Periphrastic passive and resultative in Hittite and Proto-Indo-European

There are several ways to express passive meaning in ancient Indo- European languages, one of them being periphrastic constructions. This paper argues that periphrastic passives in these languages developed from earlier object-oriented resultative constructions, which can be reconstructed for the proto-language as well.

Sobre a semântica do verbo 'ficar' em construções progressivas com adjetivos e particípios1

The Portuguese language, unlike many other languages, has the verb ficar, which is often used in resultative constructions and is characterized by having a multifunctionality: staying in a certain place, presenting the result of a change or an aspectual operation (ficar a + infinitive). In this way, this work aims to study the behavior of the verb ficar, as an indicator of change, in progressive constructions with adjectives and participles, to characterize not only the verb ficar and the progressive constructions, but also the adjectives and participles that occur in them. To this end, we selected examples of two distinct corpora built with adjectives and participles, whose tense of “estar a” would be in one of following: Presente, Pretérito Perfeito and Imperfeito (Simples do Indicativo). So, the observation of the selected tenses that occurred in these constructions, the type of adjective and its possible graduation, as well as some participles and their proximity to the typical characteristics of the adjectives, were considered as essential aspects for the development of this study. In this work, it was possible to conclude that the presence of the verb ficar in progressive constructions seems to demonstrate the loss of the characteristic completeness and resultative meaning of this verb, presenting the progressive a progression which seems to prevail. Besides, it was also possible to conclude that ficar in these constructions, selects mainly adjectives and that the selected tense is mostly Presente do Indicativo

A study on machine translation of resultative constructions

Based on an empirical investigation on data collected from four popular machine translation systems, this paper explores the current problems machine translation is confronted with in translating Chinese resultative constructions into English. The paper analyzes their syntactic and semantic differences in construction and in verbal pattern. The paper then further elaborates on the problems and reveals a truth that Chinese resultative construction poses a great challenge to machine translation for being very productive and flexible. Its productivity is credited to the fact that the main verbs in Chinese are mostly implied-fulfillment verbs. Its flexibility could be attributed to the hypothesis that there are fewer constraints on the co-occurrence of the main verb and the resultative in Chinese resultative construction. Finally, possible solutions are proposed in an attempt to solve the problems.

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

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.

Strong resultative constructions in Romance between usage and norm

The presence of strong resultative constructions in Romance languages is largely debated. In this paper, we provide evidence of strong resultative constructions with adjectival predicate in Italo-Romance. Data from Southern Italian varieties spoken in the area of Cosenza, in Northern Calabria, are discussed. The usage and distribution of two types of adjectival resultative are accounted for in relation to both structural and functional properties, and sociolinguistic variables.

A new resultative construction in Spanish? A reply to Rodríguez Arrizabalaga

We respond to Rodríguez Arrizabalaga’s recent claim that Spanish shows genuine cases of strong resultative constructions, e.g. Juan apuñaló a Tomás hasta la muerte ‘John stabbed Tom to death’, argued to be equivalent to the English construction with the PP to death. This claim is theoretically relevant as it challenges the verb-framed behavior of Spanish with respect to Talmy’s typology. Adopting a constructivist view of argument structure, we argue that Spanish hasta la muerte and English to death constructions of this type involve two completely distinct syntactic configurations, and that only the English to death PP can be regarded as a resultative phrase. We claim that the Spanish hasta PP is syntactically computed as an adjunct external to the argument structure of the predicate and provides a boundary to the predicate it merges with. We thus show that the Spanish construction with hasta la muerte fully conforms to the class of Talmy’s verb-framed languages in that this type of construction is expected to be fully available and productive in this class of languages.

A new resultative construction in Spanish? A reply to Rodríguez Arrizabalaga

We respond to Rodríguez Arrizabalaga’s recent claim that Spanish shows genuine cases of strong resultative constructions, e.g. Juan apuñaló a Tomás hasta la muerte ‘John stabbed Tom to death’, argued to be equivalent to the English construction with the PP to death. This claim is theoretically relevant as it challenges the verb-framed behavior of Spanish with respect to Talmy’s typology. Adopting a constructivist view of argument structure, we argue that Spanish hasta la muerte and English to death constructions of this type involve two completely distinct syntactic configurations, and that only the English to death PP can be regarded as a resultative phrase. We claim that the Spanish hasta PP is syntactically computed as an adjunct external to the argument structure of the predicate and provides a boundary to the predicate it merges with. We thus show that the Spanish construction with hasta la muerte fully conforms to the class of Talmy’s verb-framed languages in that this type of construction is expected to be fully available and productive in this class of languages.

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

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.

Resultative constructions in cooking recipes in English and elsewhere: Similarities and differences across languages and cultures

The present article deals with selected property resultative constructions. They are first compared in a variety of languages in general and then in the specialised genre of cooking recipes. Unlike in English, resultatives realised as adjective phrases are either not available or very rare in some languages studied in this article (Croatian, Russian, Hungarian, Spanish, Italian), where they are most frequently replaced by prepositional phrases or some clausal structures. However, it turns out on closer inspection that adjective phrases are not only used infrequently in the specialised genre of cooking recipes in those languages that do not favour this type of resultative phrases in general, but also in English, which is surprising. We claim that the unexpected asymmetry in the formal realisation of selected property resultatives (i.e., the absence of AP resultatives in cooking recipes in English) can be motivated if we consider this phenomenon against the background of the embodiment of human language in the broadest sense of the concept.