Workshop Variation and Change in the Verb Phrase Book of Abstracts
Workshop Variation and Change in the Verb Phrase University of Oslo, 5–6 December 2019 Book of Abstracts
Keynotes
Elena Anagnostopoulou Datives, genitives and passives in the history of Greek
Peter Petré Many people’s grammars, nobody’s grammar. Grammaticalization of auxiliary constructions as emergent in the community
Thursday 5th December
Tanja Mortelmans & Elena German Reflexive Constructions: an exploration into the diachronic Smirnova dimension
Michelle Troberg From derived to lexically specified Result: Change in the French verb phrase
Yela Schauwecker Resultative constructions in Medieval French as a contact phenomenon
Dennis Wegner All roads lead to eventive past participles: on similarities and constrasts in the grammaticalisation of passive and perfect(ive) participles in Germanic and Romance
Katarzyna Janic Auxiliary verb constructions
Imola-Ágnes Farkas Variation and Change in the Romanian and Hungarian Verb Phrase
Karin Harbusch & Gerard Verb frequency and verb placement in three Germanic languages: A Kempen diachronic corpus study
Petr Biskup Grammaticalization of Prepositions in Slavic
Anna Pompei From Verb-Particle Constructions to Prefixed Verbs: a diachronic perspective
Friday 6th December
Malka Rappaport Hovav Modern Hebrew in transit: the shift from a V-framed to an S-framed profile
Kari Kinn & Ida Larsson Scandinavian argument shift in time and space
Björn Lundquist & Maud On the subtle and ephemeral effects effects of reflexives on verb and subject Westendorp placement
Guro Fløgstad Aspectual simplification in a normative source: The Perfect in Argentinian Spanish school grammars
Datives, Genitives and passives in the history of Greek Elena Anagnostopoulou University of Crete Joint work with Christina Sevdali, Ulster University In this talk, I will compare the properties of dative and genitive objects in Classical vs. Modern Greek. Based on the difference in behavior of dative/genitive objects of ditransitives and monadic transitives in the two periods of Greek which correlates with a range of systematic alternations in the case realization of Modern Greek IO arguments depending on the presence and category (DP vs. PP) of lower theme arguments, I will argue that there are two distinct modes of dative and genitive objective case assignment: they are either prepositional or dependent (structural) cases, as also proposed by Baker & Vinokurova (2010), and Baker (2015) on the basis of cross-linguistic evidence. If we adopt this proposal a number of important implications follow both for the syntax of Modern Greek genitive indirect objects and for the understanding of the change from Classical to Standard Modern Greek which must be seen as a development from a grammatical system where dative and genitive were lexical/inherent/prepositional cases to a system where genitive is a dependent case assigned to DPs in the sense of Marantz (1991). Interestingly, the development from Classical Greek (CG) to Modern Greek (MG) affected the availability of dative/genitive-nominative alternations in passivization, in the opposite direction of what might be expected, i.e. such alternations were possible in CG and are no longer possible in MG. I will address this puzzle and will argue that the availability of such alternations is not always a diagnostic tool for detecting whether an indirect object DP bears lexically specified or structural/dependent Case, contra standard practice in the literature. In the final part of the talk, I will attempt to identify and critically discuss some key stages in the development from the Classical Greek to the Modern Greek system.
Many people’s grammars, nobody’s grammar. Grammaticalization of auxiliary constructions as emergent in the community Peter Petré University of Antwerp
Starting from the assumption that language is a complex adaptive system, I show how macro- properties of grammaticalizing constructions are an unintended effect of intentional individual interactions. I will look at three developments in 17th and 18th century English as represented in 50 prolific writers (brought together in the EMMA-corpus): (i) the extension of 'be going to' to mark imminent future; (ii) the emergence of a copular function of 'get' (as in 'he got angry'); (iii) the increasing productivity of prepositional passives. For each of these I will present evidence that individuals continue to innovate/adopt innovations beyond adolescence, but do so in different ways, depending on, among other things, their age and community of practice. These different shades of adopting innovations lead to a higher degree of variation, which in turn prepares the construction for a further leap in the grammaticalization process taken by later-born individuals.
German Reflexive Constructions: an exploration into the diachronic dimension Tanja Mortelmans (Universiteit Antwerpen) Elena Smirnova (Université de Neuchâtel)
The paper addresses the general syntactic pattern [SUBJi V REFLi PP/AP] with the obligatory presence of the weak reflexive marker sich. This general pattern is attested with at least three different semantic interpretations in present-day German. First, the reflexive motion construction (cf. Hilpert & Perek 2014, Mortelmans & Smirnova 2019), as illustrated in (1), refers to a complex scene in which the subject referent [SUBJ] moves along a path and/or towards a goal [PP] by means of performing the action expressed in the verb [V].
(1) Ein riesiger Bagger gräbtV sichREFL durch die schmale StraßePP ‘A giant excavator digs its way through the narrow street.’
Second, the (fake) reflexive resultative construction, illustrated in (2), expresses a complex scene in which the subject referent [SUBJ] comes into a result state [AP/PP] by performing the action expressed in the verb [V].
(2) Sie singtV sichREFL heiserAP / in die Herzen des PublikumsPP ‘She sings herself hoarse/ into the hearts of the audience.’
Third, the so-called intensifying reflexive construction (cf. Gyselinck 2018 for Dutch), illustrated in (3), functions to intensify the action expressed in the verb [V].
(3) Es lachtV sichREFL kaputtAP / zu TodePP ‘He’s laughing his head off.’
