Semelfactives are bigger than degree achievements

Abstract

This paper argues that semelfactive and degree achievement verbs are morphosyntactically distinct, despite the fact that the morphemes they are made of are often syncretic even in languages with synthetic verb morphology like Czech or Polish. We use the mechanisms of Nanosyntax, a theory of the architecture of grammar in which the lexicon stores entire syntactic subtrees, to show that there is a structural containment between semelfactives and degree achievements such that semelfactives include more syntactic structure than degree achievements. In this respect, the relative structure of these two verb classes contributes to Bobaljik's (2012) general claim that syncretism anchors structural containment as well as to the ongoing discussion about the form of spell out in syntax. The resulting picture supports the view whereby the semantics of lexical items is determined by their fine-grained internal syntax.

The status of secondary imperfectivization in Polish: Evidence from VP idioms

“…Moreover, she suggests that such atomic subevents in the denotation of iterative verbs have to be individuated linguistically in the lexical entry of a verbal predicate. By contrast, Taraldsen et al (2019) observe that semelfactive stems have nominal roots in Polish, as in kop-ną-ć 'to kick once' , jęk-ną-ć 'to moan once' . This speaks in favor of the role of the semelfactive prefix as a verbalizer.…”

“…Regarding the semelfactive morpheme n(ą)-, as in jęknąć 'to moan once' , krzyknąć 'to shout once' , which attaches to nominal roots, as observed by Taraldsen et al (2019), we treat it as a verbalizer projected in the head of the verbalizing projection vP. This follows from the observation that it is in complementary distribution with other theme vowels spelling out the verbalizing v. Additionally, the fact that we found a VP idiom in Polish with a semelfactive morpheme i.e., kopnąć w kalendarz 'lit.…”

Morphosyntax of specific and non-specific indefinite markers

“…It also seems worth noting at this point that the nanosyntactic framework proves to be useful not only in the case of indefinite markers. So far, the approach has been successful in analyzing the phenomenon of syncretism in many other grammatical domains such as participles (Starke 2006), case (Caha 2009), spatial adpositions (Pantcheva 2011), negation markers (De Clercq 2013), demonstratives (Lander & Haegeman 2016), personal pronouns (Vanden Wyngaerd 2018), wh-pronouns (Wiland 2018;Vangsnes 2013), complementizers (Baunaz & Lander 2018a), verbal prefixes in Slavic (Wiland 2012;Tolskaya 2018), class prefixes in Bantu (Taraldsen 2010;Taraldsen et al 2018) and internal structure of verbs (Taraldsen-Medova & Wiland 2019;Wiland 2019).…”