On the Syntactic Status of English Dative Idioms

2021 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 431-449
Author(s):  
Yoen Mee Park
Keyword(s):  
Syntactic Status

Finding Missing Objects in Biblical Hebrew (with an Appendix on Missing Subjects)

2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
John Cook
Keyword(s):  
Information Structure ◽  
Biblical Hebrew ◽  
Syntactic Status ◽  
Object Marking

Missing object complements are significant for the grammar and the lexicon. An explanation is called for of their syntactic status, the basis for their “recovery” or interpretation in discourse, constrictions on what type of objects may be missing, and their information-structure status in the context of object marking more generally. In this essay I present a taxonomy of missing complements in Biblical Hebrew from the perspective of information structure, focusing especially on the syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic bases of their interpretation in the discourse. In an appendix I briefly explore the applicability of this taxonomy of missing objects to explain the interpretation of missing subjects in Biblical Hebrew discourse.

Varia: Attribution, predication, apposition – Part second

Proglas ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anton Getsov ◽  
◽  
◽  
Keyword(s):  
Critical Review ◽  
Complex Interaction ◽  
The Other ◽  
Main Argument ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Grammatical Relation ◽  
The Status ◽  
Syntactic Status ◽  
The One ◽  
Syntactic Relations

The paper is part of a series of publications that set out to examine various aspects in the analysis of appositive constructions. The purpose of this particular study is to reveal the multidimensional, diverse, and complex interaction between three types of syntactic relations – attributive, predicative, and appositive. The study offers a critical review of various theories on the status of the grammatical relation between the components of non-detached (close) appositive constructions. The main argument of this paper is that determining this status, on the one hand, is a function of the morphological and semantic characteristics of the components of the construction, while, on the other hand, it determines their syntactic status.

Dutch manner of motion verbs: Disentangling auxiliary choice, telicity and syntactic function

2012 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maaike Beliën,
Keyword(s):  
Local Analysis ◽  
Cognitive Grammar ◽  
Motion Verbs ◽  
Prepositional Phrases ◽  
General Consensus ◽  
Motion Event ◽  
Growing Body ◽  
Syntactic Function ◽  
Syntactic Status

AbstractDutch manner of motion verbs play a prominent role in the literature on unaccusativity. As these verbs can take both hebben ‘have’ and zijn ‘be’ as their perfective auxiliaries, they are considered to show both unergative and unaccusative behavior. The general consensus is that these verbs normally take hebben, yet occur with zijn if they are ‘telicized’ by an endpoint, and that the auxiliaries are diagnostics for the syntactic status of prepositional phrases (PPs). The paper presents attested data that reveal that this generalization is untenable: there are examples that take the opposite auxiliary from what the generalization predicts. To account for the full set of data, the paper takes a cognitive-grammar perspective, arguing that auxiliary choice, telicity and syntactic status of PPs are independent issues requiring their own explanations. Auxiliary choice is analyzed in terms of alternate construals of a motion event: with hebben as a type of act and with zijn as a change of location. In this manner, the paper adds to a growing body of literature that questions the usefulness of the coarse unergative–unaccusative distinction, advocating a ‘local analysis’ instead.

Modals, subjunctives, and (non-)finiteness

2001 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 159-166
Author(s):  
John M. Anderson
Keyword(s):  
Traditional Concept ◽  
Syntactic Property ◽  
Theoretical Assumptions ◽  
Analytic Expression ◽  
Syntactic Status

For grammarians, acquiring some understanding of ‘finiteness’ as a linguistic concept has been a longstanding problem, even if frequently unacknowledged as such. It seems to me that the problem derives, in particular, from the fact that arriving at a universally applicable characterization of the syntactic status of finiteness is difficult to reconcile with how it has been claimed to be manifested morphosyntactically in different languages. In what follows I explore the consequences for our understanding of the role of morphological and periphrastic subjunctives in English of drawing a distinction between finiteness as a syntactic property and the possible signalling of this property in the morphology. The discussion presents no novel data or novel claims concerning the interpretation of the sentences cited (at least, not intentionally); it merely confronts the familiar with the characterization of finiteness proposed here. And I have also tried, in the interests of accessibility and generality of application, to minimize appeal to parochial theoretical assumptions beyond that involving finiteness and the recognition of grammatical periphrasis, i.e. analytic expression of a category otherwise signalled morphologically, and of the traditional concept of reaction.

The nominal system

2019 ◽  
pp. 58-101
Author(s):  
D. Gary Miller
Keyword(s):  
Negative Polarity ◽  
Second Person ◽  
Nominal System ◽  
The Third ◽  
Case System ◽  
System P ◽  
Local Case ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Syntactic Status ◽  
The Third Person

Nouns are inflected for gender (masculine, feminine, neuter), number (singular and plural), and case: nominative, accusative, genitive, dative. Except in -u- stems, the vocative has the form of the accusative and/or is syncretized with the nominative. Demonstratives and pronominals have a residual instrumental, e.g. þe (by this), and ablative, e.g. jáinþro (from there). Adjectives are similarly inflected but also have strong and weak forms. Comparatives and nonpast participles are weak. The precise syntactic status of D-words (demonstratives, determiners, and articles) is impossible to test. Personal pronouns of the first and second person are inflected for singular, plural, and dual, and have no gender distinction. The third person pronoun has all three genders but only singular and plural number. Interrogative and indefinite pronouns are morphologically identical. Gothic has a rich negative polarity system. Numerals are partly inflected and partly indeclinable. Deictic adverbs belong to an old local case system.

Agreement Paradigms across Moods and Tenses: The Case of Romanian Subjunctives and Imperatives

2009 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 137-156
Author(s):  
Mihaela Pirvulescu
Keyword(s):  
Distributed Morphology ◽  
Romance Languages ◽  
Close Resemblance ◽  
Syntactic Representation ◽  
Agreement Morphology ◽  
Verbal Agreement ◽  
Syntactic Status

AbstractThis article argues that the realization of agreement in subjunctive and imperative verbs is a consequence of the syntactic status of Tense in these two moods. Crucially, certain agreement paradigms across Romance languages show very a close resemblance: the subjunctive and imperative paradigms are identical, in most cases, to the indicative paradigms. Systematically, moods such as the subjunctive and the imperative do not show specific tense affixes or specific tense-induced allomorphy on their agreement affixes. The proposal is illustrated with Romanian verbal agreement, which is analyzed within the Distributed Morphology framework. The analysis shows that tense information is not used in subjunctive and imperative agreement morphology, unless it is exactly the same information as in another paradigm — the present indicative. It is proposed that at the syntactic level, Tense is unspecified in the subjunctive and absent in the imperative, and that the realization of agreement affixes is a consequence of this syntactic representation.

On Ergativity in Modern Norwegian

1986 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Ole Askedal
Keyword(s):  
Syntactic Status ◽  
And Control

The present paper deals with the syntactic status of the indefinite NP in Norwegian existential-presentative constructions with a formal subject det in a typological perspective. It is argued that the NP in question is identifiable as a syntactic object both on account of its behaviour and control properties and its coding properties. Moreover, this analysis parallels Itkonen's description of “existential subjects” in Finnish as belonging to an “inverted ergative system”, which is clearly relationally different from the two kinds of ergativity systems described elsewhere in the literature.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document