Intransitive Predicates Research Articles

Verbal agreement in number in Iron Ossetic

This paper describes variability in Ossetic predicate agreement in number with different kinds of semantically plural subjects. Drawing upon the materials available in Ossetic corpora, as well as elicitation data, I come to a number of conclusions which cannot be found in previous literature. Transitivity proves to be the most significant factor determining number agreement in Ossetic. Only intransitive predicates allow non-agreement in number, and non-agreeing subjects are required to satisfy the conditions of indefiniteness and syntactic focality.

Non-optimal processing of auxiliaries in L2 Italian: An eye-movement and acceptability judgment study

Abstract We investigated whether 68 non-native, tutored beginning L2 learners of Italian – with alphabetical and non-alphabetical L1s – discriminated between sentences containing target-like and non-target-like auxiliaries. We questioned whether learners’ choices could be informed by a grammatical rule, frequency of auxiliaries in the input or whether both grammatical and statistical knowledge could be eclipsed by processing difficulties. Eye-tracking and timed acceptability judgment data showed that – unlike native speakers – these L2 learners were unskilled readers of the target language and that their processing was still non-optimal. In particular, they did not process “core” (i. e., strongly agentive and inherently telic) and “peripheral” (i. e., less semantically specified) intransitive predicates differently, nor did they do so with “matching” and “mismatching” predicates. Frequency and transition probabilities speeded up learners’ decisions on acceptability, but did not affect response accuracy or reading patterns. Finally, recency and length of classroom instruction – unlike learners’ L1, duration of stay in Italy, and proficiency level – positively correlated with greater nativelikeness in the processing of auxiliaries. Our results indicate that beginning L2-Italian learners – as long as their processing is still non-optimal – are not sensitive to the consequences of the unaccusative/unergative split at the syntax-semantics interface.

Word order and information structure in heritage and L2 Russian: Focus and unaccusativity effects in subject inversion

Aims and objectives/purpose/research questions:The study’s main objective is to investigate the effects of information structure and verb type on the acceptability of canonical and non-canonical word order patterns in baseline, heritage, and L2 Russian in a controlled experimental setting. In particular, the study examines the bilinguals’ sensitivity to extralinguistic (subject focus) and intralinguistic (unaccusativity) triggers of subject–verb inversion in Russian.Design/methodology/approach:The study employs a contextualized acceptability judgment task with unaccusative, unergative, and transitive predicates. In each condition, ratings for SV(O) and (O)VS structures are elicited in broad-focus and narrow-subject-focus contexts.Data and analysis:Data come from adult English-Russian bilinguals: heritage speakers at two proficiency levels ( n = 27) and L2 learners ( n = 15), compared to monolingual Russian speakers ( n = 15). Welch’s unequal variances t-tests are utilized in the statistical analysis of the results.Findings/conclusions:Bilinguals generally under-accept inverted structures. With intransitive predicates, heritage speakers in the higher proficiency group are sensitive to the effects of unaccusativity, but not focus, on the occurrence of VS orders. However, with transitive predicates, higher proficiency heritage speakers demonstrate a target-like contrast in their ratings of OVS structures under broad and narrow focus. No clear effects of unaccusativity or focus are attested in the lower proficiency heritage or L2 speakers’ judgments of inverted orders.Originality:This is the first study to compare the effects of unaccusativity and focus on word order variation in baseline, heritage, and L2 Russian and to examine subject focus in both intransitive and transitive structures.Significance/Implications:The differential effects of subject focus obtained in the intransitive and transitive conditions indicate that heritage speakers do not experience a generalized difficulty with information-structure marking through word order. While intralinguistic word order cues seem more accessible to early bilinguals than extralinguistic cues, heritage speakers are able to attend to the latter when their visibility is enhanced in discourse.

