On the different interpretations of sentence-initial ainsi ‘so’ and the competition between three types of Verb–Subject order

2.1 The different inversion types

Nominal inversion patterns (in contrast with pronominal and complex inversion) have often been motivated discourse-functionally. For instance, Birner (1994) shows that nominal inversion in English allows “the presentation of relatively familiar information before a comparatively unfamiliar logical subject” ^[5] (Birner 1994: 234; see also Cornish 2001: 121). For French as well, linguists tend to agree that nominal inversion finds its motivation in information structure packaging (see, among others, Fuchs 1997; Lahousse 2011 for an overview). In this regard, whereas most authors accept that the postverbal nominal subject is the focus of the sentence, Lahousse (2011: 267) argues that nominal inversion indicates that the postverbal subject should not be interpreted as the topic of the sentence, but not necessarily as the focus either. ^[6] Furthermore, as Dorgeloh (2001: 34) notes, nominal inversion not only has an information structure effect at sentence-level: it is a marked option with respect to the canonical Subject–Verb word order pattern, and therefore may draw special attention to the content conveyed by the utterance (“system-based markedness”). This effect of inversion may, however, be more or less striking depending on the specific context (or genre) that the utterance appears in. In this sense, context-based effects may neutralize the effect of drawing special attention to the content of the utterance.

Pronominal inversion and complex inversion in French are attributed different functions than nominal inversion. According to Guimier (1997: 50) and Fournier (1997: 97), pronominal and complex inversion indicate that the speaker does not want to fully assert the content of the utterance ^[7] (see also Flament-Boistrancourt 1999: 170–173; Fuchs and Pierre 2007). This subjective layer distinguishes these types of inversion from canonical Subject–Verb word order and from nominal inversion. ^[8] According to Molinier (2012), another motivation for using complex or pronominal inversion rather than Subject–Verb constituent order is that inversion creates a closer link with the prior context. However, it is unclear whether this is due to the inversion type or to the presence of ainsi. This function is not attributed to nominal inversion.

It is beyond the scope of this paper to provide a detailed analysis of inversion with ainsi in terms of its information structure properties, the potential subjectivity it expresses, or the closer link it may have with prior context. We will instead focus our attention on the interaction between constituent order patterns and the interpretations of ainsi; these will be introduced briefly in the next Section. ^[9]

2.2 Interpretations of ainsi

Among the scholars who study the interpretation and function of ainsi (most notably Le Bidois 1952; Buchmüller 1975; Jonare 1976; Zenone 1982; Hybertie 1996; Guimier 1997; Flament-Boistrancourt 1999; Blanche-Benveniste 2006a; Lahousse 2011; Molinier 2012), ^[10] most agree that, in sentence-initial position (and regardless of the type of inversion), ainsi’s main function is to link the sentence/proposition it introduces (P2) to the preceding context/proposition (P1). Although the terminology used to indicate the various interpretations of ainsi may differ, all authors acknowledge the distinction between manner adverb ainsi (which includes its quotative use) (Section 2.2.1) and sentence adverb ainsi (Section 2.2.2).

2.3 Ainsi + inversion

In what follows, we present the different types of inversion (nominal inversion, Section 2.3.1; complex inversion, Section 2.3.2; pronominal inversion, Section 2.3.3) and the different interpretations of ainsi these inversion types can combine with. Our discussion is based on the relevant linguistic literature on the issue.

3.1 Manner ainsi and quotative ainsi

When ainsi functions as a manner adverb (13), it can be paraphrased by de cette manière ‘in this way’ (13’a) and explicitly refers to the way in which the action denoted by the verb in the ainsi sentence is carried out. Another possible paraphrase is in terms of the interrogative de quelle manière ‘in this way’ (13’b):

Note that manner ainsi, when expressing the way in which the action denoted by the verb is carried out, may also describe the subject of the verb (in other words, ainsi also functions here as a subject-oriented adverb). Hence, in instances such as (12) above, ainsi not only refers to a manner of living, but it also expresses a property of the subject il ‘he’; that is, ainsi may also function as an attribut du sujet (subject predicate). The same goes for instances of ainsi in combination with light verbs such as aller ‘to go’, as in (14).

Furthermore, manner can be closely related to the notion of consequence, as will be illustrated in Section 3.2.

Quotative ainsi, as in (15), refers to a preceding quotation, and does not refer to a manner of dire ‘saying’.

