The Syntax of simple and compound tenses in Ndebele

Pietraszko, Joanna Aleksandra

doi:10.3765/plsa.v1i0.3716

Cited by 3 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…In some languages, the additional component has been identified as the associative linker a- (Khumalo 1992, Demuth & Harford 1999, Cheng 2006, Zeller 2004, Henderson 2006, Taraldsen 2010; 8 in others, as the so called augment vowel, a nominal prefix (Cheng 2006, Diercks 2010, Henderson 2013. Pietraszko (2017) shows, on the basis of morphosyntactic and phonological evidence, that Ndebele relative prefixes contain all three morphemes: a regular agreement prefix, an augment vowel and the associative linker.…”

Section: ) T To V Lowering In Englishmentioning

confidence: 99%

Generalized head movement

Arregi

Pietraszko²

2018

Proc Ling Soc Amer

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Abstract. We argue for a unified account of head movement and lowering in which lowering is in essence the covert movement counterpart of head movement. This proposal is supported by the existence of successive cyclic lowering (evidenced by relative prefix formation in Ndebele), in which complex heads built by lowering have the Mirror-Principle-obeying structure expected under a head movement derivation. It also predicts that lowering can feed head movement, giving the appearance of long head movement, which we argue is the case in Mainland Scandinavian V2. Keywords. head movement; lowering; Mirror Principle; Head Movement Constraint; V2; ellipsis; do-support; relative clauses; vowel coalescence; Ndebele; Danish 1. Introduction. Since at least Emonds 1970, two similar types of movements relating head positions (terminal nodes) have been distinguished in the literature. Their differences can be illustrated with the distribution of finite lexical (nonauxiliary) verbs in French and English. While in the former V moves out of VP to a higher (c-commanding) head position hosting finite inflection (represented here as T), lexical V in English stays in situ, and instead T lowers into V's VPinternal position, 1 as diagnosed, for instance, by the relative position of the finite verb with respect to adverbs adjoined to the left of VP (Chomsky 1957, Emonds 1970:211-226, 1978:65-68, Pollock 1989: 2

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Section: ) T To V Lowering In Englishmentioning

confidence: 99%

Generalized head movement

Arregi

Pietraszko²

2018

Proc Ling Soc Amer

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“…different words, auxiliaries and other verbal morphological pieces) -are due to the failure of the application of this operation to certain functional heads. In fact, this approach to periphrasis formation, which was at first formulated in Embick (2000) has been more recently fully developed by Bjorkman (2011), Pietraszko (2016), Fenger (2018, 2020 and Calabrese (2019). 18 In Bjorkman and Pietrasko's works, the failure of functional heads to combine with the verb is due to the action of certain nodes (or better the feature complexes of those nodes) as interveners (Rizzi 1990) in syntactic processes -such as Agree 19 -that lead to head movement.…”

Section: The Functional Structure Of Periphrastic Morphologymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…23 See Calabrese (2019) for an account of this blocking. Alternative accounts of auxiliary formation can be found in Bjorkman (2011) and Pietraszko (2016Pietraszko ( , 2018.…”

Section: A Morphosyntactic Analysis Of the Infinitival Mvcmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fifty shades of morphosyntactic microvariation

Cruschina¹,

Calabrese²

2020

Formal Approaches to Romance Morphosyntax

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In this paper, we analyse Motion Verb Constructions (MVCs) in southern Italian dialects, especially in Sicily and Apulia, which provide an ideal illustration of morphosyntactic microvariation. Depending on the grammatical status of the motion verb, we can distinguish between MVCs in which a lexical verb selects a purpose clause and those that involve a restructuring configuration where the motion verb behaves as a functional verb. We focus on the latter configuration and show that in these MVCs, the second verb can occur either as an infinitive or as a verb inflected for the same features as the motion verb. Following the most recent developments in Distributed Morphology, we then offer an analysis of the morphosyntactic and word-internal structure that surfaces as periphrastic morphology, and propose that the difference between the infinitival restructuring and double inflection is due to the nature of the agreement node within the verbal complex. Within this account, double inflection is simply viewed as a case of agreement within the extended vP which arises independently from restructuring. Finally, the defective paradigm of some MVCs and the configurations in which the motion verb has become a prefixal element are discussed and analysed as the result of specific wordinternal morphological operations.

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Cyclic Selection: Auxiliaries Are Merged, Not Inserted

Pietraszko

2023

Linguistic Inquiry

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Traditional approaches to verbal periphrasis (compound tenses) treat auxiliary verbs as lexical items that enter syntactic derivation like any other lexical item, i.e. via Selection/Merge. An alternative view that has received much attention in recent years is that auxiliary verbs are not base-generated but rather inserted in a previously built structure (i.a. Bach 1967; Embick 2000; Arregi 2000; Cowper 2010; Bjorkman 2011; Arregi and Klecha 2015). Arguments for the insertion approach to auxiliaries include their last-resort distribution and the fact that, in many languages, auxiliaries are not systematically associated with a given inflectional category (the "overflow" distribution discussed in Bjorkman 2011). In this paper, I argue against the insertion approach. First, I demonstrate that the overflow pattern and last-resort distribution follow from Cyclic Selection (Pietraszko 2017)—a Merge-counterpart of Cyclic Agree (Béjar and Rezac 2009). And second, I show that the insertion approach makes wrong predictions about compound tenses in Swahili, a language with overflow periphrasis. Under the approach advocated here, an auxiliary verb is a verbal head externally merged as a specifier of a functional head, such as T. It then undergoes m-merger with that head, instantiating an external-merge version of Matushansky’s (2006) conception of head movement.

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The Syntax of simple and compound tenses in Ndebele

Cited by 3 publications

References 21 publications

Generalized head movement

Generalized head movement

Fifty shades of morphosyntactic microvariation

Cyclic Selection: Auxiliaries Are Merged, Not Inserted

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