Against the Predp Theory of Small Clauses Ora Matushansky
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Here Referred to As Class 18A (See Hyman 1980:187)
WS1 Remarks on the nasal classes in Mungbam and Naki Mungbam and Naki are two non-Grassfields Bantoid languages spoken along the northwest frontier of the Grassfields area to the north of the Ring languages. Until recently, they were poorly described, but new data reveals them to show significant nasal noun class patterns, some of which do not appear to have been previously noted for Bantoid. The key patterns are: 1. Like many other languages of their region (see Good et al. 2011), they make productive use of a mysterious diminutive plural prefix with a form like mu-, with associated concords in m, here referred to as Class 18a (see Hyman 1980:187). 2. The five dialects of Mungbam show a level of variation in their nasal classes that one might normally expect of distinct languages. a. Two dialects show no evidence for nasals in Class 6. Two other dialects, Munken and Ngun, show a Class 6 prefix on nouns of form a- but nasal concords. In Munken Class 6, this nasal is n, clearly distinct from an m associated with 6a; in Ngun, both 6 and 6a are associated with m concords. The Abar dialect shows a different pattern, with Class 6 nasal concords in m and nasal prefixes on some Class 6 nouns. b. The Abar, Biya, and Ngun dialects show a Class 18a prefix with form mN-, rather than the more regionally common mu-. This reduction is presumably connected to perseveratory nasalization attested throughout the languages of the region with a diachronic pathway along the lines of mu- > mũ- > mN- perhaps providing a partial example for the development of Bantu Class 9/10. -
Against Predp
AGAINST PREDP ORA MATUSHANSKY SFL (CNRS/Université Paris-8)/UiL OTS/Utrecht University 1xxIntroduction Whereas Stowell 1981, 1983 analyzes small clauses (minimal units of predication) as maximal projections of the head of the predicate (i.e., as APs, PPs, etc.), Bowers 1993, 2001 argues that this is not enough and predication must be mediated by a functional head (Pred°), which has both a semantic and a syntactic function: (1) VP V° PredP = small clause consider DP Pred Marie Pred° AP ø proud of her work Bowers' motivation for this proposal was mostly theoretical, but some empirical evidence was also provided. However, as I will argue below, this conclusion, although widely accepted by now, is not, on closer examination, supported by linguistic evidence that has been adduced in its favor and theory-internal arguments for it either have become obsolete or may be counted by an alternative explanation. 2xxTheoretical Evidence for PredP The first, most frequently cited argument for the existence of a functional head in small clauses comes from coordination. While it is generally impossible to coordinate maximal projections of different lexical heads (a constraint from Chomsky 1957 that Williams 1981 terms the Law of Coordination of Likes), coordination of small-clause predicates is possible (Sag et al. 1985): 83 84 Matushansky (2) a. I consider Fred crazy and a fool. b. I consider Mary both shrewd and in the know. Bowers proposes that the Law of Coordination of Likes can be explained by the impossibility of assigning a label to the constituent formed by the coordination of projections of X° and Y°. -
Some Features of the Zulu Nouns A.C
a? SOME FEATURES OF THE ZULU NOUNS A.C. Nkabinde 1. INTRODUCTION Analyses of the phonological and morphological variations of the noun coupled with the different positions in which the noun occurs in the Zulu sentence have been somewhat circuitous and incomplete. The failure of the grammarians to take cognisance of the fact that the semantic structure1 of the predicate (the verb or copulative) largely determines the nature of a following noun has led to inconclusive description. This article attempts to demonstrate that the use of the noun in the three main types of sentence2, the exploration of case relations, and the transposition of the noun in the sentence could be used to good advantage to determine the nature of Zulu nouns. 