External Argument Research Articles

Überlegungen zu zwei Unterschieden zwischen der Mittelkonstruktion des Deutschen, Englischen und Niederländischen

This paper discusses two problems about middle constructions in German, English and Dutch. The first question is why a reflexive pronoun occurs only in German middle constructions. After having discussed expressions for grooming actions and inchoative situations, it is pointed out that only in German reflexive pronouns can occur in sentences in which the external argument is suppressed. Following Steinbach (2002), it is then argued that only German reflexives can mediate the linking of the syntactic subject to the internal argument. The second question is why middle constructions can be formed from so-called double object verbs in German, but not in English and Dutch. After having pointed out that middle constructions are not compatible with an accusative argument, it is claimed that morphological coding patterns for indirect objects contribute to the language difference: Whereas in English and Dutch indirect objects remaining in middle constructions are encoded in accusative, they are expressed in dative in German.

Linking the Syntactic and Semantic Representation of Complex Structures within the Old English Domain of Speech

In order to reflect the interaction between the semantic and syntactic behaviour of predicates, the notion of lexical template has been devised as a way of including syntactic and semantic information within the same lexical representation, reflecting generalisations across lexical classes and reducing the information to be included in the lexical entries. Lexical templates are composed of the logical structures developed by Van Valin LaPolla (1997), complemented by a semantic decomposition in terms of ontological constants or internal variables and semantic primitives corresponding to the different lexical domains. As will be shown, the syntactic behaviour of a lexeme can be determined by linking the internal variables and external argument positions of a template. Within the Old English domain of speech external variables can be syntactically realised by complex structures whose semantic description will also be included in the templates.

Operating with external arguments in the Mandelbrot set antenna

The external argument theory of Douady and Hubbard allows us to know both the potential and the field-lines in the exterior of the Mandelbrot set. Nonetheless, there are no explicit formulae to operate with external arguments, and the external argument theory is difficult to apply. In this paper we introduce some tools in order to obtain formulae to operate with external arguments in the Mandelbrot set antenna. Thus, we introduce the harmonic tool to calculate both the external arguments of the period-doubling cascade hyperbolic components and the external arguments of the last appearance hyperbolic components. Likewise, we introduce composition rules applied to external arguments that, with the aid of the concept of heredity, allows the calculation of all the external arguments that constitutes the family tree of a given external argument.

The Selectional Restrictions of French Past Tenses

AbstractThis article argues against the idea that the Imparfait and the Passé Simple in French are aspectually sensitive tense operators. Both morphemes combine with any type of eventuality. It is not the case that a clause in the Imparfait denotes a state, or that a clause in the Passé Simple denotes an event. It is proposed that the Passé Simple is a true past tense, which introduces a past eventuality in the discourse with the condition that it be the maximal eventuality of the appropriate type. The Imparfait is analyzed as a dyadic morpheme, which selects an eventuality as internal argument and a past temporal referent of discourse as external argument, where the eventuality provides a condition on the temporal referent.

Mixed categories and argument transfer in Korean light verb constructions

The Korean Light Verb Construction (LVC) contains a Sino-Korean main predicate (tayhwa-lul), a Light Verb (ha-ta), and semantic arguments of the main predicate (John-i, Tom-kwa): John-i Tom-kwa tayhwa-lul ha-yess-ta. John-Nom Tom-with talk-Acc do-Pst-Dc 'John talked with Tom.' We defend a three-part analysis: (i) The subject of the main predicate is thematically controlled by the LV's subject. Evidence: Korean verbs assigning Accusative take an external argument (Wechsler/Lee 1996; Burzio's Generalization). Since the main predicate is Accusative, ha-ta must theta-mark its subject. Moreover ha-ta selects a non-stative Verbal Noun (VN) (cp. *kyumson-ul ha-ta 'humble-Acc do-Dc'); non-stative theta-structures typically take an external argument (Kang 1986). This control arises through complex predicate formation. (ii) Oblique arguments (PPs) are optionally transferred (cp. Grimshaw/Mester 1988) — but Accusative NPs are not. Evidence comes from relativization and pronoun replacement. (iii) Accusative is assigned by a mixed category Verbal Noun. This can be supported by adverbial clauses with VN's assigning Accusative without LV's. We review cross-linguistic evidence for both argument transfer (German; Hinrichs & Nakazawa; i.a.) and mixed categories (many languages, Malouf; i.a.) and show that Korean LVCs provide the right environment for both to occur.

