scholarly journals ARG-ST on phrases

2001 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Przepiórkowski
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Argument Structure ◽  
Complete Information ◽  
Formal Proof ◽  
Binding Theory ◽  
Verb Second ◽  
Complex Predicates ◽  
The Common ◽  
Verb Clusters ◽  
Internal Side

One of the major controversies in present-day HPSG is whether the information about a word's argument structure should also be available on this word's phrasal projections. Some works assume that ARG-ST is present on words only; this is the claim of, e.g., Pollard and Sag 1994, Miller and Sag 1997, Abeillé, Godard and Sag 1998, and Bouma, Malouf and Sag (to appear). The reason for this assumption is that it leads to more restrictive grammars: with this restriction, words cannot select their arguments on the basis of the argument structure of these arguments' heads (e.g., there seems to be no language in which a verb selects exactly VPs with an NP[dat] argument). On the other hand, various other works assume the presence of the complete information about a word's argument structure on this word's phrasal projections. This is the stance of, e.g., Grover 1995 (to formulate a fully nonconfigurational binding theory), Frank 1994 (to deal with verb second in German), Frank and Reyle 1995 (to account for the interactions between scope and word order in German), Calcagno and Pollard 1997 and Abeillé and Godard 2000 (to analyze French causatives), Baxter 1999 (in an account of purpose infinitives in English), and Meurers 1999 (to deal with case assignment in German verb clusters). In this paper, I endeavor to make two kinds of linguistic contribution. On the theory-internal side, I argue that the issue whether ARG-ST or any such attribute should be present at the level of possibly saturated phrases, in addition to its presence on words, is not an "all or nothing" issue. Although I show that there are some environments in Polish which do seem to require the presence of ARG-ST on phrases, I also link this presence to the common feature of such environments, namely, to their semantic vacuity (understood in the sense of Pollard and Yoo 1998). Although no formal proof can be given that this is the only possible analysis, I try to proceed carefully by examining a variety of possible alternatives and showing that all of them fail in one way or another. Since semantically vacuous environments are extremely rare, the resulting grammar is not less restrictive than, say, a grammar which allows a verb to subcategorize for a lexical argument (and, hence, have access to this argument's ARG-ST), a possibility often taken advantage of in HPSG analyses of complex predicates in various languages. On the empirical side, I look at two rarely considered and ill-understood constructions in Polish, namely, at "long raising" across a preposition, and at case agreement with predicative phrases. Neither of these constructions has been successfully analyzed so far. Although the analyses proposed in this paper may be perceived as less than satisfactory on the aesthetical side, they constitute the first formal and uniform account of these phenomena.

Niuean

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diane Massam
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Argument Structure ◽  
Word Formation ◽  
Left Periphery ◽  
Sentence Structure ◽  
Noun Incorporation ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Theta Role ◽  
Predicate Argument Structure

This book presents a detailed descriptive and theoretical examination of predicate-argument structure in Niuean, a Polynesian language within the Oceanic branch of the Austronesian family, spoken mainly on the Pacific island of Niue and in New Zealand. Niuean has VSO word order and an ergative case-marking system, both of which raise questions for a subject-predicate view of sentence structure. Working within a broadly Minimalist framework, this volume develops an analysis in which syntactic arguments are not merged locally to their thematic sources, but instead are merged high, above an inverted extended predicate which serves syntactically as the Niuean verb, later undergoing movement into the left periphery of the clause. The thematically lowest argument merges as an absolutive inner subject, with higher arguments merging as applicatives. The proposal relates Niuean word order and ergativity to its isolating morphology, by equating the absence of inflection with the absence of IP in Niuean, which impacts many aspects of its grammar. As well as developing a novel analysis of clause and argument structure, word order, ergative case, and theta role assignment, the volume argues for an expanded understanding of subjecthood. Throughout the volume, many other topics are also treated, such as noun incorporation, word formation, the parallel internal structure of predicates and arguments, null arguments, displacement typology, the role of determiners, and the structure of the left periphery.

Clause Structure and Word Order in the History of German

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Left Periphery ◽  
Structural Factors ◽  
Clause Structure ◽  
Verb Second ◽  
Verb Forms ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Research ◽  
The Right ◽  
Theoretical Analyses

Over roughly the last decade, there has been a notable rise in new research on historical German syntax in a generative perspective. This volume presents a state-of-the-art survey of this thriving new line of research by leading scholars in the field, combining it with new insights into the syntax of historical German. It is the first comprehensive and concise generative historical syntax of German covering numerous central aspects of clause structure and word order, tracing them throughout various historical stages. Each chapter combines a solid empirical basis and valid descriptive generalizations with reference also to the more traditional topological model of the German clause with a detailed discussion of theoretical analyses couched in the generative framework. The volume is divided into three parts according to the main parts of the clause: the left periphery dealing with verbal placement and the filling of the prefield (verb second, verb first, verb third orders) as well as adverbial connectives; the middle field including discussion of pronominal syntax, order of full NPs and the history of negation; and the right periphery with chapters on basic word order (OV/VO), prosodic and information-structural factors, and the verbal complex including the development of periphrastic verb forms and the phenomena of IPP (infinitivus pro participio) and ACI (accusativus cum infinitivo). This book thus provides a convenient overview of current research on the major issues concerning historical German clause structure both for scholars interested in more traditional description and for those interested in formal accounts of diachronic syntax.

