Cross-linguistic Variation in Object Marking Published by LOT phone: +31 30 253 6006 Janskerkhof 13 fax: +31 30 253 6406 3512 BL Utrecht e-mail: [email protected] The Netherlands http://www.lotschool.nl Cover illustration: detail of Polderland by Hennie de Swart (2004) ISBN 978-90-78328-39-1 NUR 616 Copyright c 2007: Peter de Swart. All rights reserved. The work in this dissertation has been funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO), grant 220-70-003. Cross-linguistic Variation in Object Marking een wetenschappelijke proeve op het gebied van de Letteren Proefschrift ter verkrijging van de graad van doctor aan de Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen op gezag van de Rector Magnificus prof. mr. S.C.J.J. Kortmann, volgens besluit van het College van Decanen in het openbaar te verdedigen op woensdag 21 november 2007 om 10.30 uur precies door Petrus Jacobus Franciscus de Swart geboren op 23 augustus 1981 te Nijmegen Promotor: Prof. dr. P.C. Muysken Copromotor: Mw. dr. H. de Hoop Manuscriptcommissie: Mw. prof. dr. J. Aissen (University of California at Santa Cruz) Mw. prof. dr. A.C.M. van Kemenade Mw. prof. dr. B. Primus (Universit¨atzu K¨oln) Acknowledgements Being a fan of the genre of acknowledgements, I am hesitant to add my contribution to it. Although the work of a single person, this thesis could not have been written without the support and friendship of others. I would like to single out a few of them. This project could not have been carried out without the financial support of the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) to the PIONIER Project Case Cross-linguistically [grant 220-70-003] which is gratefully acknowledged. I have felt very privileged over the past few years to have Helen de Hoop as my daily supervisor, and I am afraid there is no ‘thank you’ big enough that it can make up for everything she has given me. From the very first moment until the last seconds of my PhD project she has given me trust, support, and advice, engaged in discussion, provided written feedback with a speed and accuracy way beyond the call of duty, and opened numerous opportunities and possibilities for me. I could not have wished myself a better start of my scientific career than she has given me and I can only be extremely thankful for that. I am also happy to thank my promotor Pieter Muysken whose advice, comments, and questions helped me to put things in a wider perspective and to improve this thesis. Judith Aissen, Ans van Kemenade, and Beatrice Primus agreed to be the members of my thesis committee. I would like to thank them for reading the manuscript and for their stimulating comments. As a member of the PIONIER Project and the research group Optimal Communication I have received the friendship, support, and feedback of my fellow team members Geertje van Bergen, Ad Foolen, Richard van Gerrevink, Luuc van der Horst, Lotte Hogeweg, Irene Kr¨amer, Leonid Kulikov, Monique Lamers, Sander Lestrade, Andrej Malchukov, Kees de Schepper, Yang Ning, and Joost Zwarts. It has been a real pleasure to have you as my closest colleagues. Special thanks go to Luuc for his help in compiling the bibliography. Over the past few years I have met a great number of people, a few of whom I would like to thank explicitly for their help: Ellen Woolford, vi Martina Wiltschko, Leon Stassen, Lilja Øvrelid, Yukiko Morimoto, Jak- lin Kornfilt, Hans-Martin G¨artner, Marco Garc´ıaGarc´ıa,Henry Davis, Miriam Butt, and Mengistu Amberber. Family and friends are thanked for their (non-linguistic) interest and support. In particular, Emar for his close friendship in and out of academia, and all the gossip we have shared. The Steigertijgers of the Steigertheater have provided me with a second life which allowed me to occasionally forget all about linguistics. And Corien. I don’t even know where to start. Contents Acknowledgements v Abbreviations ix Abstract xiii 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Grades of Transitivity . 2 1.2 Animacy and Ambiguity Avoidance . 3 1.3 Prominence . 5 2 Gradient Transitivity 7 2.1 Introduction . 7 2.1.1 Intransitivity . 8 2.1.2 Transitivity . 11 2.1.3 (In)transitivity . 14 2.2 Transitivity in Generative Grammar . 21 2.3 Transitivity As a Gradient Phenomenon . 26 2.3.1 Hopper and Thompson (1980) . 26 2.3.2 The Relation between Meaning and Form . 32 2.4 Cognate Objects and the Syntax-Semantics Interface . 33 2.4.1 Ingredients of the Cognate Object Construction in English . 34 2.4.2 The Semantic Status of Cognate Objects . 45 2.4.3 The Syntactic Status of Cognate Objects . 50 2.4.4 A Cross-Linguistic Perspective . 60 2.5 Conclusions . 70 3 Recovering Grammatical Roles 73 3.1 Introduction . 73 3.2 Case Distinguishability . 87 3.2.1 Bidirectionality and Avoid Ambiguity . 92 viii Contents 3.3 Recoverability: Alternative Strategies . 99 3.3.1 One Nominal Interpretation and Bias ....... 106 3.4 Word Order and Exceptional Case Marking . 