On the control/raising ambiguity with aspectual verbs: a structural account

In what follows, I first briefly review Perlmutter (1968, 1970), in which it is argued that aspectual verbs are ambiguous between control and raising. I suggest that while the argument for the raising analysis is solid, the arguments supporting the control analysis of aspectual verbs are less so. As an alternative hypothesis to consider, I introduce the structural ambiguity hypothesis. In Section 3, I review three recent analyses of control and raising. Although there are important differences among them, they all share the basic assumption that the control/raising distinction is due to differences in selectional restrictions that the lexical items impose. Under such an assumption, the lexical ambiguity hypothesis is the only available option. In Section 4, I present evidence for the structural ambiguity hypothesis from studies concerning aspectual verbs in languages from four distinct families, German (Wurmbrand 2001), Japanese (Fukuda 2006), Romance languages (Cinque 2003), and Basque (Arregi Molina-Azaola 2004). These data strongly suggest that across languages aspectual verbs can appear in two different syntactic positions, either below or above vP, or the projection with which an external argument is introduced (Kratzer 1994, 1996, Chomsky 1995). Given these findings, I argue that it is the aspectual verbs' position with respect to vP which creates the control/raising ambiguity. When an aspectual verb appears in a position that is lower than vP, an external argument takes scope over the aspectual verb. Thus, it is interpreted as control. When an aspectual verb appears in a position that is higher than vP, on the other hand, it is the aspectual verb that takes scope over an entire vP, including the external argument. Thus, it is interpreted as raising. In section 5, I extend the scope of this study to include a discussion of want-type verbs in Indonesian, as analyzed in Polinsky & Potsdam (2006). Polinsky & Potsdam argue that the Indonesian want-type verbs must be raising in at least certain cases where they allow a rather peculiar interpretation. Although they assume that there are also control counterparts of the want-type verbs, I argue that applying the proposed analysis to the want-type verbs does away with the need for stipulating two distinct lexical entries for these verbs. Section 6 concludes the paper.

Download Full-text

Isoglosses and language change: Evidence of the rise and loss of isoglosses from a comparison of early Greek and early English

Poznan Studies in Contemporary Linguistics ◽

10.1515/psicl-2020-0018 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 56 (4) ◽

pp. 553-575

Author(s):

Nikolaos Lavidas

Keyword(s):

Language Change ◽

The Other ◽

Linguistic Features ◽

Considerable Distance ◽

Causative Constructions ◽

European Languages ◽

Other Hand ◽

Structural Ambiguity ◽

Early English ◽

Aspectual Verbs

Abstract We analyze the rise and loss of isoglosses in two Indo-European languages, early Greek and early English, which, however, show considerable distance between their structures in many other domains. We follow Keidan’s approach (2013), that has drawn the attention on the fact that the study of isoglosses (i.e., linguistic features common to two or more languages) is connected with common innovations of particular languages after the split into sub-groups of Indo-European: this type of approach aims at collecting isoglosses that appear across the branches of Indo-European. We examine the rise of the isogloss of labile verbs and the loss of the isogloss of the two classes of aspectual verbs in early Greek and early English. Our study shows that the rise of labile verbs in both languages is related to the innovative use of intransitives in causative constructions. On the other hand, the innovations in voice morphology follow different directions in Greek and English and are unrelated to the rise of labile verbs. In contrast to labile verbs, which are still predominant for causative-anticausative constructions in both languages, the two classes of aspectual verbs are lost in the later stages of Greek but are predominant even in Present-day English. Again, a “prerequisite” change for the isogloss can be easily located in a structural ambiguity that is relevant for aspectual verbs in early Greek and early English. However, another independent development, the changes in verbal complementation (the development of infinitival and participial complements) in Greek and English, determined the loss of this isogloss.

Download Full-text

The Selectional Restrictions of French Past Tenses

The Canadian Journal of Linguistics / La revue canadienne de linguistique ◽

10.1017/s0008413100018016 ◽

2002 ◽

Vol 47 (1-2) ◽

pp. 47-66

Author(s):

Marie Labelle

Keyword(s):

Past Tense ◽

External Argument ◽

Internal Argument ◽

Selectional Restrictions ◽

Tense Operators ◽

Past Tenses

AbstractThis article argues against the idea that the Imparfait and the Passé Simple in French are aspectually sensitive tense operators. Both morphemes combine with any type of eventuality. It is not the case that a clause in the Imparfait denotes a state, or that a clause in the Passé Simple denotes an event. It is proposed that the Passé Simple is a true past tense, which introduces a past eventuality in the discourse with the condition that it be the maximal eventuality of the appropriate type. The Imparfait is analyzed as a dyadic morpheme, which selects an eventuality as internal argument and a past temporal referent of discourse as external argument, where the eventuality provides a condition on the temporal referent.

