The middle construction and the syntax-semantics interface

Ackema, Peter; Schoorlemmer, Maaike

doi:10.1016/0024-3841(94)90353-0

Cited by 94 publications

(37 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…Another recent line of research explores the synchronic relation between passives, middles, anticausatives, and reflexives (Ackema & Schoorlemmer 1994, Lekakou 2002, Kallulli 2006a, 2006b, Koontz-Garboden 2009., Alexiadou and Doron MS., among many others). It has long been known that these valency-reduced sentence types are historically interconnected in various ways, but the question remains how they should be represented and individuated synchronically, and whether they some of them can be unified at some abstract level of analysis.…”

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confidence: 99%

Towards a null theory of the passive

Kiparsky

2013

Lingua

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The typology of passives as a theoretical problemThe Principles and Parameters approach aimed to eliminate syntactic rules and constructions in favor of general movement processes and principles, and to account for language-specific syntax by construction-independent parameters. Disappointingly, much systematic syntactic variation, including the cross-linguistic variation in passives that is the topic of this article, turned out not to be reducible to construction-independent parameter settings. Subsequent work dealt with this residue by annotating individual functional heads with lexically specified uninterpreted features to encode their grammatical behavior. Completing the retreat from the parametric program, features of specific lexical items began to be made responsible for language-specific syntax. Differences between passives across languages were attributed to the different features of their passive morphemes or voice heads, in some cases even involving stipulations that de facto apply only in passives. The passive construction and the language-specific passive rules of pre-P&P days returned, albeit within a more ambitious theoretical framework.A wholesale return to construction-specific syntax may be premature, however. Although the parametric program is mainly identified with GB and its successors, it can be pursued in other frameworks as well, and arguably with better results. Here I make this case for constraint-based theories which eliminate NP-movement and rely instead on argument structure representation, specifically on Lexical Decomposition Grammar (LDG, Wunderlich 1997, MS., Stiebels 2002.1 A base-generated syntax driven by OT constraints can minimize construction-specificity by capitalizing on the parallel syntactic structure of different diatheses.I will be arguing for the null hypothesis that a language's passive clauses have no passivespecific syntactic properties. Their syntax is predictable from the language's active sentences and the argument structure of passive predicates, which is derived from the argument structure of the basic predicate by an invariant operation triggered by the passive morpheme. This operation demotes (existentially binds) the most prominent Theta-role that is not already demoted. The affix is morphologically specified for whether it forms verb stems or adjectival/participial stems which combine with a finite auxiliary to form a periphrastic passive. Thus, the grammar of a language need not specify anything about the passive morpheme except its existence and its phonological and morphological properties (sections 3-6). The distribution of the adjunct phrases that express the logical subject of passives is governed by syntactic and semantic properties of the case or preposition that heads them (section 7, shared with non-passive constructions such as nominalizations. * This material was presented at the 2010 Vienna conference on Voice. It owes a lot to comments from the participants and three very perceptive reviewers. A special thanks to Dalina Kallulli for making ...

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confidence: 99%

Towards a null theory of the passive

Kiparsky

2013

Lingua

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“…(Roberts 1987:191) d. "Libraries send books best in boxes, (Roberts 1987:191) ausreicht, die Kasuszuweisung in der MK ausschließlich aufgrund der temporalen Abhängigkeit zu determinieren. Ackema/Schoorlemmer (1994) behaupten, dass es sich bei der Bildung der MK um einen lexikalischen Prozess handelt. In der MK wird das höchste Argument auf der thematischen Hierarchie von Jackendoff (1990) "ActorPatient -Theme -Goal" als das externe Argument in die Subjektposition der MK projiziert, nachdem das Actorargument lexikalisch bzw.…”

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“…In diesem Aufsatz wird davon ausgegangen, dass das interne Argument direkt in der externen Subjektposition realisiert wird. Somit wird angenommen, dass sich das interne Argument in der Syntax nicht bewegt und die MK ,unergativ c ist, wie Ackema/Schoorlemmer (1994, Fagan (1992), Steinbach (2002) und Zwart (1998) klargestellt haben. 5 3 Außerdem muss das Subjekt der MK eine spezifische semantische Bedingung erfüllen, die in der Literatur "responsibility of a property" genannt wird.…”

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Überlegungen zu zwei Unterschieden zwischen der Mittelkonstruktion des Deutschen, Englischen und Niederländischen

Oya¹

2003

Zeitschrift Für Sprachwissenschaft

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This paper discusses two problems about middle constructions in German, English and Dutch. The first question is why a reflexive pronoun occurs only in German middle constructions. After having discussed expressions for grooming actions and inchoative situations, it is pointed out that only in German reflexive pronouns can occur in sentences in which the external argument is suppressed. Folio wing Steinbach (2002), it is then argued that only German reflexives can mediate the linking of the syntactic subject to the internal argument. The second question is why middle constructions can be formed from so-called double object verbs in German, but not in English and Dutch. After having pointed out that middle constructions are not :ompatible with an accusative argument, it is claimed that morphological coding patterns for indirect objects contribute to the language difFerence: Whereas in English and Dutch indirect objects remaining in middle constructions are encoded in accusative, they are expressed in dative in German.

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“…I employ the term INTRANSITIVE to indicate that the construction is not TRANSITIVE and it does not necessarily describe a self-originating event or action. Keyser and Roeper (1984), Fellbaum (1986), Levin (1987), Hale and Keyser (1988), Fagan (1988), Noguchi (1989), Inoue (1990), Stroik (1992) and Ackema and Schoorlemmer (1994).…”

Section: Classification Of Constructionsmentioning

confidence: 99%