear problem of spontaneous speech in terms of development of real time, while the latter has to deal with that problem now and then compounding other unexpected situations. The difference in terms of the detachment and the involvement allows formal Chinese to follow the conceptual extension of PTS at ease to fit in with the characteristics of formal writing and speech to meet their communicative purposes, and forces informal spontaneous speech to follow the perceptual core of PTS to cope with the linear problem and the ever changing and evolving situations. Thus, in formal written and spoken Chinese, there is a trend to order sentences in such a way that the pattern reflects the conceptual schema of Background-Foreground in which the format of Topic-Comment has its roots, while in unplanned, spontaneous speech, such as naturally occurring conversations, the trend is to follow the order of "the most urgent attended first" as demonstrated in section 2.3.1.

2.3.3 Repair

In naturally occurring conversations, due to time pressure, the problem of linearization, and the hardship in maintaining the flow of thoughts in the interactive process of conversation, speakers make errors here and there. It is common place that a speaker now and then modifies his previously spoken utterance. As Brown and Yule (1983: 17) point out, "the speaker may replace or refine expressions as he goes along." This kind of modification is repair. In their works on conversation analysis, Schegloff, Jefferson, and Sacks (1977) have identified four types of repairs, namely self-initiated self-repair, other-initiated self-repair, self-initiated other-repair, and other initiated other-repair. Tai and Hu (1991) have found that in Beijing conversational discourse, self-initiated self-repair is one of the key factors contributing to the occurrences of inverted sentences. Self-initiated repair is a common feature in spontaneous speech. It is an important aspect of the speaker's active control of his own speech. Judging from my data, I have found that it is a trend for such a repair to occur at the end of a sentence, which very often serves as a transition relevance place for possible exchange of speakers. Since at this point, the current turn may be taken over by the next speaker, it is natural for a self-initiated repair to occur here to keep the on-going conversation coherent and the repair in question relevant. Consider the following example:

	(27)	A: 哎，还有一斤多呢吧？

		B: 甚么呀!

	      	C: 将近二斤。

		B: 将近二斤。

	     	哎， 上回称的是一斤零点。

      --------->  一斤二两吧，也就。。。。。。

This is a conversation among three participants when they weigh some apples. The repair in question initiated by B actually starts from his second utterance, indicated by the discourse marker "Ai.4" After B's utterance of "about two catties," he immediately realizes that the weight is incorrect. The first attempt of repair is initiated at his second utterance. The speaker at this moment is still not very sure about the exact weight. But he quickly offers the correct number in his last utterance, which is produced in an inverted form. As one may have expected, it is the correct number of weight that is placed sentence-initially. Since the information of the weight is the key message in this repair, it is only natural for it to be the focal point in the whole sentence. Considering the repairing sequence, one can see that the inverted sentence has made the effect of repair stronger and more salient by placing the constituent bearing the repairing message immediately beside the previous number. Thus, the inverted sentence has not only fulfilled the speaker's goal of repair, but also sustained the coherence of the discourse and the relevance of the utterance in question. At this moment, one may point out that, well, it seems that in this process of repair, thematization is also involved, since the repairing message is placed at the sentence-initial position as the focus of the sentence. That is correct. Thematization and repair are two devices utilized by speakers to fulfill different functional purposes. The former one establishes an attentional focus at the sentential level by making certain constituent the theme as pointed out earlier, while the latter is a discourse device to correct incorrect, inaccurate, or inadequate messages. Although the two have different functions, one may involve the other. Therefore, sometimes, among other means, repair may utilize the process of thematization to meet its own goal. This is what has happened in the current case. What we have is the interplay among different discourse tactics rather than an absolutely clear-cut situation.

2.3.4 Afterthought Appendage

Naturally occurring speech is produced in idea units along the axis of real time. Due to the interactive characteristic, the restriction of the linear property of spontaneous speech, and the context of natural environment, in conversation, the speaker utters the most salient and the most important in his mind first to strive home his intended message and direct the addressee's attention so as to sustain the coherence of the discourse. Very often at the end of the current turn before the next turn takes over, the current speaker may append some additional information to what he has just expressed. This kind of appendage is referred to as afterthought appendage. Consider (28):

	(28)--->干嘛去呀, 拿着个脸盆？

The first part of the utterance is produced in a situation when the speaker saw his child running towards him, and the second part na zhe ge lianper (taking a washbowl) is added to the first part as he noticed that there is a washbowl in the child's hand. As a result, an inverted sentence is yielded. This order of speech reflects the speaker's response to the speaker's visual perception of the real world along the development of time. The constituent gan ma qu ya (what are you going to do) is produced first because it represents what strikes the speaker's eye first. The afterthought appendage represents what comes in his sight next. Of course, the actual appendage is determined by the speaker himself, rather than required by the sentence structure. However, in this case, the addition of the afterthought appendage provides the hearer with some extra information which makes the question more specific. Therefore it is necessary for the communicative purpose. One implication of this case is that in naturally occurring speech, word order reflects the thought flow of the speaker at the moment of speaking. The order of that flow is regulated by the contextual environment of the discourse as well as of the speaker's perception of the immediate physical world. Another example can be given as follows:

	(29)-->回家吗, (停顿) 你们？

Example (29) is produced by a student to his classmates after class. The speaker's utterance is produced when a group of students are walking out of the classroom. The speaker asks some of his classmates whether they are going home. But immediately after the utterance of hui jia ma (going home?), the speaker finds that this already spoken utterance is not clear in that it does not contain the information that to whom it is addressed. One sees that in this particular situation such information is necessary since there are many students coming out of the classroom at the same time. Thus, an inverted sentence is produced as a result of the afterthought appendage. This appendage is clearly indicated by a pause between the previously spoken and the additional appendage. Consider one more example:

	(30)	A: 小李上门口来了。

		B: 是吗？

		A: 嗯。

	--->    C: 昨天中午谁值班呀， (停顿)
	    	    我给你打电话时？

 		A: 你跟人家横来着啊？

	     	C:  我没跟人家横啊。

In this conversation, C produces an inverted sentence in her question about who was on duty yesterday noon at the telephone switchboard. The fact that the dialogue starts immediately after C enters the doorway, and the first part of the utterance is produced without any preliminary warm-up opening has evidenced that that question has occupied her mind for some time. It is obvious that the most important information she wants to get from A and B is who the person on duty was. Therefore the questioning part is produced first without any hesitation. However, immediately after the utterance of it, she finds that it is necessary to further narrow down the time range so that the addressees can have a better idea about the specific person she is talking about. Thus, after a pause, an appendage of time frame is added to the first part of the utterance, and as a result, an inverted sentence occurs.

As for the inverted sentence in (30), there is one point worth discussing. In formal Chinese, an adverbial clause is placed before the main clause. In a sentence, a time expression servers as a conceptual frame containing certain event in question. Based upon the Background-foreground schema, such an expression is placed before the main clause or before the verb phrase. However, in spontaneous speech, such an order may change due to the specific ordering of information flow in the mind of the speaker at the moment of speaking. As in (30), the question about who was on duty is in the speaker's mind for quite some time and stands silently at that moment, and all other thoughts have to give their way. What comes second depends on the status of relevance of the given information in terms of contextual coherence regarding the communicative purpose. Thus, the order of main body of question-time frame in this utterance follows exactly the perceptual core of PTS. Now we see that there is a conflict between the conceptual principle of Background--Foreground arrangement and the perceptual core of PTS. As argued previously, the principle of Background-Foreground is an abstract extension of the more primitive Containing-Contained relationship in the spatial relationship. Therefore it is a general principle which belongs to conception-based principles. In live conversational environments, such a conception-based principle, as argued in 2.3.2, gives way to the perceptual core of PTS, which directly reflects the ordering relationship along the axis of the development of real time. If we treat the actual order of thoughts due to the relative urgency in relation to communicative purpose as certain reality regardless of the abstract information status of the thoughts themselves, we would accept that such an order is in conformity with PTS. Thus, at the linguistic level, the perceptual core of PTS takes precedence over other abstract conception-based principles, such as Background-Foreground, and conditions the organization of word order. Thus, (30) serves as a good example of how immediate contextual factors affect the output of syntactic patterns.

2.4. Inverted sentences and the Concept of Emergent Grammar

So far I have demonstrated that the occurrences of inverted sentences in Beijing conversational discourse are basically triggered by three pragmatic motivations, namely, attentional focusing, repair and afterthought appendage. The above analyses have shown that Chinese grammar is not only constrained by conceptual and functional principles, but also sensitive to pragmatic factors. It allows within its convention the maximum freedom to vary syntactic patterns to meet different communicative purposes. The patterns of variation, rather than pre-determined, are derived from negotiation via the interaction among participants of specific discourse within the immediate context. This relationship between contexts and grammar can be better comprehended in terms of Hopper's notion of Emergent Grammar. Hopper treats grammar as a "real-time social phenomenon, which is always in a process but never arriving and therefore emergent." The notion of Emergent Grammar, based on Hopper (1987: 142), suggests that

Structure, or regularity, comes out of discourse and is shaped by discourse as much as it shapes discourse in an on-going process. Grammar is hence not to be understood as a pre-requisite for discourse, a prior possession attributable in identical form to both speaker and hearer. Its forms are not fixed templates, but are negotiable in face-to-face interaction in ways that reflect the individual speakers' past experience of these forms, and their assessment of the present context, ...the term Emergent Grammar points to a grammar which is not abstractly formulated and abstractly represented, but always anchored in the specific concrete form of utterance.

