Locative Inversion Research Articles

Locative inversion in English

This article aims at reformulating in more current terms Hoekstra and Mulder’s (1990) analysis of the Locative Inversion (LI) construction. The new proposal is crucially based on the assumption that Small Clause (SC) predicates agree with their external argument in phi-features, which may be morphologically reflected, as in the case of adjectival agreement in theItalian copular construction Maria e malata-3sg.fem, or abstract, as in the English copular construction.

The layered internal structure and the external syntax of PP

This thesis examines the properties of spatial (i.e., locational and directional) Ps within the minimalist framework (Chomsky 1995,1998,1999), which has put an ultimate emphasis on economy in terms of derivation and representation. The principal goals of this thesis are (i) to investigate how the syntax of such nature derives PPs in accordance with the properties of Ps and (ii) to show how the internal PP structure interacts with the external syntax of PP. Chomsky's minimalist framework assumes two syntactic operations, i.e.. Merge and Move, and two different types of outcome of the operations, depending on the properties of lexical items involved in each operation executed. One outcome results from a merger of two items, of which one selects the other. The other results from a merger of two items, neither of which selects the other. I propose that there are three heads involved in deriving a layered PP structure: functional p, lexical P and locative N. This analysis is shown to be empirically supported from languages such as Dutch, English, Hungarian, Japanese and K'ekchi. I also claim that there are also intransitive Ps that adjoin to either or pP. The internal structure of PP interacts with its external syntax. One apparent area of grammar that shows desirable consequences for the layered PP analysis is P-to-V incorporation. For instance, the incorporability versus the unincorporability of Ps in Dutch can be accounted for by the principle (i.e.. Minimal Link Condition) that forbids skipping over an intermediate head, thus supporting the layered structure of PP. Another area offering support is locative inversion: the presence versus the absence of locative N head in PP can account for a contrast observed in locative inversion facts. Provided that an EPP-feature of T is category-specific, a contrast between PPs that can undergo movement to [Spec, T] and those that cannot stems from their respective internal structures.

Construcciones pasivas con estar

In this paper, we will intend to demonstrate that some constructions consisting of estar and a past participle are stative passives in between a periphrastic voice construction and an attributive sentence. With this end, we will revise which clauses with estar+participle present the semantic and syntactic properties normally associated with the periphrastic passive. In particular, we will see that just a small group of these clauses may be considered real passives, whereas most of them seem to behave either as a resultative construction or as a locative inversion. Once we have established which clauses with estar are passive, we will describe their aspectual properties in opposition to the passive with ser.

English Locative Inversion: Grammatical Interfaces and Constructions

Proceedings of the Twenty-Ninth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society: General Session and Parasession on Phonetic Sources of Phonological Patterns: Synchronic and Diachronic Explanations (2003)

The Nature of the Particle Suo in Mandarin Chinese

This article argues for an analysis of Mandarin Chinese suo as a resumptive pro-nominal clitic: suo is suggested to be the head of a nominal projection, licensed by being bound by a null operator and adjoined to I0 via head movement. This analysis will be shown to account for the various properties of suo, including its surface order with respect to other elements in the clause, the complementary distribution between suo and the resumptive pronoun ta `he', the "climbing" phenomenon, and the licensing asymmetry with respect to suo's distribution, namely, the fact that suo is allowed in relativization of the object, the locative expression, and the post-verbal element in locative inversion constructions but not in relativization of subject, manner and reason expressions. This proposed analysis will be compared with that of Chiu (1995) and will conclude that the facts of suo do not support the positing of an agreement-like projection in Chinese.

Verbs in locative constructions and the generative lexicon

A necessary condition for verbs in the locative inversion construction is proposed which is to be defined with reference to the event and qualia structures of verbs in the Generative Lexicon. The condition requires that the lexical representations for verbs include a headed subeventual structure designating a result state, the quale for which means that something is at some place. Unergative verbs, as well as unaccusative ones, meet the condition when they undergo the operation of co-composition with locative/directional phrases. Crucial evidence for the condition is provided by consideration of the Japanese counterpart to the English locative inversion construction, especially of the Japanese locative construction with unergative verbs, which necessitates the obligatory attachment to verbs of the affix representing a state.

