Parasitic participles in the syntax of verbal rather

Wood, Jim

doi:10.1016/j.lingua.2013.08.004

Cited by 7 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 42 publications

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“…While the frequency of finite-clause complements is low, they could be indications of the status of rather as a verb, though lack of overt participial specifications on it is problematic, as is the fact that participial specifications on rather are generally rare in COCA, as we have seen. Wood (2013) argues that rather allows raising to object in some dialects of US English when have precedes rather as well, which supports the potential status of rather as a verb. We have found no instances of raising to object in this environment in our data.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 94%

“…But have may also follow would, preceding rather, sooner or equatives, as in ( 44)-( 46). The order illustrated in ( 44) is interesting due to the ability of rather to take verbal morphology in this environment in some US English dialects, as reported in Wood (2013Wood ( , 2019. Example (47) illustrates this point: it hosts the participle rathered in place of rather and is one of two examples we have harvested from COCA.…”

Section: Auxiliary Have and Rathermentioning

confidence: 81%

“…This fact speaks in favor of rather being a verb when it appears together with an auxiliary. Wood (2013: 64, 82) argues that would by itself doesn’t license raising to object in English, and nor does bare rather , based on examples similar to (33)–(36). *I would Todd Akin in the United States Senate than Claire McCaskill. *I would him cook than not cook. *I rather Todd Akin in the United States Senate than Claire McCaskill. *I rather him cook than not cook. Although few, we did find counterexamples to Wood’s claim regarding bare rather .…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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English comparative modals and their complements

NYKIEL,

THAISEN

2024

English Language and Linguistics

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English comparative modals are combinations of the adverbs rather, sooner and better with an auxiliary. There is recent consensus that the comparative modals rather and sooner have over time developed a different syntax and semantics than better. However, potential differences in the syntax of rather and sooner with respect to patterns of complementation haven’t been explored. This article reports the results of a corpus study of these two modals and finds that rather patterns like object-raising verbs, allowing a range of complements that are unavailable for sooner. Our analysis of these patterns draws on recent work in the Construction Grammar framework, with forays into its formal implementation, Sign-Based Construction Grammar, and we propose that rather differs from sooner in that it constitutes a micro-construction whose features are licensed by both the Modal Construction and the Object-Raising Construction, the latter a subtype of the Transitive Construction.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 94%

Section: Auxiliary Have and Rathermentioning

confidence: 81%

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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English comparative modals and their complements

NYKIEL,

THAISEN

2024

English Language and Linguistics

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“…Nothing, however, prevents such variants from competing with "close variants" and spreading within a community if circumstances permit. This is how we can account for the variation between Standard American English adverb rather as in (11a) versus instances of verbal rather (11b-c), which Wood (2013) shows is part of the grammar of some speakers of colloquial American English.…”

Section: Close Variantsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Lessons From Neuro-(a)-Typical Brains: Universal Multilingualism, Code-Mixing, Recombination, and Executive Functions

Aboh

2020

Front. Psychol.

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In the literature, the term code-mixing/switching refers to instances of language mixing in which speakers/signers combine properties of two or more languages in their utterances. Such a linguistic behavior is typically discussed in the context of multilinguals, and experts commonly focus on the form of language mixing/switching and its cross-linguistic commonalities. Not much is known, however, about how the knowledge of code-mixing comes about. How come any speaker/signer having access to more than one externalization channel (spoken or signed) code-mixes spontaneously? Likewise, why do both neurotypical speakers/signers and certain neuro-atypical speakers/signers produce structurally similar mixing types? This paper offers some answers to these questions arguing that the cognitive process underlying code-mixing is a basic property of the human learning device: recombination, a fully automated cognitive process. Recombination is innate: it allows learners to select relevant linguistic features from heterogeneous inputs, and recombine them into new syntactic objects as part of their mental grammars whose extensions, arguably individual idiolects, represents what Aboh (2015b, 2019a,b) characterizes as hybrid grammars.

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“…Firstly, as a verbal head, the system adopted here (from Wurmbrand's work) generally assumes verbal heads to have unvalued [uT:__] features that must be valued by higher heads. Secondly, this Agree relation wouldn't interfere with the other Agree relation established between Perf and yet, as shown clearly by work on "parasitic participles" (seeWurmbrand 2010Wurmbrand , 2012Wood 2013) where one Perf head can value several verbal heads, if the configuration is right. Thirdly, as mentioned above, some speakers allow the lower v-head to be pronounced as got, yielding the have got yet to construction discussed in Section 4.3.…”

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confidence: 99%

Microvariation in thehave yet toconstruction

Tyler

Wood

2019

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The have yet to construction, exemplified by sentences such as John has yet to visit his grandmother, is widespread across dialects of English. However, recent studies have revealed that behind this apparent unity, there is significant variation in the syntactic properties of the have yet to construction. Speakers vary with respect to (i) the status of have as an auxiliary or main verb, (ii) the status of negation tests, and (iii) the status of a variety of related yet to constructions. The goal of this paper is to sort out the microsyntax of have yet to across speakers, in the face of contradictory empirical claims and mutually incompatible proposals in the existing literature. We develop an analysis based in part on two wide-scale surveys we have conducted. With respect to have, we show that speakers who can treat it as a main verb can also treat it as an auxiliary, but not necessarily vice-versa. We propose that the variation in this case has to do with where the perfect features are introduced in the clause. With respect to negation, we find that speakers do not treat all the negation tests the same, forcing us to contend with the question of how these tests work. We propose that for most speakers, only the embedded clause is syntactically negative. Negation tests split according to whether they must target the matrix clause, or whether they can target an embedded clause as well. In some cases, the tests reveal the same sentence to be both affirmative and negative, as we expect: the matrix clause is syntactically affirmative, but the embedded clause, which hosts the lexical content, is syntactically negative.

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Parasitic participles in the syntax of verbal rather

Cited by 7 publications

References 42 publications

English comparative modals and their complements

English comparative modals and their complements

Lessons From Neuro-(a)-Typical Brains: Universal Multilingualism, Code-Mixing, Recombination, and Executive Functions

Microvariation in thehave yet toconstruction

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