Word-order change in progress: the case of Slovene and Serbo-Croat and its relevance for Germanic

1987 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 269-287 ◽  
Author(s):  
David C. Bennett
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Verb Second ◽  
Related Language ◽  
Slavonic Language ◽  
History Of ◽  
Order Change ◽  
The One ◽  
Word Order Change ◽  
Germanic Languages ◽  
Fresh Insight

It will be suggested in this article that Slovene, a South Slavonic language, is on the way to acquiring verb-second (V2) word order. In providing evidence in support of this view I shall compare Slovene, on the one hand, with the closely related language Serbo-Croat and, on the other hand, with relevant details from the history of the Germanic languages. The point of comparing it with Serbo-Croat is to discover the respects in which the word order of these two languages has diverged. Taken together with what is known about the word order of Common Slavonic, the facts emerging from this comparison allow us to identify one major respect in which Slovene has changed and two respects in which it is still changing. At the same time, they reveal a major respect in which Serbo-Croat word order is also changing. The point of comparing Slovene with the Germanic languages is twofold. First, since all the present-day Germanic languages either have or have had V2 word order (Haiman, 1974), it is possible that their history can help us to understand the changes currently taking place in Slovene and to predict how Slovene might change in the future. Secondly, where details of the history of the Germanic languages are poorly understood, the possibility exists of gaining fresh insight into them in the light of the changes that have taken place more recently, or indeed are still taking place, in Slovene. In this connection we shall assess the plausibility of two theories concerning the adoption of V2 word order by the Germanic languages, those of Vennemann (1975) and Wackernagel (1892).

scholarly journals Tunnekausatiivilauseen argumenttirakenne I

Virittäjä ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 123 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Saara Huhmarniemi
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Argument Structure ◽  
Contextual Factors ◽  
Generative Syntax ◽  
Embedded Clause ◽  
Open Question ◽  
Syntactic Theories

Tunnekausatiivilauseet luokitellaan usein omaksi lausetyypikseen, johon kuuluu tunnetta tai tuntemusta ilmaiseva verbi (tunnekausatiivi), partitiivisijainen kokija ja nominatiivimuotoinen aiheuttaja. Tunnekausatiivilauseen aiheuttaja- ja kokija-argumenttien asemaa syntaktisessa rakenteessa on pidetty avoimena kysymyksenä ja rakenteen on arvioitu jopa olevan muutoksessa. Tässä artikkelissa käydään generatiivisen kieliopin kehyksessä läpi argumentti-rakenteeseen liittyviä kieliopillisia testejä, jotka koskevat esimerkiksi kongruenssia, anaforien sidontaa ja sanajärjestystä. Testien perusteella voidaan havaita, että kun tunnekausatiivilauseen aiheuttaja on NP, se sijaitsee tyypillisesti argumenttirakenteessa ylempänä kuin partitiivimuotoinen kokija. Tätä tulosta verrataan Suomi24-korpusaineistosta tehtyihin havaintoihin, joiden perusteella kokija esiintyy useammin verbin edellä kuin aiheuttaja. Tunnekausatiivilauseen sanajärjestyksen vaihtelun katsotaan olevan sidoksissa puhetilanteeseen ja argumenttien ominaisuuksiin.  Tämä artikkeli on osa kahden artikkelin sarjaa. Sarjan toisessa osassa tarkastellaan lausemaisten aiheuttajien asemaa tunnekausatiivilauseen argumenttirakenteessa.   The argument structure of the Finnish experiencer construction I: An NP causer This article investigates the Finnish experiencer construction, which involves a psychological predicate and two optional arguments: the nominative causer and the partitive experiencer. The argument structure of the Finnish experiencer construction has ­remained an open question in syntactic theories. In this paper, several grammatical tests concerning congruence, binding and word order are applied in the framework of generative syntax. They suggest that when the nominative causer is an NP, it typically occupies a higher position in the argument structure than the partitive experiencer. This result is evaluated against data from the Suomi24 corpus, which reveals that the partitive experiencer occurs preverbally more frequently than the nominative causer. The article asserts that the word order of the Finnish experiencer construction reflects contextual factors and discourse features of the arguments. This article is the first in a series of two. The second article investigates experiencer constructions with an embedded clause as a causer argument.

scholarly journals Empty verbs in Chinese predicatives and complex predicates

1999 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 147-163
Author(s):  
Niina Ning Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Verb Second ◽  
Complex Predicates ◽  
Internal Argument ◽  
Syntactic Properties ◽  
Secondary Predication

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.  

scholarly journals On the Acquisition of Word Order in WH-Questions in theTromsø Dialect

Nordlyd ◽  
10.7557/12.48 ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Marit Richardsen Westergaard
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Verb Second ◽  
Verb Movement ◽  
Syntactic Form ◽  
Wh Questions

This article reports on a study of three children acquiring a dialect of Norwegian which allows two different word orders in certain types of WH-questions, verb second (V2) and and verb third (V3). The latter is only allowed after monosyllabic WH-words, while the former, which is the result of verb movement, is the word order found in all other main clauses in the language. It is shown that both V2 and V3 are acquired extremely early by the children in the study (before the age of two), and that subtle distinctions between the two orders with respect to information structure are attested from the beginning. However, it is argued that V3 word order, which should be ìsimplerî than the V2 structure as it does not involve verb movement, is nevertheless acquired slightly later in its full syntactic form. This is taken as an indication that the V3 structure is syntactically more complex, and possibly also more marked.

Constructional change in Germanic

2021 ◽  
pp. 197-224
Author(s):  
Peter W. Culicover
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Initial Position ◽  
West Germanic ◽  
German Word ◽  
Case Marking ◽  
Verb Clusters

This chapter tracks several of the major changes in English and German word order and accounts for them in terms of constructional change as formulated in Chapter 3. It argues that the changes are relatively simple in constructional terms, although the superficial results are quite dramatic. Topics include clause-initial position, V2, VP-initial and VP-final verb position, the loss of V2 and case marking in English, and verb clusters in Continental West Germanic.

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