DOCSLIB.ORG

Split Intransitivity Thematic Roles, Case and Agreement

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Split Intransitivity Thematic Roles, Case and Agreement Split intransitivity Thematic roles, case and agreement James Samuel Baker Trinity Hall September 2018 This dissertation is submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Abstract Split intransitivity: Thematic roles, case and agreement James Baker This dissertation is an extended argument for the syntactic structure proposed in (1), re- ferred to as the VICTR Hierarchy after the initials of the ve functional heads it comprises: (1) VolitionP Volition InitiationP Initiation ConsecutionP Consecution TransitionP Transition ResultP Result VP The VICTR Hierarchy is a hierarchy of functional heads corresponding to the part of the clause generally known in the minimalist literature as ‘vP’ or the ‘thematic domain’. Nominal argumentsaremergedin thespeciersofone ormore oftheseheads and receive their thematic interpretations on the basis of their merged positions. Evidence for a model of thematic roles and syntactic argument structure based in the VICTR Hierarchy is presented for a range of domains, with a focus on split intransitivity. Split intransitivity is explored initially in regard to English, with close consideration of a range of split intransitive diagnostics (e.g. out-prexation, the resultative construction); a VICTR account of these patterns is presented. A VICTR account of auxiliary selection patterns in Western European languages is also given. This is followed by analysis of split intransitive case and agreement systems. A formal account of the case and agreement patterns in these languages based in the VICTR hierarchy is presented, derived in part from the inherent case theory of ergativity (Legate 2002, Aldridge 2004 and others) and drawing on a detailed typology. The dissertation then proceeds to de- tailed analysis of the semantic basis of split intransitive alignment in two languages, Basque iii and Georgian. Other split intransitive behaviours in these languages are also considered in VICTR terms. Throughout, the VICTR approach is compared to other approaches to split intransitivity following Perlmutter’s (1978) Unaccusative Hypothesis. The VICTR Hierarchy is also com- pared to the similar proposal of Ramchand (2008). It is argued that the VICTR Hierarchy accounts more readily than these other approaches for the particular classes of verbs identi- ed by split intransitivity diagnostics in the languages considered, and also for cross-linguistic variation in split intransitive behaviours. Much support, with some caveats, is also found in the data considered for the applicability of Sorace’s (2000) Auxiliary Selection Hierarchy (ASH) to a range of split intransitive phe- nomena cross-linguistically. Together with acquisitional considerations, the VICTR features are argued to allow for a formalisation of the patterns described by the ASH. iv To my parents for their support and to Abisola v vi Preface This dissertation is the result of my own work and includes nothing which is the outcome of work done in collaboration except as declared in the Preface and specied in the text. It is not substantially the same as any that I have submitted, or, is being concurrently submitted for a degree or diploma or other qualication at the University of Cambridge or any other University or similar institution except as declared in the Preface and specied in the text. I further state that no substantial part of my dissertation has already been submitted, or, is being concurrently submitted for any such degree, diploma or other qualication at the University of Cambridge or any other University or similar institution except as declared in the Preface and specied in the text. It does not exceed the prescribed word limit for the relevant Degree Committee. James Baker September 2018 vii viii Contents Abstract iii Preface vii 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Aimsandoverview ................................. 1 1.1.1 TheVICTRHierarchy ........................... 1 1.1.2 ComparisonwithRamchand(2008) . 4 1.1.3 ThesemanticsoftheVICTRHierarchy . 6 1.1.4 Aims: split intransitivity, case and agreement . 12 1.2 The VICTR Hierarchy in the wider theoretical context . ...... 17 1.2.1 Thecartographicenterprise . 17 1.2.2 Approachestothematicroles . 20 1.2.3 Event-structurebasedapproaches. 22 1.2.4 Syntacticapproachestoargumentstructure . 22 1.3 The loci and limits of variation . 26 1.3.1 UTAH and a Generalised Linking Rule . 27 1.3.2 The Borer-Chomsky Conjecture and variation in formal features . 28 1.3.3 Summaryandoutlook ........................... 