Depictive secondary predicates in crosslinguistic perspective

Abstract

Little is known about depictive secondary predicates such as raw in She ate the fish raw in languages other than a few European ones. The goal of this paper is to broaden the database for this grammatical construction by reviewing its recurring formal properties, introducing a crosslinguistically applicable definition and delimiting it from other, semantically and/or morphosyntactically similar constructions. In particular, we will show that the distinction between depictives and adverbials is much less clearcut, both in formal and semantic terms, than is often assumed. First, languages may not formally distinguish the two construction types. Second, in languages with genuine depictive constructions distinct from adverbials, expressions that have generally been analysed as adverbials (e.g., expressions of concomitance, manner, location, and even time) may exhibit the formal properties of depictives. As a consequence, we argue that adverbial and depictive constructions are in competition, in the sense that languages may have different cut-off points for the two construction types on an implicational hierarchy ranging from typical depictive content to typical adverbial content.

Constraints on noun phrase discontinuity in an Australian language: The role of prosody and information structure

“…Second, depictives exhibit an information structure value which is correlated with their syntactic position as predicative adjuncts: they are always in focus and are thus expected to be prosodically marked as such. This is not to say that in a language with discontinuous NPs it is necessarily straightforward to distinguish between depictive secondary predicates and attributive modifiers, since the distinction cannot be drawn in terms of word order alone (Dench and Evans 1988: 14;Schultze-Berndt and Himmelmann 2004). The ambiguity is illustrated in (18) and (19).…”

Oriented adjuncts across Germanic languages: evidence from English and Swedish

“…It is notably the resemblance between the depictive type of secondary predication and constructions with an oriented adjunct which has most often been described by various scholars (e.g. Geuder ; Schultze‐Berndt & Himmelmann ). Compare the English examples in (11) where (11)a contains an oriented adjunct and (11)b a secondary predication with a depictive.…”

On adjectives and adverbs expressing ‘nakedness’ and ‘barefootedness’ in Polish and Russian: a study on morphosyntactic variation

“…14 Most typically, the controller of a secondary predicate is one of the central participants in the event, like agent or patient as in (11a, b). However, Schultze-Berndt and Himmelmann (2004) demonstrate in their typological study that secondary predicates are not principally restricted to such controllers, although there might be restrictions as to the syntacto-semantic status of the controller in a particular language. See e.g.…”