scholarly journals Determiners are "conservative" because their meanings are not relations: evidence from verification

2021 ◽  
Vol 30 ◽  
pp. 206
Author(s):  
Tyler Zarus Knowlton ◽  
Paul Pietroski ◽  
Alexander Williams ◽  
Justin Halberda ◽  
Jeffrey Lidz
Keyword(s):  
Psychological Status ◽  
Verification Task ◽  
External Argument ◽  
Internal Argument ◽  
Logical Status ◽  
The Cross ◽  
Special Rules ◽  
Syntactic Context

Quantificational determiners have meanings that are "conservative" in the following sense: in sentences, repeating a determiner's internal argument within its external argument is logically insignificant. Using a verification task to probe which sets (or properties) of entities are represented when participants evaluate sentences, we test the predictions of three potential explanations for the cross-linguistic yet substantive conservativity constraint. According to "lexical restriction" views, words like every express relations that are exhibited by pairs of sets, but only some of these relations can be expressed with determiners. An "interface filtering" view retains the relational conception of determiner meanings, while replacing appeal to lexical filters (on relations of the relevant type) with special rules for interpreting the combination of a quantificational expression (Det NP) with its syntactic context and a ban on meanings that lead to triviality. The contrasting idea of "ordered predication" is that determiners don't express genuine relations. Instead, the second argument provides the scope of a monadic quantifier, while the first argument selects the domain for that quantifier: the sequences with respect to which it is evaluated. On this view, a determiner's two arguments each have a different logical status, suggesting that they might have a different psychological status as well. We find evidence that this is the case: When evaluating sentences like every big circle is blue, participants mentally group the things specified by the determiner's first argument (e.g., the big circles) but not the things specified by the second argument (e.g., the blue things) or the intersection of both (e.g., the big blue circles). These results suggest that the phenomenon of conservativity is due to ordered predication.

The Selectional Restrictions of French Past Tenses

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.

Building verbs in Chuj: Consequences for the nature of roots

2018 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
JESSICA COON
Keyword(s):  
Strict Sense ◽  
External Argument ◽  
Semantic Type ◽  
Combinatorial Properties ◽  
Internal Argument ◽  
Root Class

This paper offers an in-depth look at roots and verb stem morphology in Chuj (Mayan) in order to address a larger question: when it comes to the formation of verb stems, what information is contributed by the root, and what is contributed by the functional heads? I show first that roots in Chuj are not acategorical in the strict sense (cf. Borer 2005), but must be grouped into classes based on their stem-forming possibilities. Root class does not map directly to surface lexical category, but does determine which functional heads (i.e. valence morphology) may merge with the root. Second, I show that while the introduction of the external argument, along with clausal licensing and agreement generally, are all governed by higher functional heads, the presence or absence of aninternalargument is dictated by the root. Specifically, I show that transitive roots in Chuj always combine with an internal argument, whether it be (i) a full DP, (ii) a bare pseudo-incorporated NP, or (iii) an implicit object in an antipassive. In the spirit of work such as Levinson (2007, 2014), I connect this to the semantic type of the root; root class reflects semantic type, and semantic type affects the root’s combinatorial properties. This work also contributes to the discussion of how valence morphology operates. In line with works such as Alexiadou, Anagnostopoulou & Schäfer (2006), I argue that valence morphology applies directly to roots, rather than to some ‘inherent valence’ of a verb.

scholarly journals Du verbe au nom et du nom au verbe: Syntaxe et sémantique des maṣdars en arabe standard

1970 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
pp. 19-57
Author(s):  
Fayssal Tayalati
Keyword(s):  
External Argument ◽  
Standard Arabic ◽  
Internal Argument ◽  
Decomposition Model ◽  
Lexical Decomposition ◽  
Transitive Verbs ◽  
Genitive Case

The article describes the properties of deverbal nouns (maṣdars) in Standard Arabic. Prior accounts identify the following type (qaṣfu l-ʿaduwwi li-l-madīnati), among others, but neglect the maṣdar that introduces its internal argument as a direct complement in the genitive case and its external argument as a prepositional adjunct (taḥrīru l-madīnati ʿalā yadi l-jayši ). We argue that these two types reflect two different conceptu-alizations of ‘events’: bound-events, which describe a change that has taken place in the nature of a sub-stance represented by the internal argument; and unbound-events, which describe a change in the relation-ship between the internal and external arguments.Within the lexical decomposition model, we propose a semantic basis for explaining constraints on direct transitive verbs according to (i) the type of maṣdars they form; (ii) the possibility of deriving a resul-tative passive participle (ism al-mafʿūl); and (iii) the alternation, for some verbs, between a causative and non-causative use without any morphological variation.Keywords: lexical decomposition, deverbal noun (maṣdars), (un)bound-event

