scholarly journals Estonian Transitive Verb Classes, Object Case, and Progressive

Nordlyd ◽  
10.7557/12.30 ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Tamm

This article examines the relation between aspect and object case in Estonian and establishes a verb classification that predicts many facets of object case behavior. It is demonstrated that the aspectual opposition between perfectivity and imperfectivity correspond to the morphological opposition between genitive/nominative case marking and partitive object case marking. However, case marking of Estonian objects is shown to be an unreliable indicator for aspectual verb class membership. The verb classification proposed here is established on the basis of tests that involve only the partitive object case. These tests employ the Estonian progressive. The tests distinguish verb classes from each other according to the situations they typically describe and predict several conditions of case assignment of patterns.

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hussein Al-Bataineh

This paper examines the syntactic structure of Arabic vocatives, focusing on Case-marking of vocatives. The assignment of accusative and nominative Case can be accounted for in the light of Hill (2017) and Larson (2014)’s proposals. Hill (2017) provides the basic structure of the vocative phrase, and Larson (2014) proposes the internal structure of DP. The combination of these proposals explains the derivation of Arabic vocatives and their Case alternation. This paper argues that indefinite vocatives are assigned accusative Case only if they are merged with an overt D -n, otherwise a nominative Case surfaces on the noun by default. Proper names have the same analysis since the presence of the indefinite article-n is a prerequisite for accusative Case assignment. Concerning vocatives as heads of Construct States, N-to-D movement takes place in order to assign [+def] feature to D and is assigned accusative Case once D raises to the light d. Regarding vocatives in demonstrative phrases, D-to-d movement is blocked because of the intervening constituent Dem, indicating that this operation is subject to the adjacency condition. The same analysis is applicable to definite vocatives occurring with the particle ʡayyuha.


Author(s):  
Anne Tamm

This monograph discusses scalar verb classes. It tests theories of linguistic form and meaning, arguments and thematic roles, using Estonian data. The analyses help to understand the aspectual structure of Estonian. In Estonian, transitive verbs fall into aspectual classes based on the type of case-marking of objects and adjuncts. The book relates the morphosyntactic frames of verbs to properties typically associated with adjectives and nouns: scalarity and boundedness. Verbs are divided according to how their aspect is composed. Some verbs lexicalize a scale, which can be bounded either lexically or compositionally. Aspectual composition involves the unification of features. Compositionally derived structures differ according to which of the aspectually relevant dimensions are bounded.


