Process and pattern interpretations 171
represented as operators on the level of the illocution, whose effect perco-
lates through the hierarchy of levels, constraining the assignment of
pragmatic functions to elements of the utterance. Nuyts (1992: 281), too, as-
sumes that the first thing that has to be decided when mapping an
underlying cognitive ‘Singular State of Affairs’ onto an FG clause structure
is the choice of the basic predicate (and its terms). The factors he sees be-
hind this choice include higher-level matters of illocution, politeness and
attitude, etc. (as well as the availability in the lexicon of the language of
predicate frames corresponding to that SoA). However, he does not elabo-
rate on how, within his own cognitive interpretation of FG, such complex
choices are actually to be implemented.
- More specifically, Hengeveld’s reformulated ‘interpersonal level’ can easily
be interpreted in terms of Whiteheadian complex subjective aims (e.g. illo-
cutions embedded within discourse moves), and propositional prehensions,
which combine indicative prehensions (Hengeveld’s ‘referential acts’) and
predicative conceptual prehensions (Hengeveld’s ‘ascriptive acts’). The
downward layering at this level is what is essentially new in Hengeveld’s
reformulation. This allows for the alignment of an ascriptive act at the in-
terpersonal level with an entity of any order at the representational level
below it, not just a zero-order predicate. In the Whiteheadian framework of
‘eternal objects’ (here ‘predicates’) and ‘nexūs’ (here read ‘entity types’)
this is to be welcomed, since the same eternal objects may be involved in
nexūs of various degrees of abstraction. The left-to-right restrictions on de-
cisions in production at the interpersonal level that Hengeveld calls for are
in fact largely provided for by the Whiteheadian theory of the successive
stages of the ‘concrescence’, as applied to linguistic utterances (cf. Fortes-
cue 2001: Appendix 2).
- The phenomenon is by no means limited to polysynthetic languages like
Eskimo, and can be illustrated for Japanese, for example, as in the following
structure from Shibatani (1990: 248), where the affixed nominal tyuu ‘mid-
dle of’ is attached to an entire clause:
i. [Yamada-san ga tyuukosya o hanbai]-tyuu
Mr. Yamada NOM used.car ACC sell
′in the middle of Mr. Yamada’s selling used cars’
Compare even in English the man I saw at the station yesterday’s face, with
wide phrasal scope of genitive -s.
- ‘TEL(IC)’ is a ubiquitous affix that, according to Jacobsen (1993: 250), sig-
nals ‘finitehood’ of a predicate, i.e. its relative independence as a clause,
not just the second part of a serializing construction, which in Jacobsen’s
Role and Reference terms is a ‘nuclear cosubordination’ construction in
