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On the nature of anticausative morphology: External arguments in change-of-state contexts Von der philosophisch-historischen Fakultät der Universität Stuttgart zur Erlangung der Würde eines Doktors der Philosophie (Dr. phil.) genehmigte Abhandlung Vorgelegt von Florian Mathis Schäfer aus Regensburg Hauptberichterin: Prof. Dr. Artemis Alexiadou Mitberichter: Prof. Dr. Hubert Haider Mitberichter: Prof. Dr. Halldór Ármann Sigurðsson Tag der mündlichen Prüfung: 09.10.2007 Institut für Linguistik/Anglistik der Universität Stuttgart 2007 Acknowledgements I would like to thank those people who got me interested in the study of language by teaching me linguistics. I would like to mention especially Brigitte Asbach-Schnittker, Gisbert Fanselow, Caroline Féry , Hans-Martin Gärtner, Douglas Saddy, Matthias Schlesewsky, Peter Staudacher, and my supervisor Artemis Alexiadou. I would like to especially thank Artemis Alexiadou for her encouragement, help and advise during the time it took me to develop and complete this work. I would also like to thank Hubert Haider and Halldór Sigurðsson who agreed to participate in my committee. During my time in Stuttgart, I was surrounded by a number of people who not only discussed linguistics with me but who also provided a pleasant social environment. Thanks to Nadine Aldinger, Roberta D’Allessandro, Agnes Bende-Farkas, Jonny Butler, Silke Fischer, Chiara Frigeni, Susann Fischer, Ljudmilla Geist, Kirsten Gengel, Fabian Heck, Steffen Heidinger, Christian Hying, Gianina Iordachioaia, Matthias Jilka, Hans Kamp, Susanne Lohrmann, Fabienne Martin, Tom McFadden, Maria Melchiors, Enyd Michel, Sabine Mohr, Arndt Riester, Jasper Roodenburg, Antje Roßdeutscher, Giuseppina Rota, Björn Rothstein, Britta Sauereisen, Sabine Schulte im Walde, Torgrim Solstad, Sven Strobel, Johannes Wespel. Many thanks also to Sandhya Sundaresan for correcting the English of this work. Over the years, I had the opportunity to discuss parts of my work with a number of people from outside of Stuttgart. I would like to thank the following persons for their interest in my work, for encouragement, criticism and professional support: Klaus Abels, Werner Abraham, Elena Anagnostopoulou, Rajesh Bhatt, Joanna Blaszczak, Hagit Borer, Ina Bornkessel, Carmen Dobrovie-Sorin, Edit Doron, David Embick, Nomi Erteschik-Shir, Martin Everaert, Thorhallur Eythórsson, Hans-Martin Gärtner, ii Jane Grimshaw, Heidi Harley, Holden Härtl, Anders Holmberg, Gunnar Hrafn Hrafnbjargarson, Sabine Iatridou, Dalina Kallulli, Suzanne Kemmer, Chris Kennedy, Andrew Koontz-Garboden, Hilda Koopman, Jean Pierre König, Jaklin Kornfilt, Richard Larson, Winnie Lechner, Marika Lekakou, Beth Levin, Alec Marantz, Andrew McIntyre, Gereon Müller, Lea Nash, Kjartan Ottosson, Matthias Schlesewsky, Dominique Sportiche, Michal Starke, Arnim von Stechow, Tim Stowell, Peter Svenonius, Jan-Wouter Zwart. I would also like to thank all those people who kindly sent me their papers as well as those people that provided me with judgements on their native languages. Finally, I would like to thank the DFG (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) for the financial support which allowed me to carry on the study presented here. iii List of Abbreviations ABS absolutive PART partitive ACC accusative PRTL particle ACT active PASS passive ADE adessive PAST past tense AD.ELAT adelative PERF perfective AOR aorist PL plural CL clitic POSS possessive COMP complementizer POST postessive COND conditional PRS present tense DAT dative PROG progressive ERG ergative REFL reflexive GEN genitive SG singular IMP imperative SUBJ subjunctive INF infinitive SUPERLAT superlative NACT non-active TOP topic NOM nominative WIT wittnessed iv Table of Contents Introduction .................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 1 The morphological patterns of anticausatives and their interpretation.................. 10 1.1 The causative alternation ............................................................................... 10 1.2 The causative alternation in German ............................................................. 11 1.3 Theories about the derivational relation between causatives and anticausatives ........................................................................................................................ 13 1.4 Semantic effects of anticausative morphology .............................................. 14 1.4.1 Anticausatives in Italian..................................................................... 15 1.4.2 Anticausatives in French.................................................................... 23 1.4.3 Anticausatives in Greek ..................................................................... 