31 2 English (and other Western European languages) 33 2.1 Introduction ..................................... 33 2.2 Split intransitivity diagnostics in English . 33 2.2.1 Methodology ................................ 34 2.2.2 Thecausativealternation . .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 38 2.2.3 Theresultativeconstruction . 41 2.2.4 Attributivepastparticiples. 44 2.2.5 Inherenttelicity............................... 46 2.2.6 Diagnostics of consecution verbs . 47 2.2.7 Verbs of non-agentive internal causation . 56 2.2.8 Two non-diagnostics: locative inversion and there-insertion . 58 2.2.9 Summary .................................. 59 2.3 FurtheradvantagesoftheVICTRapproach . ...... 59 ix 2.3.1 TheVICTRapproachandtheUnaccusativeHypothesis . 59 2.3.2 TheVICTRapproachincomparisonto Ramchand(2008) . 63 2.4 The VICTR Hierarchy and the Auxiliary Selection Hierarchy . ...... 65 2.4.1 Introducing the Auxiliary Selection Hierarchy . 65 2.4.2 TheASHandtheVICTRHierarchy. 68 2.4.3 ComparisonwithRamchand(2008) . 81 2.4.4 Explaining ASH eects in English . 82 2.5 Conclusion...................................... 83 3 The typology of split intransitive alignment 85 3.1 Introduction ..................................... 85 3.1.1 Alignmenttypology ............................ 86 3.1.2 Terminology ................................ 89 3.2 Theformalmodelofcaseandagreement . 90 3.2.1 Introduction................................. 90 3.2.2 The existing theoretical background . 91 3.2.3 Case/agreement and the features of functional heads . 93 3.3 The semantic basis of split intransitive alignment . 99 3.3.1 Introduction................................. 99 3.3.2 [ volition] ................................. 100 ± 3.3.3 [ initiation] . 101 ± 3.3.4 [ consecution]............................... 101 ± 3.3.5 Stativity ................................... 102 3.3.6 Otherfeatures................................ 103 3.3.7 Interactionoffeatures . 105 3.3.8 Theroleoflexicalidiosyncrasy . 106 3.3.9 Conclusion ................................. 108 3.4 The relation of split intransitive and other alignment types . 110 3.4.1 The relation of alignment and basic word order . 111 3.4.2 The relation of alignment and overt marking of arguments . 112 3.4.3 The relation of alignment and voice systems . 113 3.4.4 ‘Split split intransitive’ . 114 3.4.5 Split intransitive alignment and non-canonical subject marking . 118 3.4.6 Conclusion ................................. 118 3.5 Moreoncase/agreementmismatches . 119 3.6 Acquisitional limits on variation . 128 3.7 Comparisonwithotherapproaches . 133 3.7.1 Otherapproachestocase . 134 3.7.2 Other approaches to split intransitivity . 137 3.8 Conclusion...................................... 144 x 4 Basque 159 4.1 Introduction ..................................... 159 4.2 The semantic basis of the case split in Basque . 161 4.2.1 Sourcesofdata ............................... 161 4.2.2 Transition verbs and patientive . 164 4.2.3 Consecution verbs and agentive . 167 4.2.4 Stateverbs.................................. 173 4.2.5 Summary .................................. 173 4.3 Basque case assignment and the VICTR Hierarchy . 174 4.3.1 Introduction................................. 174 4.3.2 Basque’s ‘extended accusative’ split intransitive case system...... 175 4.3.3 Formalisationofcase............................ 177 4.4 Other split intransitive behaviours in Basque . 184 4.4.1 Introduction................................. 184 4.4.2 Partitivecase ................................ 186 4.4.3 Telicity.................................... 188 4.4.4 Thecausativealternation . 190 4.4.5 Cognateobjectsetc. ............................ 193 4.4.6 Sux -(tzai)le ................................ 195 4.4.7 Theimpersonalconstruction . 197 4.4.8 Postnominal past participles . 199 4.4.9 Summary .................................. 201 4.5 TheVICTRHierarchyandotherapproaches . 203 4.5.1 TheUnaccusativeHypothesis . 203 4.5.2 Ramchand(2008) .............................. 207 4.6 Basqueandotherlanguages . 208 4.6.1 BasqueandEnglish............................. 208 4.6.2 Basque and the Auxiliary Selection Hierarchy . 209 4.6.3 Basque and split intransitive alignment . 211 4.7 Conclusion...................................... 212 5 Georgian 213 5.1 Introduction ..................................... 213 5.2 The semantic basis of the case split in Georgian . 216 5.2.1 Introduction................................. 216 5.2.2 Transition verbs and patientive . 216 5.2.3 Volitional consecution verbs and agentive . 217 5.2.4 Uncontrolled consecutions . 218 5.2.5 States .................................... 218 5.2.6 Non-agentive internally caused verbs . 218 5.2.7 Summary .................................. 219 xi 5.3 Georgian as an ‘extended ergative-type’ split intransitive language....... 220 5.3.1 Introduction................................. 220 5.3.2 Noargumentfromraising . 220 5.3.3 Argumentsfromthematicproperties . 221 5.3.4 The argument from split split intransitivity . 223 5.3.5 Overtnessofmorphology . 224 5.3.6 Evidence that patientive is from T . 225 5.3.7 Nash:agentiveasdependentcase