Quotative ainsi differs from manner ainsi in two ways: (i) it cannot be paraphrased by de cette manière ‘in that way’ (15’a), and (ii) its antecedent should be retrieved by qu’est-ce que or que ‘what’ (15’b) rather than by de quelle manière ‘in what way’ (15’c).

3.2 Two types of consecutive ainsi

When ainsi is a consecutive adverb, ^[13] it relates a cause (P1) to a consequence (ainsi P2). We argue that two types of consecutive ainsi should be distinguished, depending on whether it introduces an unintentional consequence or an intentional consequence. The first type, “unintentional consequence”, is illustrated in (16). Here, the prior context identifies a cause, namely, the lacking quality of the speeches by the ones in power, and the sentence introduced by ainsi provides its consequence: the impression is created that the ones in power no longer believe in their own appeals for full-time employment.

In this case, ainsi can be paraphrased as par conséquent ‘consequently/accordingly/as a result’ (16’a), but not as de cette manière ‘in this way’ (16’b). Ainsi is clearly not a manner adverb either, as it does not specify the way in which the action denoted by the verb (avoir l’intuition ‘to have the impression’) is carried out, nor does it denote a property of the subject.

In some cases, however, as in (17), ainsi can be paraphrased either by par conséquent ‘consequently’ or de cette manière ‘in this way’ (17’). In this case, de cette manière ‘in this way’ has an intentional reading: there is an agent (the Reserve Bank) whose intention it is to obtain a particular result (raise the GDP) in a particular way (by lowering interest rates). ^[14]

Clearly, ainsi in (17) does not refer to the way in which the action denoted by the verb takes place, i.e., ainsi does not modify s’accroître ‘grow’ (e.g., ‘growing rapidly/slowly’). Rather, the adverb refers to the way in which the Reserve Bank wants to stimulate growth: by lowering the interest rates. In other words, ainsi indicates the way in which the growth will be established (lowering interest rates).

The difference between (16) and (17) lies in the absence (unintentional consequence) or presence (intentional consequence) of an agent who considers the cause as a manner to obtain a certain result/consequence. In (16), there is no agent whose intention it is for the speaker(s) to get an unfavorable impression of political discourse; the unfavorable impression of political discourse is there nonetheless, so this is an unintentional consequence. It is therefore inappropriate to replace ainsi by de cette manière ‘in this way’ (16’b).

3.3 Illustrative ainsi

The illustrative interpretation of ainsi has received the least attention in the literature. The function of illustrative ainsi is to introduce an example of a more general assertion preceding it. In (18), “the Singapore stock exchange has a record loss of 22,52 %” is an illustration of the more general assertion “all stock exchanges closed in the red”.

Since the illustration is not caused by the preceding proposition, ainsi in this context cannot be paraphrased by par conséquent ‘by consequence/as a result/accordingly’ (18’a). It does not designate a manner either (18’b), but it can be paraphrased by par exemple ‘for example’ (18’c):

Note that, conversely, ainsi cannot be paraphrased by par exemple ‘for example’ when it is a manner adverb (19a), a quotative marker (19b), or when it introduces a result (19c, d):

3.4 Overview

Our characterization of the different interpretations of ainsi can be summarized as follows:

1. Manner ainsi refers to the manner, specified in the preceding context, in which the action denoted by the verb in P2 is carried out

2. Quotative ainsi: ainsi refers to a preceding quotation which functions as the object of the communicative verb in P2; it does not indicate the way in which the communication takes place

3. Consecutive ainsi refers to (an) event(s) described in P1 that leads to the resulting proposition (P2) introduced by ainsi. Two types are distinguished:

   1. Intentional consequence involves an agent who sees the causal event(s) (P1) as a way to achieve a certain result

   2. Unintentional consequence denotes a consequence that simply follows from a preceding event (in P1) without an agent intervening

4. Illustrative ainsi introduces a specific instantiation (P2) of a preceding general observation (P1).

Table 1 presents an overview of the distinguishing characteristics of the different interpretations of ainsi:

It should be noted that a few corpus examples allow two paraphrases from different categories (see for instance discussion about example 3). However, there is usually one predominant interpretation.

Now that we have the means to distinguish between the different interpretations, we can move on to the corpus data (Section 4) and see how these might relate to the grammaticalization of ainsi (Section 5).