In our previous studies, we have argued that these three semantic variants should be considered three independent construction types in present-day German. Still, they are closely related to each other – formally as well as semantically – and as such constitute a family of constructions. In the constructional network, they are linked to each other by means of different vertical and horizontal links. For example, the resultative and the intensifying construction types are related to each other by a metaphorical link. The focus of the present study will be on the diachronic development of this family of constructions. Building on the results of previous, synchronically oriented studies, the present study will examine diachronic corpus data from 1600 to 1900 (DTA, deutschestextarchiv.de) in order to trace back the development of each of these three reflexive constructions.
References Gyselinck, E. (2018). The role of expressivity and productivity in reshaping the constructional network. A corpus-based investigation into synchronic and diachronic variation in the intensifying fake reflexive resultative construction in 19th-21st century Dutch. Diss. Universiteit Gent. Hilpert, M. / Perek, F. (2014). “Constructional tolerance: Are argument structure constructions equally powerful across languages?” Constructions and Frames 6/2, 266-304. Mortelmans, T. / Smirnova, E. (2019). „Analogues of the way-construction in German and Dutch: another Germanic sandwich?“ In: Leuschner, T. /Koster, D. / de Vogelaer , G., Hrsg. (2019), 251–282.
Variation and Change in the Verb Phrase December 5-6, 2019, University of Oslo
From derived to lexically specified Result: Change in the French verb phrase Michelle Troberg, University of Toronto Mississauga This paper proposes a historical change in French involving the verb phrase whose consequence radically restricts possibilities of resultative secondary predication and thus accounts for Modern French as a quintessentially verb-framed language (Talmy 2000, i.a.). Old and Middle French allowed various kinds of weak resultative secondary predication evident in directional verb-particle constructions, complex adjectival resultatives, and goal-of-motion constructions (Troberg & Burnett 2014, 2017); see the examples in (1). The first two are not available in Modern French and the last is quite restricted and subject to individual and dialectal variation (Cummins 1996, i.a.). A derivation involving an extended PP along the lines of Svenonius (2010), namely with an independently projected PathP, nicely models this constellation of constructions in Medieval French; see (2a). Only two types of elements instantiate Path0 during this period: verbal roots with transitional readings, broadly construed, and small set of directional/aspectual preverbs (vestiges of Latin spatial prefixes). The typological change relevant to this paper is brought about by the well-known univerbation of the preverbs in combination with their most commonly occurring verbal roots. These gradual low-level lexical changes removed the crucial evidence for an independently projected PathP with the consequence that Path0 was no longer acquired as a distinct head from v0 (2b). Before this change, Result verbs are syntactically derived, but after it occurred, they are lexically specified. In other words, lexical items that encoded or implied transition were reanalyzed as a bundled category; common Path roots, for example, we reanalyzed as v-Path0 (aller, sortir, entrer, venir, etc.), while those that were not commonly employed to describe change of location were acquired as pure manner/activity verbs (trotter, cheminer, etc.). Structurally, such a collapsed PP rules out DirP, accounting for the wholesale loss of directional particles. Lexically, the reanalysis of verbal roots simultaneously rules out adjectival resultatives and restricts the range of verbs permitted in goal-of-motion constructions. (1) a. Resultative/directional verb particle Jus descendirent (Moniage Guillaume 1, 1150, p. 29) down descended ‘Down they went’ b. Complex adjectival resultative secondary predication Yci tout nu le despoulliez (Mir. St Panth., 350) here all naked him strip ‘Strip him naked here’ c. Goal-of-motion construction en passant par la chambre et cheminant aux nopces (CNN, 122) in passing by the bedroom and making.one’s.way to.the wedding (2) a. 2 b. v DirP 2 � 2 v-Path pP � PP 2 2 FIGURE PARTICLE Dir PathP 2 <�> 2 p PlaceP Path pP 2 Place GROUND <� > 2 FIGURE 2 p PlaceP 2 Place GROUND
CUMMINS, S. Movement and direction in French and English. TWPL 15: 31-54. SVENONIUS, P. 2010. Spatial P in English, in G. Cinque and L. Rizzi (eds), Mapping spatial PPs: The cartography of syntactic structures Vol. 6. New York: OUP, 127-160; TALMY, L. 2000. Toward a Cognitive Semantics. Cambridge: MIT Press; TROBERG, M. & H. BURNETT. 2017. From Latin to Modern French: A punctuated shift. In E. Mathieu and R. Truswell From Micro-change to Macro-change, OUP; TROBERG, M. ET H. BURNETT. 2014. Le prédicat résultatif adjectival en français médiéval. Lingvisticae Investigationes 37(1): 152-17. Abstract Yela Schauwecker Department of Romance Linguistics University of Stuttgart
Workshop: Variation and Change in the Verb Phrase
Resultative constructions in Medieval French as a contact phenomenon
In this paper I will show that the distribution of resultative constructions, such as the directed Goal-of-motion construction with Manner-of-motion verbs, in Medieval French can statistically best be accounted for by linguistic contact influence from Medieval English (ME). I will argue that the resultative construction is transferred from ME into Anglo-French (AF) independently from the individual verb itself.
In terms of the Talmyan distinction (Talmy 2000; 1985), Medieval French, chronologically situated between s-framed Latin and v-framed modern French, has traditionally been considered a v-framed system (e.g. Iacobini und Fagard 2011, Acedo-Matellán 2010, Pourcel und Kopecka 2005). Recently, however, this view has been challenged, as the OF system of motion event expression has been described as a “ surprising intermediary stage” (Burnett und Troberg 2014, 104), in that it allows certain types of s-framed resultative constructions which are not licensed in classical Latin nor in modern French (Goal-of-motion construction).