Author(s):  
Айгуль Наилевна Закирова ◽  
Никита Алексеевич Муравьев

В статье рассматриваются две пассивные конструкции в горномарийском языке. В обеих из них используется причастная форма на -mə̑; основное различие между конструкциями состоит в падежном оформлении пациентивного участника. В одной из конструкций сохраняется исходное аккузативное маркирование пациенса, тогда как в другой конструкции пациентивный участник получает номинативное оформление. Цель исследования — сравнительный анализ двух разновидностей пассива и выявление закономерностей, лежащих в основе выбора падежного оформления пациенса. В литературе по пассивным конструкциям во многих языках отмечается наличие двух пассивных конструкций: адъективного пассива со стативной семантикой и глагольного пассива с динамической семантикой. Это же различие ожидалось увидеть и применительно к горномарийскому причастному пассиву. Для проверки этого предположения были изучены: а) синтаксические особенности конструкций, соотношение в них именных и глагольных свойств, б) аспектуальная семантика конструкций, а именно противопоставление стативной и динамической семантики, в) особенности кодирования участников и контексты с различным референциальным статусом пациенса. Было установлено, что пассив с номинативным кодированием пациенса в целом характеризуется именным синтаксисом, стативной семантикой и обязательной определенностью пациенса, тогда как пассив с аккузативным кодированием имеет глагольный синтаксис, динамическую семантику и не ограничен с точки зрения референциальных свойств пациенса. Единственным наблюдаемым отклонением от данных закономерностей является одинаковая допустимость обеих разновидностей пассива в хабитуальных контекстах, что подлежит дальнейшему выяснению. На основе выявленных закономерностей было сделано обобщение, что пассив с номинативным кодированием пациенса описывает состояние, возникшее в результате некоторого события, тогда как пассив с аккузативным кодированием описывает само событие. В качестве итога исследования предложена интерпретация семантического различия между конструкциями в теоретической парадигме синтаксиса первой фазы Дж. Рэмчанд: аккузативную конструкцию можно рассматривать как конструкцию с озвучиванием каузирующего и процессуального подсобытия, а номинативную — как конструкцию с озвучиванием результирующего подсобытия. The article provides an account of two participial passive constructions employing the -mə̑- participle in Hill Mari. The data was collected in 2017 and 2019 in the villages of Kuznetsovo and Mikryakovo of the Gornomarijskij district, Republic of Mari El. The two constructions with the -mə̑- participle differ in the first place in how the patient is marked: in one of them the patient is marked for nominative, whereas in the other construction the accusative marking is inherited from the transitive verb. The aim of this study is to compare the two constructions in terms of their syntax and semantics and explore the rules that govern the choice between them. In the existing literature two kinds of passive constructions are described: adjectival passive constructions with stative interpretation and verbal passive constructions with dynamic interpretation. The two Hill Mari -mə̑- constructions were expected to demonstrate the same distinction. In order to test this hypothesis, we considered a) the syntactic properties of the constructions, and the nominal or verbal behavior of the -mə̑- form in both cases; b) the aspectual semantics of the two constructions, i.e. the possibility of stative and dynamic interpretation in both constructions; c) the marking of the arguments in the constrictions, i.e. the possibility of overt expression of the agent and the referential properties of the patient. Syntactically, the passive construction with the nominative marking of the patient turned out to be an adjectival predication. This construction is stative, and the nominative patient NP is always definite. The construction with accusative patient marking is a verbal clause with a dynamic interpretation. The accusative patient NP may have any referential properties. However, both constructions can refer to habitual events, which needs further investigation. The observed properties of the two constructions lead to the following generalization: the construction with nominative patient marking denotes a resultant state of an event, whereas the construction with accusative patient marking denotes the event itself. This difference may be interpreted in the first phase syntax framework developed by G. Ramchand: in the nominative construction the patient is the Resultee, whereas in the accusative construction the patient is the Undergoer.


2020 ◽  
pp. 575-593
Author(s):  
Ermenegildo Bidese ◽  
Andrea Padovan ◽  
Alessandra Tomaselli

Cimbrian is a German(ic) VO heritage language that does not display the linear V2 restriction: the DP subject can show up before the finite verb together with other constituents, while German-like verb-subject inversion only obtains with clitic pronouns. In recent literature on Cimbrian, pronominal subject inversion has been taken as a traditional argument in favour of mandatory V-to-C movement (assuming a split-C configuration). Building on this assumption, the syntax of the enclitic expletive subject, -da/-ta, (which shows up whenever the DP subject does not raise in the C-domain) makes the Cimbrian data particularly relevant, since it casts light on the correlation between V2 and Nominative case licensing. The stance in this chapter is that Nominative case in Cimbrian is assigned by C—as generally assumed for Germanic V2 languages—but in an idiosyncratic way: (i) it applies within the C domain, i.e. FinP; (ii) expletive -da/-ta absorbs Nominative case and acts as a defective goal with respect to the ‘low’ subject. On the basis of the feature-spreading model in Ouali (2008), the phasal head C in Cimbrian is taken to ‘KEEP’ its relevant ϕ‎- and T-features, to assign Nominative case in [Spec,FinP], and to triggering mandatory V-movement.


