The Voice System of Amharic
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Faculty of Humanities, Social Sciences and Education The Voice system of Amharic Desalegn Belaynew Workneh A dissertation for the degree of Philosophiae Doctor - December 2019 The Voice System of Amharic Desalegn Belaynew Workneh A thesis submitted for the degree of Philosophiae Doctor UiT – The Arctic University of Norway Center for Advanced Study in Theoretical Linguistics (CASTL) December 2019 Abstract This dissertation examines the voice system of Amharic. I have studied the voice features including an anticausative and a pair of causative functional items focusing on their selection, interpretation and syntactic projection. The voice items display some interesting properties that made them worth an indepth inves tigation. First, the single anticausative morpheme is associated with multiple constructions such as the passive, reciprocal, reflexive, middle and the like. This raises the foundational theoretical problem on the relation between form and meaning. Furthermore, the causative items display quite striking contrasts with the anticausative in selection. The direct causative item filters verb classes. The indirect causative does a similar filtering, but mostly on the types of external arguments. The anticausative, on the other hand, imposes little selection restriction on the verb and argument types. How the selection patterns are correlated with the interpretation and with the syntactic posi tion of the voice items is the main concern of this study. In this dissertation, I have proposed that all the crucial properties of the voice items, includ ing the observed distinctions in selection, projection and interpretation, can be explained by understanding the voice items two types–those that belong to both the syntactic and semantic domains, and those belong to the syntax only. The natural consequence of this understanding is that the syntax specific features could im pose selection only within the syntactic component. They freely combine with all semantic classes of verbs. The interface features, on the other hand, impose selection both on the syntactic derivation as well as the semantic composition. The causative items in Amharic are interface features—they merge with their semantic inter pretations, as their syntactic categories. Because of this, they impose selection restrictions on the items they merge with not only in their syntactic properties but also on their semantic attributes. The anticausative, on the other hand, is proposed to be a purely syntactic feature. That means, its distribution is fully determined by its syntactic category. Furthermore, I will argue that multiple decausative constructions associated with the anticausative morpheme such as the passive, reciprocal, reflexive, and middle, etc., are not coded into the morpheme itself. The morpheme comes semantically underspecified. The decausative constructions get associated with the morpheme only later in the derivation/composition due to syntax internal contextual factors. This is to mean that the passive, the reflexive, the reciprocal, etc., constructions are grammatically irrelevant in this language. They are simply allosemes that get assigned later in the semantic component. i Acknowledgments I would like to express my deep and sincere gratitude to my advisor, Peter Svenonius who singlehandedly made this dissertation a possibility. The last few years have been extremely challenging to me. As my relationship with the Norwegian immigration system deteriorates, I would have given up pretty early if not for Peter’s assistance. Both on the academic and the administrative side, he has been my only light to see the end of this challenging experience. We had so regular appointments and, every meeting we had, he shared his profound insights with me and made eyeopening comments on my drafts. Problems that felt deadly to me come out a way easier once I talk to Peter. Even when I was stuck and frustrated, he has always been supportive and patient. Without his constant encouragement and assistance, I would not have been able to complete this project. I am eternally grateful for his help. I am also thankful to the other CASTL professors such as Tarald Taraldsen, Michal Starke and Gillian Ramchand for their insightful and interesting lectures they taught me over the years. It is especially Gillan Ramchand who taught me to look for solutions outside of the syntactic box when it is appropriate to do so. I also learn a lot from other members of the CASTL community. I want to thank them all for producing such friendly environ ment. I am also indebted to leadership in the linguistic department. I would like to forward my special thanks to Eystein Dahl, Nina Norum, Mayvi Johansen, Beathe Paulsen for letting