The passive construction in Japanese: A cognitive perspective

This paper examines the passive construction in Japanese. Focusing on the behavior of two types of by-phrase, ni and ni yotte, it is argued that the essential components that trigger the passive construction cannot be determined on the basis of structural properties such as ‘the suppression of an external argument’ or ‘defocusing the agent’. Rather, its formation is influenced mostly by factors which accord with a cognitive approach to language, in which our subjective judgment or experience of the world comes to the fore in the determination of the grammaticality of clausal structures. More precisely, the aforementioned observation suggests that the formation of Japanese passives requires more than purely structural or syntactic information. The paper further argues that the notion of EMPATHY, though it is often alluded to as being of primacy in Japanese passives in the previous literature, is still not sufficient in the light of the data at hand. The paper proposes five cognitive components, TEMPORALITY, DEPENDENCY, INVOLVEMENT, TYPICALITY, and SALIENCE, revealing that the grammaticality of Japanese passives is determined crucially by multiple human conceptualization.

A Quantitative Study of Voice in Malagasy

This paper is a quantitative study of the voice system in Malagasy (a Western Austronesian language spoken on Madagascar). We show that nonactive verbs in Malagasy have a very different distribution in texts than nonactive verbs in English, German, and Dutch: they occur far more frequently and they typically present Agent phrases. This we claim reflects the very different role of the voicing system in the grammars of Western Austronesian and Western European languages. Part reviews the voice system of Malagasy, classifying the various voice forms into active vs. nonactive, with the latter divided into passive and circumstantial; part 2 presents the results of our text study; and part 3 draws some conclusions regarding the nature of the voice system in Malagasy. 1. THE VOICE SYSTEM OF MALAGASY. We first exemplify the Malagasy voice forms. Examples are given in the standard orthography, augmented when helpful by hyphens to indicate morpheme boundaries, to mark main stress, and block parentheses to indicate constituency. Pronounced forms are noted in round parentheses next to (or beneath) their morphemic decompositions (when not simply the concatenation of the latter). (I) a. [N-i-vidy akanjo hoan'ny zaza] i Vao. PAST-ACT-buy clothes for the child ART Vao 'Vao bought clothes for the child.' b. [No-vidy-ina i-Vao (novidin'i Vao) PAST-buy-ACT ART-Vao 'The clothes were bought by Vao for the child c. [N-i-vidy-ananai-Vao (nividianan'i Vao) PAST-ACT-buy-CIRC ART-Vao 'The child was bought clothes for by Vao.' b. [No-vidy-ina hoan'ny zaza] ny PAST-buy-ACT for'the child the 'The clothes were bought by Vao for the child c. [N-i-vidy-ananai-Vao (nividianan'i Vao) akanjo' ny PAST-ACT-buy-CIRC ART-Vao clothes the 'The child was bought clothes for by Vao.' b. [No-vidy-ina akanjo. PAST-buy-ACT clothes 'The clothes were bought by Vao for the child c. [N-i-vidy-ananai-Vao (nividianan'i Vao) zaza PAST-ACT-buy-CIRC ART-Vao child 'The child was bought clothes for by Vao.' There is massive evidence (Keenan 1972, 1995; Pearson 2000) that the bracketed strings in (1a,b,c) are constituents, called here PREDICATE PHRASES (PredPh). For example, to form the yes-no questions corresponding to (1a,b,c), it suffices to insert the particle ve at the right edge of the PredPh. Insertion internal to the PredPh is ungrammatical. Another example: the only relativizable position in (1a,b,c) is that of the NP external to the PredPh (henceforth the EXTERNAL ARGUMENT, EA, a usage we take from Pearson 2000). Thus (2a,b,c) are grammatical; relativizing any other NP, as in (3), is not. (2) a. ny olona (izay) nividy akanjo hoan'ny zaza 'the person (that bought clothes for the child' b. ny akanjo (izay) novidin'i Vao hoan'ny zaza 'the clothes (that) were bought by Vao for the child' c. ny zaza (izay) nividianan'i Vao akanjo 'the child (that) were bought-for by Vao clothes' (3) *ny akanjo (izay) nividy hoan'ny zaza i Vao 'the clothes (that) bought for the child Vao' Reading (3) through active nividy we understand that it is the clothes that bought something. The rest of (3) lacks a Theme and presents an NP, Vao, which lacks a semantic role. Similar ungrammaticality results when attempting to relativize NPs other than the EA from (Ib and c). The EA in (1a,b,c) is replaceable with pronominal forms drawn from the following series, which we call NOMINATIVE: (4) aho 'I'; izahay 'we EXCL'; isika 'we INCL'; ianao 'you SG'; ianareo 'you PL'; izay '3 SG OR PL' This series contrasts with those in (5a), called here ACCUSATIVE, and (5b), called GENITIVE. …