Source constructions as a key to alignment change

AbstractAlignment patterns in the Eastern varieties of modern Aramaic varieties are generally said to originate in an ergative source construction based on the so-called ‘passive’ participleqṭīl- ‘killed’ and the prepositionl- where ergative person markers gradually extended to all intransitive predicates. While various source constructions have been suggested, this article demonstrates that most explanatory power and scope for the complex historical background of the alignment microvariation in Neo-Aramaic is offered by the typology of resultatives. There was instability from the beginning due to the versatile nature of resultatives and the increasing polyfunctionality of the prepositionl-. This, in turn, indicates that the suggested source constructions for ergative alignment need not be mutually exclusive. Moreover, this also points to ergativity as merely one among several outcomes rather than the original source.

On the nature of arguments in event nominals

The present paper examines deverbal event nouns in Kaqchikel (Mayan) that consist of both nominal and verbal projections. Contrary to the recent proposal made by Imanishi (2020), who argues that nominalized verbs in Kaqchikel obligatorily lack an external argument projection, we demonstrate that intransitive unergative predicates maintain their external arguments under nominalization. We further propose that event -ik nouns in Kaqchikel are derived via predicative control with the verbal part being predicated of the possessor DP introduced in Spec,nP (in the spirit of Landau 2015). Additional support for this comes from the behavior of antipassive predicates under nominalization, which preserve the internal argument instead of the external one.

Efficiency in discourse processing: Does morphosyntax adapt to accommodate new referents?

Abstract The introduction of new referents into discourse has traditionally been regarded as a major challenge to language processing, for which speakers deploy specific syntactic configurations, guided by the speaker’s assessment of the recipient’s state of mind (‘recipient design’). In this paper we probe these assumptions against discourse data from nine languages. We find little evidence for specialized syntactic configurations accommodating new referents; the only notable exception is the association of new reference with direct objects, suggests that linking new referents to already established discourse frames through a transitive construction is preferable to isolating them in an intransitive one. Where specific intransitive predicates are indeed found to host new referents, we find this to be motivated primarily by semantic considerations. Contrary to long-held assumptions, we conclude that the cognitive challenge of referent introduction is only weakly reflected in morphosyntax; instead, discourse production is most efficient when new referents are integrated seamlessly with content-driven demands of the narration.

Intransitivizing morphology

AbstractThis paper provides a functional–typological discussion of the various processes which result in intransitive predicates. In addition to covering canonical cases of intransitivization such as passives, antipassives, middles, and noun incorporation, attention is also drawn to cases which complicate these categorizations, expanding our thinking about ways in which languages use discrete categories such as “transitive” and “intransitive” to represent what is more rightly a continuum of transitivity values with diverse structural representations. The paper begins with an introduction to key concepts, proceeds to a discussion of the most widely attested processes which result in intransitive predicates, and then presents some of the issues surrounding intransitivizing morphology.

An investigation of unaccusativity and word order in Mexican Spanish

Abstract Studies of unaccusativity and word order in Spanish have yielded conflicting results. This study further investigates unaccusativity by testing the ability of the ‘Auxiliary Selection Hierarchy’ (Sorace 2000) to account for word orders with intransitive predicates in Mexican Spanish. The results of an oral production task show significant word order differences between verb categories and locate an unergative/unaccusative cutoff point midway along the hierarchy, situating unaccusativity in Spanish as being similar to Italian but trending in the direction of Dutch or French. Other variables affecting the word order are identified and ranked, including subject heaviness, definiteness, and the location of adverbial phrases. Greater inter-speaker variation at the syntax-discourse interface when compared with the syntax-lexicon interface shows that the Interface Hypothesis has application to native speakers of Spanish. The results of this study are important for current research on unaccusativity and syntactic interfaces.

Pathways to adversity and speaker affectedness: On the emergence of unaccusative ‘give’ constructions in Chinese