Interestingly, the distribution of the Goal-of-motion construction with manner-of-motion verbs is not equal across data, but, as has been shown by Rainsford and Schauwecker (2020), tends to occur more frequently in older texts (chronological interpretation) and in Anglo- French (AF) texts (variety interpretation).
Based on data from the Base de Français Médiéval (BFM) 2016) and from the Anglo-Norman Hub database (cf. Schauwecker and Stein 2018), I will show that the chronological hypothesis performs significantly less well in accounting for the observed distribution than a model which is based on variety. I will therefore argue that the higher frequency of resultative constructions observed in AF can be accounted for by linguistic contact influence from s- framed Medieval English (ME).
This is all the more interesting as none of the paradigmatic manner-of-motion verbs (chevauchier “ to ride (on horseback)", nager “ to sail", voler “ to fly", etc.) have been copied (Johanson 2002) into ME. Direct copying of individual lexical item therefore does not seem to be a prerequisite for this type of construction to be transferred. This again can be taken as further evidence for the shared-syntax account of the bilingual mind (Pickering und Branigan 1998, Levelt, Roelofs, and Meyer 1999), see also Hartsuiker, Pickering, und Veltkamp 2004:413).
References: Anglo-Norman Hub. o. J. Universities of Aberyswyth and Swansea. http://www.anglo- norman.net. Base de Français Médiéval (BFM). 2016. ENS de Lyon, Laboratoire IHRIM. http://txm-bfm- corpus.org. Burnett, Heather, und Michelle Troberg. 2014. „On the Diachronic Semantics of Resultative Constructions in French“. Herausgegeben von Christopher Piñón. Empirical Issues in Syntax and Semantics 10: 37–54. Hartsuiker, Robert J., Martin J. Pickering, und Eline Veltkamp. 2004. „Is Syntax Separate or Shared Between Languages?: Cross-Linguistic Syntactic Priming in Spanish-English Bilinguals“. Psychological Science 15 (6): 409–14. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0956- 7976.2004.00693.x. Iacobini, Claudio, und Benjamin Fagard. 2011. „A diachronic approach to variation and change in the typology of motion event expression A case study: From Latin to Romance“. Cahiers de Faits de langue 3: 151–72. Johanson, Lars. 2002. „Contact-induced change in a code-copying framework“. In Language Change, herausgegeben von Mari C. Jones und Edith Esch, 285–313. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110892598.285. Levelt, M., A. Roelofs, und A.S. Meyer. 1999. „A theory of lexical access in speech production“. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 22: 1–75. Pickering, Martin J., und H. P. Branigan. 1998. „The Representation of Verbs: Evidence from Syntactic Priming in Language Production.“ Journal of Memory and Language 39: 633–51. Pourcel, Stéphanie, und Aneta Kopecka. 2005. „Motion expression in French: typological diversity“. Durham and Newcastle Working Papers in Linguistics 11: 139–53. Schauwecker, Yela, und Achim Stein. 2018. „Automatic Morphosyntactic and Dependency Annotation of the Anglo-Norman Text Database“. In Grammar and Corpora 2016., herausgegeben von Eric Fuß. Heidelberg: Heidelberg University Publishing. Talmy, Leonard. 1985. „Lexicalization patterns: Semantic structure in lexical forms“. In Language typology and syntactic description: Grammatical categories and the lexicon, herausgegeben von Tomothy Shopen, 3:57–149. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2000. Toward a Cognitive Semantics. Cambridge, Mass. [u.a.]: MIT Press.
All roads lead to eventive past participles: on similarities and contrasts in the grammaticalisation of passive and perfect(ive) participles in Germanic and Romance Dennis Wegner (University of Wuppertal)
Comparing the grammaticalisation paths of perfect and passive periphrases in Germanic and Romance uncovers a cross-linguistic contrast that often goes unnoticed in the generative literature. Whereas passive and perfect participles find a common predecessor in a deverbal adjective denoting a result in Germanic, they may be shown to develop from different sources in Romance: the Latin (verbal) PPP and its stative (adjectival) counterpart. Despite these distinctions, retracing the historical developments reveals that both language families still end up with just one past participle that is employed in passive and perfect contexts. The participles of Germanic start out as deverbal adjectives denoting results, already found in Proto-Indo-European (Fortson 2010: 105). These consist of the structure in (1) and may only be derived from unaccusative/decausative verbs denoting a change-of-state (VCoS). This still shines through in stative passives/perfects (Her hands are tied./She has her hands tied.). Upon the auxiliation of BE/HAVE, the adjectival layer vanishes (contra Broekhuis 2019). This relieves the participle of the requirement for IA-externalization (Levin & Rappaport 1986) and a VCoS. Asp, however, can only derive perfectivity if there is a VCoS. This leads to the structural options of (2) perfective with VCoS, (3) perfect with HAVE+vP, and (4) imperfective passive with vP (Wegner 2019). While it is often assumed that Romance follows the same path (Ackema 1999: 145f.), this holds for (2)/(3) developing from (1), but neglects the role of the verbal PPP in (5) for the grammaticalisation of passive periphrases. In Late Latin, it loses its perfective contribution (amatus sum > amatus fui) (Danckaert 2016: 155). The novel form then serves as the source for the periphrastic passive in early stages of Romance, which boils down to (4). Given the syncretism with ‘perfect’ participles, the two forms eventually fall together as past participles with a flexible aspectual contribution. (1) AP (2) AuxP (3) AuxP (4) AuxP (5) AuxP 2 2 2 2 2 A AspP Aux AspP Aux AspP Aux AspP Aux AspP 2 BE 2 HAVE 2 BE 2 BE 2 Asp VCoS Asp VCoS [+perf] Asp vP Asp vP Asp vP [+perf] [+perf] [+EA] [-perf] [-perf] [+perf] stative BE-perfect HAVE-perfect passive perfect passive
References: Ackema, P. 1999. Issues in Morphosyntax. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Broekhuis, H. 2019. The rise of the periphrastic perfect tense in the continental West Germanic languages.