Political concepts and political theories

* List of Figures * Preface Part I: Conceptual Analysis and Political Theories * 1. What Are Political Concepts? * 1.1 Socrates's Question * 1.2 Words, Definitions, and Things * 1.3 Wittgenstein's Later Analysis * 1.4 Wittgenstein and Conceptual Investigations * 1.5 Summary * Notes * 2. Conceptual Disputes * 2.1 Essentially Contested Concepts * 2.2 Political Ideologies * 2.3 Political Philosophy and Political Theories * 2.4 Summary * Notes * 3. Political Theories: Conceptual Structures and Enduring Types * 3.1 Liberalism, Socialism, and Conservatism * 3.2 Rationalism/Antirationalism * 3.3 Theories of Human Nature * 3.4 Individualism/Collectivism * 3.5 Summary * Notes Part II: Political Concepts * 4. Negative and Positive Liberty * 4.1 Negative Liberty: Some Ordinary Language Considerations * 4.2 Positive Freedom * 4.3 Two Concepts of Liberty * 4.3 Questioning the Positive/Negative Distinction * 4.4 Summary * Notes * 5. Liberty and Power * 5.1. Positive Freedom as Power to Act * 5.2 Power and Freedom * 5.3 Freedom, Power, and Property * 5.4 Freedom, Power, and the Law * 5.5 Summary * Notes * 6. Equality * 6.1 Equality and the Grounds for Equal Treatment * 6.2 Why Equality? External Arguments for the Importance of Equality * 6.3 Why Equality? Arguments from Fundamental Human Equality * 6.4 Equality of What? * 6.5 Summary * Notes * 7. Equality and Liberty in Political Theories * 7.1 Do Liberty and Equality Conflict? * 7.2 Classical Liberalism: Liberty and Basic Equality * 7.3 Revisionist Liberalisms * 7.4 A Socialist Reconciliation Proposal * 7.5 The Conservative Critique of Equality * 7.6 Summary * Notes * 8. Justice and Liberalism * 8.1 The Elements of Justice * 8.2 Classical Liberalism: Rules for Equally Free People * 8.3 Monistic Revisionist Liberalism: Social Justice and Contributions to the Common Good * 8.4 Pluralistic Revisionist Liberalism: A Revised Social Contract Among Free and Equal People * 8.5 Summary * Notes * 9. Justice, Society, and Community * 9.1 Marx on Societies and Their Justice * 9.2 Socialism and the Democratic Community * 9.3 Three Conservative Approaches to Justice * 9.4 Summary * Notes * 10. Political Authority * 10.1 Conservatism and Political Authority * 10.2 On Being In Authority, * 10.3 Liberal Political Authority * 10.4 Democratic Authority and the Management of Collective Affairs * 10.5 Summary * Notes * Concluding Remarks: From Political Concepts to Political Theories * Index

VOICE SPECIFICATION IN PHRASE STRUCTURE

This study attempts to show that voice specification must be encoded in phrase structure as a voice feature in v, and consequently passives/unaccusatives, as well as actives, must involve v for voice specification. The fact that passives/unaccusatives and actives share some syntactic behaviors that result from the properties of vP confirms the proposal. Although v is necessarily involved for voice specification, the v in actives and that in passives/unaccusatives differ in their feature compositions. While the v in actives has a Case feature and a semantic feature for an external argument, the v in passives/unaccusatives contains the EPP-feature instead. Furthermore, the v in raising constructions lacks even the EPP-feature.