Load more

Recommended publications
  • When Dependent Case Is Not Enough
    When dependent case is not enough András Bárány, [email protected] SOAS University of London Michelle Sheehan, [email protected] Anglia Ruskin University 9 May 2019, GLOW 42, University of Oslo Our claims • Even if dependent case exists, we need case-assignment via Agree • CPs can be case competitors, but do not get case-marking • Agreement-based case splits in Romance, Kashmiri and elsewhere suggests a closer link between φ-features and case than in dependent case theory • It is possible to adapt both Agree and dependent case to these patterns but we argue that Agree is often more parsimonious 1 The dependent case approach (1) Dependent case theory Morphologically marked cases (acc/erg/dat) result from a relationship between two DPs rather than from a relationship between a head and a DP. There are many different versions of this general approach, e.g. Anderson (1976), Yip, Maling & Jackendoff (1987), Marantz (1991), Bittner & Hale (1996), McFadden (2004), Baker & Vinokurova (2010), M. C. Baker (2015), Levin & Preminger (2015), Nash (2017). • M. C. Baker (2015) argues that dependent cases are determined at the phase level and as- signed at the transfer to spell-out bárány & sheehan — dep. case — GLOW 42 (2) Dependent case by c-command (M. C. Baker 2015: 48–49, our emphasis) a. If there are two distinct NPs in the same spell out domain such that NP1 c-commands NP2, then value the case feature of NP2 as accusative unless NP1 has already been marked for case. b. If there are two distinct NPs in the same spell out domain such that NP1 c-commands NP2, then value the case feature of NP1 as ergative unless NP2 has already been marked for case.
    [Show full text]
  • The Concept of Intentional Action in the Grammar of Kathmandu Newari
    THE CONCEPT OF INTENTIONAL ACTION IN THE GRAMMAR OF KATHMANDU NEWARI by DAVID J. HARGREAVES A DISSERTATION Presented to the Department of Linguistics and the Graduate School of the University of Oregon in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy August 1991 ii APPROVED: Dr. Scott DeLancey iii An Abstract of the Dissertation of David J. Hargreaves for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Linguistics to be taken August 1991 Title: THE CONCEPT OF INTENTIONAL ACTION IN THE GRAMMAR OF KATHMANDU NEWARI Approved: Dr. Scott DeLancey This study describes the relationship between the concept of intentional action and the grammatical organization of the clause in Kathmandu Newari, a Tibeto-Burman language spoken primarily in the Kathmandu valley of Nepal. In particular, the study focuses on the conceptual structure of "intentional action" along with the lexical, morphological, and syntactic reflexes of this notion in situated speech. The construal of intentional action consists of two distinct notions: one involving the concept of self-initiated force and the other involving mental representation or awareness. The distribution of finite inflectional forms for verbs results from the interaction of these two notions with a set of evidential/discourse principles which constrain the attribution of intentional action to certain discourse roles in situated interaction. iv VITA NAME OF AUTHOR: David J. Hargreaves PLACE OF BIRTH: Detroit, Michigan DATE OF BIRTH: March 10, 1955 GRADUATE AND UNDERGRADUATE
    [Show full text]
  • 9 Argument Structure and Argument Structure Alternations Gillian Ramchand
    9 Argument structure and argument structure alternations Gillian Ramchand 9.1 Introduction One of the major scientific results of Chomskian syntactic theory is the understanding that the symbolic representations of natural language are structured, by which I mean that symbols are organized in hierarchical constituent data structures, and are not simply linearly ordered strings or lists of memorized items. The semantic ‘arguments’ of predicates are expressed within natural language data structures, and therefore also form part of structured representations. This chapter is devoted to exam- ining the major theoretical results pertaining to the semantics of verbal predicate argument relations and their systematic patterning in lan- guage. However, we will see that even isolating the logical domain of inquiry will involve certain deep questions about the architecture