Cognitive Semantics : Meaning and Cognition

58 PETER HARDER
function served by the utterance as a whole. The function of sub-utterance
items must similarly be described by a top-down procedure of the kind
followed above: the function of a constituent element is its contribution to the
job done by the whole utterance.
This approach provides a perspective on dependence that is different
from the one described by Langacker. The basic motivation for it is that one
linguistic element needs another because it cannot do the whole job on its
own; when you code a sub-utterance item, there is always something missing
before you have a fully functional utterance. In this formulation, it is true of all
utterance fragments; but the central asymmetry of the elements in the layered
structure suggests a differentiation between two types of “incompleteness”.
As we saw, the coding differentiation embodied in the layered model distinguishes
between “operands” and “operators”; and the defining mark of operators
is that they “use” the operands in order to create a new and more complex
item. At the top (or “output”) end we found the functional types of meaning
(that relate content to the situation); at the bottom (or “input”) end we find
conceptual content, which is “used” in various ways by higher-level operators.
On the basis of this dichotomy, we can set up two complementary types of
incompleteness, giving rise to two types of dependence relations.
The incompleteness of operators consists in the lack of a content to
operate upon. Starting from the top, we began by differentiating between the
illocution (for example, declarative or interrogative) and the propositional
content. The illocution operator specifies function, for example, that the
utterance is a question, but in isolation it would lack a content. With a slight
overgeneralization, I shall call the dependence of an operator upon its operand
conceptual dependence. The motivation for this name is that the dependence
points downward in the structure, towards the conceptual end, and that what is
missing therefore includes the conceptual content. The overgeneralization is
due to the fact that there may be something else apart from conceptual content
missing.
The operand is incomplete in the opposite way. What is missing is a
specification of what to do with it — in the example we have a proposition, but
we do not know whether it is to be used to make a statement or ask a question.
Therefore the dependence of operand upon operator will be called functional
dependence. Seen from the purely conceptual point of view, there is nothing
incomplete about a proposition — we are perfectly capable of entertaining a
proposition mentally, as part of an inventory of “issues”, without incorporat-