2. THE STRUCTURE OF THE PRIMARY NOUN Zulu primary nouns are made up of a regular morphological and tonal structure. They have a disyllabic class prefix and a monosyllabic or polysyllabic stem. The class prefix has a VCV combination of phones, whereas the stem mainly has a CV combination. As a rule, the tonal structure of the class prefix has a /HH sequence of tones. We recognise the following tone patterns of Zulu noun stems identified by Cope (1970:120-121): /LL/; /LH/; /HL/; and /FL/. The primary noun occurs mainly in the subject “slot” of a declarative sentence in Zulu.3 It also occurs less regularly in the object “slot”. However, in its secondary function, the primary noun undergoes morphological, semantic, 377 tonological or phonological modification. The changes to primary nouns predominantly occur at the beginning and/or end of the word.4 The structural changes of the primary noun in its secondary function appear to be attributable to the following factors: • the nature of sentence in which the noun is used • the relationship of the verb with the noun; case relation • the relationship of the noun with another word with which it is juxtaposed. -
Serial Verb Constructions Revisited: a Case Study from Koro
Serial Verb Constructions Revisited: A Case Study from Koro By Jessica Cleary-Kemp A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Associate Professor Lev D. Michael, Chair Assistant Professor Peter S. Jenks Professor William F. Hanks Summer 2015 © Copyright by Jessica Cleary-Kemp All Rights Reserved Abstract Serial Verb Constructions Revisited: A Case Study from Koro by Jessica Cleary-Kemp Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics University of California, Berkeley Associate Professor Lev D. Michael, Chair In this dissertation a methodology for identifying and analyzing serial verb constructions (SVCs) is developed, and its application is exemplified through an analysis of SVCs in Koro, an Oceanic language of Papua New Guinea. SVCs involve two main verbs that form a single predicate and share at least one of their arguments. In addition, they have shared values for tense, aspect, and mood, and they denote a single event. The unique syntactic and semantic properties of SVCs present a number of theoretical challenges, and thus they have invited great interest from syntacticians and typologists alike. But characterizing the nature of SVCs and making generalizations about the typology of serializing languages has proven difficult. There is still debate about both the surface properties of SVCs and their underlying syntactic structure. The current work addresses some of these issues by approaching serialization from two angles: the typological and the language-specific. On the typological front, it refines the definition of ‘SVC’ and develops a principled set of cross-linguistically applicable diagnostics. -
Dative Constructions in Romance and Beyond
Dative constructions in Romance and beyond Edited by Anna Pineda Jaume Mateu language Open Generative Syntax 7 science press Open Generative Syntax Editors: Elena Anagnostopoulou, Mark Baker, Roberta D’Alessandro, David Pesetsky, Susi Wurmbrand In this series: 1. Bailey, Laura R. & Michelle Sheehan (eds.). Order and structure in syntax I: Word order and syntactic structure. 2. Sheehan, Michelle & Laura R. Bailey (eds.). Order and structure in syntax II: Subjecthood and argument structure. 3. BacskaiAtkari, Julia. Deletion phenomena in comparative constructions: English comparatives in a crosslinguistic perspective. 4. Franco, Ludovico, Mihaela Marchis Moreno & Matthew Reeve (eds.). Agreement, case and locality in the nominal and verbal domains. 5. Bross, Fabian. The clausal syntax of German Sign Language: A cartographic approach. 6. Smith, Peter W., Johannes Mursell & Katharina Hartmann (eds.). Agree to Agree: Agreement in the Minimalist Programme. 7. Pineda, Anna & Jaume Mateu (eds.). Dative constructions in Romance and beyond. ISSN: 25687336 Dative constructions in Romance and beyond Edited by Anna Pineda Jaume Mateu language science press Pineda, Anna & Jaume Mateu (eds.). 2020. Dative constructions in Romance and beyond (Open Generative Syntax 7). Berlin: Language Science Press. This title can be downloaded at: http://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/258 © 2020, the authors Published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Licence (CC BY 4.0): http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ ISBN: 978-3-96110-249-5 (Digital) 978-3-96110-250-1 -
