Internally caused change as change by inner predisposition: Comparative evidence from Romance (original) (raw)
Related papers
In this talk I will focus on a particular behavior displayed by verbs of inherently directed motion, the availability of a causative transitive alternate, and how this phenomenon interacts with the presence of the clitic se in the intransitive variant. Data from Catalan, Aragonese and Italian varieties, none of which have received much attention in the literature, will prove crucial for my proposal. In particular, I adopt an inter-Romance perspective and a nanosyntactic approach to lexicalization in order to refine the correlation that has been found for Spanish, where motion verbs are claimed to be more easily causativized (entrar el coche ‘go in the car’) in varieties where the use of se in the intransitive forms is also more frequent (Juan se entró ‘Juan SE went in’). Adopting a broader cross-linguistic perspective, I deal with causativized verbs in several Romance languages and varieties, and crucially bring into discussion an element that has, until now, gone generally unnoticed (aside from descriptive works): the ablative locative clitic that appears, together with se, in Catalan, Italian and Aragonese varieties (e.g. Cat. tornar-se’n, dial. Cat. entrar-se’n, eixir-se’n, pujar-se’n, and so on). The data from different Romance languages and dialects will allow to refine the settings of the connection between pronominal verbs of motion and the existence of a source component. In particular, I will posit the existence of a locative head (that may be analysed as an applicative head), which can be spelled out by an ablative locative clitic. I will also argue that verbs of inherently directed motion can be conceived by Romance speakers as simple, punctual events denoting the achievement of a particular position, but also as denoting a complex event that consists of a causing subevent and a resultant state (which is connected to achieving a new position and remaining there for some time, after having left behind the original location). In the latter case (that subsequently paves the way for causativization), the verbs of motion can surface in their pronominal form, even if it does not happen always. As will be shown in the talk, there is cross-linguistic and cross-dialectal variation regarding the availability of pronominal forms for these verbs, due to different lexicalization patterns.
Pineda (2018) Causativization of verbs of directed motion in Romance languages
Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 14. Selected papers from the 46th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL), Stony Brook, NY., 2018
The purpose of this paper is to shed light on a particular behavior displayed by verbs of inherently directed motion, the availability of a causative transitive alternate, and how this phenomenon interacts with the presence of clitic se in the intransitive variant. Data from Catalan, Aragonese and Italian varieties, none of which have received much attention in the literature, will prove crucial for our proposal. We adopt an inter-Romance perspective and a nanosyntactic approach to lexicalization in order to refine the correlation Jiménez-Fernández and Tubino (2014, 2017) find for Spanish, where inherently directional motion verbs are claimed to be more easily causativized (entrar el coche ‘go in the car’) in varieties where the use of se in the intransitive forms is also more frequent (Juan se entró ‘Juan se went in’).
From pure phonology to pure morphology the reshaping of the romance verb
Recherches linguistiques de Vincennes, 2009
This study deals with a significant morphological difference between Latin and Romance, namely that the latter has pervasive patterns of root-allomorphy absent from the former. Of particular interest here is the emergence of such allomorphy correlated with arbitrarily intersecting parameters of person, number, tense and mood in the verb. The alternations in question are, initially, the predictable consequences of regular sound changes. I argue that the phonological causation of this allomorphy is rapidly lost, and that the paradigmatic distribution of the resultant alternations is 'morphomic' in the sense of Aronoff (1994), lacking both phonological and morphosyntactic conditioning. These patterns provide an abstract paradigmatic template for wide-ranging and formally heterogeneous subsequent morphological changes across the Romance languages. But many scholars seek to analyse the resultant alternations in synchronically phonological terms, and some of the arguments adduced are powerful. This study reviews attempts to analyse in terms of phonological conditioning what I believe to be 'morphomic' alternations. While I defend the 'morphomicity' of the phenomena at issue, I also admit that the boundary between 'morphomic' and phonological phenomena may be less sharp than has usually been recognized.
Expanding the causative alternation: What about a third variant?
Belgian Journal of Linguistics, 2017
The causative-inchoative alternation has been a subject of much debate. It might also be a case where variation patterns that escape existing typologi-cal descriptions provide a new perspective on the problem. We analyze the variability and systematicity of alternative argument structure realizations, together with corresponding aspectual/event properties, by considering three different ways in which change-of-state verbs can be semantically and syntactically construed in Romance. Under the general assumption that the syntactic projection of arguments correlates non-trivially with event structure , we apply a novel theoretical approach to the semantics and syntax of the causative-inchoative alternation. We argue that different verbal heads can be independently combined to yield contrasting verbal configurations, with corresponding event/argument structure properties quite freely. Alongside standard cases such as causative and inchoative frames, we discuss what we call 'stative-causative constructions' [SCC], where the initiator appears as the sole argument. The general properties of this additional (third) variant suggest the availability of a null causative (external-argument-selecting) v 0 producing original monoargumental structures with corresponding (simpler) event structure. These little-known Spanish data challenge current argument structure theories assuming that the causative v 0 necessarily implicates the eventive (BECOME) component, or that the latter figures in the verb's permanent lexical entry. SCCs provide empirical evidence suggesting that what is commonly described as a basic unaccusative/transitive verb may have unergative uses.