Auxiliary verb constructions This study approaches auxiliary verb constructions (AVC) defined as mono-clausal structures that involve a lexical and auxiliary predicate, the latter contributing grammatical content to the clause (Anderson 2006). We will focus on AVC expressing benefactive meaning in particular. The aim is to investigate different sources of auxiliary verbs prone to participate in benefactive constructions. For this purpose, we offer a fine-grained analysis based on self/other-benefactive distinction, (1a-1b), to show that while some verbs (Table 1) have grammaticalized in self- benefactive domain (i.e. the action is beneficial to a subject participant); the others (Table 2) reflect other-benefactive meaning (i.e. the action is beneficial to a non-subject participant).
(1) Punjabi (Bhatia 1993: 119) a. ó ne xat likh littaa. He ERG letter.M.SG write take-PST.M.SG ‘He wrote the letter (for his own benefit).’ b. ó ne xat likh dittaa. he ERG letter.M.SG write give-PST.M.SG ‘He wrote a letter (for somebody).’
LANGUAGE SELF-BENEFACTIVE Hindi ‘take’ (Pardeshi 2001) Yakhha ‘eat’ (Schackow 2010) Table 1: Self-benefactive auxiliaries
LANGUAGE OTHER-BENEFACTIVE Ewe ‘give’ (Hünnemeyer 1985) Cantonese ‘help’ (Matthews and Yip 1994) Telugu ‘put’ (Krishnamurti 2003) Tukang Besi ‘do for’ (Donohue1999) Lahu ‘come to’ (Matisoff 1991) Table 2: Other-benefactive auxiliaries Since the shift from full lexical verbs to grammaticalized elements is gradient and involves Lexical Verb > Auxiliary Verb > Affix, another aim is to evaluate a status of a bound benefactive element within a single synchronic state of an individual language. Finally, an attempt will be made to explain development of auxiliaries. For instance, come to > benefactive path instantiates a more general grammaticalization process whereby motion verbs function as structural patterns to express relational (adpositional) concepts; give > benefactive marker > dative marker involves desemanticization, whereby the meaning component ‘to do something for the benefit of’ is bleached out (cf. Heine & Kuteva 2002).
References Anderson, Gregory. 2006. Auxiliary verb constructions (Oxford Studies in Typology and Linguistic Theory). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bhatia, Tej K. 1993. Punjabi: A Cognitive-Descriptive Grammar. Routledge Descriptive Grammar Series. London: Routledge. Donohue, Mark. 1999. A Grammar of Tukang Besi Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Heine, Bernd & Tania Kuteva. 2002. World Lexicon of grammaticalization. New York: Cambridge University Press. Hünnemeyer, Friederike. 1985. Die serielle Verbkonstruktion im Ewe: Eine Bestand- saufnahme und Beschreibung der Veränderungstendenzen funktional-spezialisierter Katarzyna JANIC, Leipzig University
Serialisierungen. M.A. thesis, University of Cologne, Cologne. Krishnamurti, Bhadriraju. 2003. The Dravidian Languages. Cambridge: CUP. Matisoff, James. (1991). Areal and universal dimensions of grammatization in Lahu. Elizabeth C. Traugott & Bernd Heine (eds.), Approaches to Grammaticalization, 1991, Vol. II, 383–453. Matthews, Stephen & Virginia Yip. 1994. Cantonese: a comprehensive grammar. London: Routledge. Pardeshi, Prashant. 2001. The explicator compound verb in Marathi: Definitional issues and criteria for identification. Kobe Papers in Linguistics 3: 94–111. Schackow, Diana. 2015. A grammar of Yakkha. Berlin: Language Science Press.
VARIATION AND CHANGE IN THE ROMANIAN AND HUNGARIAN VERB PHRASE
Imola-Ágnes FARKAS Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
In this presentation we propose to examine cognate object constructions (COCs) such as the English to sleep a sound sleep in two typologically different languages: Romanian and Hungarian. Following Horrocks & Stavrou (2010) and Lavidas (2013a, 2013b, 2018), we consider the following three classes of COCs: (i) transitive COCs built on prototypical transitive verbs (e.g. to do deeds ) (ii) transitivizing COCs built on derived unergative verbs (e.g. to sing a song ) (iii) aspectual COCs built on prototypical unergative verbs (e.g. to sleep a sound sleep ) The present stage of these two languages lacks the exact counterpart of the above aspectual COC; cf. *a dormi o dormire profundă ‘(lit.) to sleep a sleeping deep. FEM ’ and *aludni egy mély alvást ‘(lit.) to sleep a deep sleep. ACC ’. However, on closer inspection we see that both of these two languages have this structure but either at an earlier stage (Romanian) or in a different form (Hungarian). On the one hand, it has been shown that COCs are extremely frequent in Old Romanian, less frequent in Middle Romanian and very rare in Modern Romanian (cf. Frâncu 2009; Dragomirescu 2010; Dragomirescu & Nicolae 2013; Nicula Paraschiv & Niculescu 2016). Based on this generalization, we show that the almost 200 examples we have excerpted from our written corpus of 55 Old Romanian texts established in The Syntax of Old Romanian (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2016) shed light on the existence of a wide variety of transitive, transitivizing and aspectual COCs in Old Romanian. On the other hand, although in Hungarian (especially) aspectual COCs of the type to sleep a sound sleep are unacceptable (see above), Farkas (2019) demonstrates that the Accusative-marked pseudo-object mélyet ‘deep. ACC ’ in a VP such as aludni egy mélyet ‘(lit.) to sleep a deep. ACC ’ fulfils the function of the aspectual cognate object in this language. When taking a close look at the diachrony of such and similar objects, we start from a smaller set of pseudo-objects that includes the (light) pseudo-object egyet ‘one. ACC ’ and some other pseudo-objects such as egy jót ‘one good. ACC ’, jókat ‘good. PL .ACC ’, egy nagyot ‘one big. ACC ’ and nagyokat ‘big. PL .ACC ’. Based on their occurrences and frequency in several online corpora, we conclude that these cognate object-like elements are non-existent in Old Hungarian, rare in Middle Hungarian, increasingly frequent in Early Modern Hungarian and quite numerous in Modern Hungarian, where they are ‘completed’ by the emergence of a wide variety of Accusative-marked pseudo-objects having the role of the aspectual cognate object in this language (e.g. mélyet ‘deep. ACC ’).