of grammar, and the relationship between listedness and compositional semantics. Historically, the most important results in argument structure have come from those studying the properties of the Lexicon as a module of grammar, for a number of rather natural reasons as we will see. While this chapter will aim to give the reader a clear historical and ideological con- text for the subject matter and will document major influential strands of research, it will primarily concentrate on extracting the generalizations that I judge to be the lasting results of the past fifty years, and then secondarily, draw attention to the (still unresolved) architectural and theoretical issues that are specific to this domain. Section 9.2 gives the perspective on the issues from the vantage point of the Lexicon, i.e. the practical problem of deciding how much and what kind of information is necessary for the listing of verbal lexical entries.
    [Show full text]
  • Ditransitive Constructions Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig (Germany) 23-25 November 2007
    Conference on Ditransitive Constructions Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig (Germany) 23-25 November 2007 Abstracts On “Dimonotransitive” Structures in English Carmen Aguilera Carnerero University of Granada Ditransitive structures have been prototypically defined as those combinations of a ditransitive verb with an indirect object and a direct object. However, although in the prototypical ditransitive construction in English, both objects are present, there is often omission of one of the constituentes, usually the indirect object. The absence of the indirect object has been justified on the basis of the irrelevance of its specification or the possibility of recovering it from the context. The absence of the direct object, on the other hand, is not so common and only occur with a restricted number of verbs (e.g. pay, show or tell).This type of sentences have been called “dimonotransitives” by Nelson, Wallis and Aarts (2002) and the sole presence in the syntactic structure arises some interesting questions we want to clarify in this article, such as: (a) the degree of syntactic and semantic obligatoriness of indirect objects and certain ditransitive verbs (b) the syntactic behaviour of indirect objects in absence of the direct object, in other words, does the Oi take over some of the properties of typical direct objects as Huddleston and Pullum suggest? (c) The semantic and pragmatic interpretations of the missing element. To carry out our analysis, we will adopt a corpus –based approach and especifically we will use the International Corpus of English (ICE) for the most frequent ditransitive verbs (Mukherjee 2005) and the British National Corpus (BNC) for the not so frequent verbs.
    [Show full text]
  • Transitive and Intransitive Constructions in Japanese and English: a Psycholinguistic Study
    TRANSITIVE AND INTRANSITIVE CONSTRUCTIONS IN JAPANESE AND ENGLISH: A PSYCHOLINGUISTIC STUDY by Zoe Pei-sui Luk BA, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2006 MA, University of Pittsburgh, 2009 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh 2012 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH THE KENNETH P. DIETRICH SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES This dissertation was presented by Zoe Pei-sui Luk It was defended on April 24, 2012 and approved by Alan Juffs, Associate Professor, Department of Linguistics Charles Perfetti, University Professor, Department of Psychology Paul Hopper, Paul Mellon Distinguished Professor of the Humanities, Department of English, Carnegie Mellon University Dissertation Advisor: Yasuhiro Shirai, Professor, Department of Linguistics ii Copyright © by Pei-sui Luk 2012 iii TRANSITIVE AND INTRANSITIVE CONSTRUCTIONS IN JAPANESE AND ENGLISH: A PSYCHOLINGUISTIC STUDY Zoe Pei-sui Luk, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2012 Transitivity has been extensively researched from a semantic point of view (e.g., Hopper & Thompson, 1980). Although little has been said about a prototypical intransitive construction, it has been suggested that verbs that denote actions with an agent and a patient/theme cannot be intransitive (e.g., Guerssel, 1985). However, it has been observed that some languages, including Japanese, have intransitive verbs for actions that clearly involve an animate agent and a patient/theme, such as ‘arresting’ (e.g., Pardeshi, 2008). This dissertation thus attempts to understand how causality is differentially interpreted from transitive and intransitive constructions, including non-prototypical intransitive verbs, by rating and priming experiments conducted in both English and Japanese.
