scholarly journals The interpretation of external arguments

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jim Wood ◽  
Alec Marantz
Keyword(s):  
Argument Structure ◽  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Semantic Properties ◽  
Semantic Values

This chapter examines the syntactic and semantic properties of heads, e.g. Voice, Appl, and little p, that add participants to events. Instead of assuming that such heads exist as distinct primitives in the functional lexicon, it is proposed that there is one such head, which can get different interpretations depending on how it is merged into the structure. The chapter’s approach attributes the relative uniformity of the expression of argument structure to the principles that interpret syntactic structure semantically; thus, syntax is truly autonomous, with the atoms of syntactic representations carrying no inherent semantic values. Once syntactic heads are absolved from the necessity of explicitly carrying certain features relevant to their interpretation, a sparse inventory of functional heads can be developed. The system is applied to a set of constructions that present distinct challenges to theories that demand a kind of transparent reflection of argument structure in underlying syntactic representations.

Argument structure licensing and Englishhave

2011 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-105 ◽  
Author(s):  
KYUMIN KIM
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Argument Structure ◽  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Causative Constructions ◽  
Theoretical Claim ◽  
Possessive Constructions ◽  
Typological Classification

This paper provides a unified syntactic account of the distribution of Englishhavein causative constructions (e.g.John had Mary read a book) and experiencer constructions (e.g.John had the student walk out of his classroom). It is argued thathaveis realized in the context of anapplicative head(Appl) and an event-introducer v, regardless of the type of v.Haveis spelled out in the causative when Appl merges under vCAUSE, and in the experiencer construction when Appl merges under vBE. This proposal is extended tohavein possessive constructions (e.g.John has a hat/a brother):haveis realized in the context of vBEand Appl. The proposed account provides empirical evidence for expanding the distribution of Appl: (i) a causative can take ApplP as a complement, which was absent in Pylkkänen's (2008) typological classification, and (ii) Appl can merge above Voice, contrary to Pylkkänen's analysis in which Appl is argued to always merge below VoiceP, never above. Moreover, the proposed account supports the theoretical claim that argument structure is licensed by functional syntactic structure; in particular, it shows that the relevant functional heads are not aspectual heads, but Appl and v.

Scope Marking at the Syntax-Semantics Interface

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Veneeta Dayal ◽  
Deepak Alok
Keyword(s):  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Semantic Interpretation ◽  
Matrix Clause ◽  
Ongoing Research ◽  
The Matrix ◽  
Wh Questions ◽  
Embedded Clauses ◽  
Embedded Clause ◽  
Semantic Properties

Natural language allows questioning into embedded clauses. One strategy for doing so involves structures like the following: [CP-1 whi [TP DP V [CP-2 … ti …]]], where a wh-phrase that thematically belongs to the embedded clause appears in the matrix scope position. A possible answer to such a question must specify values for the fronted wh-phrase. This is the extraction strategy seen in languages like English. An alternative strategy involves a structure in which there is a distinct wh-phrase in the matrix clause. It is manifested in two types of structures. One is a close analog of extraction, but for the extra wh-phrase: [CP-1 whi [TP DP V [CP-2 whj [TP…t­j­…]]]]. The other simply juxtaposes two questions, rather than syntactically subordinating the second one: [CP-3 [CP-1 whi [TP…]] [CP-2 whj [TP…]]]. In both versions of the second strategy, the wh-phrase in CP-1 is invariant, typically corresponding to the wh-phrase used to question propositional arguments. There is no restriction on the type or number of wh-phrases in CP-2. Possible answers must specify values for all the wh-phrases in CP-2. This strategy is variously known as scope marking, partial wh movement or expletive wh questions. Both strategies can occur in the same language. German, for example, instantiates all three possibilities: extraction, subordinated, as well as sequential scope marking. The scope marking strategy is also manifested in in-situ languages. Scope marking has been subjected to 30 years of research and much is known at this time about its syntactic and semantic properties. Its pragmatics properties, however, are relatively under-studied. The acquisition of scope marking, in relation to extraction, is another area of ongoing research. One of the reasons why scope marking has intrigued linguists is because it seems to defy central tenets about the nature of wh scope taking. For example, it presents an apparent mismatch between the number of wh expressions in the question and the number of expressions whose values are specified in the answer. It poses a challenge for our understanding of how syntactic structure feeds semantic interpretation and how alternative strategies with similar functions relate to each other.

Constructions of uncontrolled state or event

2011 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 184-207 ◽  
Author(s):  
Javier Elvira
Keyword(s):  
Argument Structure ◽  
Romance Languages ◽  
General Sense ◽  
Old Spanish ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Construction ◽  
Semantic Values

Spanish and other Romance languages inherited from Latin the seeds of a new construction that is common to the syntax of some verbs belonging to the field of emotions, feelings, pain or modality. The semantic values of this construction are strange to prototypical transitivity and are coupled with a marked argument structure, compared with the more common transitive sentence. In the early centuries of the history of Spanish only a few verbs were integrated in the new scheme, which could receive an experience, modal or quantitative meaning, depending on an analogical association with certain frequent verbs. As the construction gained productivity, the importance of these few specific verbs as models for the newly integrated ones was reduced and the construction as a whole was understood in a more general sense of uncontrolled state or event. This paper provides a history of the construction in its different stages and tries to uncover the mechanism and factors that favored the increase in its productivity over the centuries. It also attempts to understand these facts from a typological standpoint, as an effect of some kind of a transitivity split that took place in Old Spanish, which gave rise to a type of marked construction, associated to some specific verbs.