On Distributivity and Pluractionality

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Homeomorphisms between limbs of the Mandelbrot set

Using a family of higher degree polynomials as a bridge, together with complex surgery techniques, we construct a homeomorphism between any two limbs of the Mandelbrot set of equal denominator. Induced by these homeomorphisms and complex conjugation, we obtain an involution between each limb and itself, whose fixed points form a topological arc. All these maps have counterparts at the combinatorial level relating corresponding external arguments. Assuming local connectivity of the Mandelbrot set we may conclude that the constructed homeomorphisms between limbs are compatible with the embeddings of the limbs in the plane. As usual we plough in the dynamical planes and harvest in the parameter space.

Two Types of Impersonal Sentences in Spanish: Locative and Dative Subjects

This paper gives further support for the claim that the EPP feature in T and ψ‐features agreement/nominative Case assignment can be fulfilled by different elements. Some Spanish impersonal sentences will be analyzed that contain predicates selecting for a locative or dative as an external argument. The predicates under study are of two types: stative and eventive. The existential verb haber (which incorporates a locative clitic in the present tense verbal morphology) belongs to the first type. The verbs suceder, ocurrir, ‘to happen’, as well as meteorological verbs, belong to the second class. Data regarding word order, idiom formation, existential interpretation, raising, extraction from coordinate structures, and nominalization show that with these impersonal predicates the locative/dative PPs behave as real subjects, and contrast with those which appear in locative‐inversion constructions, which involve anteposition of an internal argument. It will be shown that these arguments bear quirky Case and are generated in the highest node in the extended VP projection.

Acquiring the unaccusative unergative distinction in a second language: evidence from English-speaking learners of L2 Chinese

It has been proposed that intransitive verbs can be divided into two subgroups, unaccusative verbs, such as break and arrive, and unergative verbs, such as laugh and swim; the former type has an internal but no external argument, whereas the latter type has an external but no internal argument. Unaccusative verbs are verbs of change of state or location, while unergative verbs are a set of agentive monadic verbs of manner of motion. English and Chinese differ in the mapping between semantics and syntax in the domain of unaccusativity. In English, the internal argument of the unaccusative verb has to raise to subject position to be Case-marked. In Chinese, however, the internal argument can remain in object position and get inherent partitive case as long as it is an indefinite NP. External arguments of unergative verbs in both English and Chinese are in a preverbal position whether they are definite or indefinite. The study reported in this paper was to find out whether the lexical-semantic distinction between the unaccusative verb and the unergative verb could be properly represented in English-speaking learners' L2 syntax of Chinese and whether the learner would allow only the single argument of the unaccusative verb but disallow that of the unergative verb to be in object position. The results indicate that the unaccusative/unergative distinction is acquired very late by English-speaking learners, and that the acquisition does not proceed in a linear fashion

Middles and Reflexivity

This article investigates the argument structure of middle predicates. It argues that middle verbs syntactically project the entire argument grids of their active counterparts; however, middle verbs, like passive verbs, project the external (Agent) arguments of their active counterparts as adjuncts. These demoted Agent arguments can appear, in middle constructions, as the objects of for-PPs.

CAUSATIVES IN GERMAN

In this paper I argue for a unified account of causative constructions in German. The approach rests on assumptions for case assignment and subcategorization which will be independently motivated by an analysis of passive constructions. It will be shown that the difference between standard causatives and what I call causative passives should be analyzed as a special case of optional subcategorization: causative lassen optionally subcategorizes for an external argument of the embedded verb, the non-realization of which leads to a causative passive. The adoption of a (synthetic) passive bare infinitive, as advocated for in the literature, can thus be dispensed with. Instead, causative passive can be shown to function like a combination of causative and passive, thereby creating a passivelike structural context.