    [Show full text]
  • Transitivity and Intransitivity in English and Arabic: a Comparative Study
    International Journal of Linguistics ISSN 1948-5425 2015, Vol. 7, No. 6 Transitivity and Intransitivity in English and Arabic: A Comparative Study Yasir Bdaiwi Jasim Al-Shujairi Faculty of Modern Language and Communication, Universiti Putra Malaysia 43400 Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia E-mail: [email protected] Ahlam Muhammed Faculty of Modern Language and Communication, Universiti Putra Malaysia 43400 Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia E-mail: [email protected] Yazan Shaker Okla Almahammed Faculty of major languages studies, Islamic Science University of Malaysia ‘USIM’, Malaysia E-mail: [email protected] Received: October 20, 2015 Accepted: October 31, 2015 Published: December xx, 2015 doi:10.5296/ijl.v7i6.8744 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.5296/ijl.v7i6.8744 Abstract English and Arabic are two major languages which have many differences and similarities in grammar. One of the issues which is of great importance in the two languages is transitivity and intransitivity. Therefore, this study compares and contrasts transitivity and intransitivity in English and Arabic. This study reports the results of the analysis of transitivity and intransitivity in the two respective languages. The current study is a qualitative one; in nature, a descriptive study. The findings showed that English and Arabic are similar in having 38 www.macrothink.org/ijl International Journal of Linguistics ISSN 1948-5425 2015, Vol. 7, No. 6 transitive and intransitive verbs, and in having verbs which can go transitive or intransitive according to context. By contrast Arabic is different from English in its ability to change intransitive verbs into transitive ones by applying inflections on the main verb.
    [Show full text]
  • Complex Verb Formation in Eskimo*
    JANE GRIMSHAW AND RALF-ARMIN MESTER COMPLEX VERB FORMATION IN ESKIMO* 0. INTRODUCTION Polysynthetic languages characteristically exhibit complex verb forms: single lexical items which correspond in meaning to entire clauses in languages like English. This paper presents an analysis of Labrador Inuttut (LI) derivational morphology in which passive, antipassive, and the complex verb formation rules themselves are all morphological opera- tions. General principles of well-formedness and the interaction among lexical rules then explain the fundamental characteristics of the complex verb system: the internal structure and general syntactic behavior of complex verbs, restrictions on the application of complex verb formation, and the appearance of recursion within complex verbs. We begin with a brief description of the grammatical system of LI. Then we give our analysis of complex verb formation and present the results which follow from our approach. Finally we argue that to obtain these results would require considerable stipulation in a non-lexical account. 1. GRAMMATICAL BACKGROUND Our data are drawn largely from Smith's studies of Labrador Inuttut (Smith, 1977, 1978, 1980, 1982a, 1982b). LI is an Inuit Eskimo dialect which has an ergative case system (Comrie, 1973; Dixon, 1979; Plank, 1979; Levin, 1983). Both the subject of an intransitive verb and the direct object of a transitive verb receive absolutive case, and the subject of a transitive verb is marked with ergative case. 1 A transitive verb agrees in person and number with both its subject and its object, and an intransitive * This research was supported by the National Science Foundation under grants IST 81-20403 to Brandeis University and BNS 80-14730 to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and by a fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies to the first author.