Come to the conversational discourse, such a grammatical negotiation should not be simplistically understood in terms of certain verbal expressions, but in terms of speech acts (Austin 1962) and social actions (Geis 1989). The output of such negotiation establishes certain temporary regularities within the current contextual environment. The re-emergence of such regularities in similar situations may give rise to grammaticalization of such contextual constraints. It is in this sense that we understand the emergent characteristics of grammar, and it is in this sense that we may have a better understanding of the relationship between language and context. However, one should not take regularities generated from one type of discourse as absolute rules that are applicable to all discourse genres. They are discourse dependent. For example, formal written and spoken Chinese generally do not allow the occurrence of inverted sentences. For that will not only destroy its integrated and succinct characteristics but also may give rise to ambiguities and hence decrease its communicative effectiveness. Nevertheless the "rigidity" of formal Chinese and the "looseness" of informal spontaneous conversations are both embraced by the system of Chinese grammar. Both of the "rigidity" and "looseness" are frequently redefined in the endless process of grammatical emergence via the interaction among speakers of that language in the full range of communicative contexts, written as well as spoken, and formal as well as informal.

From the analysis of inverted sentences in Beijing conversational discourse, we see that Chinese grammar is very sensitive to pragmatic factors, allowing sentential variations to meet different communicative goals. But this does not mean in conversational discourse, Chinese sentences are totally free from grammatical rules. For example, even an inverted sentence like (31a) cannot be changed into the order of (31b) under any circumstances.

		(31a)	钱掉了, 你!

		(31b)	*掉钱了, 你!

As for (31a, b), one possible explanation to the fact the sequence qianbao diao le cannot be reversed as in (31b) might be that the relationship, Described Entity-Description of Resultative State, demonstrated between the elements of qianbao 'wallet,' and diao le 'to have dropped' is already grammaticalized based on the Background- Foreground schema. It is so rigid that other factors may not change it. Another fact is that as for some syntactic patterns, such as presentative sentences, no inverted forms can be found even in conversational contexts. Consider:

		(32a)	前边住着老张。

			
		(32b)	*老张，前边住着。

Then the question is whether in Chinese there are grammatical rules to start with. If there are, where do they come from, and how do they arise from different discourse contexts? The following comparison may not be accurate, but it suffices the purpose of making my point. If we compare grammar with traffic controls, we may find two situations. In highly developed big cities, traffic rules are clearly spelled out. During most of the day time, the traffic control at intersections is very tight. Everyone has to act according to the traffic signals issued either by traffic lights or by policemen. However, at night, at some less important intersections, the control may be loosened. Though the rules are still there, arriving at those intersections, drivers and pedestrians will use their common sense to decide whether they should go or not. But in some less developed rural areas, we may not have traffic rules to start with. The traffic control at intersections in those areas may totally depend on common sense and negotiations via social interactions among drivers and pedestrians. As a result, some conventions may be worked out. For example, those who arrive first, go first. In this sense, the English grammatical system is more like the tightly enforced traffic control in big cities during day time. It is more rule-governed. How about the Chinese situation? In this aspect, the Emergent Grammar does not give us the whole answer. It seems to me, the Chinese system does have rules, but most time it relies on pragmatics factors. Only when pragmatic, and semantic factors fail to give out hints do grammatical rules come into play. But based on Emergent Grammar, the Chinese system can only be like the traffic control in the less developed rural areas. This seems not the case to me. Therefore to answer this question fully, more comparative studies of data from conversational discourse, narratives as well as formal written and spoken Chinese are necessary.

3. Conclusion

Having discussed the relationships among occurrences of inverted sentences in Beijing conversational discourse, their pragmatic motivations, and the emergent grammar, I have demonstrated that Chinese grammar is sensitive to pragmatic factors associated with communicative environments, including the speaker's communicative intents and discourse contexts. Chinese grammar allows variations within the scope of convention to meet different communicative functions of different discourse genres. Thus, in naturally occurring spontaneous conversations, Chinese grammar varies its regularities via the interactive negotiation among participants in given communicative contexts to achieve the best communicative effects. Such interactive negotiation is carried out via the means of speech acts and social actions not only within the boundary of discourse contexts, but also within the scope of the socio-cultural conventions established by native speakers of Chinese. Thus the regularities established are in line with the conventionalized conceptual viewpoint about the real world in that socio-cultural society, and at the same time serve the purpose of effective and efficient communication among native speakers of that language. The notion of emergent grammar helps us obtain a better understanding of how different regularities come into being in discourse genres, and even more importantly, the dynamic process of grammaticalization. From the case of inverted sentences, we see that instead of relying on sentence-internal rules, Chinese depends heavily on pragmatic regulating factors as shown in the discussions of motivations behind the formation of inverted sentences, and conceptual semantics as illustrated in the iconic reflection of the schema of Background-Foreground and the Principle of Temporal Sequence. It is in this sense that I claim that Chinese is a pragmatically oriented language.

NOTES:

1 Examples (1)-(3) are taken from Chao (1968: 69).

2 Here Packard's use of "dislocation" is obviously different from the term's original notion. For an introduction of the term "dislocation," please refer to Radford (1988:530-533).

3 All the (b) sentences have the same meaning as the (a) sentences despite that the intended messages may be different.

4 For detailed discussions about discourse markers, please refer to Miracle (1991).

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