Abstract In this paper, we examine the characteristics of unaccusative ‘give’ constructions in Chinese, and additionally identify the pathways for their emergence in some Chinese dialects, in particular Southern Min and Mandarin varieties. In this paper, the terms dialect and variety are sometimes used interchangeably, with the term variety being the more general term that can also include variations within dialects. We distinguish between Type 1 and Type 2 unaccusative ‘give’ constructions, the former involving reversible ‘escape’-type intransitive predicates, and the latter irreversible ‘die’-type intransitive predicates. Type 1 constructions are attested in many Chinese varieties, such as Mandarin, Min, Wu, Hui, Hakka and Cantonese, whereas Type 2 constructions are more rare and thus far are mainly attested in Southern Min and some Mandarin varieties. Two major pathways in the development of unaccusative ‘give’ constructions are identified in this paper, namely, the causative pathway and the passive-mediated pathway. Our analysis also traces how the unaccusative ‘give’ construction develops into a marker of adversity and speaker affectedness. The findings of this study have implications for understanding the relationship between changes in valence (i.e., the number of core arguments that are profiled in a given construction) and speaker’s subjective stance.

Non-Causative Effects of Causative Morphology in Chukchi

The paper discusses the main uses of a synthetic causative marker in Chukchi with special reference to non-causative effects of causative morphology. The causative morpheme expresses general causation when attached to patientive intransitive and some agentive intransitive predicates, namely verbs of directed motion, change of posture and ingestion. Other agentive predicates, intransitive as well as transitive, resist causativization and receive some non-causative interpretation if they form causatives. Such causative verbs usually have applicative-like or rearranging functions.

Transitive NEED Does Not Imply Transitive HAVE: Response to Harves and Kayne 2012

Transitive NEED Does Not Imply Transitive HAVE: Response to Harves and Kayne 2012

Mood and a transitivity restriction in Lithuanian: the case of the inferential evidential

The Inferential Evidential reports events not directly observed by the speaker. Evidentiality in Lithuanian is encoded by means of a non-finite main clause predication enforced by a modal head that selects a non-finite TP, similar to the neutralization of tense distinctions in other marked moods. Non-finite, non-agreeing T fails to assign nominative to the subject. In the Inferential Evidential, a voice head, below T, hosts a vestigial passive morpheme, serving as a source for oblique subject case, while stripping the predicate of its transitivity property. So while the predicate’s valency is not altered, its accusative case-assigning potential is. This results in an oblique subject — nominative object construction, the morphosyntax of which is elucidated in a theory of case involving the key features of voice, cause, and default object case. An analysis is presented for default nominative on the object, which has the added benefit of accounting for variation in speaker judgments concerning the acceptability of the nominative object and the preference for Inferential Evidential forms based on intransitive predicates.

Negation and the Untransitive Category in Karitiâna

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Māori: A Linguistic Introduction (review)