    [Show full text]
  • Split Intransitivity in Basque
    cambridge occasional papers in linguistics COP i L Volume 11, Article 1: 001–035, 2018 j ISSN 2050-5949 Split intransitivity in Basque J a m e s B a k e r University of Cambridge Abstract e split intransitive case system of Basque has been a topic of some interest in the literature; this article identies the semantic basis of this paern and also other split intransitive paerns in the language. It is shown that split intransitivity in Basque presents further support for Sorace’s (2000) Auxiliary Selection Hierarchy. However, it is also shown that dierent split intransitivity diagnostics identied dierent classes of verbs, and that this creates diculties for the traditional Unaccusative Hypothesis (Perlmuer 1978); an alternative account based in a more rened understanding of syntactic argument structure is sketched (cf. Baker 2017, Baker 2018). 1 Introduction is article contributes to the discussion of ‘split intransitivity’: phenomena whereby certain intransitive or monovalent predicates are observed to allow particular mor- phosyntactic behaviours where others are not. Specically, its purpose is to provide a descriptive account of various ‘split intransitive’ paerns in Basque. e best- known manifestation of this type of paern in the language comes in its system of case, agreement and auxiliary selection. Consider the examples in (1), both exempli- fying monovalent verbs. In (1a), the argument of the verb occurs with the ergative case ending -k, whereas in (1b) it occurs in the zero-marked absolutive: (1) a. Gizon-a-k ikasi du. man-def-erg studied has ‘e man has studied.’ b. Gizon-a-Ø etorri da.
    [Show full text]
  • Concrete Models and Empirical Evaluations for the Categorical Compositional Distributional Model of Meaning
    Concrete Models and Empirical Evaluations for the Categorical Compositional Distributional Model of Meaning ∗† Edward Grefenstette Google DeepMind Mehrnoosh Sadrzadeh∗∗† Queen Mary University of London Modeling compositional meaning for sentences using empirical distributional methods has been a challenge for computational linguists. The categorical model of Clark, Coecke, and Sadrzadeh (2008) and Coecke, Sadrzadeh, and Clark (2010) provides a solution by unifying a categorial grammar and a distributional model of meaning. It takes into account syntactic relations during semantic vector composition operations. But the setting is abstract: It has not been evaluated on empirical data and applied to any language tasks. We generate concrete models for this setting by developing algorithms to construct tensors and linear maps and instantiate the abstract parameters using empirical data. We then evaluate our concrete models against several experiments, both existing and new, based on measuring how well models align with human judgments in a paraphrase detection task. Our results show the implementation of this general abstract framework to perform on par with or outperform other leading models in these experiments.1 1. Introduction The distributional approach to the semantic modeling of natural language, inspired by the notion—presented by Firth (1957) and Harris (1968)—that the meaning of a word is tightly related to its context of use, has grown in popularity as a method of semantic representation. It draws from the frequent use of vector-based document models in information retrieval, modeling the meaning of words as vectors based on the distribution of co-occurring terms within the context of a word. Using various vector similarity metrics as a measure of semantic similarity, these distributional semantic models (DSMs) are used for a variety of NLP tasks, from ∗ DeepMind Technologies Ltd, 5 New Street Square, London EC4A 3 TW.
    [Show full text]
  • Lexical Categories and Argument Structure a Study with Reference to Sakha
    Lexical Categories and Argument Structure A study with reference to Sakha Published by LOT phone: +31 30 253 6006 Trans 10 fax: +31 30 253 6000 3512 JK Utrecht e-mail: [email protected] The Netherlands http://wwwlot.let.uu.nl/ Cover illustration: Open air museum in Suottu. A photograph by Evgenia Arbugaeva ISBN 90-76864-00-4 NUR 632 Copyright © 2005 Nadezhda Vinokurova. All rights reserved. Lexical Categories and Argument Structure A study with reference to Sakha (met een samenvatting in het Nederlands) Lexicale Categorieën en Argumentstructuur Een studie met betrekking tot het Sakha Proefschrift ter verkrijging van de graad van doctor aan de Universiteit Utrecht op gezag van de Rector Magnificus, Prof. Dr. W.H.Gispen, ingevolge het besluit van het College voor Promoties in het openbaar te verdedigen op vrijdag 18 maart 2005 des ochtends te 10.30 uur door Nadezhda Vinokurova geboren op 12 augustus 1974 te Yakutsk Promotor: Prof. Dr. E.J. Reuland ISBN 90-76864-00-4 Contents 0. HISTORICAL PRELUDE 1 0.1. Pānini……………………………………………………………………………1 0.2. Plato and Aristotle……………………………………………………………….1 0.3. The Stoics………………………………………………………………………..2 0.4. Dionysius Thrax…………………………………………………………………3 0.5. Latin grammarians: Varro and Priscian…………………………………………4 0.6. A summary: from Plato to Priscian……………………………………………...5 0.7. Further historical developments…………………………………………………6 1. INTRODUCTION 9 1.1. Lexical categories: Features versus configurations……………………………..9 1.2. Lexical categories: The generative background……………………………….11 1.2.1. Chomsky’s (1965) Aspects of the Theory of Syntax…………………....11 1.2.2. Chomsky’s (1968/70) Remarks on nominalization…………………….12 1.2.3. Lexicalism……………………………………………………………...14 1.2.4.
