Stephanie Harves | New York University (original) (raw)
Uploads
Papers by Stephanie Harves
Thispaperbeginsby pointingouta newgeneralizationregardingthedistributionof transitive need throug... more Thispaperbeginsby pointingouta newgeneralizationregardingthedistributionof transitive need throughout Indo-European. It is shown that only those Indo-European languages that have a transitive verb have used to express possession (i.e., HAVElanguages) may also have a transitive verb need .N o Indo-European BE-language has at ransitive verbneed .I n light of this generalization, we argue for aH ale and Keyser (1993)-style incorporation approach, whereby nominal need incorporates to an unpronounced verb HAVE, yielding transitive verbal need.
Page 1. UNACCUSATIVE SYNTAX IN RUSSIAN Stephanie Annemarie Harves A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE... more Page 1. UNACCUSATIVE SYNTAX IN RUSSIAN Stephanie Annemarie Harves A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE FACULTY OF PRINCETON UNIVERSITY IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY RECOMMENDED FOR ACCEPTANCE ...
This paper discusses the syntax of the have/be yet to construction in English, as in John has/is ... more This paper discusses the syntax of the have/be yet to construction in English, as in John has/is yet to eat dinner. As pointed out by , this construction raises a number of questions. How is the NPI yet licensed? Why is have interpreted as a perfect auxiliary verb, in spite of the fact that it appears to take an infinitival complement, rather than a perfect participle? What accounts for the apparent free alternation between have and be? We argue that have in the have yet to construction is, for many speakers, perfect have, which selects for a silent raising predicate that has negative implicative semantics. This predicate is responsible for licensing the NPI yet. We further show that the apparent free alternation between have yet to and be yet to is illusory. The category of the silent predicate can be shown to be different in each case in a way that is to be expected given independent c-selectional properties of have and be in English.
This paper presents a brief overview of syntactic diagnostics for unaccusativity in Slavic with a... more This paper presents a brief overview of syntactic diagnostics for unaccusativity in Slavic with a focus on Russian. Three diagnostics are discussed in detail: the genitive of negation, distributive po-phrases, and locative inversion. A comparison of two of these diagnostics, i. e., the genitive of negation and distributive po-phrases, suggests that impersonal agreement should be viewed as a new diagnostic for unaccusativity in Russian. Only when a careful analysis of agreement in Russian is considered does the external argument restriction for these two constructions become clear. The argument presented here suggests that defective T(ense) 0 is dependent on defective (i. e., unaccusative) v 0 , highlighting the importance of argument structure for agreement in Russian.
This paper discusses the genitive of negation in Russian, one of the most well-studied case alter... more This paper discusses the genitive of negation in Russian, one of the most well-studied case alternations that exists in the language and the most well-known diagnostic for unaccusativity. Direct objects and subjects of unaccusative predicates may occur in the genitive case under sentential negation, alternating with accusative and nominative, respectively. When these Noun Phrases (NPs) appear in the genitive, they tend to receive an indefinite, non-specific, or existential interpretation. Recent semantic analyses of this construction argue that such NPs are best treated as properties of type <e,t>, which are the result of a type-shifting operation. In this paper, we examine five different types of approaches in analyzing this construction and show that in spite of the range of proposals that exists, a number of issues remain. The genitive of negation presents a puzzle that lies at the heart of the syntax-semantics interface. Putting together the syntactic and semantic generalizations that have been noted for this construction in a coherent way can shed light on the overall architecture of the grammar.
This dissertation investigates the syntax of unaccusativity in Russian. Although unaccusativity i... more This dissertation investigates the syntax of unaccusativity in Russian. Although unaccusativity is typically understood to be a property holding solely of intransitive predicates that select a single internal argument, this study suggests that the notion of unaccusativity needs to be broadened. It is shown that certain syntactic properties of unaccusativity in Russian apply not only to intransitive predicates but to various transitive and copular predicates as well.
Thispaperbeginsby pointingouta newgeneralizationregardingthedistributionof transitive need throug... more Thispaperbeginsby pointingouta newgeneralizationregardingthedistributionof transitive need throughout Indo-European. It is shown that only those Indo-European languages that have a transitive verb have used to express possession (i.e., HAVElanguages) may also have a transitive verb need .N o Indo-European BE-language has at ransitive verbneed .I n light of this generalization, we argue for aH ale and Keyser (1993)-style incorporation approach, whereby nominal need incorporates to an unpronounced verb HAVE, yielding transitive verbal need.
Page 1. UNACCUSATIVE SYNTAX IN RUSSIAN Stephanie Annemarie Harves A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE... more Page 1. UNACCUSATIVE SYNTAX IN RUSSIAN Stephanie Annemarie Harves A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE FACULTY OF PRINCETON UNIVERSITY IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY RECOMMENDED FOR ACCEPTANCE ...
This paper discusses the syntax of the have/be yet to construction in English, as in John has/is ... more This paper discusses the syntax of the have/be yet to construction in English, as in John has/is yet to eat dinner. As pointed out by , this construction raises a number of questions. How is the NPI yet licensed? Why is have interpreted as a perfect auxiliary verb, in spite of the fact that it appears to take an infinitival complement, rather than a perfect participle? What accounts for the apparent free alternation between have and be? We argue that have in the have yet to construction is, for many speakers, perfect have, which selects for a silent raising predicate that has negative implicative semantics. This predicate is responsible for licensing the NPI yet. We further show that the apparent free alternation between have yet to and be yet to is illusory. The category of the silent predicate can be shown to be different in each case in a way that is to be expected given independent c-selectional properties of have and be in English.
This paper presents a brief overview of syntactic diagnostics for unaccusativity in Slavic with a... more This paper presents a brief overview of syntactic diagnostics for unaccusativity in Slavic with a focus on Russian. Three diagnostics are discussed in detail: the genitive of negation, distributive po-phrases, and locative inversion. A comparison of two of these diagnostics, i. e., the genitive of negation and distributive po-phrases, suggests that impersonal agreement should be viewed as a new diagnostic for unaccusativity in Russian. Only when a careful analysis of agreement in Russian is considered does the external argument restriction for these two constructions become clear. The argument presented here suggests that defective T(ense) 0 is dependent on defective (i. e., unaccusative) v 0 , highlighting the importance of argument structure for agreement in Russian.
This paper discusses the genitive of negation in Russian, one of the most well-studied case alter... more This paper discusses the genitive of negation in Russian, one of the most well-studied case alternations that exists in the language and the most well-known diagnostic for unaccusativity. Direct objects and subjects of unaccusative predicates may occur in the genitive case under sentential negation, alternating with accusative and nominative, respectively. When these Noun Phrases (NPs) appear in the genitive, they tend to receive an indefinite, non-specific, or existential interpretation. Recent semantic analyses of this construction argue that such NPs are best treated as properties of type <e,t>, which are the result of a type-shifting operation. In this paper, we examine five different types of approaches in analyzing this construction and show that in spite of the range of proposals that exists, a number of issues remain. The genitive of negation presents a puzzle that lies at the heart of the syntax-semantics interface. Putting together the syntactic and semantic generalizations that have been noted for this construction in a coherent way can shed light on the overall architecture of the grammar.
This dissertation investigates the syntax of unaccusativity in Russian. Although unaccusativity i... more This dissertation investigates the syntax of unaccusativity in Russian. Although unaccusativity is typically understood to be a property holding solely of intransitive predicates that select a single internal argument, this study suggests that the notion of unaccusativity needs to be broadened. It is shown that certain syntactic properties of unaccusativity in Russian apply not only to intransitive predicates but to various transitive and copular predicates as well.