External Arguments in Transitivity Alternations

Abstract

This book is an exploration of the syntax of external arguments in transitivity alternations from a cross-linguistic perspective. The empirical focus is the causative/anticausative alternation and the formation of (adjectival) Passives. The bulk of the discussion, couched within Distributed Morphology, is devoted to the properties of the (anti-)causative alternation, which the text takes to be a Voice alternation. It offers a detailed discussion of the morphological realization of anticausatives across languages, and argues that marked anticausatives involve expletive Voice and are not reflexive predicates. In the discussion of Passives, the book argues that the fact that Passives in German and English—unlike their counterparts in Greek, where Passives are syncretic with anticausatives—are morphologically unique reflects the fact that they are also structurally unique. Passives in English and German involve Passive Voice, while they involve Middle Voice in Greek. The text furthermore shows that the distinction between target and resultant state participles is an important one in order to understand the contribution of Voice in adjectival Passives. Importantly, the study provided tools to probe into the morpho-syntactic structure of verbs and participles, and to identify the properties of verbal alternations across languages.

-Able adjectives and the syntax of psych verbs

“…(54) a. disarestos b. everethistos c. ev-prosvlitos d. efkolo-siginitos unpleasant easily-irritable easily-assailable easily-moveable Samioti further notes that the adjectives in (54) to involve an anticausative structure and not a passive one: by-phrases are disallowed, but the by itself phrase is allowed; this test diagnoses the absence of an external argument, as discussed at length in Alexiadou et al (2015): (55) O Janis ine everethistos apo monos tu/ *apo olus. the John.nom is easily-irritable.masc by himself/ *by all While Greek certainly has stative OE verbs, e.g.…”

“…Kratzer (1991) and Hacquard (2010): there is one modal element, which can attach high and low. Note here that nothing excludes an intermediate structure excluding Voice but including vP, as has been proposed in the literature on nominalization (Alexiadou 2001), and adjectival passives (see Alexiadou et al 2015 for discussion and references). This structure will be very similar to that of resultative participles referring to a resultant state but lacking an external argument.…”

“…Samiotis's analysis builds on Lekakou (2005), who argued in detail that in Greek the dispositional Middle is actually built on the basis of a passive structure. More recent work on the Greek Voice system, following Alexiadou & Doron (2012), Spathas et al (2015), and Alexiadou et al (2015), assumes that dispositional middles, and passives in Greek all involve a particular Voice head, namely Middle Voice. This head is realized with nonactive morphology, which signals the absence of a specifier of Voice (Embick 1997).…”

Language Mixing and Diachronic Change: American Norwegian Noun Phrases Then and Now

“…The term "exoskeletal" unites a family of grammatical analyses [38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48]. These works may differ in terms of how they account for details in the syntactic structure and its derivation, but the shared, fundamental core is the assumption that abstract syntactic structures are generated independently of the lexical items that will realize them.…”

Instrumental prepositions and case: Contexts of occurrence and alternations with datives

“…The crucial difference is between v's with a CAUS specification, including inchoative unaccusatives, and those unaccusatives that simply have default v; the former but not the latter are able to combine with causers. For Schäfer (2012) and Alexiadou et al (2015), the CAUS specification is unnecessary, in that it derives from v selecting a result state. The examples in (13a)-(15a) allow con causers, involving both inanimate objects and eventive nouns; in this, con parallels the specialized causer (and purpose) preposition of Italian (15) a. Il pericolo di conflitto aumentò con/per il golpe/la crisi /*dal golpe/*dalla crisi.…”