References Dragomirescu, A., 2010, Ergativitatea: tipologie, sintaxă, semantică. București: Editura Universității din București. Dragomirescu, A., A. Nicolae, 2013, L’objet interne en roumain: description, évolution et comparaison entre les langues romanes, in E. Casanova Herrero, C. Calvo Rigual (eds.), Actas del XXVI Congreso Internacional de Lingüística y de Filología Románicas . Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 147-158. Volume II. Farkas, I.-A., 2019, Sóhajtott egyet, mélyet, hangosat: a magyar áltárgyak mint aspektuális belső tárgyak. Nyelvtudományi Közlemények (under review) Frâncu, C., 2009, Gramatica limbii române vechi (1521-1780) . Iași: Casa Editorială Demiurg. Horrocks, G., M. Stavrou, 2010, Morphological Aspect and the Function and Distribution of Cognate Objects across Languages, in M. Rappaport Hovav, E. Doron, I. Sichel (eds.), Lexical Semantics, Syntax and Event Structure . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 284-308. Lavidas, N., 2013a, Null and cognate objects and changes in (in)transitivity. Evidence from the history of English. Acta Linguistica Hungarica 60(1): 69-106. Lavidas, N., 2013b, Unaccusativity and the diachrony of null and cognate objects in Greek, in Elly van Gelderen, Michela Gennamo and Jóhanna Barðdal (eds.) Argument Structure in Flux. The Naples-Capri , Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 307-341. Lavidas, N., 2018, Cognate noun constructions in Early Modern English. The case of Tyndale’s New Testament, in H. Cuyckens et al. (eds.) Explorations in English Historical Syntax . Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 51-76. Nicula Paraschiv, I., D. Niculescu, 2016, Cognate objects and other pleonastic constructions, in G. Pană Dindelegan (ed.), The Syntax of Old Romanian . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 605-611.
Verb frequency and verb placement in three Germanic languages: A diachronic corpus study
Karin Harbuscha & Gerard Kempenb aComputer Science Faculty, University of Koblenz-Landau bMax Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen
In recently published psycholinguistic studies using treebanks of spoken German, Dutch and English (Kempen & Harbusch 2019a, b), we reported a statistical relationship between verb frequency and verb position (early vs. late) in finite clauses. Compared to the overall frequency distribution of verb lemmas in the corpora, high-frequency finite verbs are over- used in main clauses, at the expense of nonfinite verbs. Overuse of high-frequency finite verbs is virtually non-existent in subclauses. Furthermore, this “main-clause bias” (MCB) of high-frequency verbs is stronger in German and Dutch than in English. We argued that the MCB effect and its cross-language variation reflects the obligatory early (Cº) vs. intermediate (Iº) vs. late (Vº) positions of the finite verb in the clause types: German/Dutch: main clauses: Cº; subclauses: Vº. English: main clauses: Cº (iff subject-verb inversion) or else Iº (if auxiliary/modal) or Vº (if lexical verb); subclauses: Iº or Vº (as in main clauses; no Cº). Consequence: a wider gap between finite-verb positions in main vs. subordinate clauses in German/Dutch than English. We attributed the MCB to fast accessibility of high-frequency verbs (Kempen, Harbusch & van Kemenade 2019). This increases the probability of these verbs landing in clauses mandating early (Cº) finite-verb placement. In our talk we will present two extensions of this work: (1) We confirm the existence of the MCB and its cross-language variation in modern written corpora (although the effects are somewhat less prominent here than in the spoken corpora). (2) We compare the modern languages with three ancestor languages: Old High German, Old English, and Old Saxon (instead of Old Dutch, for which no treebank exists). Result: clear MCB patterns in OHG and OS, but not in OE. Interpretation: In OE writers (and speakers, presumably), verb accessibility affected main- and subordinate-clause planning similarly, whereas in OHG and OS, and in modern versions the three languages, verb accessibility affects main-clause more strongly than subordinate-clause planning. This suggests that in OE (but not in OHG and OS) subordinate clauses were basically planned as main clauses. This necessitated OE to rely on paratactic constructions in many cases where OHG and OS could use subordination.
