Saturating syntax: Linkers and modification in Tagalog

Abstract

Not all instances of composition are saturating in the sense of functional application (McNally, in press). For example, intersective modification with adjectives or relative clauses requires a non-saturating mode of composition (cf., e.g., Chung and Ladusaw, 2004). To account for such semantic configurations, composition rules like Predicate Modification (Heim and Kratzer, 1998) or Restrict (Chung and Ladusaw, 2004) have been posited. In Tagalog, wherever we find instances of non-saturating composition, we also find the element na/-ng, known in the Austronesian literature as linker. Sabbagh (2009, fn.31) points out that linker may be analyzed either as a semantically vacuous element serving as a “morphological flag” for non-saturating composition (in the style of Chung and Ladusaw, 2004, or as an operator of type 〈et, et〉 that composes with a predicate and adds the “instruction” to compose its output with another predicate via a non-saturating composition rule. Both options leave us with the need for a specialized composition rule in addition to functional application so that two properties may compose in the semantics. Alternatively, Rubin (1994) proposes that the grammar supplies a functional head of type 〈et, 〈et, et〉〉 that composes with two predicates and returns a single predicate denoting the intersection of both – a head that does the work of modification. Following Rubin, we argue that in Tagalog this element is realized overtly as linker. Adopting this latter proposal allows us to simplify the compositional mechanism so that it need not rely on specific processes for modification in addition to functional application. It also makes strong predictions, consistent with the data, about the environments in which we expect linker to appear. We explore the possibility of expanding the predictive power of our account of linker such that modification is implicated wherever it surfaces.