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E Welsh Impersonal Construction e Welsh impersonal construction A thesis submied to e University of Manchester for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Faculty of Humanities 2015 Laura Arman School of Arts, Languages and Cultures CONTENTS List of Figures5 List of Tables6 Abstract7 Declaration8 Copyright9 Acknowledgements 10 Nomenclature 12 1 Introduction 14 2 Two Welsh passives 18 2.1 Background.................................. 18 2.2 Impersonal and passive............................ 19 2.2.1 e impersonal construction..................... 19 2.2.2 Analytic passive........................... 22 2.2.3 e passive core........................... 26 2.2.3.1 ei + verbnoun....................... 26 2.2.3.2 e role of aspect..................... 33 2.3 Traditionally passive functions........................ 36 2.4 Functions of the impersonal......................... 38 2.4.1 Syntactic restrictions on the cael-passive and imps ........ 39 2.4.2 General use of IMPS......................... 41 2.5 Imps in earlier frameworks.......................... 43 2.6 Summary.................................... 44 3 Passivization of transitives 46 3.1 Current issues................................. 46 3.2 Internal and external arguments....................... 47 3.2.1 Italian psych-verbs and θ-theory.................. 49 3.2.2 Diagnostics.............................. 49 3.2.3 Applying three diagnostics to Welsh transitives.......... 50 3.2.4 Psych-verbs studied......................... 52 3.2.4.1 Type I........................... 56 2 3.2.4.2 Type II........................... 59 3.2.4.3 Type III........................... 59 3.2.4.4 Type IV........................... 60 3.2.4.5 Type V........................... 63 3.2.5 Psych-verbs summary........................ 64 3.3 Other ‘psych’ predicates........................... 65 3.4 Conclusions and further work........................ 70 4 Diagnosing unaccusative verbs 72 4.1 Aims...................................... 72 4.2 Unaccusativity and split intransitives.................... 72 4.3 Unaccusativity in Welsh intransitives.................... 74 4.3.1 Middle Welsh split.......................... 74 4.3.2 Modern Welsh............................ 75 4.3.3 Identifying diagnostics........................ 76 4.3.4 Comparison with Manning(1995).................. 81 4.4 Derived subjects................................ 82 4.4.1 A return to psych verbs....................... 83 4.5 Unaccusativity and derived subjects..................... 86 4.6 Potential accounts for restricted verbs.................... 89 4.6.1 Transitivity.............................. 89 4.6.2 Cognizer................................ 90 4.6.3 Animacy of the object........................ 91 4.7 Diagnostics................................... 92 4.7.1 Causative............................... 92 4.7.2 Reexive................................ 92 4.7.3 Passive................................. 93 4.8 Summary of conclusions and outcomes................... 94 5 Delimiting restrictions on the impersonal 95 5.1 Introduction.................................. 95 5.2 Unaccusativity diagnostics and the impersonal............... 96 5.3 Reciprocal verbs................................ 98 5.4 Predicative complements with Imps ..................... 101 5.4.1 Resultative predicative complements................ 101 5.4.2 Transitive stative verbs with predicative complements...... 103 5.4.3 Intransitive statives with predicative complements........ 105 5.5 Stative verbs of measure........................... 106 5.5.1 Impersonals are temporal?...................... 111 5.5.2 Temporal measure verbs....................... 111 5.6 Alternating verbs............................... 112 5.6.1 Testing for agentivity......................... 112 5.6.2 Change of State verbs........................ 114 5.6.3 Revisiting impersonals of intransitive verbs............ 117 5.7 Discussion................................... 118 6 Argument structure and animacy eects 120 6.1 Impersonal morphology............................ 120 6.2 Restrictions on impersonalization...................... 120 6.3 Argument Structure.............................. 121 6.3.1 Valency reducing syntax....................... 121 3 6.3.2 Suppressible arguments....................... 122 6.3.3 Psych verbs.............................. 123 6.4 Testing properties of the subject....................... 124 6.4.1 Low transitivity and argument types................ 124 6.4.2 Motion verbs............................. 125 6.5 Animacy.................................... 127 6.5.1 Subject as human agent....................... 127 6.5.2 Verbs with inanimate subjects.................... 128 6.5.3 Unspecied human arguments................... 130 6.6 Remaining issues and complications..................... 