William Snyder the Compounding Parameter (TCP)
To appear in Violeta Demonte and Louise McNally (eds.) Telicity, Change, and State . Oxford: OUP. 1 PARAMETER THEORY AND MOTION PREDICATES William Snyder The Compounding Parameter (TCP) of (Snyder 1995, 2001) has been linked to a number of the same points of cross-linguistic variation that Leonard Talmy (1985, 1991, 2000) addresses in his well-known verb-framed / satellite-framed typology. Talmy differentiates between languages in which path-of-motion is normally encoded in the main verb of a clause ("verb-framed" languages), and those in which path-of-motion is more commonly expressed outside the verb ("satellite-framed" languages). Both the English type of verb-particle construction (where the particle can be separated from the verb by a phrasal constituent, as in Mary pulled the lid off ) and the English adjectival resultative construction ( John wiped the table clean ) have been argued to depend on the positive setting of TCP (e.g. Snyder 2001, Sugisaki & Isobe 2000); and both are typical of Talmy's satellite-framed languages (e.g. Talmy 1985:68,104). Likewise, researchers have argued that a spatial PP (such as under the bridge ) can convert a pure manner-of-motion activity predicate (Sue swam for/*in 15 minutes ) into an accomplishment ( Sue swam under the bridge in 15 minutes ) only in [+ TCP] languages (Beck & Snyder 2001, Gehrke 2008), and only in satellite-framed languages (cf. Aske 1989:6-7). This chapter examines the precise role of TCP in the linguistic expression of motion events. One of my central claims will be that TCP should be understood as the availability, or unavailability, of a specific rule of semantic composition, which I term To appear in Violeta Demonte and Louise McNally (eds.) Telicity, Change, and State . -
Page 806 to 831 References.Lwp
References Adisasmito, Niken, & Simon Donnelly (1993a). Grammatical High Tone Assignment in Rwanda Negatives. Handout from Linguistics Summer Institute Phonology Workshop, 21 July 1993, Ohio State University . Adisasmito, Niken, & Simon Donnelly (1993b). Grammatical High Tone Assignment in Rwanda. Handout from 24th Annual Conference on African Linguistics. Columbus, Ohio. 23 July 1993. Ambrose, David (2004). Sephuthi language and literature. Lesotho Annotated Bibliography , section 129. Lesotho: House 9 Publications. Anttila, Arto (2002). Morphologically conditioned phonological alternations. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 20:1-42. Archangeli, Diana (1988). Aspects of underspecification theory. Phonology 5: 183-208. Archangeli, Diana, & Douglas Pulleyblank (1986). The content and structure of phonological representations. MS , University of Arizona and University of British Columbia. Archangeli, Diana, & Douglas Pulleyblank (1994). Grounded Phonology . Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. Bao, Zhiming (1999). The Structure of Tone . Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bastin, Yvonne (1983). La finale -IDE et l’imbrication en bantou . Tervuren: Annales du Musée Royal de l’Afrique Centrale. Baumbach, Erdmann J. M. (1987). Analytical Tsonga Grammar . Pretoria: University of South Africa. Beach, Douglas M. (1924). The science of tonetics and its application to Bantu languages. Bantu Studies 2: 75-106. Beckman, Jill N. (1995). Shona height harmony: Markedness and positional identity. In University of Massachusetts Occasional Papers in Linguistics 18: Papers in Optimality Theory, ed. by Jill N. Beckman, Laura Walsh Dickey & Suzanne Urbanczyk, 53–75. Amherst: GLSA. Beckman, Jill N. (1997). Positional faithfulness, positional neutralization and Shona height harmony. Phonology 14.1: 1-46. 806 Beckman, Jill N. (1998). Positional faithfulness . Doctoral dissertation, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. http://roa.rutgers.edu/files/234-1297/234-1297-BECKMAN- 6-0.PDF (12 December 2007). -
MR Harley Miyagawa Syntax of Ditransitives