Simple Event nominals with Argument Structure? – Evidence from Irish deverbal nominalizations1

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 143-163
Author(s):  
Maria Bloch-Trojnar
Keyword(s):  
Argument Structure ◽  
External Argument ◽  
Synthetic Compounds ◽  
Internal Argument ◽  
Light Verb Constructions ◽  
Light Verb ◽  
Simple Event ◽  
Verb Constructions ◽  
Irish Data ◽  
Deverbal Nominals

Abstract Deverbal nominals in Irish support Grimshaw’s (1990) tripartite division into complex event (CE-), simple event (SE-) and result nominals (R-nominals). Irish nominals are ambiguous only between the SE- and R-status. There are no CE-nominals containing the AspP layer in their structure. SE-nominals (also found in Light Verb Constructions) are number-neutral and incapable of pluralizing and are represented as [nP[vP[Root]]]. R-nominals are devoid of the vP layer and behave like ordinary nouns. The Irish data point to v as the layer introducing event implications and the vP or PPs as the functional heads introducing the internal argument (Alexiadou and Schäfer 2011). Event denoting nominals in Irish can license the internal argument but aspectual modification and external argument licensing are not possible (cf. synthetic compounds in Greek (Alexiadou 2017)), which means that, counter to Borer (2013), the licensing of Argument Structure need not follow from the presence of the AspP layer.

Two types of alignment change in nominalizations

Diachronica ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edith Aldridge ◽  
Yuko Yanagida
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Early Development ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
External Argument ◽  
Austronesian Languages ◽  
Internal Argument ◽  
Old Japanese ◽  
Embedded Clause ◽  
Genitive Case ◽  
Object Relative

Abstract This paper investigates two instances of alignment change, both of which resulted from reanalysis of a nominalized embedded clause type, in which the external argument was marked with genitive case and the internal argument was focused. We show that a subject marked with genitive case in the early development of Austronesian languages became ergative-marked when object relative clauses in cleft constructions were reanalyzed as transitive root clauses. In contrast to this, the genitive case in Old Japanese nominalized clauses, marking an external argument, was extended to mark all subjects. This occurred after adnominal clauses were reanalyzed as root clauses. Japanese underwent one more step in order for genitive to be reanalyzed as nominative: the reanalysis of impersonal psych transitive constructions as intransitives. With these two case studies of Austronesian and Japanese, we show that reanalysis of nominalization goes in either direction, ergative or accusative, depending on the syntactic conditions involved in the reanalysis.

Canonical and reverse predication in the syntax of the active/passive diathesis alternation

2020 ◽  
pp. 147-187
Author(s):  
Marcel den Dikken
Keyword(s):  
External Argument ◽  
Passive Voice ◽  
Active Voice ◽  
Accusative Case ◽  
Internal Argument ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Secondary Predication ◽  
Predication Relation

This chapter defends an analysis of the active/passive alternation sharing with Collins’s smuggling proposal the idea that the participial VP occupies a specifier position above the external argument, but base-generating it in this position rather than moving it there. In both the active and the passive, the VP and the external argument are in a predication structure, with a RELATOR mediating the predication relation. The active voice builds a canonical predication structure, with the VP in the RELATOR’S complement position and the subject of predication as the specifier. In the passive voice, the VP is externally merged in the specifier of the RELATOR and the external argument in its complement. This analysis provides an explanation for obligatory auxiliation, the unavailability of accusative Case for the internal argument, Visser’s Generalization (the ban on personal passivization of subject control verbs), and the restrictions on referential dependencies and depictive secondary predication in passives.

