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This paper presents an analysis of secondary predicates as aspectual modifiers and secondary predication as a summing operation which sums the denotation of the matrix verb and the secondary predicate. I argue that, as opposed to the summing peration involved in simple conjunction, there is a constraint on secondary predication; in the 0 case of depictives, the event introduced by the matrix verb must be PART-OF the event introduced by the secondary predicate, where e1 is PART-OF e2 if the running time of e1 is contained in the running time of e2 and if e1 and e2 share a grammatical argument. I argue resultative predication differs from depictive predication in that the PART-OF constraint holds in resultative constructions between the event which is the culmination of e1 and e2: formally, while depictive predication introduces the statement PART-OF(e1,e2), resultative predication introduces the statement PART-OF(cul(e1),e2). I show that this is all that is necessary to explain the well-known properties of resultative predication.
The distinction between COMPLEMENTS and ADJUNCTS has a long tradition in grammatical theory, and it is also included in some way or other in most current formal linguistic theories. But it is a highly vexed distinction, for several reasons, one of which is that no diagnostic criteria have emerged that will reliably distinguish adjuncts from complements in all cases – too many examples seem to "fall into the crack" between the two categories, no matter how theorists wrestle with them.
In this paper, I will argue that this empirical diagnostic "problem" is, in fact, precisely what we should expect to find in natural language, when a proper understanding of the adjunct/complement distinction is achieved: the key hypothesis is that a complete grammar should provide a DUAL ANALYSIS of every complement as an adjunct, and potentially, an analysis of any adjunct as a complement. What this means and why it is motivated by linguistic evidence will be discussed in detail.
The unusual development of the PDE [present-day English] s-genitive can be historically motivated, if the 's form is supposed to be not a mere leftover of the Old English (henceforth OE) casemarking, but the outcome of the merging of two patterns: the inflectional genitive ending (levelled to -s) and the construction "John his book" (henceforth 'possessive-linked genitive') during the Middle and the Early Modem English phases.
As my corpus analysis will show, the semantic and syntactic constraints ruling the occurrence of the 's pattern in the time interval of the rise of the 's-pattern (1400 - 1650) are the same ones as those ruling the occurrence of the possessive-linked genitive.
This hypothesis is further confirmed by cross-language comparison (with the other West Germanic languages, especially Afrikaans).
The present study is concerned with Single Clitics, as weil as with Clitic Doubling and Clitic Left Dislocation constructions and will test the Uniformity Hypothesis (Sportiehe 1992), according to which all three constructions involve the same underlying structure. It will be shown that:
- acquisition data pose a problem for the Uniformity Hypothesis (Sportiche 1992) and support rather the idea that Single Clitic, Clitic Doubling and Clitic Left Dislocation constructions do not involve the same underlying structure,
- omission of definite articles in Clitic Doubling and Clitic Left Dislocation constructions parallels omission of definite articles in simple DPs,
- selective omission of some types of Determiners, i.e. definite articles and use of another type of Determiners, i.e. clitic pronouns, can be explained in terms of the different feature specification of words belonging to the category D and the different status of clitics vs. definite articles.
The article deals with the analysis of the development of aspectuality at the early stages of the acquisition of Russian. Data from seven children are investigated for this purpose. It is claimed that the category of aspectuality, being the property of the whole utterance, can be expressed at the early stages of language acquisition even before the verb itself occurs. During this period some children mark the basic aspectual opposition "process-result" by the linguistic devices at their disposal, namely by various uses of sound imitations or onomatopoetics. Onomatopoetics, when used once, can be said to be the predecessors of perfective verbs, while reduplicative use of onomatopoetics seems to correspond to the imperfective aspect. The paper presents an analysis of the early verb lexicons of six children. Among their 24 earliest verbs both aspects are represented. As revealed by the analysis, aspect (and Aktionsart) clusters with tense in a specific way: imperfective verbs are mainly used in the present while perfectives are used mostly in the past.
The paper investigates the issue whether the stage-level/individual level contrast introduced by Carlson 1977 requires the assumption of two homonymous copulas depending on the categorization of the predicative. We argue that instead of a uniform stage-level/individual level distinction we have to distinguish several similar but independent contrasts, none of which crucially depend on the semantics of the copula. In the second part of the paper, we concentrate on one group of phenomena-the distribution of weak subjects-and propose an explanation in terms of an interaction between topic/comment structure and aspectual properties of the predicate.
In this paper I investigate the properties of the copula-like verb 'ficar' in Brazilian Portuguese using Pustejovsky's generative lexicon (GL). The verb 'ficar' can be translated as 'stay' or 'become', depending on its complement. With locatives, only the STAY reading is possible. With adjectival complements, both BECOME and STAY readings are possible. I propose that 'ficar' takes an eventuality as its complement and I argue that there is no need to create multiple lexical entries for it, since the readings are the result of the possible combinations between the transition denoted by 'ficar' and the properties of the stative complements.
I argue that the BECOME reading with adjectival predicates is the result of combining part of the qualia of the adjectival predicate with the TRANSITION of 'ficar'. The STAY readings of 'ficar'+adjective are the result of shadowing the transition. In the case of 'ficar'+locative, the BECOME reading is unavailable. Departing from the hypothesis that subevents have to be linked to arguments in order to be able to be modified by certain types of modifiers or be selected by certain types of heads, I argue that the transition, in the case of locative complements, is not associated to any argument because nothing in the qualia of the locative complement is compatible with a transition, given that there is not motion component in either 'ficar' or the locative. Unlinked to any argument, the TRANSITION can only be part of the 'constant' meaning of the verb, which explains why it is not available for modification.
This paper investigates syntactic properties of verbless constructions in Chinese. Verbless constructions differ from constructions with overt verbs in three major respects. First, there is a VP-internal nominal raising in Chinese, which is optional if an overt verb shows up, and obligatory if there is no overt verb. Second, while an overt verb can select various kinds of argument, the internal argument of a verbless construction cannot be indefinite. Third, there are two types of object depictive secondary predication constructions, and only one of them allows for a null verb.
Simplicity as a methodological orientation applies to linguistic theory just as to any other field of research: ‘Occam’s razor’ is the label for the basic heuristic maxim according to which an adequate analysis must ultimately be reduced to indispensible specifications. In this sense, conceptual economy has been a strict and stimulating guideline in the development of Generative Grammar from the very beginning. Halle’s (1959) argument discarding the level of taxonomic phonemics in order to unify two otherwise separate phonological processes is an early characteristic example; a more general notion is that of an evaluation metric introduced in Chomsky (1957, 1975), which relates the relative simplicity of alternative linguistic descriptions systematically to the quest for explanatory adequacy of the theory underlying the descriptions to be evaluated. Further proposals along these lines include the theory of markedness developed in Chomsky and Halle (1968), Kean (1975, 1981), and others, the notion of underspecification proposed e.g. in Archangeli (1984), Farkas (1990), the concept of default values and related notions. An important step promoting this general orientation was the idea of Principles and Parameters developed in Chomsky (1981, 1986), which reduced the notion of language particular rule systems to universal principles, subject merely to parametrization with restricted options, largely related to properties of particular lexical items. On this account, the notion of a simplicity metric is to be dispensed with, as competing analyses of relevant data are now supposed to be essentially excluded by the restrictive system of principles.
It is widely believed that existential quantifiers can bring about the semantic effects of a scope which is wider than their actual syntactic scope (See Fodor & Sag (1982), Cresti (1995), Kratzer (1995), Reinhart (1995) and Winter (1995), among many others.) On the other hand, it is assumed that the syntactic scope of universal quantifiers can be determined unequivocally by the semantics. This paper shows that this second assumption is wrong; universal quantifiers can also bring about scope illusions, though in a very specific environment. In particular, we argue that in the environment of generic tense, universal quantifiers can show the semantic effects of a scope which is wider than the one that is actually realized at LF. Our argument has four steps. First, we show that in generic contexts, universal quantifiers escape standard “scope-islands” (Section 1). Second, we show how the effects of wide scope in generic contexts can be achieved without syntactic wide scope (Section 2.1). Third, we show that this result is actually forced on us, once we take seriously certain independent issues concerning the interpretation of generic tense (Sections 2.2 - 2.4). Finally, the semantics of generic tense and, in particular, its interaction with focus, will yield some intricate new predictions, which, as we show, are borne out (Sections 3 - 5).
Part of linguistic competence involves the ability to construct and interpret words. The average high school student knows about 60,000 words whose form and meaning are not derived from those of other words. Such words including read, language, on, cold, and if, to name but a few - must be learned and stored as separate items in the lexicon (or mental dictionary). However, countless other words can be constructed and comprehended by the application of quite general rules to more basic words. For example, any speaker of English who knows the meaning of the noun fax - and the verb derived from it - could form and interpret words such as faxable (for things that can be faxed) and fax machine (for the device that sends and receives faxes). The system of categories and rules involved in word formation and interpretation is called morphology. This chapter presents an introduction to the study of morphology, beginning with the inventory of notions relevant to the analysis of word structure.
Coreference in dialogue
(1997)
Since the early days of discourse analysis coreference has always been considered a major factor in the formation of texts and dialogues. The repetition of nominal elements and the anaphoric use of pronouns in successive sentences is a fundamental cohesive pattern which ties sentences together and contributes to the coherence of sequences. "La coherence transphrastique trouve dans la pronominalisation un des procedes les plus efficaces" (Stati 1990, 160). The basic structural pattern on which linguists focused their interest in the early 1970s is captured by the following examples: (1) A man entered the house. After closing the door, the man sat down. He was tired. (2) Peter The man entered the house. He was tired. He ...
Eins der signifikanten Probleme in der maschinellen Übersetzung japanische in deutsche Sprache ist die fehlende Information und Definitheit im japanischen Analyse-Output. Eine effiziente Lösung dieses Problems ist es, die Suche nach der relevanten Information in den Transfer zu integrieren. Transferregeln werden mit Präferenzregeln und Default-Regeln kombiniert. Dadurch wird Information über lexikalische Restriktionen der Zielsprache, über die Domäne und über den Diskurs zugänglich.
In LaPolla 1990, I presented arguments to show that Chinese is a language in which there has been no grammaticalizalion of the syntactic relations "subject" and "object". This being the case, then syntactic relations cannot be what determines word order in Chinese. In this paper I will argue that, aside from a semantic rule that the actor of a verb, if expressed, must precede that verb, it is pragmatic relations (information structure) that are the main determinants of word order in Chinese.
This paper presents the first results of a comprehensive project on comparative Tibeto-Burman (TB) morpho-syntax. Data on morphological forms and typological patterns were collected from one hundred fifty-one languages and dialects in the TB family. For this paper the data were surveyed for nominal 'ergative' or agentive case marking (postpositions), in an attempt to determine if it would be possible to reconstruct an ergative case marker to Proto-Tibeto-Burman (PTB), and in so doing learn more about the nature of grammatical organization in PTB. Ablative, instrumental, genitive, locative, and other case forms were also surveyed for possible cognacy with ergative forms, as suggested in DeLancey 1984.