Download Full-text

Repetitive presuppositions with again: Un-severing the external argument

Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America ◽

10.3765/plsa.v5i1.4666 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 5 (1) ◽

pp. 83

Author(s):

Josep Ausensi ◽

Jianrong Yu ◽

Ryan Walter Smith

Keyword(s):

Empirical Evidence ◽

Argument Structure ◽

Lexical Semantics ◽

External Argument ◽

Present Evidence ◽

Semantic Composition ◽

Event Identification ◽

Functional Head ◽

Head Voice ◽

Secondary Predication

Since Marantz (1984) and Kratzer (1996), it has been widely accepted in the literature on argument structure that agents are introduced as external arguments via a functional head VOICE through secondary predication, using semantic composition rules like EVENT IDENTIFICATION. The widely cited evidence for such a position is the fact that while internal arguments can condition special semantic interpretations of the surface verb, agents never do. In this paper, we present evidence against such a view, arguing that a well-defined class of verbs can impose intentionality entailments and also require representation of the agent argument internally within their lexical semantics. The crucial empirical evidence we utilize is modification by again, specifically the range of available repetitive presuppositions it can introduce. We show that again behaves differently with respect to how its repetitive presupposition can be satisfied by verbal roots whose agent argument is introduced externally versus verbal roots that must entail intentionality and representation of its agent argument. Together with widely accepted assumptions about the syntax and semantics of again-modification, we argue that not all external arguments can be severed from the verbal root.

Download Full-text

Principles of Solution Focused Therapy and Their Application to Audiology

Perspectives on Public Health Issues Related to Hearing and Balance ◽

10.1044/phi15.1.27 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 15 (1) ◽

pp. 27-33

Author(s):

James C. Blair

Keyword(s):

Basic Assumption ◽

Current Practice ◽

Helping Professions ◽

Patient Centered ◽

Therapy Approach ◽

Agents Of Change ◽

Centered Care ◽

Client Centered Therapy ◽

Solution Focused ◽

Solution Focused Therapy

The concept of client-centered therapy (Rogers, 1951) has influenced many professions to refocus their treatment of clients from assessment outcomes to the person who uses the information from this assessment. The term adopted for use in the professions of Communication Sciences and Disorders and encouraged by The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) is patient-centered care, with the goal of helping professions, like audiology, focus more centrally on the patient. The purpose of this paper is to examine some of the principles used in a patient-centered therapy approach first described by de Shazer (1985) named Solution-Focused Therapy and how these principles might apply to the practice of audiology. The basic assumption behind this model is that people are the agents of change and the professional is there to help guide and enable clients to make the change the client wants to make. This model then is focused on solutions, not on the problems. It is postulated that by using the assumptions in this model audiologists will be more effective in a shorter time than current practice may allow.

Download Full-text

The Cambridge History of the Romance Languages

10.1017/chol9780521800723 ◽

2010 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Keyword(s):

Romance Languages ◽

History Of

Download Full-text

Idiographic Dynamics of Positive Affect in GAD

European Journal of Psychological Assessment ◽

10.1027/1015-5759/a000580 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 36 (3) ◽

pp. 500-509

Author(s):

Hannah G. Bosley ◽

Devon B. Sandel ◽

Aaron J. Fisher

Keyword(s):

Positive Affect ◽

Structural Equation ◽

Alternative Hypothesis ◽

Equation Model ◽

Aggregated Data ◽

Regulatory Strategy ◽

Constant State ◽

Automatic Search ◽

Time Lagged ◽

Exploratory Procedure

Abstract. Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) is associated with worry and emotion regulation difficulties. The contrast-avoidance model suggests that individuals with GAD use worry to regulate emotion: by worrying, they maintain a constant state of negative affect (NA), avoiding a feared sudden shift into NA. We tested an extension of this model to positive affect (PA). During a week-long ecological momentary assessment (EMA) period, 96 undergraduates with a GAD analog provided four daily measurements of worry, dampening (i.e., PA suppression), and PA. We hypothesized a time-lagged mediation relationship in which higher worry predicts later dampening, and dampening predicts subsequently lower PA. A lag-2 structural equation model was fit to the group-aggregated data and to each individual time-series to test this hypothesis. Although worry and PA were negatively correlated in 87 participants, our model was not supported at the nomothetic level. However, idiographically, our model was well-fit for about a third (38.5%) of participants. We then used automatic search as an idiographic exploratory procedure to detect other time-lagged relationships between these constructs. While 46 individuals exhibited some cross-lagged relationships, no clear pattern emerged across participants. An alternative hypothesis about the speed of the relationship between variables is discussed using contemporaneous correlations of worry, dampening, and PA. Findings suggest heterogeneity in the function of worry as a regulatory strategy, and the importance of temporal scale for detection of time-lagged effects.

Download Full-text

A Quick Visual Mind Can be a Slow Auditory Mind

Experimental Psychology (formerly Zeitschrift für Experimentelle Psychologie) ◽

10.1027/1618-3169.56.1.33 ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 56 (1) ◽

pp. 33-40 ◽

Cited By ~ 16

Author(s):

Sander Martens ◽

Addie Johnson ◽

Martje Bolle ◽

Jelmer Borst

Keyword(s):

Attentional Blink ◽

Task Difficulty ◽

Human Mind ◽

Visual Modality ◽

Present Evidence ◽

Conscious Level ◽

Visual Targets ◽

Concurrent Information

The human mind is severely limited in processing concurrent information at a conscious level of awareness. These temporal restrictions are clearly reflected in the attentional blink (AB), a deficit in reporting the second of two targets when it occurs 200–500 ms after the first. However, we recently reported that some individuals do not show a visual AB, and presented psychophysiological evidence that target processing differs between “blinkers” and “nonblinkers”. Here, we present evidence that visual nonblinkers do show an auditory AB, which suggests that a major source of attentional restriction as reflected in the AB is likely to be modality-specific. In Experiment 3, we show that when the difficulty in identifying visual targets is increased, nonblinkers continue to show little or no visual AB, suggesting that the presence of an AB in the auditory but not in the visual modality is not due to a difference in task difficulty.

Download Full-text