Blackfoot causative formation between lexicon and grammar

Linguistics ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 54 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Inge Genee
Keyword(s):  
Argument Structure ◽  
Morphological Type ◽  
Grammatical Structure ◽  
States Of Affairs ◽  
Lexical Unit ◽  
Causative Constructions ◽  
Discourse Grammar ◽  
Synthetic Construction ◽  
Causative Construction ◽  
Semantic Properties

AbstractThis article considers the treatment of causatives in Functional Discourse Grammar (FDG) in relation to questions regarding the division of labor between the Grammar and the Lexicon in Functional Discourse Grammar (FDG). The focus is on causative constructions in which the causativizer affixes to the verb in so-called polysynthetic languages. In this respect the article also contributes to the treatment of polysynthesis in FDG. The central question is whether the causative construction is a derived lexeme created in the lexicon and inserted into the grammatical structure as a single lexical unit, or whether it is created in the grammar as a synthetic construction involving two lexical units. The article describes the pertinent morphosyntactic and semantic properties of causative constructions in Blackfoot, a polysynthetic language belonging to the Algonquian language family. I show that such constructions contain two events, each with their own semantic properties including argument structure and modifiability. In FDG this is accounted for by analyzing the semantic configuration at the Representational Level of analysis as a complex Episode consisting of two States-of-Affairs, while analyzing the morphosyntactic configuration at the Morphosyntactic Level as a complex verbal Word containing two verbal Roots, one of which is the causativizer. The causativizer is analyzed as an independent verbal lexeme stored in the lexicon rather than as derivational morpheme. This analysis follows logically from the way in which FDG conceptualizes polysynthesis, namely as a morphological type which allows the presence of more than one lexical element within a single word.

scholarly journals The syntactic structure of the initial and final sentences

2020 ◽  
Vol 99 (3) ◽  
pp. 65-72
Author(s):  
M.K. Zhunusova ◽  
◽  
A.Zh. Sayazhanova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Historical Period ◽  
Complex Sentences ◽  
Syntactic Features ◽  
Nominal Structure ◽  
Complex Forms ◽  
Rhetorical Questions ◽  
Semantic Properties ◽  
Single Part

The article analyzes the key role of syntactic features in the composition of the text. It was determined that the first and last sentences of the text are syntactically diverse. Sentence words, simple, introductory, and complex sentences perform communicative, expressive, and stylistic functions in the text. The semantic and compressed structures, modality, expressiveness, and stylistic skills that are based on various structures of these sentences were studied to reveal the clarity and comprehensibility of the idea of sentences. It is emphasized that with the help of syntactic laws, by means of one-or two-part sentences that convey the idea of the text, the features of the character are briefly and concisely revealed. The features of the formation of various initial sentences are defined. The syntactic structure of initial and final sentences is different: simple, ambiguous, complete, incomplete, positive, negative. All types of single-part components are nominal, vocative, and non-articulate sentences. However, such sentences are not complex, they are mostly simple short sentences. Semantic and syntactic characteristics of initial and final sentences are described in their idiomatic, narrative, interrogative, and complex forms. It was determined by the semantic properties of rhetorical questions in the initial proposals. It should be noted that the nominal structure of the initial sentences of the text is used not only for ease of description but also for emotionality as if it is related to certain aspects of the plot or the general content of the story and affects the reader's feelings. It is believed that the authors in the initial sentences not only indicate the time or place of the event, but also describe human behavior in relation to the environment and nature, and thus allow the reader to predict the end of the story. It was ascertained that the initial and final sentences, depending on the historical period, can be used in both positive and negative meanings.

scholarly journals German participle II constructions as adjuncts

2000 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
pp. 309-321
Author(s):  
Ilse Zimmermann
Keyword(s):  
Argument Structure ◽  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Relative Pronoun ◽  
Syntactic Position ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Adverbial Clauses ◽  
Propositional Operator ◽  
High Degree ◽  
Interpretative Flexibility

