Denominal necessity modals in Basque (original) (raw)

2012, Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today

Basque has a noun meaning need and a modal form, traditionally classified as verbal, homophonous to it, as in English. This paper provides a derivational account of the relation between the nominal and the so-called verbal need in Basque, by claiming that the purported verbal cases are derived from the nominal ones. This derivational relation, we argue, does not follow from the incorporation of Basque need into a verbal head, as has been recently claimed for English need. The necessity modal forms an independent clausal constituent with a DP or a non-finite clause representing the content of the need as its sole argument. This clausal constituent is merged to a high applicative head that introduces in the structure the experiencer of the need. The Basque modal construction resembles in this regard the nominal modal constructions found in some of the celtic languages such as Irish or Scottish Gaelic. This structure is merged with an intransitive verb BE, which provides the verbal support for the construction. The incorporation of the applicative head to BE results in the transitive auxiliary have in Basque, a phenomenon that is independently attested outside the modal cases. 1 This research was partly funded by the Basque Government [Programs: (i) Research Groups (GIC07/144-IT-210-07); (ii) Development of Research Nets in Humanities 2009 (HM-2009-1-1); and (iii) Mobility Programs (MV-2008-2-18) to M.U-E] and by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (FFI2008-04786 and FFI2011-29218). It has also been funded by the Agence National de la Recherche (France), via the project TSABL (ANR-07-CORP-033). 2 As discussed by Etxepare & Uribe-Etxebarria (2009, 2010a,b,c) and Balza (2010b), there is a wide variety of modal constructions in Basque involving the modal behar. In this paper we focus on the type which is usually considered the standard one, that where behar follows its complement and selects for a transitive auxiliary and an ergative subject (see Ormazabal 1990a). See also op. cit.above for discussion of the full range of modal constructions with behar. See also Haddican and Tsoulas, this volume, and references therein for related discussion. Revised version to appear in U. Etxeberria, R. Etxepare and M. Uribe-Etxebarria (eds) DPs and Nominalizations in Basque. John Benjamins. (2) a. Behar handia dut b. Beharrean naiz c. Beharra Need big aux need-D-post am need-D "I have a big need" "I am in need" "The need" d. Ez dut horr-en beharr-ik neg aux that-gen need-partitive "I don"t have any need of that" We propose that modal behar is a derived verb in the two cases illustrated in (1). In particular, we argue that both in the configuration involving [behar + DP] in (1a) as well as in that involving [behar + non-finite clause] in (1b), where behar behaves as a lexical verb meaning "need/must/have to", this modal is derived from nominal behar (see Etxepare & Uribe-Etxebarria 2010a; see also Uribe-Etxebarria 1989b and 1990, for an early version of this idea). Kayne & Harves (2008), Harves (2008) and Kayne (2009) have recently argued that English need derives from an underlying structure with the nominal need as the complement of a light verb have (a verb expressing ordinary possession), as roughly represented in (3): (3) HAVE [need …] These authors observe, following Isačenko (1974), that those languages that do not possess a possessive have also lack a transitive modal verb need. Assuming this typological correlation, they propose that modal need is derived via incorporation of nominal need to possessive have (Isačenko 1974 and Noonan 1993). As shown in (4a), Basque also has a possessive have, which freely alternates with a lexical verb meaning "to possess" (the verb eduki) in the expression of possession: (4) a. Jonek liburu bat du b. Jonek liburu bat dauka Jon-erg book one has Jon-erg book one possesses "Jon has a book" "Jon has/possesses a book" Given this correlation, it is tempting to extend an incorporation analysis à la Harves & Kayne to this language. We depart however from the specific underlying structure and the ensuing derivation proposed by these authors for English need. We will show that the derived verb behar differs both from its English lexical counterpart need and from ordinary denominal Basque verbs in several important respects: (i) it cannot take the inflectional morphology that regular verbs take, (ii) it differs from its English transitive counterparts with respect to the arity operations it accepts, and (iii) in the nominal syntactic distribution of the modal item in both transitive and intransitive modal constructions. We argue that the modal noun behar is the nominal predicate of a small clause whose subject (either a DP or a non finite clause) is the content of the need, as represented in (5): (5) …[ Small Clause DP/non-finite clause behar] This clausal constituent merges to an adpositional head that introduces an independent argument, external to the clause: what we informally call the experiencer of the need. The adpositional is the complement of an intransitive verb be that provides the verbal support for the construction: Revised version to appear in U. Etxeberria, R. Etxepare and M. Uribe-Etxebarria (eds) DPs and Nominalizations in Basque. John Benjamins. (6) …BE [ PP Subject EXPERIENCER OF NEED P [ SMALL CLAUSE DP behar NEED ] ] non finite clause In (6), P incorporates to the copula BE, giving rise to transitive have. The underlying structure of modal constructions is thus akin to the one proposed for auxiliary have by Kayne (1993).