2017
The second article in this section "Towards a Unified Treatment of Spanish Copulas", by Arche, Fábregas, and Marín adds to the ongoing debate of the distribution of the Spanish copulas ser and estar by accounting for their alternation in adjectival and passive clauses in a unified way. They propose that the properties of passive clauses are due to the properties of the copulas and not the participles, and further argue that only estar has an additional component of central coincidence with a stative nature. Charnavel analyzes French scalar particles même, quand même, ne serait-ce que, and seulement and compares them to English particles even and only. Her article, "How French Sheds New Light on Scalar Particles" proposes a new theory based on specific characteristics such as scalarity, additivity, and exclusivity and provides new empirical evidence about these French particles, which, despite widespread assumptions, behave differently from their English counterparts. The last article of the Syntax-Semantics section is by Donazzan and Tovena and investigates the semantics of semelfactive predicates in Italian. In "Pluralities of Events: Semelfactives and a Case of 'Single Event' Nominalisation", the authors analyze the notion of plurality and unity of events by looking at the two possible readings that ata-nominalisations, i.e.: nuotata, ombrellata, receive in instrument semelfactive verbs. They conclude that semelfactives, in their processive readings, have to considered activity predicates. The second section of the volume includes articles on Morphosyntax, beginning with "Laísmo and 'le-for-les': To Agree or not to Agree?", by Adolfo Ausín and Francisco J. Fernández-Rubiera, a novel exploration of an old problem in nonstandard Spanish pronominal paradigms. They propose a unified account for three apparently unrelated phenomena: the presence of the accusative clitic, the presence/ absence of number agreement in the dative clitic ('le-for-les'), and the presence/absence of gender agreement in the dative clitic in laísta dialects ('le-for-la'). They propose that agreement in these two nonstandard dative clitic constructions is related
Folia linguistica 43(1): 251-255., 2009
FOLIA LINGUISTICA is the peer-reviewed journal of the Societas Linguistica Europaea. It appears in Spring and Autumn (ca. 450 pages in all) and covers all nonhistorical areas in the traditional disciplines of general linguistics (phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics), and also sociological, discoursal, computational and psychological aspects of language and linguistic theory. Other areas of central concern are grammaticalization and language typology. The journal consists of scientific articles presenting results of original research, review articles, critical surveys of research in specific areas, book reviews, and a miscellanea section carrying brief descriptive reports and discussion notes. Manuscript submission: Please consult the FoL style sheet (to be found at the FoL homepage www.folialinguistica.com).
Diachronica, 2009
This volume contains a collection of nine papers originally presented in a workshop at the Deutscher Romanistentag in Saarbrücken in 2005. It is "of interest to a broad public within linguistics", "[s]yntacticians, typologists, historical linguists and romanists" (p. 9). Besides the papers, there is an "Introduction" by the editors (1-11), "Contents" (p. i), "Acknowledgements" (p. ii), and a "Subject Index" (251-252). The title of the volume refers to Eugenio Coseriu's "paradox of change: if synchronically, languages can be viewed as perfectly running systems, then there is no reason why they should change … And yet, as everyone knows, languages are changing constantly" (p. 1). Unfortunately the editors show no interest in Coseriu's resolution of this paradox. In the "Introduction" (1-11) they take it to imply that grammar change is a total mystery, which was not Coseriu's understanding (to which I return below). They then list a number of types of explanation of change that have been proposed by linguists of diverse persuasions (1-4) and try to characterize each of the papers that make up the volume in terms of these explanation types. The editors' own contribution ("Syntactic change from within and from without syntax: A usage-based analysis", 13-30) discusses two changes, the rise of the French interrogative particle est-ce que and the Spanish presentative hay + noun. The exposition illustrates the authors' conviction that the "best solution to the paradox of change is the notion that change … originates in language usage". The first of these changes is shown to be pragmatically motivated and the second, an instance of syntactically motivated syntactic change. Andreas Dufter ("On explaining the rise of c' est-clefts in French", 31-56) tests the standard explanations for this innovation (loss of word stress and/or word order as focus marking) against several corpora and shows the relevance of phonological and syntactic factors in this development, and especially a pragmatic innovation, that of the informative-presupposition cleft (48-51), from which clefting was extended to other environments. Elisabeth Stark's paper ("The role of the plural system in Romance", 57-84) confronts number, partitivity, and gender in Latin and modern Romance (mainly
Causative constructions and restructuring: two evergreen topics
Isogloss, 2024
Isogloss 2024, 10(4)/1 Jan Casalicchio & Peter Herbeck 1970ies, has come back as an important topic of discussion, which is fed by contributions from different countries and from different angles. Furthermore, while in the past decades the studies focused on few Romance languages, nowadays these constructions are studied in lesser-known Romance languages as well, and there are new studies that offer a cross-linguistic perspective. This Special issue deals with two types of predicates, causative and restructuring verbs. Although they do not form a uniform class, they show several similarities with respect to transparency phenomena, and therefore they are often analysed together. The papers by