The Syntax of (Anti-)Causatives

The Syntax of (Anti-)Causatives PDF Author: Florian Schäfer
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027290709
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 342

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book develops an approach to the causative alternation that assumes syntactic event decomposition and a configurational theta theory. It is couched within the framework of the Minimalist Program and, especially, within Distributed Morphology. Central to the work is the syntax and semantics of canonical external arguments of causative verbs as well as of oblique causers and causative PPs in the context of anticausative verbs in different languages such as Germanic, Romance, Balkan, and Caucasian languages. The book also develops a new account of the origin and nature of the morphological marking which is often found on anticausatives across languages. The main claim is that this morphology is a reflex of a syntactic way to prohibit the assignment of the external theta role. Moreover, the book develops an account about the origin of the implicit agent in generic middles which often bear the same morphology as marked anticausatives.

The Syntax of (Anti-)Causatives

The Syntax of (Anti-)Causatives PDF Author: Florian Schäfer
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027290709
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 342

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book develops an approach to the causative alternation that assumes syntactic event decomposition and a configurational theta theory. It is couched within the framework of the Minimalist Program and, especially, within Distributed Morphology. Central to the work is the syntax and semantics of canonical external arguments of causative verbs as well as of oblique causers and causative PPs in the context of anticausative verbs in different languages such as Germanic, Romance, Balkan, and Caucasian languages. The book also develops a new account of the origin and nature of the morphological marking which is often found on anticausatives across languages. The main claim is that this morphology is a reflex of a syntactic way to prohibit the assignment of the external theta role. Moreover, the book develops an account about the origin of the implicit agent in generic middles which often bear the same morphology as marked anticausatives.

The Syntax of (anti-)causatives

The Syntax of (anti-)causatives PDF Author: Florian Schäfer
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027255091
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 340

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book develops an approach to the causative alternation that assumes syntactic event decomposition and a configurational theta theory. It is couched within the framework of the Minimalist Program and, especially, within Distributed Morphology. Central to the work is the syntax and semantics of canonical external arguments of causative verbs as well as of oblique causers and causative PPs in the context of anticausative verbs in different languages such as Germanic, Romance, Balkan, and Caucasian languages. The book also develops a new account of the origin and nature of the morphological marking which is often found on anticausatives across languages. The main claim is that this morphology is a reflex of a syntactic way to prohibit the assignment of the external theta role. Moreover, the book develops an account about the origin of the implicit agent in generic middles which often bear the same morphology as marked anticausatives.

French anticausatives

French anticausatives PDF Author: Steffen Heidinger
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110251353
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 214

Get Book Here

Book Description
How do new ways of encoding valence alternations emerge, how and why do they spread, and what are the consequences of their emergence and spread for already existing patterns? This book discusses these questions on the basis of a concrete example of valence alternation, the French causative-anticausative alternation. The main focus of the proposed analysis is the anticausative member of the alternation and the relation between the two formal types of anticausative verbs in French, the reflexive and the unmarked anticausative (La branche s'est cassée vs. La branche a cassé 'The branch broke'). The emergence and spread of the reflexive anticausative, the consequences of these processes for the unmarked anticausative and the semantic relation between reflexive and unmarked anticausatives are analyzed on the basis of several corpus studies.

Levels of representation in the lexicon and in the syntax

Levels of representation in the lexicon and in the syntax PDF Author: Maria Luisa Zubizarreta
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110859920
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 204

Get Book Here

Book Description
The architecture of the human language faculty has been one of the main foci of the linguistic research of the last half century. This branch of linguistics, broadly known as Generative Grammar, is concerned with the formulation of explanatory formal accounts of linguistic phenomena with the ulterior goal of gaining insight into the properties of the 'language organ'. The series comprises high quality monographs and collected volumes that address such issues. The topics in this series range from phonology to semantics, from syntax to information structure, from mathematical linguistics to studies of the lexicon.

External Arguments in Transitivity Alternations

External Arguments in Transitivity Alternations PDF Author: Artemis Alexiadou
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199571945
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 247

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book is an exploration of the syntax of external arguments in transitivity alternations from a cross-linguistic perspective. It uses data principally from English, German, and Greek to investigate the causative/anti-causative alternation and the formation of adjectival participles.