me have some extra time to finish up this dissertation. Had not been to their patience, I would never be able to shape the work the way I want it to be. I also would like to thank Florian Schäfer for taking his time to comment on the draft of the dissertation. He generously agreed to read and comment on the dissertation without ever meeting me, and provided a detailed commentary that greatly improved the work. His sharp questions made me rethink of much of the analysis. I also want to forward my special thanks to Eba Teresa for reading part of this dissertation and judging on the grammaticality of the Amharic sentences. Many thanks to him. My time in Tromsø would have been boring if I didn’t have such dear friends as Etaferahu Tesfaye, Ruhama Teshome, Daniel Legbanu, Abebaw Admassie, Mimi Adane, Terje Mo Hansen, Ruben Mo Hansen, Yanet Abebaw & Eliab Abebaw. I want to forward my special thanks to them for supporting me to do better not just on my dissertation, but in my life in general. iii Contents Abstract i Acknowledgments iii Contents v List of Tables xi List of Figures xiii Abbreviations xv Acronyms xvii Transcription xix 1 Introduction 1 1.1 The aim and scope .............................. 1 1.2 Why Amharic? ................................ 3 1.3 The main issues ................................ 5 1.3.1 The derivational directions ...................... 6 1.3.2 The selection of the voice items ................... 9 1.3.3 Polysemy of the voice items ..................... 9 1.3.4 Syntactic projection of the voice ................... 11 1.3.5 The function of the voice items ................... 11 1.4 The proposals ................................. 11 1.5 Outline of the Dissertation .......................... 13 I The data 17 2 Causativization 19 2.1 Introduction .................................. 19 v vi Contents 2.2 Lexical causative ............................... 20 2.3 Periphrastic Causative ............................ 20 2.4 Morphological Causatives .......................... 20 2.4.1 The direct causative a– ........................ 20 2.4.2 The indirect causative as– ...................... 22 2.5 Comparing the two morphological causatives . 26 2.5.1 Meaning ............................... 26 2.5.2 Animacy restrictions ......................... 30 2.5.3 Distribution .............................. 31 2.5.4 Argument structure .......................... 32 2.5.5 Event structure of the causatives ................... 34 2.6 Causatives in the GB ............................. 38 2.6.1 Minimalist approach ......................... 39 2.6.2 Harley’s study of the causatives in Japanese . 41 2.6.3 Amberber’s analysis of the causatives in Amharic . 42 2.6.4 Towards a new analysis ....................... 48 2.7 Summary ................................... 49 3 The anticausative 51 3.1 Introduction .................................. 51 3.2 Terminological clarification .......................... 52 3.3 Multiple functions of the anticausative .................... 54 3.3.1 The Passive .............................. 54 3.3.2 The Impersonal Passive ....................... 55 3.3.3 Other Passivelike constructions ................... 56 3.3.3.1 Reportive Passive ..................... 56 3.3.3.2 Pseudopassive ...................... 56 3.3.4 The middle .............................. 57 3.3.4.1 Change in body posture . 57 3.3.4.2 Nontranslational motion . 58 3.3.4.3 Translational Motion ................... 58 3.3.4.4 Emotion middles ...................... 59 3.3.4.5 Cognition Middle ..................... 59 3.3.4.6 Indirect Middle ...................... 59 3.3.4.7 Spontaneous event middle . 60 3.3.4.8 Other deponent middles . 60 3.3.5 The Reflexive ............................. 60 3.3.6 The Reciprocal ............................ 62 3.3.7 The Unaccusative ........................... 63 3.4 Anticausativization in GB ........................... 63 3.4.1 Derivational theory of the passive . 63 Contents vii 3.4.2 Some issues with the derivational theory of the passive . 68 3.4.2.1 Transitive verbs with no passive . 69 3.4.2.2 Passives with no active counterpart . 71 3.4.2.3 Idioms ........................... 73 3.4.2.4 Accusative case can be marked with the passive . 74 3.4.2.5 Passive of intransitives . 75 3.4.2.6 Polyfunctionality of the passive morphemes . 75 3.4.2.7 Passive of nominals .................... 76 3.5 Polyfunctional morphemes in Minimalist approaches . 79 3.5.1 Nanosyntax: voice values as structured features . 86 3.5.2 Voice values as flavors of voice ................... 98 3.5.3 Underspecified voice . 103 3.6 Summary ...................................104 4 The Verb Classes 105 4.1 Unmarked causative ..............................106 4.1.1 Class 1: hit ..............................106 4.1.2 Class 2: break ............................107 4.1.3 Class 3: