Encasing the Absolutes

The paper explores the issue of structure and case in English absolute constructions, whose subjects are deduced by several descriptive grammars as being in the nominative case due to its supposed neutrality in terms of register. This deduction is countered by systematic accounts presented within the framework of the Minimalist Program which relate the case of absolute constructions to specific grammatical factors. Each proposal is shown as an attempt of analysing absolute constructions as basic predication structures, either full clauses or small clauses. I argue in favour of the small clause approach due to its minimal reliance on transformations and unique stipulations. Furthermore, I propose that small clauses project a singular category, and show that the use of two cases in English absolute constructions can be accounted for if they are analysed as depictive phrases, possibly selected by prepositions. The case of the subject in absolutes is shown to be a result of syntactic and non-syntactic factors. I thus argue in accordance with Minimalist goals that syntactic case does not exist, attributing its role in absolutes to other mechanisms.

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Verbless predicative structures across Romance

Journal of Linguistics ◽

10.1017/s0022226715000201 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 52 (3) ◽

pp. 609-637

Author(s):

NICOLA MUNARO

Keyword(s):

Small Clause ◽

Individual Level ◽

Functional Head ◽

Phase Extension ◽

The Subject ◽

Small Clauses ◽

Apparent Similarity

This article develops an analysis of a verbless predicative structure attested throughout Romance: in this type of reduced clause the predicate linearly precedes the subject and is separated from it by a clear intonational break, while the missing verb is interpreted as a silent copula. I argue that this structure should be viewed as the result of three movement steps: the first step is to be identified with predicate inversion, that is, extraction of the predicate from the complement position of the predicative small clause to a higher specifier position thanks to phase extension, followed by raising of the predicate to the specifier of SubjP to check the EPP feature, and finally to the specifier of the left-peripheral projection FocusP in order to check a focus feature. The present analysis is based on the crucial, and independently motivated assumption, that the process of phase extension, produced by raising of the small clause internal relator R° to a higher functional head F°, is limited to small clauses associated with individual-level predicates. The verbless predicative structure is then compared to an analogous construction in which the preposed predicate is preceded by awh-item, arguing that, despite their apparent similarity, the two structures should be clearly distinguished.

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Secondary predication and default case

ZAS Papers in Linguistics ◽

10.21248/zaspil.26.2001.140 ◽

2001 ◽

Vol 26 ◽

pp. 113-125

Author(s):

Youngjun Jang ◽

Siyoun Kim

Keyword(s):

Small Clause ◽

Nominative Case ◽

Accusative Case ◽

Default Case ◽

The Subject ◽

Secondary Predication

This paper compares secondary predication constructions (including small clause complements, resultatives, and/or depictives) in English and Korean and argues that these two typologically different languages employ different modes of satisfying the Case Filter (Chomsky 1981) with regard to the Case of the subjects of secondary predication constructions. More specifically, we argue that the subject of the secondary predicate in English is Accusative Case-marked by the higher governing verb, while that in Korean is Nominative Case-marked by default. Evidence for default Nominative Case will be provided from Korean and other languages.

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Resultatives, goal PPs, and postverbal subjects: From Scotland to Belfast

Journal of Linguistics ◽

10.1017/s0022226720000407 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 1-45

Author(s):

ANDREW WEIR

Keyword(s):

Standard English ◽

Small Clause ◽

Resultative Constructions ◽

Functional Head ◽

Light Verb ◽

Unaccusative Verbs ◽

Cast Doubt ◽

The Subject ◽

Small Clauses

This paper investigates postverbal imperative subjects (e.g., get you to school), ungrammatical in standard English but grammatical in certain contexts in dialects of Scottish and Belfast English. Henry (1995) reports that unaccusative verbs generally allow postverbal subjects in Belfast English, but in the Scottish English (ScotE) dialect considered here, only a very restricted subset of verbs allow it. Moreover, in ScotE, the preposition away can appear without an overt verb (I’ll away to my bed); this also allows a postverbal subject in imperatives (away you to school). The ScotE data cast doubt on Henry’s (1995) proposal that the licensor of postverbal subjects is weak agreement. The paper argues that the subjects in these constructions are actually external arguments of small clauses (of which goal PPs are taken to be a subset following, e.g., Beck & Snyder 2001). The differences between dialects are located in the structure of resultatives; Belfast English allows Case to be assigned to the subject of small clauses in resultative constructions via a functional head endowed with a causation feature, allowing them to remain in situ in imperatives. In standard English, the causation feature is directly merged onto the verb, not allowing for Case assignment and forcing raising of the subject of the small clause. The ScotE data is argued to arise from the availability of a very ‘light’ verb which is realized as get in some contexts and as silence in others.

