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Agreement Morphology, Argument Structure and Syntax

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Agreement Morphology, Argument Structure and Syntax Agreement Morphology, Argument Structure and Syntax Marcus Kracht II. Mathematisches Institut Freie Universit¨at Berlin Arnimallee 3 D-14195 Berlin [email protected] October 6, 1999 Avant Propos No work grows out of nothing. In this case, I have benefitted largely from working with Albert Visser and Kees Vermeulen while I was working in a project on the parallels between natural languages and programming languages. Albert Visser's ideas concerning semantics in general and how to set up a really clean framework for dynamic semantics in particular have had a profound impact on me. It has always been his intention to provide a mathematically elegant and sound semantical framework for natural language. Yet, it is one thing to believe that such a framework is possible and another to actually provide it. This book is about how his ideas on semantics can be made fruitful in linguistic theory. I had to sacrifice some features of the original system. My only excuse here is that language just isn't the way we would like it to be. There are many facts to deal with, and they tend to mess up the system a fair bit. There is however also a fair chance that I haven't managed to make things as simple as I could have done. This work has been presented on various occasions and in various stages of incarnation in Paris, Tubingen,¨ Potsdam, Berlin, Saarbruc¨ ken and Los Angeles. I wish to thank those in the audience who have helped me to bring out my ideas more clearly and who have pointed out numerous deficiencies of earlier versions. In particular I thank Katherine Demuth, Alan Dench, Jan van Eijck, Gisbert Fanselow, Hans{Martin G¨artner, Willi Geuder, Hubert Haider, Ed Keenan, Hap Kolb, Anoop Mahajan, Gereon Muller,¨ David Perlmutter, Ed Stabler, Markus Steinbach, Albert Visser and Ralf Vogel. I owe special thanks to Markus and Ralf for long discussions on argument structure and polyvalency. I am deeply indebted to Albert and Hans{Martin for their enthusiasm, without which such an endeavour is not possible. Above all, thanks to Johanna Domokos for her patience with me, for helping me with Finnish and Hungarian and her rich knowledge of languages about which I had never heard before. For the errors that remain I claim responsibility. I appreciate any remarks from my readers, as they will help me to improve on this subject. Berlin, August 1999 , Marcus Kracht 3 Introduction This book is about the interaction of morphology, semantics and syntax. It presents to our knowledge the first theory that integrates all three of them in a substantial and explicit way. The basic idea is very simple. When we put together two units into a one, be they morphological units or syntactic units, then we put together their morphology, their semantics and their morphology. The system is in this respect very much like Montague grammar, and there is no derivation needed to get the surface strings right. However, as much as Montague grammar is apt at managing the connections between syntax and semantics, it becomes very problematic when we look at morphology. For some parts of morphology | in particular agreement morphology | are very distinct in character from syntax. Agreement morphemes do not have meaning in the traditional sense of the word. Instead, they introduce some `redundancy' into the sentence by which we can uncover its meaning more easily. In fact, agreement morphology is not redundant in many cases; overt morphology can actually give us more freedom in syntax, as we are assured we can know how to put the things together. This at least is the laymans theory of agreement. It is out intention to show that this theory is, by and large, correct. Recently, Albert Visser and Kees Vermeulen ([98] and [99]) have developed a semantics which is perfectly suited for our purposes. To put their idea in a nutshell, each item functions like a box, which is closed to the outside. You cannot see what is in them. In particular, the names of the variables used in the formulae are hidden away. By default, each box has its own universe. These boxes communicate by means of labels, which allow them to see whether they actually share some element of their universe. Agreement is putting these labels onto the boxes. In order to see why such a new way of thinking is needed, we shall look a little bit into the conception of formal semantics. The job of formal semantics is to show how a complex expression is interpreted in a model, or alternatively, how natural language can be translated into some given formal language whose model theoretic interpretation is known. This comprises two things. Namely, we need to worry about the association of meaning to the elements of the language and second we need to worry about the modes of combination which derive complex 5 6 Introduction expressions and pair them with meanings. As for the first, one has to get clear what sort of logical analysis one needs to posit for the elements of language. For example, one needs to ask whether verbs denote relations between individuals or whether they denote events or even more complex structures. This is directly related to the question what a particular word actually means, though it is put at a more abstract level. Without being able to say just what to walk means in contrast to, say, to run, we still have to decide whether it denotes a 1{place relation or whether it denotes an event. The other things that formal semantics must do once that question is settled upon is to show how the association between the variables occurring in the representations is done. In Montague's own system the latter job was taken care of by the λ{calculus. There was basically only one mode of composition, and its semantic correlate was λ{application. This strategy put the entire burden on the semantics of the individual lexical item. Each different syntactic environment that this item can occur in gives rise to a different basic analysis. To give just one example: adjectives can typically modify nouns regardless of whether they are relational or nonrelational. One is inclined to think that nevertheless the semantics for an adjective like blue this would not be semantically relevant, that is, it would have one and the same semantics whether it modifies a relational noun or whether it modifies a nonrelational noun. But just a look at the types ( e; e; t ; e; e; t versus e; t ; e; t ) reveals that hh h ii h h iii hh i h ii this cannot be so. Many ingenious ways to generate these additional meaning have been found | for example Geach's rule |, but they often obscure the issue at hand. What we want is one and the same meaning in both cases and not machines that take us from one to the other. The present work assumes that many facts like this do not call for an ever more sophisticated analysis at the level of the lexicon. Rather, what is called for is a new approach at semantical composition. At the heart of our proposal lies our conviction | which we share with a substantial number of linguists | that it is not structure alone that determines how things go, but that other factors come into play, being neither superior nor inferior to structure. (This view has for example been expressed in LFG. For a defense of this view see Nordlinger [72] and references therein.) One very important factor is overt morphology. Consider for example the following Latin sentences. Introduction 7 (1) Tullius v¯ıdit Paulum. Tully-nom sees Paul-acc (2) Paulum v¯ıdit Tullius. Paul-acc sees Tully-nom Tully sees Paul. (3) Tullium v¯ıdit Paulus. Tully-acc sees Paul-nom (4) Paulus v¯ıdit Tullium. Paul-nom sees Tully-acc Paul sees Tully. Both (1) and (2) mean the same, although the order of the arguments is inverted. Similarly with (3) and (4). If we exchange the cases instead, then object and subject exchange their roles. These facts suggest that whatever the explanation will ultimately be, case plays a role in the interpretation. English does not allow the subject and object to change places, whence (1) and (2) have the same translation, and so do (3) and (4). This, we claim, is due in part to the fact that English lacks any case distinctions whatsoever. In the semantics that we are proposing here we take these facts at face value. We allow heads to select arguments by some (overt) morphological property, such as case, but also gender, number and so on. These properties drive the meaning composition. This allows for the statement that the Latin verb v¯ıdere seeks for a nominative marked argument, which will be its subject, and an accusative marked argument, which will be its object. When it combines with an NP, the overt case information triggers identification with the right argument. If the NP is nominative, then it will be identified with the subject variable, if it is accusative, with the object variable. If it is neither of the two, then the composition will not succeed. There is then no need (and no possibility even) to posit a VP in Latin, if VP means that verbal constituent that excludes the subject. If this line is pursued, the overt morphology starts to play an active role in the game. Contrary to the now current view in transformational grammar, cases do not function as uninterpretable features of syntax that need to be eliminated before the semantics can make sense of the structure.
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