Syntax of Ditransitives Heidi Harley and Shigeru Miyagawa (in press, Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics) July 2016 Summary Keywords 1. Structure for the Two Internal Arguments 2. Underlying Order 3. Meaning Differences 4. Case, Clitic 5. The Structure of Ditransitives 6. Nominalization Asymmetries 6.1. A Morphological Account of the Nominalization Asymmetry 6.2. –kata Nominalization in Japanese and Myer’s Generalization 6.3 Selectional Accounts of the Nominalization Asymmetry 6.4 Applicative vs Small Clause Approaches to the DOC. 7. Constraints on the Dative/DOC Alternation 7.1 Morphological Constraints 7.2 Lexical Semantic Constraints 7.3 Information-Structural and Sentential Prosody Constraints 8. Overview and Prospects Further Reading References Summary Ditransitive predicates select for two internal arguments, and hence minimally entail the participation of three entities in the event described by the verb. Canonical ditranstive verbs include give, show and teach; in each case, the verb requires an Agent (a giver, shower or teacher, respectively), a Theme (the thing given, shown or taught) and a Goal (the recipient, viewer, or student). The property of requiring two internal arguments makes ditransitive verbs syntactically unique. Selection in generative grammar is often modelled as syntactic sisterhood, so ditranstive verbs immediately raise the question of whether a verb might have two sisters, requiring a ternary-branching structure, or whether one of the two internal arguments is not in a sisterhood relation with the verb. Another important property of English ditransitive constructions is the two syntactic structures associated with them. In the so-called “Double Object Construction”, or DOC, the Goal and Theme both are simple NPs and appear following the verb in the order V-Goal-Theme. -
The Structure of Small Clause Predication
173 Azusa Yokogoshi The Structure of Small Clause Predication The Textual Functions of Their Heads Azusa YOKOGOSHI 1. Introduction The structure of small clauses, which are exemplified in the italicized portions of (1), has been one of the most controversial topics in generative grammar. (1) a. We consider Mary honest. b. We want Mary happy. Various analyses have been proposed for the structure of small clauses. It is widely assumed that small clauses have the same categorial status and internal architecture regardless of the matrix verbs selecting them. However, as recently discussed by Contreras (1995), Baker (1997), and Basilico (2003) among others, there is good reason to argue that the structure of small clauses should not be treated uniformly. However, their analyses differ considerably as to the classification of small clauses. Apparently, the matrix verbs in (1) seem to select small clauses with the same structure. As will be shown, however, small clauses selected by consider and want differ in their syntactic and semantic properties and therefore should be treated as having different structures. The verbs which behave like consider and want are given in (2a,b), respectively. (2) a. believe, consider, find, imagine, judge, perceive, prove, regard, suspect, take, ... b. expect, fear, hate, like, love, need, want, ... (cf. Declerck (1991)) The selection of small clauses of the matrix verbs is textual in the sense that it is determined not only by syntactic but also semantic factors.1 It will be argued that the 1 The concept of “text” would not only include discourse but also some other factors. Readers refer to Halliday (1978) as to the notion of text, although I would not strictly follow the framework of Halliday’s systemic functional grammar here. -
Exceptional Case Marking in Japanese and Optional Feature Transmission*
EXCEPTIONAL CASE MARKING IN JAPANESE AND OPTIONAL FEATURE TRANSMISSION* Hajime Takeuchi Nanzan University 1. Introduction In this paper, I present an analysis of exceptional Case marking (ECM) in Japanese. A typical example is shown in (1). (1) a. Taroo-wa [Yuki-ga baka da to] omot-teiru. T-TOP [Y-NOM stupid COP COMP think-PROG ‘Taro thinks that Yuki is stupid.’ b. Taroo-wa [Yuki-o baka da to] omot-teiru [[ T-TOP [Y-ACC stupid COP COMP think-PROG ‘Taro thinks that Yuki is stupid.’ A certain class of verbs in Japanese takes a clausal complement with an overt complementizer, to, and the subject in the embedded clause can be marked with either nominative or accusative Case without any semantic difference. There are two major analyses for the Japanese ECM in the literature. One is the obligatory raising analysis initially proposed in Kuno (1976) and examined in detail in Authier (1991), Tanaka (1992), and Ura (1994). The other is the optional raising analysis discussed in Bruening (2001), Hiraiwa (2001, 2005) and Tanaka (2002). In this latter analysis, the accusative Case on the embedded subject is licensed via Agree. The proposal herein pursues the latter and aims for making it more precise. Crucial for the analysis presented in this paper is the proposal by Chomsky (2008) that a phase head transmits its features to its complement. Thus, C transmits its phi-features and edge feature (EF) to T, and only then does T become capable of licensing nominative Case. I argue that feature transmission (FT) is optional in certain limited cases, and that this makes * An earlier version of the material of this paper was presented in the 8th Workshop of the International Research Project on the Comparative Syntax and Language Acquisition, held at Nanzan University in March, 2010 and in Generative Lyceum, held at Kwansei Gakuin University in May, 2010. -
A Look at Tesniere's E19 Elements Through the Lens of Modern
A Look at Tesnière’s Éléments through the Lens of Modern Syntactic Theory Timothy Osborne 615 6th Street Apt. 110 Kirkland, WA 98033 USA [email protected] Abstract nent theoretician to have rejected the binary di- vision of the clause into a subject and predicate A recent project to produce a much belated and to have replaced this division with verb cen- English translation of Lucien Tesnière’s trality. The placement of the verb as the root of Éléments de syntaxe structurale has provided all syntactic structure was the all-important nov- the opportunity for an in depth look at elty (and the main act of genius) in his theory. Tesnière’s theory of syntax. This contribu- Given verb centrality, the theory of syntax that tion examines a few aspects of Tesnière’s Tesnière was proposing could not help but be work through the lens of modern syntactic theory. Tesnière’s understandings of constit- construed as a DG. uents and phrases, auxiliary verbs, preposi- Despite the fact that Tesnière is widely tions, gapping, right node raising, proposi- acknowledged as the father of an entire stream tional infinitives, and exocentric structures of syntactic theory, most syntacticians and are all briefly considered. Concerning some grammarians lack exposure to his work. Few of these areas, we see that Tesnière was vi- grammarians have actually read Tesnière’s Élé- sionary with his analysis, whereas in other ments de syntaxe structurale, largely because an areas, modern syntactic theory now rejects English translation of the Éléments is absent his account. Of particular interest is the fact from the world of linguistics. -
Morphological and Phonological Structure in Zulu Reduplication
University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2013 Morphological and Phonological Structure in Zulu Reduplication Toni Cook University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the Linguistics Commons Recommended Citation Cook, Toni, "Morphological and Phonological Structure in Zulu Reduplication" (2013). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 745. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/745 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/745 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Morphological and Phonological Structure in Zulu Reduplication Abstract This dissertation provides an account of Zulu reduplication within the derivational framework of Distributed Morphology (DM). New Zulu data challenge the idea of reified domains like the D(erivational)- Stem and Macrostem as relevant constituents for reduplication (Downing 1997, Hyman, Inkelas, and Sibanda 2009). Instead, a crucial distinction is made between morphemes that fall within the scope of reduplication, and those that are outside of it. Reduplication is assumed to be an operation that copies segmental material to a bare disyllabic template, and only has indirect access to morphosyntactic structure through phonological operations. I claim that reduplication can take place as soon as the RED morpheme undergoes Vocabulary Insertion and Linearization, or at a later point in the derivation. Chapter 1 introduces the material, and chapter 2 presents an argument that the variation between the default Bantu verbal final vowel -a and the vowel from an extension suffix iselated r to the presence of two v heads in the structure. I show that the variation in the final owelv is absent with lexicalized causatives.