Instrumental aki and the Nature of Niuean Transitivity

This paper examines the lexicosyntactic properties of the Niuean instrumental element aki. This particle can be used as a preposition or it can appear as a clitic within the sentence-initial verbal complex. The cliticization of aki has interesting consequences for transitivity that will be explored in this paper. It is shown that the previous claim (Seiter I980) that aki cannot attach to an intransitive verb is misleading. Rather, aki cannot attach to a semantically nonagentive verb, although the resulting clause may or may not contain an ergative NP, depending on whether or not the agent is syntactically expressed. The examination of aki leads us to conclude that the Niuean transitive clause, defined by the presence of an agentive external argument, is determined by the saturation of the VP. Another goal of this paper is to determine whether the clitic aki functions as an incorporated preposition (i.e., in conjunction with the verb as a case and thematic role assigner) or as some sort of anaphoric clitic, coreferential with an element in the discourse. This question arises because, in other Polynesian languages such as Tongan and Samoan, aki has been said to have an anaphoric use (Chapin I974, Clark I976, Hovdhaugen I985). Little has been said specifically about Niuean aki, though Chapin (I974) states that aki is not anaphoric in languages other than Tongan and Samoan, and Seiter (I98o) considers Niuean aki in all cases to be an incorporated preposition. Our conclusion in this paper is that, while in the most commonly cited examples aki has prepositional properties, in certain circumstances (i.e., when operator bound), it acts anaphorically, in that it needs an antecedent in the preceding clause. We show that in this use, Niuean aki, like aki in the languages discussed by Clark, Chapin, and Hovdhaugen, is similar to another verbal clitic, the locative or temporal ai that has been discussed by Chapin (I974) and by Massam and Roberge(I997).

The Affectedness Constraint and AspP

The present article is an attempt to derive the Affectedness Constraint on the assumption that delimited predicates project an Aspect node with the feature [+delimited], in the spirit of Tenny (1987) and Borer (1993). This feature triggers movement of a delimiting argument to the specifier of Asp for checking reasons. Also, it is assumed that a predicate needs a subject and that the specifier of Asp counts as subject of the predicate from which Asp has been projected. If affectedness constructions are distinguished by the fact that their external argument is missing, having been lexically oppressed, it follows that a derivation converges iff an internal argument can be promoted to subject position; externalization of the internal argument can be driven only by delimited predicates, because only a delimiting object can be triggered to move to the specifier of Asp [+delimited]. The article concentrates on an affectedness construction in Swedish: have of possession + DP + passive participle. However, it will be argued that the solution carries over to other affectedness constructions.

V-V Compounds as Serialization

This article argues for a fundamental structural similarity between Serial Verb Constructions, widely known from Kwa languages, and V-V compounds in Japanese. A major theoretical implication of the analysis is that it supports an analysis of clausal structure where the external argument is not included in the immediate projection of a verb but is introduced by another projection (Collins (1997a), among others).

Prepositional Phrases from the Twilight Zone

This paper proposes a treatment of optional prepositional phrases with a status intermediate between adjuncts and complements. The essential idea is simply that such PPs are semantically but not syntactically selected. It is argued that prepositions often assign an external theta role to a complement of the governing verb, subject to the heretofore unnoticed syntactic condition that such external arguments must be direct rather than oblique. This explains certain binding opacity effects and also greatly simplifies the subcategorization frames of verbs. The analysis is formulated in the framework of Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (Pollard & Sag 1994).

Inversion stylistique et position de base du sujet

AbstractThis article advances two main claims. First, it argues that [Spec, VP], the base position of the external argument, is right-branching in French. It is shown that some surprising restrictions imposed on the order of complements in stylistic inversion can then be interpreted in terms of an adjacency condition restricting the occurrence of lexical material between the postverbal subject and its Case checker. Second, it asserts that [Spec, IP], the derived subject position, is occupied by a null expletive, pro. The limited distribution of the construction then follows from the licensing conditions governing the null expletive in French. Further, the proposed analysis sketches a possible interpretation of adjacency phenomena and of the notion of expletives within recent developments of generative grammar.