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The Different Readings of Wieder ‘Again’: A Structural Account
Abstract
I will defend a purely structural account of the different readings arising from the German adverb wieder ‘again’. We will be concerned with the so-called repeave/resritutive ambiguity. The claim is that the ambiguity can be resolved entirely in terms of syntactic scope The theory assumes a rather abstract syntax. In particular, abundant use is made of Kratzer’s (1994) voice phrase, which plays a central role for the derivation of repetitive readings. One of the leading ideas of the analysis is that the structural accusative position has wide scope with respect to the agent relation expressed by the head of the voice phrase. If wieder precedes an accusative object, a repetitive reading is obligatory. If wieder follows the accusative object, two readings are available due to two possible positions of wieder. The analysis is an improvement of the proposal of Stechow (1995) It solves a number of questions left open there and considers a range of new data.
... (1) Trời lại mưa (nữa) rồi. 1 sky again rain more PERF 'It is raining again.' (Nguyễn, 1997, p. 147) The word lại in Vietnamese can be used as a verb meaning "to come", an adverb, a modal particle conveying the speaker's attitude, or a sub-element in a sentence connector (Thompson, 1987;Nguyễn, 1997;Trần, 2023, and others). See (2a)-(2d). ...
... (Trần, 2023, p. 263) In this work, we focus on the repetitive use of lại. It has been pointed out that different syntactic positions of lại result in different readings (Thompson, 1987;Nguyễn, 1997;Phan, 2013, etc.); see (3a,b). When the adverb lại precedes a verb, it has a repetitive reading. ...
... (Phan, 2013, p. 98) b. Ông viết lại thư. he write again letter 'He revised the letter.' (Phan, 2013, p. 98) Stechow (1996) postulates a structural analysis for the ambiguous readings of the adverb wieder, "again", in German and argues that the ambiguity of wieder arises from different modifying scopes. Beck and Johnson (2004) further apply this analysis to the ambiguity of the adverb again in English (see also Beck & Snyder, 2001;Beck, 2006). ...
This work examines the grammatical properties of lại and nữa in Vietnamese, both of which can express the repetition of an event. It has been observed that different syntactic positions of lại result in different readings, as noted in previous studies. When lại precedes a verb, it may assume either the repetitive reading or restitutive reading. When lại follows a verb, it can only assume the restitutive reading. Nữa can be used for the repetitive reading and the incremental reading as well, in the sense that an activity is incremented by adding subevents measured along some dimension, as discussed by Tovena & Donazzan (2008). We adopt Stechow’s (1996) structural analysis and the theory of focus semantics and propose that the preverbal lại is adjoined to vP, which can be focus-associated with an element within its c-command domain, i.e., vP or VP. This is the origin of the ambiguous readings of the preverbal lại. The postverbal lại is adjoined to VP, and this is the reason why it does not yield ambiguous readings. We also propose that nữa is adjoined to vP, along with the movement of vP to a higher functional projection. This results in the surface final position of nữa.
... show that this prediction is not borne out in Polish. The results of the standard tests, including the scope of znów 'again' (von Stechow, 1996;Rapp and von Stechow, 1999), stative presuppositions with też 'also' (Spathas and Michelioudakis, 2021) and result-oriented reading of durative adverbials (Piñón, 1999), converge on the same conclusion: unprefixed, bare imperfectives can be resultative (7). This effectively confirms the null hypothesis, according to which the lexical semantics of unprefixed verbs like mdleć I 'to faint' and łamać I 'to break' are not radically different from their English counterparts. ...
... (#result-oriented / event-oriented) Another well-known example of sublexical modification involves the variable scope of again (von Stechow, 1996;Beck and Johnson, 2004;Beck, 2006). More recently, a similar ambiguity has been reported for additive operators such as also and too, which give rise to stative as well as eventive presuppositions with a subset of COS verbs (Spathas and Miche-lioudakis, 2021). ...
... again (von Stechow, 1996), stative presupposition with additive operators like also (Spathas and Michelioudakis, 2021), and compatibility with result state-oriented durative adverbials (Piñón, 1999). All of these diagnostics converge on the conclusion in (35), which falsifies the semantic correspondence between event structure and aspect in Polish. ...
This thesis presents a detailed analysis of Polish verb stems from a cross-linguistic perspective, couched in the framework of Distributed Morphology (Halle and Marantz 1993 et seq.). Polish verbs are decomposed into a number of functional projections responsible for aspect (perfective vs. imperfective) and event structure (simple event vs. complex change of state). The first part of the thesis focuses on the morphosyntax of event structure. Polish is classified as a weak satellite-framed language in a tripartite version of Talmy’s typology (Acedo-Matellán, 2016). Just like Latin and Classical Greek, Polish has resultative prefixes, but no complex AP or PP resultatives. The properties of weak satellite-framed languages are captured by an M-Merger Parameter, which requires a non-branching resultative X/XP to incorporate into the verb at PF (Matushansky, 2006). The second part of the thesis turns to the mor- phosyntax of aspect, investigating the relationship between verbal affixes and the value of aspect in Polish and other Slavic languages. I discuss and dismiss proposals based on syntactic agreement (Biskup, 2019, 2022) and a semantic mapping from event structure to aspect (Klein, 1995; Ramchand, 2008a; Tatevosov, 2018, 2022). Instead, I develop a novel movement-based analysis, whereby vP-internal prefixes raise to AspP to license perfectivity. Special attention is paid to the function of secondary imperfective morphology, such s the suffix -yw. I argue that there is no such thing as a ‘secondary imperfective operator’ at the level of syntax/semantics, and that the secondary imperfective is a dissociated morpheme in the sense of Embick (1997), inserted only at PF. The emerging picture is consistent with a grammatical architecture in which morphology interprets the output of narrow syntax, but is not fully isomorphic with it. Morphological operations may filter out well-formed syntactic representations or insert morphemes that are absent from narrow syntax and LF.
... I have omitted the small clause because a spatial argument is not an inherent property of the verb but an optional argument (Bentley and Cruschina 2018); an overt change of location argument can be merged (270a) correct, it would suggest that the subject DP is indeed an internal argument, yet the degraded nature derives not from C-selectional properties but rather a semantic discrepancy. In this section, I present stronger arguments for a syntactic difference, which comes come down to the availability of low scope effects on the theme DP subject by the adverb again for disappearance but not CoS unaccusatives, following tests used by von Stechow (1996) and Alexiadou and Schäfer (2011) to test for themes arguments within the result denoting Small Clause. I elaborate on this explicitly in Section (6.2.1). ...
... however, only in a change-of-location predicate does the theme find itself within the SC. Alexiadou and Schäfer 2011:110) The derivations above render either repetitive or restitutive readings via C-command, along the lines of proposals by (von Stechow 1995(von Stechow , 1996; see Martin and Schäfer 2014 for a review of again readings). Thus, for change-of-state predicates I have proposed the analysis in (275); this shows two possible instances of again c-commanding v and its theme (following a standard C-command approach), giving rise to the repetitive reading. ...
... Recall a SC merge site of the logical subject is indicated if the indefinite DP subject and a late surfacing instance of again clause final position, or rather a position taking scope over the SC only (von Stechow 1996;Dobler 2008a,b;Schäfer 2008;Alexiadou and Schäfer 2011), give rise to a restitutive reading. If, as I have claimed, manner-of-motion verbs and some activity verbs can indeed be coerced into an existential unaccusative structure involving merge of the logical subject in SC (contra Levin and Rappaport Hovav 1995), we expect that a restitutive reading will be available with an indefinite subject in the appropriate context. ...
This dissertation approaches the syntax of structures involving non-canonical subjects and non-canonical subject positions. In particular, I investigate two phenomena: Locative Inversion (LI) in English, French, Italian, and Hebrew; and well-known verb-third violations of the verb-second (V2) rule in Kiezdeutsch, an urban contact variety of German. In LI a spatio-deictic XP appears to occupy the preverbal canonical subject position, while the canonical nominative subject DP surfaces in a postverbal inverted position. From a theoretical and empirical perspective, I compare the distribution of different covert and overt arguments participating in LI and the availability of LI in embedded and matrix contexts crosslinguistically. The second case study concentrates on remarkable Kiezdeutsch V2 violations, as they appear to follow a regular order of [frame-setting adverb → Subject → finite verb]; this is remarkable not only on account of it violating an otherwise strict V2 requirement, but it also indicates the innovation of a subject position that Standard German does not have. I carry out a corpus study and find that an apparent subject requirement extends to other verb-third resumptive- dislocation phenomena, yet it is shown that we cannot understand this requirement in the sense of an EPP position associated purely with nominative DP subjects. From a theoretical perspective, this dissertation develops and applies a theory of subject requirements, which is able to account for the breadth of investigated crosslinguistic variation in LI and the presence or absence of a high clausal subject requirement in verb-third V2-violations in Kiezdeutsch and more standard varieties of German. Ultimately, I make use of finite differences across C and T in the distribution of D, φ, and discourse-related δ-features (cf. Miyagawa 2017) features via different inheritance options from the phase head. I demonstrate that the presence of non-canonical subjects in LI and the presence of canonical subjects in a seemingly non-canonical subject position in Kiezdeutsch can both be derived via variation in the placement of a δ-feature with a specification for Subject of Predication orthogonal to typical EPP requirements related to D and φ.
... For instance, under syntactic decompositional analyses which hold that verbs are built in the syntax (cf. Hale & Keyser, 1993von Stechow, 1996;Marantz, 1997;Harley, 2003Harley, , 2005Folli & Harley, 2005;Borer, 2003Borer, , 2005bBorer, , 2013Acedo-Matellán & Mateu, 2014;Alexiadou et al., 2015, i.a.), the roots of change of state verbs such as break are stative and the entailment of change typical of this verb class is only structurally introduced by event templates, defined by functional heads in the verbal domain. Consequently, examples such as John broke the vase or John opened the door involve the same syntactic structure and only differ in the type of information that the roots provide about the event. ...
... In Rappaport Hovav & Levin's (1998) event structural approach (see §2.2 of Chapter 2), event structures are not represented in the syntax, but rather an event structure is taken to be part of the lexical entry of a verb (Beavers & Koontz-Garboden 2020: 11). In contrast, syntactic decompositional theories of verb meaning take event structures to be represented in the syntax (Lakoff, 1965;McCawley, 1968McCawley, , 1971Ross, 1972;Hale & Keyser, 1993Pesetsky, 1995;von Stechow, 1996;Marantz, 1997;Harley, 2003;Borer, 2003;Folli & Harley, 2005;Ramchand, 2008;Alexiadou et al., 2015;Acedo-Matellán, 2016). This approach is significantly represented by linguists working in the Distributed Morphology tradition (Halle & Marantz, 1993;Marantz, 1997;Embick, 2004;Harley, 2014) which holds that verbs are created in the syntax by merging roots with event templates, defined by functional heads in the verbal domain. ...
... Beavers & Koontz-Garboden's analysis of Result Roots argues against the Bifurcation Thesis for Roots insofar as entailments of change are uncontroversially assumed to be introduced by functional heads, e.g., by projections such as the verbalizing little v head in the verbal domain (see D' Alessandro et al. 2017 for a general overview), as previously discussed. By making use of contradiction tests and sublexical modification with modifiers that are able to target subparts of the event structure, e.g., again (see Dowty, 1979;von Stechow, 1995von Stechow, , 1996Beck & Snyder, 2001;Beck & Johnson, 2004 and §1.4), Beavers & Koontz-Garboden show that Property Concept Roots and Result Roots are two well-defined classes of roots denoting states that differ in whether they come with an entailment of change themselves. More importantly, Beavers & Koontz-Garboden show that the fact that Result Roots inherently comprise entailments of change as part of their truth-conditional content has grammatical consequences on the morphological forms of the surface verbs and adjectives that are derived from this class of roots. ...
This dissertation explores the division of labor between grammar and the lexicon from the viewpoint of event structural theories which take verb meanings to decompose into event templates and roots. Event templates define the temporal and causal structure of the event, while roots fill in real-world details. On this view, the semantics of the whole syntactic structure and the grammatical properties of the verbs are solely determined by the event templates, and never by roots. In this dissertation, I argue against this strong division of labor by showing that roots play a bigger role in grammar and meaning composition. I argue in favor of an event structural theory of verb meaning in which the contributions of event templates and roots are not mutually exclusive, but complement each other with grammatical consequences. Namely, root-specific entailments are shown to be grammatically relevant insofar as they restrict the syntactic structure and in turn determine the grammatical properties of verbs. I argue thus in favor of an event structural approach which needs to be sensitive to the semantic contribution of roots insofar as roots impose restrictions on their syntactic contexts.
... In short, there is a difference between transitive and unaccusative verbs associated a changeof-state or change-of-location readings related to the interpretation of indefinite themes (Alexiadou & Schäfer, 2011;Dobler, 2008aDobler, , 2008bSchäfer, 2008;von Stechow, 1996). For example, in the change-of-state example (78a) only a repetitive reading is available, yet a restitutive reading is available in (78b) involving a change of location. ...
... 11 (see Alexiadou & Schäfer, 2011, 108) This contrast stems from a hierarchical difference relating to the position of again taking wide scope over vP and SC (repetitive) or narrow scope over a SC only (restitutive). A restitutive relates to a result state which is only available when the theme is merged in a SC (79) (see discussion in Alexiadou & Schäfer, 2011;Dobler, 2008aDobler, , 2008bvon Stechow, 1996), but is never available with an indefinite if the theme is merged as a direct complement of the verb. Alexiadou & Schäfer, 2011, 110) This discussion relates to LI inasmuch as a SC-internal DP-subject can be diagnosed if it is indefinite and compatible with a restitutive reading in the presence of a late again. ...
Locative Inversion (LI) in English is a broad-focus inversion structure in which a spatio-deictic XP seemingly occupies the canonical subject position. An analysis of LI must explain EPP-satisfaction: previous approaches take either a silent expletive pro (Bruening, 2010; Coopmans, 1989; Postal, 2004) to value EPP or they consider the locative element to do so like expletive there. Indeed, LI resembles inversion under there, showing pragmatic, lexical-semantic, and syntactic restrictions, being limited mostly to unaccusatives of speaker-directed movement/orientation, while verbs of disappearance or change-of-state are largely unacceptable. However, unlike inversion under there, LI does not trigger definiteness effects which are associated with expletives. Moreover, LI is incompatible with negation, do-support and the present perfect. We propose that LI is an inherently evidential construction. This behaviour results from an EPP-satisfying logophoric covert perceiver argument dubbed Exp loc (Sluckin, Cruschina & Martin, 2021) which provides an alternative to the typologically anomalous expletive pro. Exp loc moves from a vP-internal position scoping over a Small Clause to Spec,TP and is licensed only by contexts and verbs which can presuppose a perception event on the part of a perceiver. This explains previous observations that LI involves a visual experiential component (Breivik, 1989; Brinton & Stein, 1995). Importantly, Exp loc derives known pragmatic and lexical-semantic restrictions on LI, e.g., no disappearance unaccusatives, negation (which negates a perceivable event), and the English present perfect which is infelicitous in reports of direct perception. Furthermore, we show that all unergative verbs participating in LI are coerced into an unaccusative structure.
... One modifier with the right properties for testing this prediction is the presupposition trigger again. Again is standardly treated as a modifier of event predicates (type <<v,t>,<v,t>>) that introduces a presupposition that an event of the sort denoted by its argument occurred previously (von Stechow 1996;Beck & Johnson 2004;Bale 2007). Importantly, again's presupposition is uniquely determined by the event predicate it takes as argument. ...
... FollowingKratzer (1996), we introduce the agent argument outside of the VP through a functional head in the extended projection of the verb, particularly Voice. Further, followingKratzer (2009), verbal functional heads effect 4 As a simplifying assumption, we forego further decomposition of ingestive verbs into separate eventive and stative subconstituents, as is common in the analysis of result verbs, such as open(von Stechow 1996). Nevertheless, an anonymous reviewer points out that restitutive readings of again, where again presupposes the restoration of a prior state entailed by the verb, are in fact available with verbs of ingestion. ...
(Bale 2007) argues, on the basis of the differential availability of subjectless repetitive presuppositions with again with certain verb classes, that the agent argument of eventive transitive verbs is introduced VP-externally (Kratzer 1996), but that the agent argument of intranstive and stative transitive verbs must be taken as a true argument by the verb. We challenge Bale’s claim from two directions. First, we observe that two classes of eventive transitive verbs, resist subjectless presuppositions with again. Second, we show that the unavailability of subjectless presuppositions with these and other verb classes is not an ironclad argument against severing agents from their verbs generally, and, develop a semantic analysis, inspired by an analysis of stative transitive verbs due to Hale & Keyser (2002), on which the relevant classes of verbs inherently make reference to the agent of their event argument in the form of an anaphoric index. This index is subsequently bound by a functional head that introduces the agent argument. The facts and analysis proposed here have wider theoretical implications for the way agents qua external arguments are introduced in general, suggesting that verbs of certain classes and VP-external functional heads may both play crucial roles in the syntactic introduction of the agent argument and its interaction with sublexical modifiers like again.
... Supporting evidence for distinguishing between property concept and change-ofstate roots in terms of their stative or eventive nature comes from various sources. First, it is well known that the presupposition trigger again produces an ambiguity between repetitive and restitutive readings when modifying verbs formed out of property concept roots, as illustrated with open below (Dowty 1979;von Stechow 1996;Beck and Johnson 2004: amongst others). ...
... While this may appear non-standard, it is not unprecedented in the literature. For example, von Stechow (1996) analyzes causative and inchoative verbs as differing only in the presence of absence of an agent; as such, both John opened the door and the door opened are events of the door becoming open, with the former event possessing a specified agent (see also Alexiadou et al. 2015). result. ...
A major challenge for event structural theories that decompose verbs into event templates and roots relates to the syntactic distribution of roots and what types of event structures roots can be integrated into. ONTOLOGICAL APPROACHES propose roots fall into semantic classes, such as manner versus result, which determine root distribution (Rappaport Hovav and Levin 1998, 2010). FREE DISTRIBUTION APPROACHES, in contrast, hold that root distribution is not constrained by semantic content and roots are free to integrate into various types of event structures (Borer 2005; Acedo-Matellán and Mateu 2014). We focus on two different classes of verbs classified as result verbs in Rappaport Hovav and Levin’s (1998, 2010) sense and their ability to appear in resultative constructions. We build on Beavers and Koontz-Garboden’s (2012, 2020) proposal that the roots underlying these verbs fall into two classes: property concept roots, which denote relations between individuals and states, and change-of-state roots, which on our proposal, denote relations between individuals and events of change. We show that change-of-state roots, but not property concept roots, are able to appear in the modifier position of resultative constructions by providing naturally occurring examples of such resultatives. Combining the proposed lexical semantics of these two classes of roots with a reformulation of an ONTOLOGICAL APPROACH solely dependent on a root’s semantic type, we show that this analysis makes novel and accurate predictions about the possibility of the two classes of roots appearing in resultative constructions and the range of interpretations available when change-of-state roots are integrated into resultative event structure templates.
... In the literature, there is a vast and lively discussion about its two readings. 25 Pittner (2003), basing her work on von Stechow (1996) among others, argues for the following. ...
... A third reading has been proposed in the literature, but it is not generally assumed; see, e.g., vonStechow (1996) andLechner et al. (2015) and the references quoted therein. ...
German is a V2 language, i.e., a declarative clause has the finite verb in the position immediately after the first constituent. Traditionally, this order is derived by raising the verb to C and putting a single constituent into the so-called pre-field. Arguably, there are three options to fill the first position: (i) topicalization (A’-movement), (ii) formal movement, which raises the highest constituent in the ongoing derivation (A-movement), or (iii) merging a constituent which is only legitimate there (base-generation). Theoretically, any major constituent can occupy the pre-field. However, it has been observed that certain expressions cannot appear there. In its narrower focus, the paper argues that there are more pre-field-phobic expressions than standardly assumed, and that these expressions, although at first glance heterogeneous, fall into two classes. One can be defined structurally and is considered in the second part of this paper; the other class can be captured in terms of meaning and comprises a specific type of expressive adverbial (discussed in the first and main part). The paper’s message in a broader sense is that syntax restricts the occurrence of expressive expressions. It is shown that the sentence-initial position in German does not allow material which is exclusively use-conditional in the sense of expressive meaning.
... 36 Morgan 1969. 37 Stechow 1996. 38 Lakoff 1970Parsons 1990. ...
... Predicate decomposition structures are adopted in VerboWeb to represent the meaning of each verb class. These representations have the advantage of making 46 Pinker 1989;Stechow 1996;Pylkänen 1997;2000;Arad 1998;Martin -Schäfer 2014. 47 Jackendoff 1990Dowty 1979. ...
The study of verbs and their classification is an important aspect of the investigation of language grammars, because it allows generalizations about sentence structures. In this sense, we propose to study the verbal lexicon of Brazilian Portuguese, with the wide-ranging objective of building generalizations about the sentence structure of this language, while considering the properties in common between the different lexical items investigated. The research carried out aims more specifically to present a classification and a broad list of verbs in Brazilian Portuguese that are classified and analyzed according to their common semantic properties which have impact on the sentential structures in which these items occur. Verbs are distributed into classes and subclasses, according to their argument structure morphosyntactic properties and their semantic properties related to event structure. For this, data gathering and theoretical analyses are
made based on Syntax-Lexical Semantic Interface theories. The research culminates in the creation of the VerboWeb lexical database. Currently, VerboWeb presents a broad analysis of over 1500 verbs, divided into 19 classes, and 8 subclasses. The aim of this paper is to present the research project VerboWeb.
... Bale (2007), however, argues that not all external arguments can be severed from the verb in this way, making use of the range of repetitive presuppositions with again as a diagnostic for syntactic decomposition. Formally speaking, again is a function of type <<v,t>,<v,t>>, being an identity function in the assertion and introducing a presupposition that an identical event had happened temporally prior to the asserted event (Dowty 1979;von Stechow 1996;Beck and Johnson 2004, a.o., lexical entry adapted from Bale 2007). ...
... Most importantly, though, even if we set aside the first two concerns, we see that a creation verb analysis along the lines of (58) makes incorrect predictions about the range of available readings when transitive uses of dance are modified by again. Specifically, such an analysis predicts the existence of a purely restitutive reading with again when it attaches to the small clause result constituent (von Stechow 1996;Beck and Johnson 2004). We see plainly that such a reading with again is impossible. ...
Bale (2007) proposes that agentive intransitives differ semantically from agentive transitives, in that while the agent of a transitive is introduced by a functional projection and composes with its verb via Event Identification (Kratzer 1996), intransitives lexically encode their agent arguments and compose with them via Function Application. This is based on the availability of agentless repetitive presuppositions with again, with transitives permitting a repetitive presupposition excluding the agent while intransitives do not. In this paper, we challenge Bale’s claim and show that typically intransitive verbs like dance and bark, which do not usually allow agentless presuppositions, permit agentless presuppositions when they appear with an optional internal argument. To account for this, we propose that verbal roots possess an underspecified thematic role argument, along with individual and event arguments. Combined with a conservative syntax for introducing agents via VoiceP (Kratzer 1996), the analysis captures the dependence of agentless presuppositions on the presence of an internal argument without recourse to any distinction between transitive and intransitive eventive verb roots. The analysis contributes a new theory of roots lying between two theoretical poles, one that argues that roots take internal arguments (e.g., Harley 2014) and one that severs internal arguments syntactically and semantically from the verb (e.g., Schein 1993; Borer 2003, 2005).
... In the literature there are two major approaches to deriving it: structural and lexical. We begin with the structural approach, the dominant view in the literature. 2 The basic idea is that in languages like English and German, a single 'again' adjoins to different structural positions, leading to distinct readings (von Stechow 1995;1996;Beck & Johnson 2004, among others). ...
Availability of restitutive ‘again’ varies both cross-linguistically and language-internally. This creates an acquisition puzzle: For each change-of-state predicate, how do children know if a restitutive reading is possible? In child-directed English, unambiguously restitutive uses of ‘again’ with a “goal-PP” structure (e.g., ‘walk to the village’) are exceedingly rare. Nonetheless, comprehension tasks with goal-PPs show that preschoolers already know the reading is available. Here we show that the same pattern holds for Mandarin you (roughly, ‘again’): extremely little direct, unambiguous evidence for the restitutive reading with goal-PPs, but preschoolers already know it is possible. This pattern is all the more remarkable for Mandarin because you is both preverbal and polysemous, making it less transparent how the restitutive reading is obtained. We propose that our findings fit neatly in a structural approach, where restitutive readings involve attaching ‘again’ to a VP-internal result phrase: The child can deduce the availability of restitutive you if they have acquired both the property allowing repetition-denoting you to semantically compose with a sub-constituent of the VP, and the structural properties of Mandarin goal-PPs that make a restitutive reading possible.
... Other lexical aspect considerations assumed to play a role in un-prefixation can be subjected to additional scrutiny as well. As mentioned above, earlier authors have stressed that only accomplishment predicates allow un-, to the exclusion of activities, states, achievements (based on Vendler, 1967Vendler, , 2019. This generalization seems to be largely true; however, we have found some achievement base predicates that do allow un-, primarily verbs relating to technology whose actions involve just a click, some of which are exemplified below. ...
This paper explores the distribution and semantics of the reversative affix un- and the restitutive affix re-, and overall makes a new proposal about the lexical semantics of verbs. I argue that these affixes tell a story of derivational morphology that is based not on categorization of verbs into neat aspectual and decompositional classes, but on the result of the verb’s action on the object and whether or not such a result state permits reversal and restitution. The argument structure of these affixes shows us that morphology interacts with semantics in a true compositional sense, whereby the affectedness of the object is a crucial factor in determining compatibility and composition. I propose an approach to verb meaning that encodes this important information as outcomes: the lifespan properties of the object after the action occurs on it. I propose, formulating the Verb-Root-Outcomes framework, that all verb roots come equipped with sets of outcomes. A wide array of verbs that have been classified as ‘change-of-state’ are shown to have different sub-classes based on the shape of the outcome set, and this also allows a formal definition of what ‘potential’ change could mean. The affixes un- and re- are modeled as result-state modifiers, which are sensitive to the outcomes of the action of the verb stem they attach to, and only attach when their presuppositions about the state of the object are met. Apart from directly comparing reversal and restitution with the same formal notion of equivalence, this approach also allows a transparent representation of event decomposition, whereby change in the object is able to be tracked at a granular level and its importance in determining the success of morphological derivations highlighted. This theory argues for compositional semantic interpretation at a sub-lexical level, while also showing how sentential and pragmatic factors affect verb meaning and derivational affixation .
... We adopt a syntactic decompositional view of verb meaning and event structure in which verbs are created in the syntax by combining lexical roots with functional heads (von Stechow 1996;Marantz 1997;Mateu 2002;Borer 2003;Harley 2003; (Bowers 1993) which functions as a relator responsible for structuring small clauses that serve as complement to the v head in predicates involving change of state or location (Hoekstra 1988;. The small clause introduces the undergoer of the event of change and the final state or location in the specifier and complement of Pred respectively. ...
We analyze an intransitive construction involving verbs like Span-ish matarse 'kill' whose subjects appear to have both internal and external argument properties. Examples include Juan se mató en un accidente de coche 'Juan got himself killed in a car accident', in which the subject's ref-erent shows hybrid behavior between agent and patient as it needs to be engaged in an action leading to its accidental death. We propose that the subject's internal and external argument properties can be accounted for if subjects can bear two semantic roles by virtue of being associated with more than one distinct head in the syntax (Pineda & Berro 2020). We argue that such intransitive uses involve a distinct argument structure from transitive reflexives despite sharing the same surface form, cf., El sospe-choso del homicidio se mató al estar rodeado por la policía 'The suspect killed himself when he was surrounded by the police'. The present account provides evidence that agents and external arguments do not always correlate since some verb classes can have identical surface form, despite involving underlyingly distinct argument alignment.
... Die Semantik von wieder (und seinem englischen Gegenstück again) ist in den letzten 30 Jahren aus theoretischer Perspektive intensiv diskutiert worden; einen Überblick bieten z.B. von Stechow (1996), Fabricius-Hansen (2001), Klein (2001). Im Zentrum der Diskussion stand die Frage, wie die Variation zwischen einer 'repetitiven' und einer 'restitutiven' Lesart von wieder und die damit korrelierte 'Ambiguität' etwa von (4) zu erklären seien: Es kann sich in (4) ('repetitiv') um ein wiederholtes Vergessen oder ('restitutiv') um ein erstmaliges Vergessen handeln, das den Zustand des Nicht-Wissens wiederherstellt. ...
... In addition to the presence of causer-PP diagnosing the causing subevent, the support for their bi-eventivity comes from the presence of the result state, diagnosed by applying the adverb again and its relevant interpretation. Following von Stechow (1995Stechow ( , 1996, A&I note that again in causative contexts may have two interpretations, i.e., repetitive (denoting the repetition of the causing event) and restitutive (denoting the restitution of the previous state). These two interpretations are also associated with again in anticausatives, (10): ...
This paper focuses on the Experiencer Object (EO)/Experiencer Subject (ES) alternation in Polish. This alternation is viewed here as distinct from the causative/anticausative alternation, because eventive EO verbs do not pattern like change of state (COS) verbs, and their reflexive ES alternants are unergative, not unaccusative. Eventive EO verbs share a common base with their ES counterparts, which corresponds to an unergative vP, with the experiencer merged in a low external argument position, viz. Spec, vP (Tollan 2018), not in Spec, VoiceP. The difference between causative EO verbs and their ES cognates lies in the Voice layer; in the former, the causer argument occupies the specifier of thematic VoiceP, while in the latter the Voice is expletive, filled with the reflexive marker się. Despite sharing the common base, eventive EO verbs and their reflexive ES variants are not derivationally related by a syntactic rule, as neither of the two structures can be treated as the basic one. The same reflexive marker with the same function and structural position is found in Polish anticausatives, which also share a common base with their causative counterparts. The common base, this time, however, corresponds to an unaccusative, not unergative, vP.
... These are complicated issues, and they do not matter for the central argument of this paper. 19 This leads to various readings of wieder, often discussed in the literature; see, for example, Fabricius-Hansen 1995, von Stechow 1996, Klein 2001 Note that English is much more restricted in the way in which such a particle can be inserted in the initial structure. seems very natural to assume that languages provide their speakers with devices to indicate that the proposition expressed in some sentence is true, as well as with devices to indicate that some other but related proposition is true. ...
... The syntactic decomposition of the verbal domain of these sentences is given in (47b) and (48b), and the semantics computed from these structures are given in (47c) Central to this analysis is that lexical causative and anticausative verbs have the same vPstructure and, thereby, the same event structure complexity (cf. von Stechow 1996, Pylkkänen 2008, Martin & Schäfer 2014. Their vPs denote a complex event involving an event e and a state s predicated of the internal argument DP and the semantic relation between the event and the state is one of causation (Kratzer 2005). ...
This article discusses verbs of change that allow a formally transitive construal that, nevertheless, has anticausative semantics. Verbs forming such “transitive anticausatives” (e.g., The water raised its temperature) also form canonical anticausatives (cf. The temperature of the water rose). Such verbs differ from verbs that only form canonical anticausatives (cf. The water warmed) in that they do not lexicalize a fixed scale along which they measure change, so that the DP merged in the internal argument position of these verbs (a DP denoting a property concept like the temperature) can determine the actual scale of change. When these verbs form canonical anticausatives, the entity undergoing change along this scale is realized as the possessor of this internal argument DP. When these verbs form transitive anticausatives, the entity undergoing the change is realized in the verb’s canonical external argument position, where it is, however, not assigned any external argument role. Instead, as in the canonical anticausative variant, it is interpreted as the possessor of the internal argument DP. This possessive relation is overtly reflected in English and other languages where the subject of the transitive anticausative construal binds a possessive pronoun in the internal argument DP. After an illustration of the phenomenon in typologically different languages, the article lays out the above semantic properties of the transitive anticausative construal and the verbs occurring in it. It then subsumes transitive anticausatives under the theory of the causative alternation in Alexiadou et al. (2006, 2015) and Schäfer (2008). Particular attention is, thereby, given to the morphological marking that sets apart, in many languages, the lexical causative and the anticausative variant of (a subset of) alternating verbs (cf. English raise/rise). Transitive anticausatives show a theoretically challenging but informative behavior here. Even though the transitive anticausative construal expresses anticausative semantics, its verb necessarily features the morphological marking that is canonically associated with its lexical causative use. This suggests that the morphological difference often found between pairs of lexical causative and anticausative verbs is only indirectly related to causative and anticausative semantics but is ultimately determined by more abstract, syntactic properties.
... Additionally, eventhood diagnostics with again also support the conclusion that there is no helping event in the assistive construction. Again is considered an event modifier (Stechow 1996, Fabricius-Hansen 2001, Beck 2005. If there is a vP associated with the 'helping' meaning component, again should be able to target 6 The participation requirement can only be flouted if either the assister or the assistee was going to perform the event but some legitimate reason (e.g., sudden illness) keeps them from doing so. ...
This paper investigates a verbal category called "assistive" in two closely-related Turkic languages, Kyrgyz and Kazakh, which appears to have a helping-like interpretation. The assistive construction includes a dative-marked Agent argument, which is not to be introduced by the commonly known noncore argument introducing heads Cause, Applicative, or Voice. The paper argues that the assistive does not encode a helping event, rather it is a hitherto unidentified type of event pluralizer (pluractional), which can introduce an Agent argument. The paper presents novel data showing that the assistive defines event plurality at the level of subevents: it requires that the embedded event be divided into two subevent sets such that the embedded event is the sum of the two subevent sets and the dative-marked argument is the Agent of one of the subevent sets. Thereby, the paper contributes to the inventory of pluractionals and to the cross-linguistically attested noncore argument introducing categories.
... For unpublished earlier versions of each of these approaches seeKratzer (1994) (discussed in vonStechow 1996) andEmbick (1997). Acta Linguistica Academica 70 (2023) 3, 285-316 ...
One of the basic questions in the theory of morphology concerns the nature of word formation: how morphemes are assembled into larger objects, and—crucially—whether there are distinct systems in which this occurs (lexicon versus syntax), or just one. Stative (a.k.a. “adjectival”) passives like opened in the opened door, or flattened in the metal is flattened, have provided an interesting testing ground for questions of this type. Following a period in which such passives were argued to be formed lexically, much subsequent work has developed the idea that they are derived syntactically, in fully phrasal structures. This paper examines a number of properties of English stative passives which raise problems for a fully phrasal treatment. These include (but are not limited to) (i) modification asymmetries relative to eventive passives; and (ii) interactions with un-prefixation. The generalizations that are revealed suggest that stative passives are built syntactically, but without phrasal internal structure: what I call small(er) syntax. Importantly, small structures are not tantamount to a lexical analysis; I provide a direct comparison that argues that the evidence favors the smaller type of approach. The argument for small structures has implications for the syntax of Roots that are introduced throughout the discussion.
... As causative event structures are bieventive, they should in principle allow for modification of the entire event or the non-causative subpart of the event. Indeed, the modifier again allows for both interpretations in a sentence with the causative change of state verb close, as in (56) (e.g., Bale 2007;Beck 2005;Beck and Johnson 2004;Dowty 1979: 252-253;Morgan 1969: 61-62;Pedersen 2015;von Stechow 1995von Stechow , 1996. Compare (56) with (57) containing the manner verb kick, which is assigned a monoeventive event structure; this sentence only has the reading where again scopes over the entire event. ...
Many English verbs typically used agentively allow non-agentive uses. Some recent approaches attribute such variable agentivity to underspecification, though in principle, polysemy is also an option. We demonstrate the complexity of variable agentivity through an in-depth examination of the English verb sweep, which shows variable agentivity due to both underspecification and regular polysemy. Drawing on corpus data, we identify two senses for sweep, each with unique argument realization options and interpretive properties. The prototypical uses of this verb, which involve the use of a broom, are obligatorily agentive; however, we claim they instantiate a specialized sense. We argue that the verb's basic sense, which underlies all its other uses, is underspecified for agentivity, being found with agentive and non-agentive subjects. We formulate event structures for both senses that encode the grammatically relevant components of meaning common across all the verb's uses: an entity moves along a planar surface while imparting a force via contact with it. We show that the event structure for the specialized sense, which fixes the moving entity to be a broom, is derived via established processes involving the lexicalization of instruments and routine activities that humans achieve a specific goal. We demonstrate how the argument realization options and interpretive properties that the verb shows in each sense emerge from applying established principles of argument realization and of semantic composition to these event structures.
... e. *Alice does slowly her homework. Stechow (1996) for a similar repetitive/restitutive ambiguity effect of wieder ('again') in German. What matters here is that there is a result state-denoting component which is hosted in a syntactic position immediately after the verb; and lại (in (b)) is one of the detectors of this component. ...
... This ambiguity surrounding again is commonly accounted for as a structural ambiguity (Morgan 1969;Dowty 1979;von Stechow 1995von Stechow , 1996Beck & Johnson 2004;Beck 2005;Bale 2005Bale , 2007a.o.). The structural account proposes that again presupposes the truth of its prejacent at a time prior to the utterance time and that its ambiguity arises from its different possible attachment points. ...
In Italian, ri- ‘again’ can be separated from the constituent it is semantically attached to and challenges the structural account for the ambiguity of ‘again’-type elements. To address this issue, this paper proposes a solution through aspectual agreement and suggests a movement and reconstruction analysis for the separation effect of ri-. It also provides supporting evidence for this analysis through Coordinate Structure Constraint and Relativized Minimality.
... The first (and more widely accepted) of the two approaches to restitutive readings in the literature (Stechow 1995(Stechow , 1996Beck & Johnson 2004 among others), is the STRUCTURAL ACCOUNT, which posits a single lexical entry for AGAIN that contributes a repetitive presupposition as shown in (6). ...
This paper observes that adverbs meaning ‘back’ systematically give rise to restitutive readings which have long been thought of only as secondary readings of adverbs meaning ‘again’. Restitutive readings are argued to arise from two sources: repetition of a state, or reversal of an event. Languages like English and Hindi-Urdu have a separate dedicated adverb for each, showing the independence of these two sources. A single reversal-based/counterdirectional lexical entry (originally proposed for AGAIN) is demonstrated to capture an intuitive relationship that exists between three core readings of BACK. These readings are, however, shown to have several as yet unconsidered properties that necessitate a finer-grained expression of counterdirectionality than is afforded by the broad concept of reverse events. The paper significantly revises the counterdirectional presupposition, capturing the core readings of BACK-adverbs by appealing not to repetition or reversal but to elements that can be copied from the assertion itself: THEME, SCALE, and end point of scalar change.
... Not-at-issue content projects out of questions. Again presupposes that the proposition denoted by its complement has happened before (von Stechow 1996;Pedersen 2015 Romero et al. (2017) and Arnhold et al. (2021) argue that their participants speak an uptalk variety of English, and hypothesize that the shallower rises they found would be final falls in non-uptalk dialects of American English, and thus that in non-uptalk dialects, the prosodic distinction is actually final rise for checking-¬p and final fall for checking-p. First, I am skeptical of the underlying assumption that there is a clear-cut distinction between uptalk and non-uptalk dialects such that all utterances rise in uptalk dialects. ...
I show that speaker bias in polarity focus questions (PFQs) is context sensitive, while speaker bias in high negation questions (HNQs) is context insensitive. This leads me to develop separate accounts of speaker bias in each of these kinds of polar questions. I argue that PFQ bias derives from the fact that they are frequently used in conversational contexts in which an answer to the question has already been asserted by an interlocutor, thus expressing doubt about the prior assertion. This derivation explains their context sensitivity, and the fact that similar bias arises from polar questions that lack polarity focus. I also provide novel evidence that the prejacents of HNQs lack negation, and thus only have an outer negation reading (see, e.g., Ladd in Papers from the seventeenth regional meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, vol. 17, pp. 164–171, 1981; Romero and Han in Linguistics and Philosophy 27(5):609–658, 2004; Krifka in Contrastiveness in information structure, alternatives and scalar implicatures, pp. 359–398, 2017; AnderBois in Questions in discourse, pp. 118–171, 2019; Frana and Rawlins in Semantics and Pragmatics 12(16):1–48, 2019; Jeong in Journal of Semantics 38(1):49–94, 2020). Based on a treatment of HNQs as denoting unbalanced partitions (Romero and Han in Linguistics and Philosophy 27(5):609–658, 2004), and competition with their positive polar question alternatives, I propose a novel derivation of speaker bias in HNQs as a conversational implicature. Roughly, if the speaker is ignorant, then a positive polar question will be more useful because it is more informative, so the use of an HNQ conveys that the speaker is not ignorant. The denotation of the HNQ then makes clear which way the speaker is biased. The result separates high negation from verum focus, and I argue that it is more parsimonious and has better empirical coverage than prior accounts.
... For more on these distinctions, seeBeck (2006), Fabricius-Hansen (2001), and Stechow (1996. ...
... One argument often put forward in support of syntactic decomposition theories is based on modification of causatives by repetitive adverbs, such as again. 3 It is a well-known fact that modification of a causative by the repetitive adverb again gives rise to an ambiguity (4) (see, for example Beck 2006;Neeleman & van de Koot 2019;Pylkkänen 2008;von Stechow 1996). The repetitive reading is a repetition of the entire event. ...
Syntactic decomposition theories of argument structure take predicates to be syntactically complex, consisting of a root and one or more functional heads. Traditionally, these functional heads have been used as potential attachment sites for adverbs, such as the repetitive adverb again, giving rise to the repetitive/restitutive ambiguity. In this paper, I question the assumption that these functional heads provide sublexical attachment sites based on theoretical and empirical objections. Taking both the scope of the adverb and effects of focus into account, I present a supralexical approach to the ambiguity. Discussing novel data of two Dutch repetitive adverbs as well as a repetitive verbal prefix, I argue that again has a default restitutive reading that becomes repetitive if the adverb scopes over the object or if focus is placed on the adverb. This research has implications for syntactic decomposition approaches to argument structure.
... Zwarts (2019) identifies a total of 6 different senses, which he arranges in a semantic map according to their semantic relationships. In a seminal paper, von Stechow (1996) argues (compare Dowty 1979) that the repetitive and restitutive readings of the adverb wieder ('again') can be modeled as a syntactic scope ambiguity (rather than a lexical ambiguity), given a decomposition analysis of the modified predicate. On its restitutive reading, (3) essentially presupposes that the door was open before and asserts that Xaver opened it. ...
Germanic languages have been recognized as having not only intensifying or focus particles, but also so-called modal particles. The relevant items are specialized discourse markers joined by characteristic syntactic properties. After an introductory overview of the complex field, the contributions of the current volume capitalize on, but also work much further beyond the baseline of the established insights. They offer analyses of (a) new data types within and sometimes across several Germanic languages (e.g. varieties/stages of German, Dutch, or Norwegian), encompassing different classes of particles and a variety of syntactic-semantic as well as usage-based aspects; (b) the classical dichotomy between languages like German and English when it comes to the availability of modal particles both synchronically and diachronically; (c) crucial integrated insight from non-Germanic languages such as French, Hungarian, Italian, Mandarin, or Vietnamese. A number of mostly interface-based proposals of several languages as well as further generalizations are put on the table for both expert and novice readers in the field.
... 'Again' attachment has been widely used to diagnose event decomposition in the syntax (e.g., McCawley 1968, Dowty 1979, von Stechow 1996; 'again' introduces a presupposition that an event has previously occurred at least once. Simple causatives with the adverb yine 'again' in Turkish are ambiguous between two interpretations, one where it scopes over the causing event (6a) and another where it scopes over just the caused event (6b). ...
It is claimed in Key 2013 that Turkish, despite allowing multiple causative morphemes on a single complex verb, does not in fact allow causative recursion, where one causing event is embedded by another causing event. This paper argues against Key’s conclusion, using evidence from eventhood diagnostics to show that “double” causatives in Turkish encode two distinct, syntactically represented causing events in addition to the caused event. Thus Turkish causatives are indeed recursive. This finding supports approaches to productive affixal causatives which allow recursive embedding of the same category over approaches which rely on a fixed functional hierarchy.
... For English, the absolute adjectives combined with again yield restitutive/repetitive reading demonstrated in (5). The repetitive/restitutive ambiguities of again have been discussed in the literature for a long time (see at least von Stechow 1995Stechow , 1996Beck 2005), but here we will focus only on a small part of the again ambiguitiesthose that arise in the context of degree achievements. The repetitive reading of the degree achievement dried in (5) means that the whole event of drying had to happen before; one such context is exemplified in (5a). ...
The telicity behavior of degree achievements has been a puzzling problem to many linguists. The most successful and currently standard theory (Kennedy & Levin 2008) treats them as degree expressions lexicalizing different types of scales, which in turn influence the resulting evaluative or non-evaluative interpretation. While it may account for English, this theory does not hold up cross-linguistically. We challenge the scalar theory with new Slavic data and show that verbal prefixes influence the (non-)evaluative interpretation of degree achievements more than their underlying scales do. This proposal is formalised as an addition of two type shifters, morphosyntactically realised as prefixes, which, in result, have an evaluative/non-evaluative effect on the given degree achievement.
... tekrardan 'again' for (459). I take a standard view of again as a type <s,t> modifier (von Stechow 1996;Beck and Johnson 2004), accordingly at least the following four attachment sites in (460) (461) a. Reading 1 (again above matrix VoiceP): The financial difficulties made the old man borrow money from the loan-sharks, the same financial difficulties had made the old man borrow money from loansharks before. ...
This dissertation explores the syntactic and semantic properties of implicit arguments in various voice constructions, such as active and passive voice, applicatives, causatives and impersonals, using mainly Sason Arabic (SA) and Turkish as empirical starting points. I add to the typology of null arguments, further demonstrating that they do not form a homogeneous category (e.g. Williams 1985; Rizzi 1986; Bhatt and Pancheva 2017; Landau 2010). My investigation reveals (at least) four types of implicit arguments in languages under investigation in terms of their semantic properties and syntactic visibility: (i) an existentially closed passive agent, (ii) a full DP, (iii) a free variable, and (iv) an impersonal pronoun. Establishing a distinction in Turkish between two constructions with identical morphology, i.e., passive and impersonal, I show that the implicit agent of passive is unprojected, whereas the null impersonal pronoun is fully projected. I also demonstrate that purported ‘passives of passives’ in Turkish are in fact impersonals of passives, and passives cannot iterate. This follows from an analysis of passive as a subtype of Voice, the head that introduces the external θ-role (following Legate 2014). I compare the null impersonal with the overt impersonal insan ‘human’ in Turkish, indicating that they exhibit distinct behavior. I also provide a syntactic analysis of the passive that confirms and captures the generalization that passive cannot iterate (Perlmutter and Postal 1977). The approach to passive adopted in the dissertation predicts that an active-passive-like alternation should be available to other functional categories, such as ApplP or CauseeP. Accordingly, I investigate several morphological and periphrastic causative constructions from SA and Turkish, arguing that this prediction is borne out. While all the causatives embed a second VoiceP, the behavior of this VoiceP varies across causative constructions: some are like the canonical, agentive VoiceP, whereas the behavior of others warrants identifying them as distinct categories, specifically VoicecauseeP or CauseeP. Furthermore, the investigation of ‘make’ causatives in SA reveals that the embedded agent may be present (i) as a free variable on thematic, active Voice head (à la Heim 1982) without needing a specifier or (ii) as a full DP, which is separated from its licensor by a phase domain and needs to Ā-move to be (Case)-licensed.
Under the widely adopted Kratzer (1996) model of argument structure, internal arguments are arguments of verbs but external arguments are not, they are arguments of a functional head, Voice. Bale (2007) and Smith and Yu (2021) present a strong challenge to this model with the claim that it makes incorrect predictions about readings of again. Specifically, they claim that an external argument cannot escape the presupposition of again if the verb is an unergative intransitive or a stative transitive, but only if it is an eventive transitive. Since the Kratzer model treats all external arguments the same—of eventive transitives, stative transitives, and unergatives—it apparently fails to capture the data. However, this paper shows that the empirical claims of Bale (2007) and Smith and Yu (2021) are incorrect, for both English and Japanese. Unergatives and stative transitives do allow subjectless readings if an appropriate context is set up. We also show that internal arguments never escape the presupposition of again; this includes the subjects of unaccusative intransitives. The overall pattern precisely matches the predictions of the Kratzer model.
Within linguistic theory, the division of labour between syntax and the lexicon has been a central issue for debate among different architectures of grammar, roughly corresponding to the distinction between memorization and rule governed aspects of language competence. In this article, I give some historical context for these debates, concluding that differences in architectural assumptions are only resolvable ultimately if we are willing to allow these implementational decisions to have consequences for (and make predictions concerning) human behaviours or mental processes. I proceed then to assess the psycholinguistic evidence concerning the lexicon and processing from the cognitive science literature, and offer a reassessment of what this means for the linguistic debates that have dominated discussions of the lexicon to this date. My conclusion will be that some of the comfortable dichotomies often relied on in these discussions are untenable and that some of the classical positions need to be reevaluated.
Manner/result polysemy describes a phenomenon where a single root can encode both manner and result meaning components of an eventive verbal predicate. It therefore poses a challenge to (i) the hypothesis of manner/result complementarity as a fundamental constraint on verb/root meaning and (ii) a strict one-to-one mapping between roots and meaning. Examining novel data from the Oceanic language Daakaka, I provide further evidence that polysemous verbs like tiwiye ‘press manually, break’ only apparently violate manner/result complementarity, as manner and result meaning components are in complementary distribution. As both meaning components are sensitive to their morphosyntactic environment, I develop an account of contextual root allosemy, in which manner and result interpretations are associated with designated syntactic positions in relative configuration to an event-introducing verbalizer v. In particular, I argue that a single root may be associated with two non-compositional entries in the encyclopaedia, an eventive and a stative one, which allows the root to be merged in either the manner or result position. Independent support comes from suppletive verb forms in the paradigm of polysemous roots in Daakaka, where the spell-out conditions of contextual allomorphy and contextual allosemy overlap. Finally, I discuss theoretical and empirical challenges for alternative accounts of manner/result polysemy, including accounts based on derivation, coercion, and homophony.
U-syncretism is the identical morphological marking of the passive and other verbal categories that have reduced syntactic valency, including the anticausative and verbal reflexive (Embick 2004). Nonactive morphology in Greek exhibits u-syncretism, while English and German have dedicated passive morphology. An influential body of literature holds that u-syncretism is the hallmark of a middle or nonactive Voice structure, which has a range of interpretations, while its absence is symptomatic of a canonical passive (Alexiadou and Doron 2012; Alexiadou et al. 2015; Spathas et al. 2015; Schäfer 2017; a.o.). The Turkish passive suffix also marks anticausatives and some verbal reflexives (Gündoğdu 2017). Nevertheless, the present paper argues that Turkish has a canonical passive that is morphosyntactically distinct from nonactive/middle Voice. U-syncretism is found only with verb stems that lack transitive marking. With stems that take an overt marker of transitivity—a causative suffix or an active light verb—the passive suffix is rigidly passive in interpretation, licensing a by phrase but not a by-itself or causer phrase in the case of alternating change-of-state verbs, and rejecting a reflexive reading even with a naturally reflexive verb. I conclude that the Turkish passive is derived with a transitive verb stem, while the anticausative and reflexive are derived with intransitive stems. U-syncretism arises only where transitive marking is null, and therefore, I argue, reflects a morphosyntactic ambiguity rather than different interpretations of the nonactive/middle Voice construction. This paper thus shows that a canonical passive can exhibit surface u-syncretism.
This paper investigates a verbal category called “assistive” in two closely related Turkic languages, Kyrgyz and Kazakh, which appears to have a helping-like interpretation. The assistive construction includes a dative-marked Agent argument, which is not to be introduced by one of the commonly known noncore-argument-introducing heads, Cause, Applicative and Voice. The paper argues that the assistive does not encode a helping event; rather it is a hitherto unidentified type of event pluralizer (pluractional), which can introduce an Agent argument. The paper presents novel data showing that the assistive defines event plurality at the level of subevents: it requires that the embedded event be divided into two subevent sets such that the embedded event is the sum of the two subevent sets and the dative-marked argument is the Agent of one of the subevent sets. Thereby, the paper contributes to the inventory of pluractionals and to the cross-linguistically attested noncore-argument-introducing categories.
Many English verbs typically used agentively allow non-agentive uses. Some recent approaches assume such verbs are unspecified for agentivity, although in principle, polysemy is also an option. We demonstrate the complexity of variable agentivity through an in-depth examination of the English verb sweep, which shows variable agentivity due to both underspecification and motivated polysemy. Drawing on corpus data, we identify two senses for sweep, each with unique argument realization options and interpretive properties. The prototypical uses of this verb, which involve the use of a broom, are obligatorily agentive; however, we claim they instantiate a specialized sense. We argue that the verb’s basic sense, which underlies all its other uses, is unspecified for agentivity, being found with agentive and non-agentive subjects. We formulate event structures for both senses that encode the grammatically relevant components of meaning common across all the verb’s uses: an entity moves along a surface while imparting a force via contact with it. We show that the event structure for the specialized sense, which fixes the moving entity to be a broom, is derived via established processes involving the lexicalization of instruments and routine goal-oriented activities. We demonstrate how the argument realization options and interpretive properties that the verb shows in each sense emerge from applying established principles of argument realization and semantic composition to these event structures.
Transitive causative change of state (TCoS) verbs elicit scalar readings, distinguishing them between: upper-bounded verbs (e.g., dry), denoting a culminating change of state, and lower-bounded verbs (e.g., wrinkle), denoting a change from a zero to a non-zero value (or from one value to another) regarding the property described by the semantic core of the verb. In their eventive reading, transitive experiencer object (TEO) verbs (e.g., calm down, delight) also denote causative eventualities able to yield scalar inferences. This study investigates whether TEO verbs are also associated with a minimum or maximum standard degree, proposing a similar subdivision of TEO verbs into lower-bounded items (delight) and upper-bounded items (calm down). In a forced-choice selection experiment we tested the impact of the standard degree (bound) of the semantic core of Spanish TEO verbs on the availability of lower-bounded or upper-bounded readings comparing them to TCoS verbs. Results revealed that the factor bound was significant to the extent that both lower-bounded TEO and TCoS predicates yielded the response compatible with a lower-bounded reading significantly more often than predicates that possess a maximum degree, supporting the distinction between lower and upper bounded items. Further, a significant effect of verb type was also observed, differentiating a change of state on the mental (TEO) versus the physical (TCoS) levels.
This paper examines the way in which scope‐taking of again interacts with word order in the English particle verb alternation. Small‐clause approaches to the particle verb alternation differ from most competing approaches in taking both verb‐particle‐object and verb‐object‐particle orders to contain a result state‐denoting small clause. An expectation of this approach on a structural approach to again ambiguity is that both orders should admit restitutive again readings. Results from a controlled judgment survey of 73 North American English speakers bear out this prediction.
The present thesis adopts for the first time a unifying approach to expletiveness, which is traditionally understood as the existence of linguistic form that is void of meaning, and seeks to identify the characteristic properties that so-called expletive categories share. Based on experimental evidence on the distribution and interpretation of five allegedly expletive categories from Greek, I demonstrate that expletiveness arises systematically in the co-presence of (i) a syntactically local semantic dependency, (ii) a truth-conditional contribution not richer than an identity function, and (iii) the potential development of a speech act-related interpretative import.
I start with the investigation of the expletive voice emerging in Greek anticausative verbs with non-active voice morphology and motivate empirically two main claims: Expletive voice does not affect the truth conditions of the sentence it appears in, and it merges always in a syntactic environment that formally encodes cause-related information. I proceed with the study of the expletive determiners involved in Greek polydefinite DPs and show experimentally that they are preferred, both syntactically and semantically, in the context of restrictive modification. Additional evidence is provided that such expletive determiners belong to colloquial registers of Greek and often develop an expressive meaning. Next, I investigate the expletive plural number on Greek mass nouns and demonstrate that it does not alter the already cumulative denotation of the noun it combines with but, like the expletive polydefinite determiners, carries expressive meaning. Finally, I study allegedly expletive instances of the Greek sentential negation markers min and dhen. I argue, both empirically and theoretically, that min conveys a positive speaker bias inference when occurring in polar questions and fear-predicate complements, while dhen does not appear to show expletive uses.
Under the light of the novel findings above, I conclude that expletives do not correspond to linguistic forms that are devoid of meaning. The major contribution of the thesis is that expletive categories are shown to be interpretable at the level of Logical Form and also beyond grammar, at the level of speech act-information interpretation.
In this paper, I argue in favor of the view that a generative lexicon, as advanced in lexicalist theories, might not be needed to derive verbal's argument structure. I instead support the hypothesis that a verb's meaning emerges as a result of the syntactic structure in which it is merged and that the role of lexical items/roots reduces to their idiosyncratic encyclopedic content. These two assumptions are executed via adopting the proposal that splits the traditional VP structure into two main functional heads, namely VoiceP and vP, and via endorsing the architectural assumptions advanced in the framework of Distributed Morphology. The main empirical support for this claim comes from verbs that appear in syntactic structures that are not in consonance with their semantic-conceptual content, Arabic varieties that lost their vocalic melodies that would otherwise encode thematic roles, and spray-load alternation. This paper concludes by exploring language-particular processes whose non-applicability goes beyond morphology, the analysis of which supports the role of the Encyclopedia.
This volume offers insight into different aspects of an interesting but fairly understudied language family, opens a path to new inquiries, and provides valuable contribution to linguistics, in general, and to Iranian linguistics, in particular. The articles in this volume offer novel analyses of significant properties of some of the Iranian languages, and contribute to various linguistic subareas such as experimental and historical linguistics as well as the morphology, syntax and semantics of several members of this language family. Specifically, this volume features a few articles on the Ezafe construction which shed new light on this interesting phenomenon of Western Iranian languages from historical, comparative and syntactic points of view. Moreover, a few articles address the syntax and formal semantics of properties of Persian, offering new insight into particular constructions in this language which are also fruitful for the general theory of linguistics. Crucially, all authors raise important questions, opening up the path for further investigations.
The grammatical approach to scalar implicatures attributes their introduction to a covert operator exh, which can be posited in various structural positions. By studying the interaction of scalar implicature calculation and the presuppositions of English also and again, we are able to pinpoint the structural position of exh. This diagnostic shows that some triggers of scalar implicature require exh to be adjoined as low as possible above them, whereas other triggers allow for more delayed adjunction of exh. We offer a concrete proposal for these behaviors in terms of syntactic feature-checking and show how it extends to cases involving ignorance inferences.
What counts as too close for comfort? How can an entire room suddenly feel restless at the imminence of a yet unknown occurrence? And who decides whether or not we are already in an age of unliveable extremes? The anthropology of intensity studies how humans encounter and communicate the continuous and gradable features of social and environmental phenomena in everyday interactions. Focusing on the last twenty years of life in a Mayan village in the cloud forests of Guatemala, this book provides a natural history of intensity in exceedingly tense times, through a careful analysis of ethnographic and linguistic evidence. It uses intensity as a way to reframe Anthropology in the age of the Anthropocene, and rethinks classic work in the formal linguistic tradition from a culture-specific and context-sensitive stance. It is essential reading not only for anthropologists and linguists, but also for ecologically oriented readers, critical theorists, and environmental scientists.
This article explores a phenomenon of English in which out‐ combines with a predicate to form a complex predicate (e.g., outsing, outdo, outrun, outsmart, …), here called “out‐pred.” A thorough investigation uncovers several new generalizations, which can be summarized as follows. (i) Out‐pred formation is productive and syntactic, building upon the structure for the pred. (ii) Out‐ is the core of the out‐pred clause's extended verbal projection. These findings are derived via an analysis in which out‐ merges with the pred before any argument(s) can merge. This analysis is then further supported by exploring domains in which out‐pred is unavailable; though these are seemingly unrelated, they share deep derivational properties that are incompatible with the derivation of out‐pred. The findings of this article have implications for the syntactic representation of argument structure more generally, supporting analyses where all arguments of a verb are syntactically severed from it.
This article investigates the syntactic distribution of the German quantificational particle known as “invariant alles” (‘all’). The generalization that emerges is that, given a derivation, alles occurs in any position occupied by an Ā chain link of the “associate” of alles, that is, the phrase that alles “modifies.” The article concludes that alles forms a deep constituent with its associate and that therefore instances of nonadjacent alles are derived transformationally, specifically by some stranding procedure. Floating analyses and adverbial analyses of quantifier float are argued to be insufficient to explain the generalization. Three types of argument are presented in support: (a) the distribution of alles is a subset of its associate's; (b) alles blocks derivations when it occurs in a position in which its associate would also block the derivation; (c) alles is sensitive to the kind of movement that its associate undergoes, in that it can occur in tails of Ā movement but not in tails of A movement. Further implications are that wh movement proceeds successive‐cyclically through (presumably) vP in German, that tails of A and Ā movement can be distinguished by alles, and that object scrambling is necessarily A movement in German.
Based on the lexicalization patterns of manner and result meaning in the main predicate, two resultative constructions can be distinguished, namely resultative secondary predication that lexicalizes the manner component, and means construction that lexicalize the result component. Notably, both constructions are unevenly distributed across languages (Talmy 2000, 1991). However, this typology is primarily based on non-serializing languages, such as English and Romance, in which the secondary manner or result predicate is necessarily non-verbal. This constrasts with resultatives in serializing languages, in which both the manner and result component are realized by verbal predicates, making it difficult to determine the underlying morphosyntactic status of the respective predicates. By investigating the morphosyntactic and semantic properties of resultative serial verb constructions (RSVCs) in two serializing languages, Mandarin and Samoan, I demonstrate that RSVCs are neither a unified or special phenomenon (contra Slobin 2004, Larson 1991), but show the same split observed in non-serializing languages. Further, these observations have broader implications on a unified configurational analysis of manner and result meaning within a syntactic account of event and argument structure building (cf. Folli & Harley 2020).
The concept 'fulfillment type' (how likely a verb can lead to goal achievement) is a verb property formulated in the Realization domain in the Talmyan event conflation theory. Despite a detailed classification consisting of intrinsic-/moot-/implied-/attained-fulfillment, the nature of this concept is not yet fully explored, and the identification of verbs' fulfillment types in the literature is largely based on intuition. Therefore in this article, we (a) define the fulfillment types with reference to event structure, (b) further delineate the distinctions between the four fulfillment types in terms of the verb's capacity to encode, 'activate', and entail the framing event, and (c) devise a series of cross-linguistically applicable diagnostics for fulfillment type identification.
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Der Titel dieses Buches, "Bausteine syntaktischen Wissens", enthält eine syste matische Mehrdeutigkeit. Einmal ist damit die Organisation des syntaktischen Wissens in unseren Köpfen gemeint; die Bausteine sind Module, deren kom plexes Zusammenspiel unsere syntaktische Kompetenz ausmacht. Zum anderen weist der Titel auf den fragmentarischen Charakter des Unternehmens hin. Von allem, was man über Syntax weiß, haben wir nur einige Bausteine zusam mengetragen, die wichtigsten, wie wir hoffen. Viele Gesichtspunkte sind aber nur am Rande oder überhaupt nicht erwähnt. Ein Gleiches gilt für die Literatur auswahl, die nur einen Bruchteil des uns bekannten Schrifttums enthält. Aufge nommen wurden nur die zitierten Werke. Der Untertitel "Ein Lehrbuch der modernen generativen Grammatik" drückt den Anspruch aus, ein systematisches und stimmiges Lehrgebäude zu errichten, das in die wichtigsten Prinzipien der generativen Grammatiktheorie einführt. Wir haben uns gescheut, das Buch Einführung zu nennen, weil ein sol cher Titel nahegelegt hätte, daß es sich um ein elementares Buch handelt. Dem ist leider nicht so. Trotz größten Bemühens der beiden Autoren um eine ein fache Sprache und um die Erklärung aller benutzter Begriffe, fürchten wir dennoch, daß die Schrift nicht einfach zu lesen ist. Der Stoff muß systema tisch durchgearbeitet werden, was ohne Papier und Bleistift, ein gutes Ge dächtnis und viel Motivation kaum möglich sein dürfte.
The abstract for this document is available on CSA Illumina.To view the Abstract, click the Abstract button above the document title.
The abstract for this document is available on CSA Illumina.To view the Abstract, click the Abstract button above the document title.
This paper presents an account of verb movement in Yiddish. Like German, Yiddish exhibits the verb-second phenomenon (V2); but unlike German, Yiddish shows V2 effects in both main and embedded clauses. I argue that in Yiddish the finite verb moves to Infl rather than to Comp, as has generally been proposed for German. As a consequence of V I movement, [Spec, IP] (the topic position) is specified to function as either an A or A-bar position in Yiddish. This yields a natural way of distinguishing subject and non-subject topics. Finally, Yiddish is shown to have a second type of verb movement which exists independently of V2. This instance of verb movement is V Comp, and shows the same main/embedded symmetry as V Comp in German.
How reliable are all those stories about the number of Eskimo words for snow? How can lamps, flags, and parrots be libelous? How might Star Trek's Commander Spock react to Noam Chomsky's theories of language? These and many other odd questions are typical topics in this collection of essays that present an occasionally zany, often wry, but always fascinating look at language and the people who study it. Geoffrey K. Pullum's writings began as columns in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory in 1983. For six years, in almost every issue, under the banner "TOPIC. . .COMMENT," he published a captivating mélange of commentary, criticism, satire, whimsy, and fiction. Those columns are reproduced hereâalmost exactly as his friends and colleagues originally warned him not to publish themâalong with new material including a foreword by James D. McCawley, a prologue, and a new introduction to each of these clever pieces. Whether making a sneak attack on some sacred cow, delivering a tongue-in-cheek protest against current standards, or supplying a caustic review of some recent development, Pullum remains in touch with serious concerns about language and society. At the same time, he reminds the reader not to take linguistics too seriously all of the time. Pullum will take you on an excursion into the wild and untamed fringes of linguistics. Among the unusual encounters in store are a conversation between Star Trek's Commander Spock and three real earth linguists, the strange tale of the author's imprisonment for embezzling funds from the Campaign for Typographical Freedom, a harrowing account of a day in the research life of four unhappy grammarians, and the true story of how a monograph on syntax was suppressed because the examples were judged to be libelous. You will also find a volley of humorous broadsides aimed at dishonest attributional practices, meddlesome copy editors, mathematical incompetence, and "cracker-barrel philosophy of science." These learned and witty pieces will delight anyone who is fascinated by the quirks of language and linguists.
Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Linguistics and Philosophy, 1981. Supervised by Noam Chomsky. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 712-718).
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