References
Harbusch, K., Kempen, G., & van Kemenade, A. (2019). High verb frequency as an accessibility parameter promoting early verb placement in main clauses of OHG, OS, and OE. Talk at the Conference on Historical Corpora and Variation (HiCoV), Cagliari, April 2019. Kempen, G., & Harbusch, K. (2019). Mutual attraction between high-frequency verbs and clause types with finite verbs in early positions: Corpus evidence from spoken English, Dutch, and German. Language, Cognition, and Neuroscience, 34(9), 1140–1151. Kempen, G., & Harbusch, K. (2019). Information-structural effects of the accessibility of finite verbs: Corpus evidence from spoken English, Dutch, and German. Talk at the Comparative Germanic Syntax Workshop (CGSW34), Konstanz, June 2019. Grammaticalization of Prepositions in Slavic Petr Biskup Humboldt University of Berlin
This talk is concerned with grammaticalization of Slavic prepositions. Slavic languages have two types of prefixes: internal, with locative and idiosyncratic meanings, and external, with aspectual, temporal and operator meanings. Internal prefixes will be analyzed as prepositions (originally often adverbs) projecting their arguments in the complement of the verbal root and introducing the result state. External prefixes display properties typical for grammaticalization: more abstract meaning, loss of flexibility, higher position in syntactic structure, hence I analyze them as a product of the reanalysis of the head of the complement PP. I focus on the verbal prefix po- ‘on’ because it has a special status among other prefixes; it can have a pure temporal meaning and forms a speaker-oriented imperative. Specifically, I argue that Czech – in contrast to e.g. Russian, Polish and Bulgarian – has a genuine simple future po-, introducing the future reference when attached to a motion verb. I compare the future po- with other verbal prefixes and show that the future po- differs from them, e.g. in its inability to affect aspectual, selectional and argument structure properties of the host verb and in its inability to form certain verbal forms. I argue that the properties of future po- are based on the fact that it is a prepositional element that became grammaticalized as a future marker in two steps: The first step – reanalysis to AspP – is typical for external prefixes and is common to all Slavic languages, the second grammaticalization step – to TP – only happened in Czech (Slovak, Slovenian and Sorbian). Thus, many of the observed differences between the future po- and non-future prefixes can be accounted for in terms of their different structural positions. After reanalysis, the two arguments of future po- are addressee and speaker.
From Verb-Particle Constructions to Prefixed Verbs: a diachronic perspective Anna Pompei (University of Roma Tre)
The aim of this proposal is to analyze the relationship between Verb-Particles Constructions (VPCs) and Prefixed Verbs (PVs) in some Indo-European languages from a constructionist perspective. By VPCs I mean multi-word expressions formed by a particle and a verb, such as English phrasal verbs (to go out, to go in) (Dehé 2002) and Italian verbi sintagmatici (andare fuori, andare dentro) (Simone 1997). On the other hand, PVs are well exemplified in Latin (e.g. exeo, ineo), inter alia. The relationship between VPCs and PVs can be supposed in a synchronic perspective, e.g. considering German trennbare Verben, where the particle can be added to the base verb (hinausgehen, hineingehen) or follow it, according to the syntactic context. Moreover, in ancient phases of Indo- European languages there is evidence of the fact that PVs originate from VPCs (e.g. Old English under stōd, in Beowulf 1416). In Homeric poems both VPCs and PVs are found, whereas in post- Homeric Greek VPCs disappear. Considering the formation of PVs in various Indo-European languages, the following phases can be hypothesized (Pompei 2010):
PHASE I co-occurrence P [ ] V PHASE II complex verb P [ ] V PHASE III juxtaposition P+V Phrasal verbs PHASE IV compounding [P+V]V PHASE V derivation [P + [V]V]V
From a diachronic point of view, the relationship between VPCs and PVs has been studied in terms of grammaticalization (Cuzzolin 1995). However, grammaticalization can only explain how particles become prefixes (phase V). In fact, the constructionist perspective will help us to: (1) study the syntactic and semantic constraints on the formation of VPCs (phases II and III), starting from the simple co-occurrence of particle and verb (phase I) (e.g. distance between particle and verb; linguistic items that can be found between particle and verb – so-called particle shift; argument structure; information structure); (2) identify the constructional schemes and conflation phenomena (Booij 2010) promoting compounding (phase IV) (other forms of incorporation).