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Ereigniskontrollierte Adjunkte im Deutschen

Zeitschrift für Germanistische Linguistik ◽

10.1515/zgl-2019-0023 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 47 (3) ◽

pp. 507-534

Author(s):

Inghild Flaate Høyem

Keyword(s):

Past Participle ◽

Small Clause ◽

Matrix Clause ◽

Object Control ◽

The Matrix ◽

The Subject ◽

Small Clauses ◽

German Data ◽

Semantic Properties ◽

Insight Into

Abstract The present paper investigates small clause adjuncts displaying the phenomenon referred to as ‘event control’ in literature. Many languages, including German, employ non-finite clauses (besides finite clauses) as propositional adjuncts, for instance infinitival, participial and small clause adjuncts. The subject of these adjunct clauses is left unexpressed and must generally be interpreted co-referentially with the subject or object of the matrix clause (subject or object control), but the matrix event itself can also be interpreted as the controller. Adjuncts involving event control have, to my knowledge, never been examined jointly or particularly thoroughly. The aim of this paper is therefore to provide insight into German data involving event control in different kinds of non-finite propositional adjunct clauses, by examining common and diverging syntactic and semantic properties. The data comprises nominative DPs (Germ. Satzappositionen), adverbial infinitives headed by um (Engl. in order to), adverbial present and past participle constructions, and adverbial small clauses headed by the particle als. Furthermore, I discuss briefly how these data could be captured theoretically, by analyzing them as adjuncts in different syntactic-semantic domains and as obligatorily controlled (OC) adjuncts according to the OC-properties described by Landau (2013).

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Small clauses in English and Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian / Male klauze u engleskom i bosanskom, hrvatskom i srpskom jeziku

Književni jezik ◽

10.33669/kj2019-30-06 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 181-208

Author(s):

Izela Habul-Šabanović

Keyword(s):

English Literature ◽

Generative Grammar ◽

Small Clause ◽

Contrastive Analysis ◽

Sentence Level ◽

The Subject ◽

Basic Concepts ◽

Small Clauses ◽

Secondary Predication ◽

Finite Verb

Small Clauses in English represent one of the basic concepts of modern generative grammar and they are characterized as minimal units of non-verbal predication, where the predication relation between the subject and the predicate is established in the absence of a finite verb form. In traditional grammars, they are generally referred to as “secondary predication” constructions. As the concept of a “small clause” is not familiar in the context of traditional descriptive grammars of Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian, the aim of this paper is to make a preliminary contrastive analysis of how these or similar constructions are realized in Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian through translation equivalents and how they are treated in traditional grammars. Additionally, we have applied several tests typically used in English literature to prove the constituency of small clauses in order to establish whether or not these constructions could form a separate constituent at the sentence level in Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian as well.

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What information structure tells us about individual/stage-level predicates

Borealis – An International Journal of Hispanic Linguistics ◽

10.7557/1.1.1.2293 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 1 (1) ◽

pp. 1 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Angel Jiménez-Fernández

Keyword(s):

Information Structure ◽

Syntactic Structure ◽

Small Clause ◽

Individual Stage ◽

Individual Level ◽

The Subject ◽

Small Clauses ◽

The Individual

The goal of this paper is to explore the lexical-syntactic structure of copulative constructions and argument small clauses within the framework proposed by Gallego & Uriagereka (2011) for the Individual-Level/Stage-Level distinction (Carlson 1988, Kratzer 1995) and implement their theory by claiming that there is a crucial correlation between IL/SL constructions and their information structure. I argue that IL subjects are topics (and hence this is a categorical construction, following Kuroda 1972, Milsark 1977 and Raposo & Uriagereka 1995), whereas in SL constructions the topic may either be the subject or a silent spatiotemporal argument (their construction being thetic). I show the topic nature of IL subjects in contexts of specificity and subextraction. I ultimately derive the IS of IL/SL constructions from their lexical-syntactic structure and identify the type of topic here as an Aboutness-Topic (in the sense of Frascarelli & Hinterhölzl 2007, Lambrecht 1994, Erteschik-Shir 1997). Keywords: individual-level/stage-level predicates, copulas, small clause, central-coincidence/terminal coincidence prepositions, topic, specificity, subextraction

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Resultatives in Korean Revisited: Complementation versus Adjunction

Nordlyd ◽

10.7557/12.138 ◽

2008 ◽

Vol 35 (1) ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Minjeong Son

Keyword(s):