Reviewed by: Māori: A Linguistic Introduction Ulrike Mosel Māori: A Linguistic Introduction. Ray Harlow. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Pp. xiv + 241. $85.00 (cloth). Māori is an Eastern Polynesian language that is spoken by approximately 160,000 people in New Zealand and has been recognized as an official language since 1987. In spite of innovative language revitalization measures—in particular, the immersion programs in preschools—the language must still be considered endangered because its natural intergenerational transmission as a first language has ceased. Typologically, Māori comes close to an isolating language, as it has productive bound morphemes only for nominalization, causativization, and passivization. Grammatical relations, tense-aspect, and person are expressed by particles and independent pronouns (pp. 99–100), whereas number is regularly indicated by determiners and idiosyncratically by vowel lengthening or reduplication (pp. 114–15, 127–29). The encoding of grammatical relations shows nominative-accusative alignment, but a few constructions align the argument of intransitive predicates with the patient argument of transitive verbs (pp. 24–28, 115, 129). As for the order of constituents, Māori is a typical verb-initial language; it has prepositions, and modifiers follow their heads (p. 150). The seven chapters of the present volume give a comprehensive overview of historical, sociolinguistic, phonological, and grammatical aspects of Māori. Each chapter is accompanied by up to five pages of notes that contain further explanations and additional references. The relatively brief first chapter (pp. 5–9) summarizes the documentation of Māori from the first book in and on Māori in 1815 to recent linguistic publications on grammar and lexicography, modern literature, and children’s books. Chapter 2 (pp. 10–40) is devoted to the genetic affiliation of the language and to the reconstruction of sound changes and grammatical developments in Polynesian languages, including the debate on whether Proto-Polynesian had an ergative or accusative case-marking pattern (pp. 24–28). Furthermore, it outlines the grammatical and lexical innovations that separated Māori from other Polynesian languages in prehistoric times and those that developed during the period of contact with English, although they were not necessarily caused by the influence of that language (pp. 29–37). A case in point is the development of a verb phrase construction in the progressive aspect from a locative prepositional phrase with a unmarked nominalization as its complement. Chapter 3 (pp. 41–61) describes the phonological, grammatical, and lexical variation across Māori dialects and discusses the significance of these differences for present-day language maintenance efforts and the implications they have for the reconstruction of New Zealand’s prehistory. A number of variant forms in Māori dialects have parallels in other closely related Polynesian languages, but are unlikely either to have developed independently in the Māori dialects or to have been already present in the common ancestor language of Māori and those other Polynesian languages; one can argue that these features support the hypothesis that New Zealand was settled by different though closely related groups at different times and places (pp. 52–55). [End Page 92] Chapters 4–6 present a sketch of Māori phonology, morphology, and syntax. Each chapter focuses on those issues that have been of special interest in typological, historical, or theoretical research and surveys how they have been treated in traditional grammars and in more recent frameworks. The phonology chapter (pp. 62–95) covers, as expected, the phoneme inventory, phonotactics, syllable structure, and stress assignment, but also contains a very interesting section based on Harlow’s own research. Comparing the recordings of aged speakers that were done by Radio New Zealand in the 1940s with the speech of young people recorded recently, Harlow demonstrates that the voiceless stops are increasingly aspirated and that the pronunciation of vowels becomes more similar to English (pp. 75–81). The chapter concludes with a section on the Māori writing system and the development of Māori as a written language (pp. 85–92). The chapter on morphology (pp. 96–134) starts with a notorious problem in Polynesian linguistics: the classification of words. Most lexical words (i.e., content words in contrast to functional words or particles) can occur...

The distribution of French intransitive predicates

This article investigates the distribution of intransitive predicates in French. It argues that within each individual construction, the constraints that govern predicate selection are determined by the necessary semantic compatibility between the participating predicates and the construction itself. This analysis based on the lexical semantics of specific verbs and constructions contrasts with most previous accounts that follow the Unaccusative Hypothesis' claim that predicate distribution follows the specific structure of two distinct classes of intransitives. The local analysis is shown to be preferable to its structural counterpart to describe the behavior of intransitives in three constructions, namely: active impersonals, object raising in the context of the faire 'make' construction, and croire union. Because object raising and croire union are traditionally considered unaccusative diagnostics, the results obtained in this article raise serious questions about the validity of the Unaccusative Hypothesis for French, and suggests a possible alternative methodology to investigate the syntactic behavior of intransitive predicates.

Impersonals in Polish: an LFG perspective

AbstractPolish has a large number of constructions which have been referred to as impersonal because they lack a canonical subject. I discuss syntactic, morphological and lexical properties of these constructions in turn and argue that they can be classified into four distinct types: constructions with optionally unexpressed pronominal subjects, morpholexically derived constructions with obligatorily unexpressed syntactic subjects, genuinely subjectless constructions formed with defective verbs and passivised intransitive predicates, and constructions with overt non‐agreeing subjects. I offer LFG‐type analyses of the first three categories of construction. I identify subjects for two of them at the argument structure and functional structure levels of representation, and confirm only one type of construction as truly subjectless at all levels of syntactic representation of the predicate.

Transitivity of ergative case-marking predicates in Japanese

In this article, I argue that ergative case-marking predicates in Japanese, which take two non-canonically case-marked arguments, are best described as transitive predicates having subjects and direct objects, rather than as intransitive predicates without any direct objects — contrary to Shibatani’s recent proposal (Shibatani 1999, 2001a, b, Shibatani and Pardeshi 2001). More specifically, ergative case-marking predicates are argued to be transitive, as originally conceived by Kuno (1973) and others, on the basis that outer dative/nominative phrases display subject properties, while inner nominative phrases exhibit positive object properties. Furthermore, it is argued that ergative case-marking constructions do not constitute a sub-type of double subject construction by showing that they are licensed in a different way.