1983 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 131-181 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean-Yves Pollock

The present paper has two intimately connected goals; It aims at contributing to Chomsky's "Government Binding Theory" and also at providing a fairly detailed comparative analysis of French and English impersonal constructions. Its contribution comes under the guise of (a) an Agreement Theory (see section 2), (b) a general constraint on impersonal chains (see (72)) and (c) a new nominative Case assignment rule: it is suggested that in French and Italian (but not in English) "ergative verbs" (in Burzio (1981) 'sense) can assign nominative Case to their "object". Furthermore, as has become standard in recent comparative work in the GB framework, the paper attempts to isolate the parameters that are responsible for the minimally distinct properties of the constructions under investigation. It is shown here that they can be traced back to the interplay of a Case parameter, the morphological properties of expletive elements (il vs there) and the properties of Universal Grammar.


2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-87 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hideki Kishimoto ◽  
Geert Booij

Japanese has a fairly large set of complex adjectives formed by combining a noun with the adjective nai ‘null, empty’. The complex negative adjectives have the remarkable property that they allow nominative case marking to appear inside them optionally. We argue that these complex negative adjectives can be classified into three classes, and that the differences in their syntactic behaviour can be accounted for by positing three distinct morphosyntactic configurations (ranging from a fully phrasal structure to a complex word involving morphological compounding). Some, though not all, complex negative adjectives with case marking show a behaviour which suggests that they constitute single lexical units, while at the same time their components are susceptible to syntactic operations that normally do not apply to the internal structure of words. The data on the Japanese complex adjectives illustrate that adjectives formed via quasi-noun incorporation do not constitute words in a strict morphological sense, in that the entire complexes behave as lexical units, while their components remain visible syntactically.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 181
Author(s):  
Saud A. Mushait

The study explores the derivation of wh-questions in Najrani Arabic and attempts to answer the following questions: (i) Can wh-questions in Najrani Arabic be derived in VSO or SVO or both?, and (ii) How can Najrani Arabic wh-questions be accounted for within Chomsky’s (2001,2005, 2013,2015 ) Phase approach? The objective of the study is to present a unified analysis of the derivation of wh-questions in Najrani Arabic and show the interaction between Najrani Arabic data and Chomsky’s Phase framework. It has been shown that Najrani Arabic allows the derivation of wh-questions from the argument and non-argument positions in VSO word order. Given this, we assume that VSO is the unmarked order for the derivation of wh-questions in Najrani Arabic. In VSO, the subject DP does not raise to Spec-TP because the head T does not have the EPP feature: the latter attracts movement of the former. The verb raises to the head T of TP, while the subject DP remains in-situ in Spec-vP. Moreover, in Najrani Arabic intransitive structures, the phase vP does not have a specifier because it does not have an external thematic argument whereas in transitive constructions the vP has. Concerning case assignment, the phase vP merges with an abstract tense af (fix) on the head T, which agrees with and assigns invisible nominative case to the subject wh-word man ‘who’. We assume that the phase head C is the probe and has the Edge feature which attracts the raising of the subject wh-phrase to Spec-CP. Besides, we argue that the light transitive head v has an Edged feature which attracts the raising of the object wh-phrase aish ‘what’ to be the second (outer) specifier of vP. Being the phase head, the v probes for a local goal and finds the object wh-phrase aish; the v agrees with and assigns accusative case to the object wh-phrase aish. As the TP merges with a null interrogative head C, the phase head C has an Edge feature that attracts the raising of the object wh-word aish to Spec-CP for feature valuation. Following this, the null copies of the moved entities left after movement receive a null spellout in the phonological level and, hence, cannot be accessed for any further operation.


2007 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 229-255 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Tamm

This paper discusses telicity and perfectivity in Estonian. Neither of these categories corresponds exactly to the Estonian object case alternation, which is argued to reflect predicate or clause aspectual properties and not the NP-related properties of objects. The aim of this account is to accommodate the systematic compatibility of verb classes with certain clausal aspectual object case marking patterns. The paper proposes a way of understanding the interaction between verbal and clausal aspect in terms of boundedness and formalizes it in the framework of Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG). The features of verbs and case markers determine the clausal aspect from different constituents at the syntactic level of constituent structure. The information is unified at another syntactic level, functional structure.


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