131 6.6.1 Transitive impersonals........................ 131 6.6.2 Measure verbs revisited....................... 133 6.7 Impersonal as active.............................. 135 6.8 Conclusion and further research....................... 136 7 Prototypes and theories of the passive 137 7.1 Canonical and prototypical passives..................... 138 7.2 An RRG analysis of IMPS........................... 141 7.2.1 Argument number and nature.................... 144 7.3 Passive in LFG................................. 146 7.3.1 LFG and Mapping eory...................... 149 7.3.2 Kibort’s Mapping eory...................... 152 7.3.3 Accommodating the Welsh data................... 155 7.3.4 Summary of an exercise in LFG................... 157 7.4 Review of approaches to the passive used.................. 158 8 Conclusion 159 Bibliography 161 Appendix A List of Middle Welsh o-marked verbs 169 Appendix B Levin’s (1993) measure verb classes 170 Final word count: 55,625 4 LIST OF FIGURES 7.1 Layers of RRG clause structure (Van Valin & LaPolla 1997:26)....... 145 7.2 A lexical predicate (kiss) in LFG....................... 146 7.3 Lexical rule for passivization (Bresnan 1982:1:9).............. 147 7.4 f-structure of Emma kisses Andrew ...................... 150 7.5 Grammatical Features of the arguments of kiss with its a-structure.... 151 7.6 Grammatical Features of a lexical passive rule............... 151 7.7 Cross-classication of Grammatical Functions............... 154 7.8 A passivized transitive verb with the grammatical features of its argu- ments (Kibort 2007:267)............................ 154 7.9 Grammatical features of a Welsh get-passive predicate.......... 156 7.10 f-structure AVM for Polish impersonal czytano cos´ (Kibort 2008:269)... 157 7.11 Potential f-structure AVM for Welsh intransitive impersonal disgynnir . 157 5 LIST OF TABLES 3.1 Transitive psych-predicates with the diagnostics outlined......... 55 4.1 Marking preferences of Middle Welsh (Manning 1995)........... 75 4.2 Fluid intransitive system of Middle Welsh (Manning 1995)........ 75 4.3 Deverbal adjectives with -edig ........................ 79 4.4 Simplication of table 3.1 – transitive psych predicates and diagnostics for derived subjects.............................. 84 4.5 A selection of the 28 intransitive verbs (predicates) tested......... 87 4.6 Intransitive verbs ‘prexed’ with -ym .................... 87 4.7 Transitive verbs ‘prexed’ with -ym ..................... 88 4.8 Hopper & ompson’s (1980) parameters of Transitivity......... 89 4.9 Cognizers.................................... 91 5.1 Verbs with arguments of equal status.................... 99 5.2 Stative transitives with PCs.......................... 103 5.3 Stative readings of verbs of measure tested................. 106 5.4 10 intransitive COS verbs........................... 114 5.5 10 alternating change of state verbs..................... 115 5.6 10 alternating deadjectival change of state verbs.............. 116 6.1 testing the sole/higher argument of impersonal verb gweld, ‘see’..... 125 6.2 Intransitive verbs of body internal motion................. 126 6.3 Entity-specic intransitive verbs....................... 129 A.1 List of intransitive O-marking verbs from Manning(1995)......... 169 A.2 List of intransitive A-marking verbs from Manning(1995)......... 169 6 ABSTRACT In this thesis I will explore the impersonal constructions in Modern Welsh. In doing so, I will follow the approach of the previous literature in comparing this construction with the analytic Welsh passive. e general linguistic literature on passivization as- sumes that both constructions involve passivization and despite some studies of Welsh concluding that the impersonal construction is not a passive, this thesis cannot support or deny this claim. I show that it is the denition of passive that obstructs a conclusive analysis for the Welsh impersonal morphology’s syntactic and semantic eects, ultimately. Using the data described in detail throughout the thesis, I conclude with an assessment of the scope of our current theories of passive – be they typological or theoretical – that reveals problematic areas. Typological, prototypical and canonical approaches to the passive of course fail to include enough nuance to identify the relevant structural components of the Welsh impersonal, whilst theoretical approaches cannot account for the restrictions found on intransitive impersonals. LFG’s mapping theory has the potential to accom- modate the Welsh data according to current proposals and as such is examined in more depth. I have given an emphasis to using naturally occurring data whenever possible and this has led to a data-rich, descriptive work, in an aempt to expand the breadth of examples of Welsh found in discussions of linguistic theory.
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