4.1 The corpus: Le Monde (1998)

Our analysis (for more details and examples, see Karssenberg and Lahousse 2014) is based on the corpus Le Monde (1998), which contains the issues of the newspaper Le Monde from the year 1998 and has a total number of approximately 25.7 million lemmatized words. In order to retrieve the occurrences of ainsi in which the adverb is sentence-initial, the query employed was “. ainsi”, i.e., ainsi following a period. This yielded 537 tokens, which were then sorted manually in order to select all instances of ainsi + inversion in tensed clauses. A total of 171 sentences with sentence-initial ainsi + inversion were obtained.

4.2 Quantitative results

Table 2 shows that the predominant type of inversion in sentences introduced by ainsi is complex inversion (42 % of all the cases), followed by nominal inversion (35 %) and pronominal inversion (23 %).

Furthermore, the corpus contains 366 tokens with sentence-initial ainsi followed by Subject–Verb constituent order. Thus, 68,1 % of all tokens show no pattern of inversion, and 31,9 % (171 tokens) do. Clearly, inversion is marked with respect to canonical Subject–Verb constituent order in the sense of Givón (1995), in that “the marked category (…) tends to be less frequent (…) than the corresponding unmarked category” (Givón 1995: 28). ^[15]

All 171 examples of ainsi followed by inversion were then coded for “interpretation” on the basis of the tests formulated in Section 3. The results are presented in Table 3:

As can be seen from this table, nominal inversion co-occurs in many cases with manner adverb ainsi (58 %, see (13)) and in 5 % with quotative ainsi (see (14)). Hence, the claim that nominal inversion necessarily combines with a manner or quotative adverb interpretation of ainsi (Molinier 2012; see Section 2.3) is too strong: the ainsi-sentence is introduced by consecutive ainsi in a third of the nominal inversion tokens of our corpus. Moreover, there are two examples of nominal inversion introduced by illustrative ainsi, a pattern that is not mentioned in the linguistic literature. We will analyze both unexpected patterns in Sections 4.3.1 and 4.3.2.

As for complex inversion, our data confirm that this type of inversion occurs mostly with sentence adverb ainsi (91,7 % of all complex inversion cases, see (16)). We will explain the unexpected combination “manner ainsi + complex inversion” in Section 4.3.3. Furthermore, among the sentence adverb interpretations, consecutive ainsi has received most attention in linguistic literature, but our data show that illustrative ainsi is by far the most frequent interpretation of ainsi sentence adverb in combination with complex inversion (50 of the 73 complex inversion tokens, i.e., 69 %).

Finally, previous studies suggest that pronominal inversion, contrary to complex inversion, also co-occurs with manner and quotative ainsi (see Section 2.2.3). With respect to ainsi followed by Subject–Verb order, the great majority of the 366 tokens in our corpus have an illustrative interpretation (20a), while the consecutive interpretation is less frequent (20b). ^[16]Ainsi does not function as a manner adverb in any of the tokens with Subject–Verb order. In this sense, when it comes to the interpretation of sentence-initial ainsi, Subject–Verb order behaves more like complex and pronominal inversion.

4.3 Marked cases

In what follows, we analyze the tokens found in our corpus that seem to run against tendencies mentioned in the linguistic literature (cf. Section 2.2): the combination of “consecutive ainsi + nominal inversion” (4.3.1), “illustrative ainsi + nominal inversion” (4.3.2), and “manner ainsi + complex/pronominal inversion” (4.3.3). All these exceptions are shown to follow from independent factors that render the unmarked type of inversion (i.e., the inversion type that is normally combined with that specific interpretation of ainsi) unavailable.

5.1 Grammaticalization of ainsi: Prior accounts

Manner adverbs are known to grammaticalize into sentence adverbs. Thus, König (2012; 2015) sees ainsi as one of many manner deixis markers that have followed cross-linguistically attested paths of grammaticalization (e.g., French ainsi, pareil ‘same’, autant ‘as much’; German so ‘thus’; Dutch zo ‘thus’; English thus, so). These processes have led to different new uses, among which consecutive adverbs, quotation markers, and comparative adverbs. König (2012) states: “From a synchronic point of view, these notable processes of grammaticalization and of semantic change turn up in the uses of these demonstratives [e.g., ainsi] as very elaborate polysemous structures” (König 2012: 37). ^[18] Manner adverbs can be the source of so many different sentence adverbs because their basic interpretation is “very general and vague, so that an extension of their interpretation is possible in many contexts” (König 2012: 29). ^[19] Some of the attested cross-linguistic paths of deixis markers of manner and degree are summarized in Figure 1 below (see König 2012: 23). ^[20]

Figure 1:

Deixis markers of manner and degree: the paths of grammaticalization.