Kambera intransitive argument linking

This paper contains a descriptive analysis of the various ways in which the sole arguments of intransitive predicates are linked to (morpho)syntax in Kambera, a little‐known Austronesian language spoken in Eastern Indonesia. The single argument of Kambera intransitives can be marked by five different pronominal clitic combinations, each of the constructions expressing a different contextual property. One of the constructions is the absolutive construction, in which an intransitive subject is either obligatorily or optionally treated like a transitive object (‘fluid‐S marking’, Dixon 1979, 1994). An analysis of the possible origin, structure and contextual properties of Kambera fluid‐S marking will be given and it will be proposed that in general the morphosyntactic expression of intransitive arguments is not lexically determined nor based on syntactic information coded in the lexical entry but rather depends on the context in which the verb is used. The Kambera facts will be related to the question of which information the lexical entry of an intransitive is universally supposed to contain, in particular, whether or not that information should be syntactically relevant.

The grammar of causatives and the conceptual structure of events

Analytic causative constructions can best be described as extensions of simpler kinds of expressions, rather than as reductions from more complex underlying structures. In particular, causatives of intransitive predicates (e.g. I made Mary cryj are viewed as modelled on simple two-participant clauses (like I ate the cake,), and causatives of transitive predicates (e.g. He had the servant taste the foodj are seen as modelled on simple threeparticipant clauses (like I gave Mary a flower, or She broke it with a hammer—i.e. mainly ditransitive and instrumental clause types). One especially important advantage of this approach is that it offers an explanatory semantic account of the Variation of case markings found in causative constructions (such as the rather general alternation of dative, or other non-oblique, with instrumental), itpredicts that such Variation is related systematically to the semantics ofcase markings in simple clauses, which is in fact the case. It is argued that accounts ofcase marking of causees formulated strictly in terms of a formal hierarchy ofcases cannot be adequate, given the semantic factors affecting the choice of case. The marking of the causee is a consequence of conceived differences in its role in the causal event, which relate to such aspects of event structure as (in)directness of causation and (relatedly) degree of agency and affectedness of participants. Such factors are elements ofcertain general conceptual models of causation. This approach not only has wider empirical coverage than syntactic, hierarchy-based accounts, but is simple, unified, has greater explanatory power both for cross-linguistic Variation andfor intricate intralinguistic distributional facts; finally, it accords with a cognitively-based view oflanguage, in which the knowledge underlying grammar is not qualitatively different from other aspects of human understanding and reasoning.

PARTICULES DE NEGATION DANS LES INSCRIPTIONS SUR BRONZE DE LA DYNASTIE DES ZHOU

This article is devoted to a semantico-syntactic analysis of the use of seven markers of negation in Early Archaic Chinese, especially in the Zhou bronze inscriptions. The negative BU 不 which is used with intransitive verbal predicates or with adjectives, establishes a descriptive relationship between the subject and the predicate in its clause; it only shows a simple descriptive intention and takes an integral part in the presupposition. The negative marker FU 弗 is fully adverbial and is used, essentially, with transitive verbs. The marker FEI 非, establishes an attributive, descriptive relationship between the two terms of the predication inside the clause just as does BU; but it introduces a polemic value in expressing the falsity of a presupposition. The marker WU2 毋, in contrast with WU1 勿, does not come under the category of a deontic modality. The obligation which it shows does not come from the speaker (or from any other source) but is internal to the subject-predicate relationship. The negation in this case is to be taken as a statement of fact and not as an injunction. However, according to the observations here, WU2 毋 refers to the epistemic modal category. That why it can express the double value of both "certainty" and “necessity” according to the context. The negative WANG 勿 (the negative counterpart of YOU 有 "existence" or "possession") is used to express the possession of dependence. In addition, because of its existential value, it allows for presenting certain terms in both a restrictive and an extensive sense. Finally WU3 無 is most often attached to a substantive and forms thus a marginal expansion (in a syntactically dependent position) serving to characterize a nominal phrase, a verbal phrase, or an entire clause.