Pour un traitement unitaire de l’assignation du datif en français

2009 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-123 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fayssal Tayalati ◽  
Marleen Van Peteghem
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Role ◽  
External Argument ◽  
Semantic Roles ◽  
Internal Argument ◽  
Dative Case

The aim of this paper is to propose a unified account of dative assignment for both verbs and adjectives in French. We will show that both types of predicates assign dative case to their second internal argument, provided that this argument is situated in a higher position in the thematic hierarchy than the first internal argument. This hypothesis, which considers the dative in French as a structural rather than a semantic case, can easily account for all three-argument verbs, for most two-argument verbs and even for adjunct datives. As for the adjectival predicates, we will show that only ergative adjectives, whose first argument is an internal argument, can assign dative to their second internal argument. The few exceptions to this hypothesis can be explained by the fact that, although the dative is not a semantic case, it is associated with certain semantic roles, given that its semantic role is situated in the thematic hierarchy between the role of the external argument and the role of the first internal argument.

scholarly journals Middle-passive voice in Albanian and Greek

2015 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-150 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. RITA MANZINI ◽  
ANNA ROUSSOU ◽  
LEONARDO M. SAVOIA
Keyword(s):  
Distributed Morphology ◽  
External Argument ◽  
Passive Voice ◽  
Internal Argument ◽  
Open Position

In this paper we consider middle-passive voice in Greek and Albanian, which shows a many-to-many mapping between LF and PF. Different morphosyntactic shapes (conditioned by tense or aspect) are compatible with the same set of interpretations, which include the passive, the reflexive, the anticausative, and the impersonal (in Albanian only). Conversely, each of these interpretations can be encoded by any of the available morphosyntactic structures. Specialized person inflections (in Greek and Albanian), the clitic$u$(Albanian) and the affix -th- (Greek) lexicalize the internal argument (or the sole argument of intransitive in Albanian) either as a variable, which is LF-interpreted as bound by the EPP position (passives, anticausatives, reflexives) or as generically closed (impersonals, in Albanian only). The ambiguity between passives, anticausatives and reflexives depends on the interpretation assigned to the external argument (generic closure, suppression or unification with the internal argument respectively). In perfect tenses, auxiliaryjam‘be’ in Albanian derives the expression of middle-passive voice due to its selectional requirement for a participle with an open position. Crucially, no hidden features/abstract heads encoding interpretation are postulated, nor any Distributed Morphology-style realizational component.

Reanalyzing Mandarin V1-V2 resultative constructions—A force-theoretic approach

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-32
Author(s):  
Peng (Benjamin) Han
Keyword(s):  
Theoretic Approach ◽  
External Argument ◽  
Result State ◽  
Resultative Constructions ◽  
Causal Influence ◽  
Internal Argument ◽  
Change Of State ◽  
Resultative Construction ◽  
Event Based

Abstract This study takes a force-theoretic approach to Mandarin V1-V2 resultative constructions. Unlike event-based analyses that hold a causing event accountable for a result state, this study attributes a result state to a specific entity involved in the relevant causing event. In this way, V1-V2 resultative construction (RC) sentences have the interpretation that through a causing action, one entity relevant to the action caused a change of state to another entity; this causal influence is reconceptualized as a force from the former entity, characterizing the situation change concerning the latter entity. Following Copley and Harley (2015), this conceptual reanalysis is represented structurally, successfully deriving V1-V2 RC sentences. V2 and the internal argument DP specify the property of a resultant situation and its holder, defining the force; the external argument DP tells about this force's source; V1 modifies this force, indicating the causing action through which this force is realized.

Copulas and light verbs as spellouts of argument structure

2019 ◽  
pp. 31-47
Author(s):  
Nicholas Welch
Keyword(s):  
Argument Structure ◽  
Structural Variation ◽  
Structural Complexity ◽  
Light Verbs ◽  
Cast Doubt ◽  
The Cross ◽  
Syntactic Context

Dene (Athapaskan) languages typically have a small inventory of semantically light verbs. This chapter demonstrates that their interpretations derive wholly from their syntactic context in predictable ways and proposes these verbs are spellouts of morphosyntactic structure with either semantically vacuous roots or none at all. They are shown to form a cline of structural complexity and it is suggested that some of the cross-linguistic semantic variability observed in light verbs may originate from this structural variation. Additionally, since these verbs serve as matrix verbs of full clauses, they cast doubt on claims that light verbs are syntactically dependent on main verbs. The extreme semantic impoverishment and configurational relatedness of these verbs suggests that they are a unified class. Two of them are commonly termed copulas; the data and analysis presented here, however, suggest that a principled distinction between copulas and light verbs may ultimately be illusory.

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