The present investigation is concerned with German participles II (past participles) as lexical heads of adjuncts. Within a minimalist framework of sound-meaning correlation, the analysis presupposes a lexicalist conception of morphology and the differentiation of Semantic Form and Conceptual Structure. It is argued that participles II have the same argument structure as the underlying verbs and can undergo passivization, perfectivization and conversion to adjectives. As for the potential of participles to function as modifiers, it is shown that attributive and adverbial participle constructions involve further operations of conversion. Participle constructions are considered as reduced sentences. They do not have a syntactic position for the subject, for an operator (comparable to the relative pronoun in relative clauses) or for an adverbial relator (as in adverbial clauses). The pertinent components are present only in the semantic structure. Two templates serve the composition of modifiers - including participle constructions - with the modificandum. It is necessary to differentiate between modification which unifies two predicates relating to participants or to situations and frame setting modification where the modifier is given the status of a propositional operator. The proposed analysis shows that the high degree of semantic underspecification and interpretative flexibility of German participle II constructions resides in the indeterminacy of participles II with respect to voice and perfect, in the absence of certain constituents in the syntactic structure and in the presence of corresponding parameters in the Semantic Form of the participle phrases.  

scholarly journals Plural comitative constructions in Polish

2005 ◽  
Author(s):  
Beata Trawinski
Keyword(s):  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Semantic Properties ◽  
Coordinate Structures

This paper provides a treatment of Polish Plural Comitative Constructions in the paradigm of HPSG in the tradition of Pollard and Sag (1994). Plural Comitative Constructions (PCCs) have previously been treated in terms of coordination, complementation and adjunction. The objective of this paper is to show that PCCs are neither instances of typical coordinate structures nor of typical complement or adjunct structures. It thus appears difficult to properly describe them by means of the standard principles of syntax and semantics. The analysis proposed in this paper accounts for the syntactic and semantic properties of PCCs in Polish by assuming an adjunction-based syntactic structure for PCCs, and by treating the indexical information provided by PCCs not as subject to any inheritance or composition, but as a result of applying a set of principles on number, gender and person resolution that also hold for ordinary coordinate structures.

scholarly journals Central Taurus Sign Language: On the Edge of Conventionalization

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rabia Ergin ◽  
Leyla Kürşat ◽  
Ethan Hartzell ◽  
Ray Jackendoff
Keyword(s):  
Sign Language ◽  
Argument Structure ◽  
Structural Variation ◽  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Morphological Markers ◽  
Present Evidence ◽  
Everyday Objects ◽  
Complex Study ◽  
Under Construction

We discuss the conventionalization process in Central Taurus Sign Language (CTSL), an emerging sign language in its initial stages, and present evidence from four studies for the amount of lexical and structural variation it harbors. The four studies together portray the architecture of a young system under construction. Study 1 looks at signs for everyday objects and finds considerable variation in their degree of conventionalization. Study 2 examines modifier-head and negation-head relationships, showing substantial conventionalization. Study 3 addresses the emergence and conventionalization of various word orders as argument structure markers. It shows that conventionalization increases over successive cohorts of signers, but it decreases as argument structure becomes more complex. Study 4 demonstrates the emergence and conventionalization of distinctive morphological markers to signal the subtle semantics of symmetry and reciprocity. Finally, we raise the issue of whether CTSL presents evidence of syntactic structure, or whether its properties can be characterized in terms of a simpler “linear grammar” that maps directly between phonology and semantics.

Los verbos adimensionales

Revue Romane ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-33
Author(s):  
Antonio Fábregas
Keyword(s):  
Argument Structure ◽  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Cognitive Domain ◽  
Conceptual Semantics ◽  
Change Of State

Abstract The goal of this article is the analysis of the empirical properties of change of state verbs which do not specifiy lexically the dimension where change operates – such as aumentar ‘increase’, reducir ‘reduce’, acrecentar ‘increase’ –, and also to examine the theoretical consequences that this class has for our understanding of argument structure, the distinction between light and non-light predicates and the interconnection of structural and conceptual semantics. We will show that these verbs, which we label ‘adimensional predicates’ are sharply different from prototypical change of state verbs, and we argue that their existence supports a distinction between the syntactic structure of a verb of change of state and the conceptual operation that anchors the change to a specific cognitive domain.

L2 LEARNERS’ ADAPTATION TO AN L2 STRUCTURE THAT IS DIFFERENT FROM L1

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Heeju Hwang
Keyword(s):  
Implicit Learning ◽  
Argument Structure ◽  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Learning Mechanism ◽  
L2 Learners ◽  
Matching Game ◽  
Causative Structure ◽  
Korean Learners ◽  
Korean Learners Of English ◽  
Cumulative Experience

Abstract The present study investigates how L2 learners adapt their production preferences following immediate and cumulative experience with a syntactic structure when an L2 structure differs from an L1 structure in terms of verb subcategorization frame and argument structure. Korean learners of English described causative events in English in a picture-matching game. The meaning of a causative sentence in English (e.g., Jen had her computer fixed) is expressed with an active transitive sentence in Korean (e.g., Jen-NOM computer-ACC fixed). The results demonstrated that both immediate and cumulative experience with a causative structure increased the likelihood of producing grammatical causative descriptions (e.g., Jen had her computer fixed), while decreasing the production of ungrammatical active transitive descriptions (e.g., Jen fixed her computer). The findings provide novel evidence that an implicit learning mechanism is involved in L2 learners’ processing and learning of an L2 structure that is different from L1.

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