REFERENCES Baker, M. C. (1988), Incorporaton: a Theory of Grammatical Function Changing, Chicago, The University of Chicago Press. Booij, G. (2010), Construction Morphology, Oxford, Oxford University Press. Cuzzolin, P. (1995), “A proposito di sub vos placo e della grammaticalizzazione delle adposizioni”, Archivio Glottologico Italiano, 35, 122-142. Cuzzolin, P. – I. Putzu – P. Ramat (2006), “The Indo-European Adverbs in diachronic and typological perspective”, Indogermanische Forschungen, 111, 1-38. Dehé, N. (2002), Particle Verbs in English: Syntax, Information Structure, and Intonation, Amsterdam, Benjamins. Devine, A. M. – L. D. Stephens (2000), Discontinuous Syntax: Hyperbaton in Greek, Oxford, Oxford University Press. Lehmann, C., 1983, “Latin preverbs and cases”, in H. Pinkster (ed.), Latin Linguistics and Linguistic Theory, Amsterdam, Benjamins, 145-165. Lüdeling, A. (2000), On Particle Verbs and similar constructions in German, Stanford, CSLI. Pompei, A. (2010), “De l’expression de l’espace à l’expression du temps (et de l’aspect) en latin: le cas des préverbes“, De lingua Latina, 3, 1-20. Pompei, A. (2010), “Space coding in verb-particle constructions and prefixed verbs”, in G. Marotta – A. Lenci – L. Meini – F. Rovai (eds.), Space in Language, Proceedings of the Pisa International Conference, Pisa, Edizioni ETS, 401-418. Pompei, A. (2014), “Verb-particle constructions and preverbs in Homeric Greek between telicization, incorporation and valency change”, in A. Bartolotta, The Greek verb. Morphology, Syntax and Semantics, Louvain-La-Neuve, Peeters, 253-275. Simone, R. (1997), “Esistono verbi sintagmatici in italiano?”, Cuadernos de Filología Italiana, 3, 47-61. Talmy, L. (2007), “Lexical Typologies”, in T. Shopen (ed.), Language Typology and Syntactic Description, III, II ed., Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 66-168. Modern Hebrew in transit: the shift from a V-framed to an S-framed profile Malka Rappaport Hovav The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Biblical Hebrew (BH) has been shown to be a V-framed language [3]. The classification of Modern Hebrew (MH) is controversial [2,4]. In this talk I show that the grammar of MH is in the process of developing the profile of an S-framed language, more specifically, a weak S-framed language in the sense of [1]. A wide range of manner verbs can appear with directional phrases and PP result phrases, but the language does not admit AP results. The question I address in this talk is what triggered this shift. I speculate that, like many other V-framed languages, BH did not have an articulated direction/location satellite distinction – location phrases received directional interpretation from verbs encoding direction [7]. Some locational satellites were reanalyzed as directional. This process appears to have been influenced by S-framed L1 languages of non- native speakers of Hebrew throughout generations (mainly, Slavic and Germanic languages). The process was then accelerated by a more systematic location/direction distinction in nominal-based spatial expressions. I show that more recently, Hebrew has been developing resultative constructions with non-selected objects and that this process stemmed from a reanalysis of collocational idioms from Classical Hebrew, one of them with a reflexive object which has been reanalyzed as a fake reflexive [7]. Most recently, some of these directionals seem to be grammaticalizing and acquiring aspectual interpretations. I speculate that this process was influenced by contact with English. The data and analysis support the notion that S- framed languages have an argument-structure building process which is lexically licensed by the appropriate lexical means [5,6].
References
[1] Acedo-Matellán, Víctor. 2016. The Morphosyntax of Transitions. A Case Study in Latin and Other Languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press. [2] Berman, Ruth A. and Dan I. Slobin. 1994. Relating Events in Narrative: A Crosslinguistic Developmental Study. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. [3] Doron, Edit and Keren Dubnov. 2017. The locative alternation in Biblical (and Modern) Hebrew. In A. Moshavi and T. Notarius (eds.) Studies in Biblical Hebrew Linguistics.Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns. 321-360. [4] Henkin, Roni. 1998. Motion in Hebrew: issues in the typology and rhetoric of motion expressions. Lešonenu 61.4. The Academy for the Hebrew Language. [in Hebrew]. [5] Mateu, Jaume. 2010. On the l-Syntax of Manner and Causation. In M. Duguine, S. Huidobro,N. Madariaga, eds., Argument Structure and Syntactic Relations: A cross- linguistic perspective. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 89-112. [6] Mateu, Jaume. 2012. Conflation and incorporation processes in resultative constructions. In Violete Demonte and Louise McNally, eds., Telicity, Change, and State: A Cross- Categorial View of Event Structure. Oxford: Oxford University Press.252-278. [7] Rappaport Hovav, Malka. 2015. A Constructional Idiom in Modern Hebrew: The Influence of English on a Native Hebrew Collocation. Journal of Jewish Languages 3. 325–336.
Scandinavian argument shift in time and space Kari Kinn, University of Oslo & Ida Larsson, University of Oslo
Norwegian and Swedish exhibit variation with respect to argument placement, both within and across the languages. In both Norwegian and Swedish, NP objects follow negation (ex. 1). Pronominal objects, on the other hand, tend to precede negation (in main clauses with a single lexical verb); this is referred to as Object Shift (OS) (Holmberg 1986 and much subsequent literature) (ex. 2). Object shift does normally not apply, however, if the object pronoun is focused or has has a non-nominal antecedent (e.g. Andreasson 2013).
(1) Han likte ikke boka. (2) Han likte den ikke. he liked not book.DEF he liked it not ‘He didn’t like the book.’ (Nor) ‘He didn’t like it.’ (Nor)
Pronominal subjects (when not fronted to the prefield) tend to precede negation in both languages (Subject Shift, SS, ex. 3),while NP subjects exhibit more variation (in ex. 4, it follows negation). Subject placement is influenced by factors such as clause type and information structure (focused subjects generally follow negation even when pronominal).
(3) Derfor likte han ikke boka (4) Derfor likte ikke gutten boka. therefore liked he not book.DEF Therefore liked not boy.DEF book.DEF ‘Therefore he didn’t like the book.’ (Nor) ‘Therefore the boy didn’t like the book.’ (Nor)
The languages differ in their placement of objects in relation to verbal particles. In Swedish, all objects normally follow particles (ex. 5–6). In Norwegian, on the other hand, pronominal objects normally precede the particle, while NP objects can either precede or follow it (ex. 7–8).
(5) Vi kastade ut soporna/dem (7) Vi kastet ut søppelet/(%det) we threw out rubbish.DEF.PL/them we threw out rubbish.DEF/it ‘We threw out the rubbish/it out.’ (Swe) ‘We threw out the rubbish/ it out.’ (Nor)
(6) *Vi kastade soporna/dem ut (Swe) (8) Vi kastet søppelet/det ut. (Nor)
In this paper we investigate how this complex variation is transmitted across generations, making use of novel data from the corpora LIA (Language Infrastructure Made Accessible, a corpus of Norwegian dialect recordings from the 19th and 20th century) and CANS (Corpus of American Nordic Speech, consisting of recordings of Norwegian and Swedish heritage speakers in North America). We show that the variation is generally remarkably stable over time, and that it seems follow the same syntactic and information-structural principles across generations. This corroborates the notion that children are sensitive to fine-grained syntactic and information- structural distinctions from early on (Westergaard 2013). Even in the heritage varieties (American Nowegian and American Swedish) the same patterns can be discerned, in addition to new types of variation that we will explore in the paper.
