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.
Highlights
Introduction and synopsisLanguages like English do not exhibit a morphological distinction between verb stems that belong to different structural or aspectual classes
This is in essence what seems to be a common ingredient in Czech and Polish semelfactive stems, which are all based on nominal roots, and degree achievement stems, which are all based on adjectival roots
Two distinct aspectual classes of stems, semelfactives and the degree achievements, have the same morphological make-up in Czech and Polish, yet they turn out to be structurally distinct once their submorphemic representations are considered
Summary
Languages like English do not exhibit a morphological distinction between verb stems that belong to different structural or aspectual classes. The discussion of the properties of the U-theme allows us to observe a third difference between the two aspectual classes of the NU-stems: semelfactive stems spell out the argument structure of a larger size than degree achievements do. This explains why Czech and Polish degree achievement verbs based on NU-stems are exclusively unaccusative, while semelfactive verbs are either transitive/accusative or unergative. Before we proceed to discuss the syntax of NU—a morpheme which builds both semelfactive and degree achievement stems in Czech and Polish—in a greater detail, consider first how syncretism has been used to explain the morpheme–phrasal syntax connection in Nanosyntax and its consequences to structure and interpretation of grammatical representations
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