Monopredicative reason constructions in Gban

Stellenbosch Papers in Linguistics Plus, 2019

This paper examines argument alternation constructions in the Bantu language, Kiwoso. The data demonstrates that alternation is constrained by selectional properties of a root and its combination with different functional heads, which is language specific. The findings establish that external arguments of anticausative, passive and middle alternations are distinct in terms of syntax and semantics. The data indicates that external arguments appear as DPs in causative alternates but in anticausative, passive and middle sentences they surface as PPs, albeit with different interpretations. In passives, the PPs are introduced by a na-phrase and express event participants, while in anticausatives and middles they are introduced by a kophrase which denotes event modifiers. It is also established that anticausative, passive and middle verb constructions are related in that their sole subject argument is the object argument of their causative (transitive) variants.

Linguistic Inquiry, 2018

This article shows how a systematic impersonalization alternation in Russian provides additional evidence for underspecification in argument structure. In the case of a large class of lexically causative verbs, the causer is realized either as a volitional Agent in the nominative case or as an oblique-marked, nonvolitional causer, depending on how the event is construed. A causative theory of accusative is advanced, according to which the mere presence of external causation is a sufficient condition for accusative licensing, including those cases that lack an external argument altogether. The analysis is extended to explain accusative preservation in the Icelandic “fate accusative” construction.

During the last 40 years research of causativity belonged to the central themes of the general and comparative or better typological linguistics. In this respect it is astonishing that in my opinion from the Slavic side this subject was treated if at all very marginally in the past. My interest was motivated by the fact that CC requires an analysis, which touches an interface of morphology, semantics, lexicon and syntax. Therefore it is also easy to grasp by the Minimalistic Program (with the inclusion of Distributive Morphology). Furthermore, the theme comprises important observations concerning questions of diathesis and passive which moti- vated me to choose it for the present volume. In this article the features of externally and internally caused verbs will be described and put into context of the phenomenon of unaccusa- tivity. My approach will be the following: I will try to characterize the relationship between lexicon and syntax, namely including the concepts of Distributive Morphology and of ROOT-Semantics of verbs, which participate or rather, do not participate in Causative Alternation and unaccusativity. The Causative Alternation (CAL) will serve as criteria to distin- guish between externally and internally caused causation; with help of the CAL the unaccusative Verbs will be divided into two sub- groups: alternating unaccusative (AU-) verbs and non-alternating unaccusative (NAU-) verbs. In the following an alternate distinction between AU- and NAU-verbs will be developed, namely the pre- sence/absence of information about how the process to be treated was caused. The universal concept of the encyclopedic lexicon in the English, German and Czech language seems to assume four different ROOTS of verbs at base to classify the Anti-Causativity-Opposition: √agen- tive (murder, assasinate, cut), √internally caused (blossom, wilt, grow), √externally caused (destroy, kill, slay) and √cause unspecified (break, open, melt). Moreover, it will be shown that unergative/causative pairs depict an independent phenomenon which does not affect considerations about CAL (correspondent to Alexiadou et al. 2006a, b and Marantz 1997, but dissenting Levin − Rappaport Hovav 1995 and Reinhart 2000). In 6 and 7 I will provide an exact analysis of the roots (ROOTS) and the syntactic projections which derive from them.