    [Show full text]
  • Features and Categories in Language Production
    Features and Categories in Language Production Inauguraldissertation zur Erlangung des Grades eines Doktors der Philosophie im Fachbereich Neuere Philologien der Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität zu Frankfurt am Main vorgelegt von: Roland Pfau aus Wasserlos (Alzenau) 2000 * * * “Piglet,” said Pooh a little shyly, after they had walked for some time without saying anything. “Yes, Pooh?” “Do you remember when I said that a Respectful Pooh Song might be written about You Know What?” “Did you, Pooh?” said Piglet, getting a little pink round the nose. “Oh, yes, I believe you did.” “It’s been written, Piglet.” The pink went slowly up Piglet’s nose to his ears, and settled there. “Has it, Pooh?” he asked huskily. “About - about - That Time When? - Do you mean really written?” “Yes, Piglet.” 2 The tips of Piglet’s ears glowed suddenly, and he tried to say something; but even after he had husked once or twice, nothing came out. So Pooh went on: “There are seven verses in it.” “Seven?” said Piglet as carelessly as he could. “You don’t often get seven verses in a Hum, do you, Pooh?” “Never,” said Pooh. “I don’t suppose it’s ever been heard of before.” (A.A. Milne, Winnie-the- Pooh) * * * 3 Acknowledgements You might say this is my ‘Hum’. It is, of course, not nearly as ingenious as the Respectful Pooh Song, that Pooh composed to pay tribute to Piglet’s bravery. Moreover, Pooh - talented by nature - completed his masterpiece all on his own. This, however, is something I do not claim for myself. Quite the opposite is true: many people have contributed in one way or the other to the completion of this thesis as well as to my time at Frankfurt University and to my well-being in and out of linguistics.
    [Show full text]
  • Ergative Case and the Transitive Subject: a View from Nez Perce
    Nat Lang Linguist Theory (2010) 28: 73–120 DOI 10.1007/s11049-009-9081-5 ORIGINAL PAPER Ergative case and the transitive subject: a view from Nez Perce Amy Rose Deal Received: 28 February 2008 / Accepted: 22 March 2009 / Published online: 23 October 2009 © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009 Abstract Ergative case, the special case of transitive subjects, raises questions not only for the theory of case but also for theories of subjecthood and transitivity. This paper analyzes the case system of Nez Perce, a “three-way ergative” language, with an eye towards a formalization of the category of transitive subject. I show that it is object agreement that is determinative of transitivity, and hence of ergative case, in Nez Perce. I further show that the transitivity condition on ergative case must be cou- pled with a criterion of subjecthood that makes reference to participation in subject agreement, not just to origin in a high argument-structural position. These two results suggest a formalization of the transitive subject as that argument uniquely accessing both high and low agreement information, the former through its (agreement-derived) connection with T and the latter through its origin in the specifier of a head associ- ated with object agreement (v). In view of these findings, I argue that ergative case morphology should be analyzed not as the expression of a syntactic primitive but as the morphological spell-out of subject agreement and object agreement on a nominal. Keywords Nez Perce Ergativity Transitivity Case Agreement Anaphor agreement effect Sahaptin· · · · · · 1 The category of transitive subject An analysis of ergative case, the special case of transitive subjects, can only be as adequate as the theories of subjecthood and transitivity on which it rests.
    [Show full text]