116 3.5 Recoverability vs. Prominence . 126 3.6 Conclusions . 134 4 The Prominence Factor 135 4.1 Introduction . 135 4.2 Prominence Categories . 137 4.2.1 Prominence Hierarchies . 149 4.3 Cross-Modularity in Active to Passive Alternations . 157 4.4 Differential Object Marking: Animacy vs. Definiteness . 173 4.4.1 Animacy vs. Definiteness/Specificity . 181 4.4.2 Split vs. Fluid Case Alternations . 185 4.5 Conclusions . 194 5 Conclusions 197 Bibliography 201 Samenvatting (Summary in Dutch) 229 Curriculum Vitae 235 Abbreviations 1, 2, 3 first, second, third person abl ablative abs absolutive acc accusative adel adelative adr addressee ag agent agr agreement aor aorist anim animate antp antipassive at agent topic aux auxiliary cl classifier com commitative con connective cp completive aspect dat dative decl declarative def definite dem demonstrative det determiner dln delineator emph emphatic pronoun erg ergative exp experiencer f feminine fac factive fin finite foc focus marker fut future gen genitive x Abbreviations hum human imp imperfective ind indicative inf infinitive instr instrumental intr intransitive inv inverse invol non-volitional io indirect object lc lack of control loc locative m masculine nc non-control nmz nominalizer ntr neuter nom nominative npst non-past obj object obl oblique obv obviative ocl object clitic opt optative part partitive pass passive pat patient pf perfective pl plural prs present prt particle pst past ptc participle rl relativizer sbj subjunctive sg singular sim singular imperative clause marker st stative sti stimulus su subject thm theme tr transitive vol volitional xi Classical Authors The following abbreviations are used to refer to classical authors and their works: Antiph. Tetr. Antiphon Tetralogiae Plaut. Pseud. Plautus Pseudolus Pl. Ap. Plato Apologia Sall. Cat. Sallustius De Catilinae coniuratione Xen. An. Xenophon Anabasis xii Abbreviations Abstract This dissertation deals with the relation between form and meaning in the domain of transitivity, in particular with respect to the cross-linguistic phenomenon of differential object marking. Transitive sentences are sen- tences with a two-place predicate (verb) that takes two arguments, a subject and an object. Languages may differ, however, in how they map semantic (in)transitivity to syntactic (in)transitivity. There are construc- tions that are transitive from a semantic point of view, as they involve two participants (arguments), while they can be argued to be intransitive from a syntactic point of view. Examples are passive, antipassive, and object incorporation constructions. The same can be observed for seman- tically intransitive constructions that come out as syntactically transitive. In particular, I will argue in chapter 2 that cognate object constructions are semantically intransitive, yet in many languages get mapped to syn- tactically transitive constructions. I will present a fine-grained approach to transitivity that can deal with one-to-many and many-to-one mappings between meaning and form. Differential object marking, which is the central domain of investi- gation in this thesis, also involves a shift in transitivity, since sentences with caseless objects can be argued to be syntactically less transitive than those with case-marked ones. One explanation of differential ob- ject marking phenomena lies in the problem of ambiguity: a speaker may case mark a direct object in order to ensure recoverability of the intended interpretation on the side of the hearer. Avoidance of ambiguity as a speaker’s strategy can explain why some instantiations of object marking are not driven by semantic or syntactic features of the object per se, but by these features in relation to the features of the subject. In chapter 3 I will present an asymmetric speaker’s model of bidirectional optimiza- tion, in order to account for this strategy of case-marking. Clearly not all instantiations of differential object marking can be explained in terms of recoverability, however. Towards the end of the chapter I will show how a language can develop a strategy to mark all and only prominent objects out of a strategy of ambiguity avoidance. xiv Abstract This latter strategy of mere prominence marking is further investi- gated in chapter 4. In the literature both animacy and definiteness/- specificity are claimed to be features of the object that trigger case mark- ing in differential object marking languages. Both features can be sub- sumed under the notion of prominence. Animate and definite/specific objects are more prominent than inanimate and indefinite/non-specific ones. I will argue, however, that animacy and definiteness/specificity each play a radically different role when it comes to differential object marking. While case-marking can change the hearer’s interpretation of the definiteness or specificity of an object, it cannot change the animacy of the object.