University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2017 Parameterising Germanic Ditransitive Variation: A Historical- Comparative Study Hezekiah Akiva Bacovcin University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the Linguistics Commons Recommended Citation Bacovcin, Hezekiah Akiva, "Parameterising Germanic Ditransitive Variation: A Historical-Comparative Study" (2017). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 2176. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/2176 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/2176 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Parameterising Germanic Ditransitive Variation: A Historical-Comparative Study Abstract This dissertation investigates the interplay of morphology and syntax in generating surface complexity and the universality of argument structure by analysing recipient ditransitives in Germanic. The main claim of the dissertation is that all recipients in Germanic are introduced as dative PPs in the specifier of an applicative phrase. This conclusion supports a strong version of Baker’s UTAH hypothesis, namely that there is no variation between natural languages in argument structure and that all surface variation is derived from transformations on a uniform underlying structure. In addition to arguing for the base generated structure of recipient ditransitives, this dissertation also explores transformations that apply to the base structure and show how these transformations are able to account for the surface variation seen both synchronically and diachronically in Germanic. Morphological variation in the form of allomorphy in the realisation of the dative P head is argued to cause the variation seen in Dative Shift (e.g. “John gave Mary the book” vs “John gave the book to Mary”). In addition to the morphological variation, languages also varied as to the availability of different syntactic transformations. For active sentence, the main syntactic transformation is VP-internal scrambling, which moves the theme over the recipient to generate theme–recipient word orders (e.g., “John gave the book to Mary”). Also, pronominal cliticisation can effect the morphological realisation of dative case. In the passive, P-incorporation is argued to license dative-to-nominative recipient subject raising. Theme passivisation is argued to be licensed by a number of different syntactic methods, including relativised minimality with respect to the PP/DP distinction. The main original contributions of this dissertation are: the complete syntactic framework presented here, a collation of typological data from across the Germanic languages, and novel data and methods in historical syntax. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Linguistics First Advisor Anthony Kroch Keywords ditransitives, Germanic linguistics, historical syntax, recipients Subject Categories Linguistics This dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/2176 PARAMETERISING GERMANIC DITRANSITIVE VARIATION Hezekiah Akiva Bacovcin A DISSERTATION in Linguistics Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2017 Supervisor of Dissertation Anthony Kroch, Professor of Linguistics Graduate Group Chairperson Eugene Buckley, Associate Professor of Linguistics Dissertation committee David Embick, Professor of Linguistics William Haddican, Associate Professor of Linguistics, CUNY Julie Legate, Professor of Linguistics Don Ringe, Professor of Linguistics PARAMETERISING GERMANIC DITRANSITIVE VARIATION: A HISTORICAL-COMPARATIVE STUDY COPYRIGHT 2017 Hezekiah Akiva Bacovcin Acknowledgements A great many thanks are necessary in a project this size. First, a thanks is due to my advisor Tony Kroch, without whose patient guidance this document would never have been completed. A similar thanks is due to the other members of my committee – David Em- bick, Bill Haddican, Julie Legate, and Don Ringe – who have given me invaluable feedback during this process. Outside of my comittee, a special thanks go to Alison Biggs and Einar Sigurðsson, who made time in their busy schedules to chat with me about this project. I have also gotten wonderful feedback from the FMART and Treebanks meeting groups at the University of Pennsylvania, who allowed me to present various versions of this material numerous times. In addition to wonderful feedback, I have received tremendous support from the entire Linguistics community at UPenn. I would like to thank all my fellow graduate students for being wonderful colleagues. I also need to thank my wife and children for giving me a foundation that drives me to strive for excellence. Finally, great honour and