Stylistic Inversion In English: A Reconsideration

We argue that the phenomenon described and discussed in the literature as locative or stylistic inversion in English is actually a conflation of twoquite different constructions: on the one hand, light inversion (LI), inwhich the postverbal NP element can be phonologically and structurallyextremely simple, possibly consisting of a single name, and on the otherhand heavy inversion (HI), where the postverbal element is heavy in thesense of Heavy NP Shift.1 We present evidence that the preverbal PP in LI patterns with subjects but the PP in HI is a syntactic topic, usinga variety of tests which distinguish A-positions from Ā-positions.Other significant differences between HI and LI, such as the classesof verbs which support these two constructions respectively, and thedifferential behavior of HI and LI with respect to adverbial placement,provide support for interpreting HI as a case of Heavy NP Shiftapplying to subject constituents.

Pronoun positioning

It is well known that unaccented pronouns in English cannot occur in the postverbal position in locative inversion, in the postparticle position in a verb + particle construction, and in the second NP position in a double construction. This study shows that the hypothesis that pronouns must appear in a derived position is valid, and that by adopting such a position we can explain the restrictions noted above. This is done by showing that pronouns have a nearly identical distribution to subjects of a categorical predication, which have been argued to be in a derived position. There is one case where the positioning of pronouns and the positioning of categorical subjects is not parallel — infinitival clauses. This asymmetry shows that the placement of pronouns in a derived position is not the result of a correlation between topic function for pronouns and derived positions, but of a correlation between topic marking for pronouns and derived position.

Presentational focus and thematic structure in comparative Bantu

Locative inversion has often been treated as an unaccusativity phenomenon in languages as typologically different as English and Chichewa (e.g. Bresnan 1990). Yet Bantu languages show some diversity in the thematic structure of verbs that can occur with locative inversion and related expletive/impersonal constructions. This paper provides a detailed examination of locative inversion and expletive constructions in Setswana, showing that this class of presentational focus constructions exhibits morphological, syntactic, agreement, and discourse characteristics that differ from those of Chichewa and other Bantu languages. It shows that these differences, the result of morphological loss during historical change, can best be understood synchronically within a theory of partial information structures (Bresnan 1982).

Imperfective aspect zhe, agent deletion, and locative inversion in Mandarin Chinese

In this article I argue that not all the verbs that undergo locative inversion in Mandarin Chinese are intrinsically unaccusative as assumed in the literature. The fact that some transitive non-passivized verbs can undergo locative inversion is argued to be the result of morphological operations rather than the result of transitive alternation (cf. Cheng 1989). One such operation — that involving the morpheme zhe — is described here; I claim that it deletes the agent role of a verb if certain conditions are met, and allows the verb in question to satisfy the conditions on locative inversion (Bresnan and Kanerva 1989). I also argue that the zhe operation is not a variant of the passive operation, but a morphological operation in its own right.

Locative Inversion and the Architecture of Universal Grammar

L'inversion locative en anglais et en chichewa presente des similitudes, qui s'expliquent par l'existence de memes structures argumentales sous-jacentes, des fonctions syntaxiques et des principes qui les relient. Or l'alignement des roles semantiques avec les categories syntaxiques reflete une difference typologique profonde entre ces deux langues. Ces differences syntaxiques constituent un defi a l'analyse de la grammaire universelle et soutient l'approche alternative adoptee par Bresnan et Kanerva en 1989

Locative Inversion in Mandarin Chinese

Locative inversion is a common linguistic phenomenon that has been studied by linguists of various theoretical backgrounds (see, among others, Bresnan 1990, Demuth 1990, Hoekstra and Mulder 1990, and Rochemont and Culicover 1990). This paper is an attempt to analyse such a phenomenon in Mandarin Chinese within the framework of Government and Binding (GB) Theory. Its purpose is twofold: to investigate the syntactic properties of this particular construction, and to illustrate the relevance of Lexical Conceptual Structure (LCS) to syntactic analyses within the GB paradigm.

Locative Inversion In Cantonese

This paper proposes that locative inversion is a widespread syntactic process in Cantonese. The sentence-initial locative phrases in the Locative Inversion sentences are argued to be subjects which come from the postverbal complement position in the majority of cases; but it is also possible to move a preverbal adjunct locative phrase to the subject position in the existential "yau"(have) sentences. This movement hypothesis is crucially dependent on the relative distribution and cooccurrence restrictions between the sentence-initial locative phrases and their coreferent proform "hai dou"(there). One important observation drawn from the SuperRaising analysis of the sentence-initial locative phrases is that "pro" in Chinese, albeit an A-specifier, will not block Amovement, unlike what is predicted by the theory of Relativized Minimality.

Where Stylistic and Syntactic Processes Meet: Locative Inversion in English

Les procedes d'inversion stylistiques en anglais peuvent etre analyses, dans le cadre de la theorie du liage et du gouvernement, comme des faits proprement syntaxiques. L'exemple d'inversion de phrases comportant des adverbes de localisation