2013

; Rwanda) has various grammatical forms available for encoding causation, including the morphological causative marker-ish. 1 In (1a), an example is provided of the transitive verb kubita 'beat,' and in (1b) is its causative-marked counterpart, with the-ish morpheme underlined for clarity. 2 Note that the-ish-marked variant is a ditransitive. (1) a. Umu-gabo CL1-man a-kubit-a CL1S-beat-IMP in-ka. CL9-cow 'The man beat the cow.' b. Umu-gore CL1-woman a-kubit-ish-a CL1S-beat-CAUS-IMP umu-gabo CL1-child in-ka. CL9-cow 'The woman made the man beat the cow.' Speakers also have the option of expressing causation by using the verb tuma 'make,' underlined in (2), which syntactically embeds the base predicate. (2) Umu-gabo CL1.man ya-tum-ye CL1S-make-PERF umw-ana CL1-child a-kubit-a CL1-beat-IMP in-ka. CL9-cow 'The man made the child beat the cow.' In Section 3.2 I show that this form patterns like an analytic causative, a term that will be explicitly defined in Section 2. Although the two superficially perform the same function of indicating causation, I show that an example in which the subject umugabo 'man' from the base verb in (1a) is demoted and a new causer agent (i.e. umugore 'woman') is added. This analysis, however, is not entirely satisfying for Kinyarwanda, due to the fact that there is an alternative use of-ish as an instrumental applicative morpheme, something previously noted by Kimenyi (1980). This is illustrated in (3b), which is in complementary distribution with the instrumental oblique in (3a). (3) a. Umw-ana CL1-child a-kubit-a CL1S-beat-IMP in-ka CL9-cow kw' with in-knoni. CL6-stick 'The child beat the cow with a stick.' b. Umw-ana CL1-child a-kubit-ish-a CL1S-beat-INST-IMP in-koni CL6-stick in-ka. CL9-cow 'The child beat the cow with a stick.' (4) a. Aba-na CL2-children ba-a-boroz-e. CL2-PST-scream-PERF 'The children screamed.' b. Umu-gabo CL1-man y-a-junguny-e CL1-PST-throw-PERF umu-pira. CL3-ball 'The man threw the ball.' c. Umu-gabo CL1-man y-a-kas-e CL1-PST-cut-PERF igi-ti. CL7-tree 'The man cut the tree.' These verbs may all be causativized by the morpheme-ish. The sentences in (5a-c) are the causativized forms of sentences in (4a-c), respectively. This is a clear example of "overt causatives." (5) a. Aba-na CL2-children ba-a-borog-esh-eje CL2-PST-scream-CAUS-PERF umu-gore. CL1-woman 'The children made the woman scream.' b. Umu-gabo CL1-man y-a-junguny-ish-ije CL1-PST-throw-CAUS-PERF umu-hungu CL1-boy umu-pira. CL1-ball 'The man made the boy throw the ball.' c. Umu-gabo CL1-man y-a-kat-esh-eje CL1-PST-cut-CAUS-PERF umu-hungu CL1-boy igi-ti. CL7-tree 'The man made the boy cut the tree.' In (5), the morpeheme increases the verbal valency of the corresponding sentences in (4) by one. As a side note, speakers also accepted sentences in which the objects in (5b) and (5c) were offered in the reverse order: 10 (6) a. Umu-gabo CL1-man y-a-junguny-ish-ije CL1-PST-throw-CAUS-PERF umu-pira CL1-ball umu-hungu. CL1-boy 'The man made the boy throw the ball.' b. Umu-gabo CL1-man y-a-kat-esh-eje CL1-PST-cut-CAUS-PERF igi-ti CL7-tree umu-hungu. CL1-boy 'The man made the boy cut the tree.' Kinyarwanda has been noted to be a symmetrical object language, in which both objects in applied double-object constructions are treated equally in their objecthood properties (Kimenyi 1980). One of these properties is that the order of the objects does not affect the interpretation of the sentence. An explanation of this fact is left for a theory of object symmetry, of which there are many approaches (see Jerro (2013) for an overview). The sentences in (4) can also be causativized by being embedded under the verb tuma 'make.' The data in (7) correspond to the verbs in (4). (7) a. Aba-na CL2-children ba-tum-ye CL2-make-PERF umu-gore CL1-woman a-borog-a. CL1-scream-IMP 'The children made the woman scream.' b. Umu-gabo CL1-man y-a-tum-ye CL1-PST-make-PERF umu-hungu CL1-boy a-juguny-a CL1-throw umu-pira. CL3-ball. 'The man made the boy throw the ball.'

Causativization can only be applied to intransitives in many languages. Some may even restrict it to inagentive intransitives. This paper provides a plausible answer to the question why languages behave like this. It is argued that causative constructions and causativization should be understood primarily in semantic terms, not solely in terms of valency increase and adding a causer. Evidence is provided for a basic common function of causatives and passives (deactorization) that explains the observation that in a number of languages, causatives and passives are marked in the same way.

ENGLISH LINGUISTICS, 2000

2013

2015

In this talk I gave an overview of the constructions used for non-verbal predication in Gban (< South Mande) and presented three connected case studies. The first one concerned the distribution of the two main formal types of all non-verbal constructions, the second one — the distribution of the two predicative possessive constructions. The third case study was dedicated to the “adnominal” predicative possessive construction (lit. “John’s car exists”), its information structure and constituency properties. Although it has been doubted that predicative possessive constructions of this formal type in the languages of the world can indeed contain a genuine single NP such as [John's car], Gban does seem to provide such a case. The “Possessor + Possessee” complex here shows many properties of a single constituent and shows no differences in the syntactic behaviour (according to the tests that have been applied) from a genuine possessive NP (in examples like “I’ve seen [John’s car]”).

Semantics-Syntax Interface, 2014

In this paper I will analyze the causative‐anti causative opposition from the point of view of semantic construal, and how syntax builds structures following semantic instructions that convey that information, without adding or deleting information. I will use causativity to analyze the tension that rises when a putatively universal semantic construal, (narrow‐)syntactically instantiated, is to be materialized using limited, language‐specific resources. This will touch on the subject of language typology, and its importance to describe the observable effects of this tension between semantics and morpho‐phonology, already noticed by Tesniére (1959). Our theoretical proposal will take mutually consistent elements from Conceptual Semantics, Relational Semantics, Lexical Decomposition, and Minimalism, in the search for the simplest (yet, empirically adequate) theory of the syntax-semantics interface. Consequences for comparative linguistics will be suggested, with particular emphasis on Slavic, Germanic, and Romance languages.