thanks are due to the Fount of Knowledge, the Holy One, blessed be He, without whom there would be no author, nor subject matter, nor the ability to understand. iii ABSTRACT PARAMETERISING GERMANIC DITRANSITIVE VARIATION: A HISTORICAL-COMPARATIVE STUDY Hezekiah Akiva Bacovcin Anthony Kroch This dissertation investigates the interplay of morphology and syntax in generating sur- face complexity and the universality of argument structure by analysing recipient ditran- sitives in Germanic. The main claim of the dissertation is that all recipients in Germanic are introduced as dative PPs in the specifier of an applicative phrase. This conclusion supports a strong version of Baker’s UTAH hypothesis, namely that there is no variation between natural languages in argument structure and that all surface variation is derived from transformations on a uniform underlying structure. In addition to arguing for the base generated structure of recipient ditransitives, this dis- sertation also explores transformations that apply to the base structure and show how these transformations are able to account for the surface variation seen both synchronically and diachronically in Germanic. Morphological variation in the form of allomorphy in the reali- sation of the dative P head is argued to cause the variation seen in Dative Shift (e.g. “John gave Mary the book” vs “John gave the book to Mary”). In addition to the morphological variation, languages also varied as to the availability of different syntactic transformations. For active sentence, the main syntactic transformation is VP-internal scrambling, which moves the theme over the recipient to generate theme–recipient word orders (e.g., “John gave the book to Mary”). Also, pronominal cliticisation can effect the morphological realisation of dative case. In the passive, P-incorporation is argued to license dative-to-nominative recipient subject raising. Theme passivisation is argued to be licensed by a number of different syntactic methods, including relativised minimality with respect to the PP/DP distinction. The main original contributions of this dissertation are: the complete syntactic frame- work presented here, a collation of typological data from across the Germanic languages, and novel data and methods in historical syntax. iv Contents Acknowledgements iii Abstract iv Contents v List of Tables ix List of Figures xi 1 Introduction 1 2 Theoretical Background 9 2.1 Introduction . 9 2.2 Thematic Roles . 10 2.3 Recipient Case . 12 2.4 Argument Structure . 16 2.5 Morphosyntactic Operations . 19 2.6 Conclusions . 26 3 Active Syntax of Recipient Ditransitives 28 3.1 Introduction . 28 3.2 Goals and Recipients . 30 3.2.1 Introduction . 30 v 3.2.2 Two tos in English . 33 3.3 Morphology and Dative Marking . 36 3.3.1 Typology of Morphosyntactic Marking . 36 3.3.2 Analysis of Recipient Marking . 38 3.3.3 Case Studies in Dative Shift . 44 3.4 Syntax of Recipients . 48 3.4.1 Asymmetric C-command . 50 3.4.2 Evidence for scrambling . 53 3.4.3 Replies to Arguments Against Transformational Analysis of English Dative Shift . 59 3.4.4 Scrambling and Overt Marking . 66 3.5 Conclusions . 67 4 Passive Syntax of Recipient Ditransitives 69 4.1 Introduction . 69 4.2 Recipient Passivisation . 70 4.2.1 Dative-to-Nominative Raising . 70 4.2.2 Oblique Subjects . 80 4.2.3 More on PP subjects . 82 4.3 Theme Passivisation . 85 4.3.1 Case Licensed Locality Violation . 85 4.3.2 Movement Licensed Locality Violation . 89 4.3.3 Bare Recipient Theme Passives and Bare Recipient TR Actives . 91 4.3.4 Swedish Verbs and Theme Passivisation . 94 4.4 Conclusions . 97 5 Case Studies in English Diachrony 98 5.1 Introduction . 98 5.2 Quantitative Study of Historical Syntax . 99 vi 5.3 Recipient Marking . 104 5.3.1 Dative P Allomorphy . 104 5.3.2 Quantitative Analysis of the Rise of to .................. 113 5.3.3 Pronoun Cliticisation . 116 5.4 Recipient Passivisation . 121 5.4.1 Old English . 121 5.4.2 Rise of Nominative Recipient Passivisation . 122 5.5 Passivisation and Underlying Word Order . 127 5.6 Conclusions . 129 6 Conclusions and Further Implications 133 6.1 Conclusions . 133 6.2 Implications . 135 A Statistical Details 138 B Germanic Ditansitive Examples 139 B.1 North Germanic . 139 B.1.1 Icelandic . 139 B.1.2 Faroese . 142 B.1.3 Norwegian . 143 B.1.4 Swedish . 144 B.1.5 Danish . 147 B.2 West Germanic . 148 B.2.1 High German . 148 B.2.2 Yiddish . 154 B.2.3 Dutch . 155 B.2.4 Afrikaans . 156 B.2.5 Frisian . 157 B.2.6 Low German . 158 vii B.2.7 English . 159 Bibliography 166 viii List of Tables 3.1 % of Middle and Early Modern English give and promise type ditransitives with to-marking