Icelandic Morphosyntax and Argument Structure

Icelandic Morphosyntax and Argument Structure PDF Author: Jim Wood
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319091387
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 334

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book provides a detailed study of Icelandic argument structure alternations within a syntactic theory of argument structure. Building on recent theorizing within the Minimalist Program and Distributed Morphology, the author proposes that much of what is traditionally attributed to syntax should be relegated to the interfaces, and adapts the late insertion theory of morphology to semantics. The resulting system forms sound-meaning pairs by generating hierarchical structures that can be translated into morphological representations, on the one hand, and semantic representations, on the other. The syntactic primitives, however, underdetermine both morphophonology and semantics. Without appealing to special stipulations, the theory derives constraints on the external argument of causative-alternation verbs, interpretive restrictions on nominative objects, and the optionally agentive interpretation of verbs denoting self-directed motion.

The Syntax of Igbo Causatives

The Syntax of Igbo Causatives PDF Author: Ogbonna Ndubuisi Anyanwu
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Igbo language
Languages : en
Pages : 170

Get Book Here

Book Description


The Morphosyntax of (anti) Causatives in Wolof

The Morphosyntax of (anti) Causatives in Wolof PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 65

Get Book Here

Book Description


The (anti-)causative Alternation in Kikongo

The (anti-)causative Alternation in Kikongo PDF Author: Mbiavanga Fernando
Publisher:
ISBN: 9783862887552
Category : Kongo language
Languages : en
Pages : 309

Get Book Here

Book Description
"This study investigates the problem of how the lexical-semantic, aspectual (event structure) and syntactic properties exemplified in the causative and anticausative sentences in Kikongo can be accounted for by invoking different combinations of the Voice, vCAUS, and Root nodes in terms of the decomposition approach to the analysis of causative and anticausative alternation. In so doing, the book explores the nature of the interaction and interdependence of lexical semantic verb class properties, aspectual verb class properties, and the syntactic encoding of the external argument of verbs in the causative and anticausative alternation constructions. Certainly, the construal of transitivity in Kikongo constitutes a central issue in the investigation in relation to the problem of argument alternation. Kikongo is a cross-boarder Bantu language spoken in Angola, DRC, Congo Brazzaville, and Gabon, zoned as H with unit 10 in Guthrie's (1967-71) referential classification. In Angola Kikongo has many dialects, thus, data used in this book is from Kizombo, a dialect classified as 16h, as spoken in Damba and the Maquela do Zombo districts in the province of Uige. The Kizombo dialect is estimated to be spoken by 25% of the total population of the province of Uige. Owing to the exocentric language policy adopted by the local authorities in the earlier years of independence, Kikongo, similar to other African languages of Angola, is not sufficiently documented. Thus little literature in or about Kikongo is available"--Back cover.

Voice syncretism

Voice syncretism PDF Author: Nicklas N. Bahrt
Publisher: Language Science Press
ISBN: 3961103194
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 340

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book provides a comprehensive typological account of voice syncretism, focusing on resemblance in formal verbal marking between two or more of the following seven voices: passives, antipassives, reflexives, reciprocals, anticausatives, causatives, and applicatives. It covers voice syncretism from both synchronic and diachronic perspectives, and has been structured in a manner that facilitates convenient access to information about specific patterns of voice syncretism, their distribution and development. The book is based on a survey of voice syncretism in 222 geographically and genealogically diverse languages, but also thoroughly revisits previous research on the phenomenon. Voice syncretism is approached systematically by establishing and exploring patterns of voice syncretism that can logically be posited for the seven voices of focus in the book: 21 simplex patterns when one considers two of the seven voices sharing the same marking (e.g. reflexive-reciprocal syncretism), and 99 complex patterns when one considers more than two of the voices sharing the same marking (e.g. reflexive-reciprocal-anticausative syncretism). In a similar vein, 42 paths of development can logically be posited if it is assumed that voice marking in each of the seven voices can potentially develop one of the other six voice functions (e.g. reflexive voice marking developing a reciprocal function). This approach enables the discussion of both voice syncretism that has received considerable attention in the literature (notably middle syncretism involving the reflexive, reciprocal, anticausative and/or passive voices) and voice syncretism that has received little or not treatment in the past (including seemingly contradictory patterns such as causative-anticausative and passive-antipassive syncretism). In the survey almost all simplex patterns are attested in addition to seventeen complex patterns. In terms of diachrony, evidence is presented and discussed for twenty paths of development. The book strives to highlight the variation found in voice syncretism across the world’s languages and encourage further research into the phenomenon.