Morphological causatives are Voice over Voice

Nie, Yining

doi:10.3366/word.2020.0161

Cited by 7 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…We refer to such VoicePs as "quasi-active" to emphasize that although they are syntactically active, in the sense that they contain a syntactic external argument in Spec,VoiceP, they have various characteristics in common with middles and passives. 3 We further propose that the matrix causative verb realizes a second Voice head on top of the embedded Voice head, adapting aspects of Nash's (2017) analysis of Georgian (see also Nie 2020, where a version of this structure is generalized to morphological causatives in general). We will occasionally refer to this aspect of the analysis as Voice stacking.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the Implicit Argument of Icelandic Indirect Causatives

Sigurðsson

Wood²

2021

Linguistic Inquiry

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The goal of this paper is to understand the syntax of Icelandic indirect causatives (ICs), especially with respect to the implicit causee. We show that the complement of the causative verb must be at least as large as a VoiceP, and that it shares some properties with active VoicePs, and others with passive VoicePs. We make sense of this state of affairs by proposing that the causee, while phonetically silent, has an explicit syntactic representation, but as a fP rather than a DP. We further propose that ICs are built by stacking a second VoiceP on top of the lexical verb’s first VoiceP, and that this configuration, along with the underspecified interpretation of fP, leads to a special thematic interpretation of both the causer and the implicit causee. Our analysis suggests that there are certain core ingredients involved in building ICs—such as stacked VoicePs and an underspecified causee—but that the source of these ingredients can vary across languages and constructions, depending on the formal primitives that grammars make available to the language more generally.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the Implicit Argument of Icelandic Indirect Causatives

Sigurðsson

Wood²

2021

Linguistic Inquiry

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“…Since Malayalam, like many other languages, has overt intransitive morphology, we assume a uniform Voice head (following Alexiadou & Anagnostopoulou & Schäfer (2015) and others (Kastner 2019;Nie 2020)) for all verb types including unaccusatives where the Voice head, while present, nonetheless prohibits a specifier. To generate the different verbs, we propose the following.…”

Section: Theoretical Assumptionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Malayalam morphological causatives are formed differently in comparison to the ways in which similar complex verb forms are thought to be constructed in other languages. For example, in Tagalog, Halkomelem and Japanese (Nie 2020), morphological causatives are generally analysed as affixed forms that realise Voice as either 'transitive' or 'causative'. In Malayalam, morphological valence changes are enabled by the adjunction of an agentive root (√agent) to the syntactic heads v and/or Voice.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Unlocking the verbal spine in Malayalam: Past tense is key

Krishnan

Sarma

2023

Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics

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The focus of the paper is the internal structure of the verbal spine. Our aim is to show, using data from Malayalam, how verbal structures can be built, allowing for a new understanding of verb alternations as well as the verbal spine. The paper provides a novel analysis of the various v/Voice features, and proposes the adjunction of a √AGENT to the functional heads v and Voice. The difference in the loci of adjunction of the √AGENT is shown to be directly correlated with the differences in the semantics of the verb with consequences for the argument structure, specifically, the external argument at Spec, VoiceP. This analysis not only unpacks the verbal spine to help build a uniform account of verb alternations, but also provides for a clear understanding of the complex past tense morphology in the language. The contextually driven allomorphy of the past tense is shown to be directly linked to the morphosyntactic features and the expression of the exponents at v/Voice. The paper also proposes that the feature specifications on the verbal spine are becoming synchronically opaque for a variety of reasons, and are often only indirectly recoverable via the past tense morphology.

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“…Note that I remain agnostic on the identity of the projection that introduces the causee (“CauseeP”)—the relevant part of the proposal is that the causee c‐commands the theme. (See Folli & Harley 2007, Torrego 2010, Pitteroff & Campanini 2013, and Nie 2020 for discussion of the causee‐introducing functional layer. )…”

Section: Against Binding or Movement In Ep Via Applmentioning

confidence: 99%

Two Kinds of External Possession in Mississippi Choctaw

Tyler¹

2020

Syntax

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External possession refers to the phenomenon where a DP is marked as an independent argument in its clause but is interpreted as the possessor of another argument. Choctaw makes extensive use of external possession, but, puzzlingly, it comes in two distinct morphological profiles. Previous work has assumed these to be surface morphological variants, but this article shows instead that external possession in Choctaw is derived by two distinct mechanisms. One mechanism involves building a DP with an internal possessor and raising the possessor out to a higher, left‐peripheral position. The alternative mechanism involves building two unconnected DPs, one in an internal‐argument position and one in a high applicative phrase, and identifying the higher DP with the possessor θ role of the lower DP in the process of semantic composition, by a mechanism known as delayed saturation. I demonstrate that this latter mechanism can generate external possession of objects and unaccusative subjects, depending on whether there is an external argument, and is subject to a host of interpretative restrictions that the movement‐based mechanism is not. Thus I show not only that external possession can be derived by two different mechanisms but also that those mechanisms may coexist in the same language.

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Morphological causatives are Voice over Voice

Cited by 7 publications

References 28 publications

On the Implicit Argument of Icelandic Indirect Causatives

On the Implicit Argument of Icelandic Indirect Causatives

Unlocking the verbal spine in Malayalam: Past tense is key

Two Kinds of External Possession in Mississippi Choctaw

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