According to König (2012) and Diessel (1999), the point of departure of the grammaticalization of a manner expression is always its exophoric use, that is, the manner expression is accompanied by gestures and refers to a referent in the discourse context (surroundings). The expression then evolves towards an endophoric use: it refers to a linguistic referent that precedes (anaphoric) or follows (cataphoric) the utterance of the sentence containing the manner expression. The anaphoric manner expression can then take either a conditional/inferential meaning or a comparative and then consecutive meaning; through its cataphoric use, it can take a quotative meaning (see Figure 1).

In their analysis of c’est ainsi que ‘it is so/thus that’, Lahousse and Lamiroy (2015) also argue that ainsi has evolved from a manner/comparative expression into a sentence adverb. The anaphoric or “relational” dimension of ainsi plays an important role in this process. ^[21] According to these authors, the adverb has lost its concrete, manner semantics, which has been replaced by more abstract meanings such as consequence, a typical sign of grammaticalization. They also note that it is no surprise that ainsi in contemporary French can occur as a manner adverb as well as a sentence adverb: when an expression grammaticalizes from stage A to stage B, both stages often co-exist in a language (the notion of layering, Hopper 1991). Furthermore, two meanings can also be simultaneously present in one utterance, in which case one can speak of a “bridging context” (Evans and Wilkins 2000; Heine 2002). Lahousse and Lamiroy (2015) state that their corpus data contain tokens in which both the manner interpretation and the consequence interpretation are present at the same time, i.e., there is overlap (see, e.g., Heine et al. 1991; Heine 1999).

5.2 From manner adverb to sentence adverb

In what follows, we will argue that the grammaticalization paths described by König (2012) and Lahousse and Lamiroy (2015) can be supplemented by results from the corpus analysis in Section 4.

Firstly, recall that a distinction between two types of consecutive ainsi was proposed (Section 3.2): intentional consequence ainsi can be paraphrased by de cette manière ‘in this way’, whereas unintentional consequence ainsi cannot. Contrary to the path proposed by König (2012) from anaphoric to consecutive adverbs, in which the comparative interpretation is positioned in between the two (28a), we hypothesize that an alternative (or an additional) path could be the one visualized in (28b). Given that intentional consequence combines the semantics of manner and of consequence, it can be seen as a bridging context between manner and consequence. ^[22]

Secondly, it is interesting to note that the interpretation that is by far most frequent in combination with ainsi, namely illustration, is not (yet) integrated into Figure 1. This use of ainsi can be said to be the most “semantically bleached” in that it no longer refers to any manner or cause, but simply presents a link between a set in the previous discourse and an example of this sub-set in the sentence introduced by ainsi. Further insight into this under-researched interpretation of ainsi could come from taking a cross-linguistic perspective, that is, from examining ainsi’s cognates in languages that followed similar paths, described by König (2012, 2015, 2017) (see Figure 1). As (29) shows, both German so ‘thus’, Dutch zo ‘thus,’ and English so can function as a manner adverb, although in English, the adverb needs to be reinforced by like (see König 2017).

German so ‘thus’ and Dutch zo ‘thus’ are also productively used as quotation markers (30a–b). In English, the adverb so is only used as a quotation marker in rather archaic formulations (30d), and although thus is also possible (30c), the translations of the French, German, and Dutch quotative uses show that like this is a more natural way to indicate a quotation.

As for the consecutive uses of the adverbs under consideration, German so is reinforced as somit ‘thus’ (lit. so with) (31a). In Dutch, zo ‘thus’ can be reinforced as zodoende ‘thus’ (lit. so doing), but it need not be: in (31b), zodoende ‘thus’ can be replaced by zo ‘thus’. In English, thus can be used to express a cause-consequence relationship (31c), and so can so, reinforced or not by that (31d).

However, contrary to German so ‘thus’ and Dutch zo ‘thus’, English so and thus cannot have an illustrative interpretation, as shown by the examples in (32).

It could therefore be the case that the illustrative meaning was the last to emerge in French, German, and Dutch, and that this simply did not (yet) happen in English. ^[23] Clearly, the illustrative interpretation is still in need of further research, both from a diachronic and a cross-linguistic point of view.

Summing up, we hypothesize that (i) intentional consequence may have been a bridging context between manner and consequence, and (ii) the illustrative interpretation may have been the last to develop.