References Andréasson, M.. 2013. Object shift in Scandinavian languages: The impact of contrasted elements. Nordic Journal of Linguistics 36(2). Pp. 187–217. Holmberg, A.. 1986. Word order and syntactic features in the Scandinavian languages and English. Stockholm University. Lundquist, Björn. 2014. Verb-particles: active verbs. Nordic Atlas of Language Structures (NALS) Journal 1: 110–118. Westergaard, M. 2013. The acquisition of linguistic variation. Parameters vs. micro-cues. In Lohndal, T. (ed.): In Search of Universal Grammar. From Old Norse to Zoque, pp. 275–300. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. On the subtle and ephemeral effects of reflexives on verb and subject placement Björn Lundquist & Maud Westendorp, UiT The Arctic University of Tromsø
Both during language change and in more stable situations, we find small pockets of true word order optionality, where word order choice does not affect semantics. In this talk, we focus on two such cases in present day Scandinavian: Subject Shift in Norwegian and verb placement in embedded assertive clauses in Faroese. We investigate how a seemingly unrelated property of grammar, namely the placement of light objects (object shift), here reflexives, affects subject placement and verb movement. Object shift in Scandinavian is only observed if the verb and the subject appear in pre- adverbial positions (Holmberg's generalization). Given that both subject shift in Norwegian and embedded verb movement in Faroese are optional (see (1)), object shift in these contexts will be fully conditioned by the variable outcome.
1. a. Subject shift: Subj-Refl-Adv, Adv-Subj-Refl, *Refl-Adv-Subj b. Verb placement: Verb-Refl-Adv, Adv-Verb-Refl, *Refl-Adv-Verb
From the results of an elicited word order test in the Nordic Word Order Database, we observe an increase in the likelihood of DP Subject Shift in Norwegian and verb movement in Faroese when a light object reflexive is present (0.45 compared to 0.36, p < 0.05 for verbs, 0.38 compared to 0.14, p < 0.01 for Subject Shift). It thus seems like object shift feeds subject shift and verb movement, but only in a highly probabilistic fashion. Importantly, no Scandinavian variety has developed a system where these processes are obligatory in the presence of a reflexive/light object. By studying the interaction of these constructions, we can learn several things about the architecture of grammar, most notably the timing of different types of syntactic operations, but also about the occasional absence of frequency effects on grammar change. Aspectual simplification in a normative source: The Perfect in Argentinean Spanish school grammars
Guro Nore Fløgstad, University of Southeastern Norway
Romance languages have a verbal form originating in the resultative, that expresses past with current relevance (Ha comido ‘Has eaten’). Bybee, Perkins, and Pagliuca (1994) refer to this perfective path (lexical source (have)→ resultative→perfect→past) as a diachronic universal, with substantial cross-linguistic evidence supporting it. However, a number of well-known studies question both unidirectionality in grammaticalization (Norde 2009), predictability of semantic-diachronic change (Diewald 2010), the inclusion of the individual (Petré & Van de Velde, 2018), and specifically, the typological base of the perfective path (Howe, 2013). Rodríguez Louro (2016) finds that the Argentinean Spanish perfect (historically, the resultative) is only used in 5 % of current relevance contexts. However, it is often assumed that even in varieties such as Argentinean, with an almost negligible use of the perfect, this form is still reserved for specific functions, e.g. indefinite past reference (Rodríguez Louro, 2016). This paper investigates the dissemination of the semantics of the past in a normative source: grammars provided to Argentine middle school children (Santillana 2016). From being a feature of late 19th century Argentinean grammar, possibly in a process of expansion (Fløgstad & Rodríguez Louro, in press), the perfect is absent in contemporary grammars, with the simple past being used in all past perfective contexts, exemplified in (1), a context typically associated with the perfect: 1) El invierno ya comenzó The winter already begin.3SG.PRT “Winter has begun” (Santillana 2016: 88) In Argentinian Spanish, then, a past system with no specific expression of current relevance has found its way to the standardized grammar in the span of 120 years. Simplification in normative grammars, possibly an attempt to avoid synchronic variation (Milroy & Milroy, 1985), may aid the transmission of a progressive norm, possibly further advancing and disseminating an ongoing change.
Bybee, J., Perkins, R., & Pagliuca, W. (1994). The evolution of grammar : tense, aspect, and modality in the languages of the world. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Diewald, G. (2010). On some problem areas in grammaticalization studies. Stathi, E., Gehweiler, E. Konig, E. (eds.). Grammaticalization: current views and issues. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Fløgstad, G. N. & Rodríguez Louro, C. (in press). Gauging expansion in synchrony. The perfect in 19th century Rioplatense Spanish. Mehlum Eide, K. & Fryd, M. The perfect volume. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Howe, C. (2013). The Spanish perfects : pathways of emergent meaning. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Milroy, J., & Milroy, L. (1985). Authority in language : investigating language prescription and standardisation. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Petré, P., & Van de Velde, F. (2018). The real-time dynamics of the individual and the community in grammaticalization. Language, 94(4), 867-901. doi:10.1353/lan.2018.0056 Rodríguez Louro, C. (2016). Indefinite past reference and the Present Perfect in Argentinian Spanish. Studies in Language, 40(3), 622. doi:10.1075/sl.40.3.05lou