functions as a closer proximal deixis bringing the Summary

4.3.3.6 Paragraph Functions of

onf sany A brief comment is in order about the role of onf sany at paragraph and discourse levels. Text analysis demonstrates a nominalizing role of chunks of text above the sentence. Interestingly these occur not in the sentence-final position but elsewhere in the sentence. Formal Burmese onf sany nominalization contrasts with another sentence-final particle e.. The orientation of both particles is nominal and deictic. onf sany functions as distal deixis or less proximal and thus within the logic of the text ‘points’ to the argument or ‘refers’ to the argument in the thematic structure; it establishes the matter, the reality, the factuality as the text develops.

e. functions as a closer proximal deixis bringing the

argument it “points to” close to speaker and hearer together; it creates textual notions of prominence based upon the metaphor of “close is important” and immediacy, based upon the metaphorical analogue of space as time.

4.4 Summary

Nominalization, is an operation on two sets of categories, noun and verb, that yields a form that is of intermediate categoriality reflecting the sources. This categorical mixture that nominalization displays became a landmark case that fixed the lexicalist position within generative grammar; it has ironically provided an opportunity for others to take exactly the opposite position and to attempt a syntactic coup; it has also puzzled philosophers and mathematicians—even Aristotle began his Categories with a discussion about predicates and substances; it has challenged linguists like Langacker to develop an image schema approach to categories and relations; it will probably continue to challenge generations of scholars as a unit incorporating opposites. Nominalization as a process refers to a continuum of types and degrees of boundedness conditions. One interesting feature of nominalization is the extensibility of the center as with mass nouns versus count nouns or extensibility of an action or process as with event or process versus result nominals. As a process, nominalization is implicitly somewhat abstract since reification is a kind of cognitive attribution of Thing-ness to a Relation. The level of abstractness may vary as may the level of concreteness. It is possible to profile those relations as a series of continua in three domains: Abstract - Concrete, Nominal - Verbal, Result - Event - Action. Figure 42. Abstractness in relation to ontological nominals Figure 42 relates to Asher’s 1993 spectrum of abstractness in terms of the types of events and verbs being more concrete figure 30. The relation of result nominal to fact seems very alike in many respects, except fact is an outsider’s viewpoint and result is more verbal and subjective, more experienced. The purpose of this figure is to demonstrate the area where ontological nominals fit in relation to types of verbs and regular derivational nominalizations. It is preferable to conceive of ontological nominals as more abstract than derived nominals, which are in turn more abstract than nominals, or mere “names” of things. It is also preferable to consider levels of abstractness in derived nominalizations and levels of abstractness in ontological nominalizations. The set of two types of nominalizations given in figure 43 exemplify those distinctions. Figure 43. Abstractness of event and result nominals In relation to sentential nominalization by onf sany, though it bounds much information and a complex structure and would, for that reason, seem highly abstract, it actually is less abstract than t\rifh a-mrang. Nom + high = ‘height’ or ‘highness’. This is because it retains a heightened action or event quality. To prefigure the work of the next chapter on text nominal structure in relation to the abstractness issue, one might wish to say t\rifh a-mrang. Nom + high = ‘height’ or ‘highness’ [Result]. Abstract Concrete \rifh onf mrang. sany high + Nom ‘It’s high.’ [Event] that a nominal that ‘ate’ to use a very good Burmese idiom ten ontological nominals within a sentence would be for that reason highly abstract. However, this is not the case, if abstractness is the opposite of eventive. Figure 44 demonstrates the level of complexity of ontological nominals in relation to the onf sany sentence-final nominalization. From the final particle there are ten ontological nominals, counting from the top-most and following the tree downward like a slide, counting only black nodes, then counting back to capture the main nodes horizontally across the mid- section of the sentence. Figure 44. Abstractness or complexity An empirical test for resulthood in nominals was the inability to be extended as in ‘further’ or ‘more’ or ‘frequently’. Such a test does apply for a sentence like “Beginning from that time on, the English government oppressed and restricted the Myanmar people.” Modification to the sentence is possible via sentential adverbials… “more and more” in English either before the sentence or after provides an interpretation of the qualification to the whole sentence, though it can be ambiguous as both to the sentence and to the main verb. In this chapter a model of nominalization via postpositional particles was presented, basically through a discussion of the nominalization template for the proto-type nominalizer onf sany. This template carries numerous functions in addition to nominalization. The multi-functionality of nominalization has perhaps been one of the reasons it has been overlooked in the past, since most grammars looked at semantic functions of the particles more than grammatical organization of Word, Expression, and Sentence. The next chapter examines Burmese nominals in relation to text structure. 140 5 Discourse Analysis of Two Texts Paradigms gain their status because they are more successful than their competitors in solving a few problems that the group of practitioners has come to recognize as acute. To be more successful is not, however, to be either completely successful with a single problem or notably successful with any large number. The success of a paradigm is at the start largely a promise of success discoverable in selected and still incomplete examples. -Thomas Kuhn 1970:23

5.1 Introduction