Auxiliary Selection

Abstract

Few syntactic phenomena are relevant to as many areas of linguistic theory as auxiliary selection – the alternation between auxiliaries in periphrastic constructions. Standing at the intersection between syntax, lexical and clausal semantics and morphology, it has been the subject of intense research since the late 1970s and has played a role in several important theoretical developments and debates. Auxiliary selection also poses a number of empirical questions. Even within a single language, the correct description of the alternation can be controversial, and the extensive cross‐linguistic variation has turned out to be rather difficult to characterize in a systematic way. In this article, I give a survey of how our understanding of auxiliary selection has developed, both on the empirical and the theoretical side. I also include a brief discussion of work on how patterns of selection arise and change over time.

Perfects, Resultatives, and Auxiliaries in Earlier English

“…In previous work (McFadden andAlexiadou 2005, 2006), we have more precisely identified the relevant contexts as past counterfactuals and argued that a number of other factors not obviously related to modality can be reduced in part or in whole to this counterfactual effect. We briefly summarize here the results of that work, extending it where necessary.…”

“…It is well established that auxiliary selection in periphrastic perfect constructions is characterized by extensive and subtle crosslinguistic variation (see, e.g., Aranovich 2007, McFadden 2007 for recent discussion). We take it to be a reasonable methodological assumption that this variation is not arbitrary, but can be related to independently observable properties of the languages in For helpful discussion and comments on this and earlier versions of the work presented here, we would like to thank two anonymous Linguistic Inquiry reviewers, Elena Anagnostopoulou, Jonny Butler, Dave Embick, Susann Fischer, Sabine Iatridou, Tony Kroch, Winfried Lechner, Eric Reuland, Florian Schäfer, Sandhya Sundaresan, and audiences at the Penn Linguistics Colloquium 29, the West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics 24 and 25, the Workshop on Technology in the Humanities, the Comparative Germanic Syntax Workshop 20 and 21, Diachronic Generative Syntax 9, and the 5th and 6th York-Newcastle-Holland Symposia on the History of English Syntax.…”

Processing flexible form-to-meaning mappings: Evidence for enriched composition as opposed to indeterminacy

“…Both these accounts have limitations: the projectionist view allows for too little variation, because of the deterministic nature of its linking rules, whereas the constructionist view allows too much variation, because it lacks a mechanism that rules out impossible mappings. In other words, neither type of account*in its pure form*explains the fact that the system is both rigid and flexible (McFadden, 2007). 2 [Note, however, that some recent versions of the constructionist approach (e.g.…”

M�tode Filol�gic I Ling��stica De Corpus: Una Intersecci� Profitosa (O Com Enfrontar-Se a Mostres D

“…En un altre ordre de coses, construccions com (3c) fan evident, per l'ascensió del clític, que s'hi ha produït una reestructuració (Ramos 2005;Mateu i Massanell 2015;Massanell i Mateu en premsa). Finalment, fragments com (3d) permeten reparar en el fet que també en català, com ja s'havia observat per al napolità antic (Cennamo 2002;Ledgeway 2003) i per a diverses llengües germàniques antigues (Shannon 1995;McFadden 2007;McFadden i Alexiadou 2010), la modalitat irreal o contrafactual afavoreix la presència d'haver, perquè, en realitat, no s'ha arribat a produir l'estat resultant (Mateu i Massanell 2015;Massanell i Mateu en premsa). En altres casos, més tardans, entrats ja en el segle XVI, els exemples reflecteixen l'inici d'un gir, encara tímid, en la selecció de l'auxiliar, primer a través de construccions híbrides, que conserven la concordança del participi amb el subjecte malgrat que aquest tret és propi de les construccions auxiliades amb ésser i no amb haver, com mostra (3e), i després en Després d'aquestes pinzellades per a situar el lector quant al procés gradual de canvi en els auxiliars dels temps de perfet, atès que és l'àmbit de recerca en què basem l'exemplificació del present article sobre metodologia de tractament de dades, en els apartats següents analitzem detalladament tres exemples que s'han adduït en la bibliografia com a mostres primerenques de penetració d'haver en el terreny d'ésser, a partir d'interpretacions que, a parer nostre, no són encertades i que es poden reconduir si se'n fa una anàlisi contextualitzada, és a dir, atenent al conjunt de l'obra i al context lingüístic en què aquesta es va produir, com ens ensenya el mètode filològic.…”