28 1.4.4 Conclusion and outlook...................................................................... 32 1.4.5 Anticausatives in German .................................................................. 33 Chapter 2 The dative causer construction.................................................................................... 47 2.1 Datives in the context of unmarked anticausatives and non-alternating unaccusative verbs ......................................................................................... 47 2.2 Datives in the context of marked anticausative verbs.................................... 52 2.3 The absence of the unintentional causer reading: Semantic blocking? ......... 57 2.3.1 Do marked anticausatives involve external argument semantics?..... 62 2.3.2 Causer vs. causing event .................................................................... 68 2.3.2.1 Causative constructions without an external argument........ 71 2.3.2.1.1 The adversity causative in Japanese................... 71 2.3.2.1.2 The desiderative construction in Finnish ........... 74 2.3.2.2 Is the dative causer blocked by a causative event? .............. 76 v 2.3.3 Interim conclusion.............................................................................. 80 2.4 Language comparison: Datives in anticausative structures ........................... 81 2.4.1 Introduction........................................................................................ 81 2.4.2 The language survey .......................................................................... 83 Chapter 3 Datives and changes of state ........................................................................................ 89 3.1 Datives as specifiers of applicative heads...................................................... 89 3.1.1 Low applicatives ................................................................................ 91 3.1.2 Affected datives ................................................................................. 95 3.1.3 Unintentional causer datives as high applicatives.............................. 98 3.2 Interim summary and some open questions................................................. 100 3.3 An alternative view on the unintentional dative causer ............................... 108 3.4 A typology of external arguments of causative events ................................ 116 3.5 Some crosslinguistic relatives of the dative causer...................................... 124 3.6 Conclusions: The syntax and semantics of the unintentional causer construction.................................................................................................. 132 Chapter 4 The causative alternation........................................................................................... 141 4.1 The core theory of (anti-)causatives alternation .......................................... 141 4.1.1 Problems for derivational analyses .................................................. 147 4.1.1.1 Morphological marking...................................................... 147 4.1.1.2 Verb restrictions and selection restrictions ........................ 149 4.1.1.3 PP-modification in passives and anticausatives................. 152 4.1.1.3.1 PP-modification in English.............................. 153 4.1.1.3.2 PP-modification in German ............................. 155 4.1.1.3.3 PP-modification in Greek................................. 159 4.1.1.4 Crosslinguistic differences in verb restrictions and selection restrictions.......................................................................... 163 4.1.1.5 Interim conclusion.............................................................. 165 4.1.2 On the event decomposition of (anti-)causatives............................. 166 vi 4.1.3 The syntax of (anti-) causatives ....................................................... 173 4.2 Comments on the categorization of Roots................................................... 180 4.3 Comments on the decomposition of (anti-)causatives ................................. 183 4.3.1 The dative causer revisited............................................................... 191 Chapter 5 The syntax of marked anticausatives: Part I ........................................................... 193 5.1 The origin of anticausative morphology...................................................... 195 5.1.1 Lexicalist accounts of the causative alternation revisited................ 196 5.1.2 The marked / unmarked contrast from a typological perspective.... 199 5.2 The phrase-structural representation of anticausative morphology............. 203 5.2.1 The morpho-syntactic properties of German marked anticausatives205 5.2.1.1 Semantic intransitivity ......................................................