Complementation Analysis ◽

Supporting Evidence ◽

Small Clause ◽

Recent Proposal ◽

Nominative Case ◽

Accusative Case ◽

The Subject ◽

Case Markings

Korean resultatives are divided into two types depending on whether the subject of a resultative secondary predicate is assigned accusative case or nominative case. The former is comparable to selected object resultatives (e.g., Mary wipe the table clean), and the latter to unselected object resultatives (e.g., John screamed himself hoarse) in English. Korean resultatives have received a great deal of attention in the literature due to different case markings on the subject of a secondary predicate. However, there has been no agreement regarding whether Korean resultatives should be analyzed as small clause complements, similar to English, or adjunct phrases. Some argue that both resultative types are small clause complements (e.g., Kim 1999, Chang and Kim 2001), but some argue that only the selected object resultatives are true small clause type resultatives while the unselected object resultatives are VP adjuncts (e.g., Song 2005, Yeo 2006). A recent proposal by Shim and den Dikken (2007), however, suggests that both types should be analyzed as TP adjuncts. This paper defends the second position, a split analysis for the two types of resultatives: a complementation analysis for selected object resultatives, and an adjunction analysis for unselected object resultatives. Supporting evidence for the split analysis is provided by a few syntactic and semantic facts that lead to the conclusion that the two resultatives must be structurally distinguished from one another in terms of their complementhood/adjuncthood.

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Again on relative clause and subordination in Latin

Journal of Latin Linguistics ◽

10.1515/joll-2014-0002 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 13 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Gualtiero Calboli

Keyword(s):

Relative Clause ◽

Syntactic Structure ◽

Central Point ◽

Relative Pronoun ◽

Case Theory ◽

Nominative Case ◽

Subordinate Clauses ◽

Long Time ◽

The Subject ◽

The Law

AbstractI started from the relative clause which occurs in Hittite, and in particular with the enclitic position of the relative pronoun. This is connected with the OV position and this position seems to have been prevailing in Hittite and PIE. The syntactic structure usually employed in Hittite between different clauses is the parataxis. Nevertheless, also the hypotaxis begins to be employed and the best occasion to use it was the diptych as suggested by Haudry, though he didn't consider the most natural and usual diptych: the law, where the crime and the sanction build a natural diptych already in old Hittite. Then I used Justus' and Boley's discussion on the structure of Hittite sentence and found a similarity with Latin, namely the use of an animate subject as central point of a sentence. With verbs of action in ancient languages the subject was normally an animate being, whereas also inanimate subject is employed in modern languages. This seems to be the major difference between ancient and modern structure of a sentence, or, better to say, in Hittite and PIE the subject was an animate being and this persisted a long time, and remained as a tendency in Latin, while in following languages and in classical grammar the subject became a simple nominal “entity” to be predicated and precised with verb and other linguistic instruments. A glance has been cast also to pronouns and particles (sometimes linked together) as instruments of linking nominal variants of coordinate or subordinate clauses and to the development of demonstrative/deictic pronouns. Also in ancient case theory a prevailing position was assured to the nominative case, the case of the subject.

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Two puzzles on the nominative particle ga in Japanese

Journal of Japanese Linguistics ◽

10.1515/jjl-2018-0015 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 34 (2) ◽

pp. 223-243

Author(s):

Noriko Kawasaki

Keyword(s):

Present Article ◽

Semantic Content ◽

Japanese Language ◽

Conversational Implicature ◽

Long Distance ◽

Nominative Case ◽

Semantic Account ◽

The Subject

Abstract Back in the 1970s, Kazuko Inoue observed that some active sentences in Japanese allow a prepositional subject. Along with impersonal sentences pointed out by S.-Y. Kuroda, such examples suggest that the nominative subject is not an obligatory element in Japanese sentences. While this observation supports the hypothesis that important characteristics of the Japanese language follow from its lack of (forced-)agreement, Japanese potential sentences require the nominative ga on at least one argument. The present article argues that the nominative case particle ga is semantically vacuous even where a ga-marked phrase is indispensable or the ga-marked phrase is construed as exhaustively listing. Stative predicates require a ga-marked phrase because they can ascribe a property to an argument only by function application. The exhaustive listing reading arises by conversational implicature when the presence of a ga-marked phrase signals that a topic phrase is being avoided. The discussion leads to a semantic account of subject honorification whereby the honorification only concerns the semantic content of the predicate, and does not involve agreement with the subject. It is also shown that sentences with a prepositional subject allow zibun only as a long-distance anaphor, which indicates that they do lack a subject with the nominative Case.

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Minimalisme et variation syntaxique

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

10.1017/s0008413100020430 ◽

1998 ◽

Vol 43 (1) ◽

pp. 65-95

Author(s):

Juvénal Ndayiragije

Keyword(s):

Minimalist Program ◽

Empirically Supported ◽

Internal Focus ◽

The Subject ◽

Feature Checking ◽

Focus Projection ◽

Formal Features

AbstractThis article argues for a very restrictive theory of feature checking whereby only formal features of functional heads need to be checked for convergence. This theory, which enables us to dispense with most of the economy conditions assumed within the minimalist program (Chomsky 1995), is empirically supported by two syntactically and semantically related constructions in Kirundi: the Subject-Object Reversal and the Transitive Expletive Constructions. On parametric grounds, we argue that such constructions derive from the existence in Kirundi of a TP-internal focus projection whose [+focus] feature must be checked for convergence.

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