More on tripartite models of grounding

There was a recent question about my post on the need for a tripartite system of grounding, as advocated by Porter’s model of verbal aspect. Here is the relevant excerpt of the comment:

I noticed you cited an earlier source from Jones but wasn’t sure if you were aware of this one. They say that this “is a revision of schemes by Longacre(1976b), Longacre and Levinsohn (1978), and Hopper (1977), and others, who proposed simple bipartite structures of information” (p. 3) and presents “the theoretical framework underlying a number of papers in this volume.” Basically, they survey several Mesoamerican languages and conclude that all mark at least three levels of discourse: background, foreground, and peak. Jones and Jones show six levels. From more to less prominent they list peak, pivotal events, backbone events, ordinary events, significant background, and ordinary background (p. 7). However, none of the languages employ all three event levels (pivotal, backbone, and ordinary) which suggests that emically, there are only 5 levels and several of the languages surveyed use all 5.

To use frontground, foreground, background terminology, the basic levels would be frontground (peak), ordinary/important foreground, ordinary/important background.

Now, they mainly discuss narrative and only provide a short discussion at the end on non-narrative genre. Another thing to keep in mind, especially when considering Porter’s position, is that the marking devices used to distinguish these levels includes more than tense. There is also affixation, particles, mood, independent/dependent constructions, repetition/doublets.

[snip]

You can find a pdf of the article here: http://www.sil.org/acpub/repository/16072.pdf

Jones and Jones are discussed by Stephen Wallace,¹  so I’d encourage you to read his take on things. My claim here is not that grounding is a simple binary opposition, but to take to task the specific claim regarding Greek tense-forms always portraying a single level of grounding. Porter is not claiming that he is following what Jones and Jones have claimed, but that Greek represents a unique language situation since it has three aspects.

Regarding Jones and Jones’ claims, in the full paper I interact with a Finnish linguist’s work that claims what could be viewed as a tripartite model. In reality, it is two binary systems that are entailed one within the other. You have a basic background/foreground opposition, then within each of these there is the option for prominence marking to highlight something with respect to the other background/foreground actions. What Jones and Jones are claiming is quite similar, in that they are noting that peak and pivotal events stand out more than ordinary events, all of which are ostensibly in the foreground. Similarly, there is significant vs. ordinary background, all of which is background.

The key thing to look into is how the discussion they tried to begin has developed since then. Longacre’s notion of peak is simply that: a notion. In the broader linguistic discussion, the main people who treat it as a monolithic entity are primarily found in NT studies. Most understand peak to be more of a clustering of discourse features, a harmonic convergence so to speak. Quite often offline material is inserted just before or at the peak to slow down the discourse flow.

You’d also need to go back and look at how Jones and Jones define their terminology versus how S. Wallace or Levinsohn or I do. I use foreground/mainline to refer to those actions or events which advance the plot. By definition, background/offline material does not advance the theme or plot. This is the binary division I advocate, recognizing that there is highlighting and prominence marking occurring at times on both planes.

My sense of what Jones and Jones are responding against is the early tendency to take Longacre’s model as a simple, flat, binary opposition. Things have come a long way since the 70s. My claims in Discourse Grammar of the Greek New Testament refer to highlighting devices, but do not relate the highlighting back to grounding. I would agree with J&J’s assertion that there can be prominence marking on both planes, but would say that the binary division of “that which advances the theme/plot” and “that which does not” still stands. It is not clear to me that Porter’s frontground is simply prominence marking in the foreground. He seems to view it as something distinctly different from foreground.