Regular and Generic Possessives in Maltese (original) (raw)
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NPs in German: Locality, theta roles, possessives, and genitive arguments
Glossa: a journal of general linguistics, 2021
Since Abney (1987), the DP-analysis has been the standard analysis for nominal complexes, but in the last decade, the NP analysis has experienced a revival. In this spirit, we provide an NP analysis for German nominal complexes in HPSG. Our analysis deals with the fact that relational nouns assign case and theta role to their arguments. We develop an analysis in line with selectional localism (Sag 2012: 149), accounting for the asymmetry between prenominal and postnominal genitives, as well as for the complementarity between higher arguments and possessives, providing a syntactic and semantic analysis.
In: Butt, Miriam & King, Tracy Holloway. eds. The Proceedings of the LFG17 Conference. University of Konstanz, Germany. Stanford: CSLI Publications. 243-263, 2017
In this paper I set out to model the encoding of definiteness in Hungarian possessive DPs with particular attention to the (non)complementarity of definiteness markers and possessive markers. I develop a formal LFG account of the relevant phenomena. Its essence is that I propose that in Hungarian DPs the DEF feature is nonunifiable. Naturally, the definite article always encodes this feature, while some possessor types also encode it, and others do not. The latter can only require that this feature should be present in the possessive DP. It is in this way that I capture the (non)co-occurrence of the definite article and various possessors.
Adnominal predicative possessive construction and pragmatically “flexible” noun phrases in Gban
2016
In this article I studied the two predicative possessive constructions in Gban, which belong to the “locational” and “adnominal” formal types (lit. “A house is on John” and “John’s house exists”). They were found to be almost complementarily distributed according to which semantic types of possession they can express. The second, “adnominal”-type predicative possessive construction underwent a more detailed study. Although it has been doubted by some linguists whether there are in fact any true “adnominal” predicative possessive constructions in the languages of the world (i.e. those that are indeed based on a genuine single NP such as [John’s car]), Gban does seem to provide such a case. The “Possessor + Possessee” complex in the second predicative possessive construction here shows many properties of a single constituent and shows no differences in the syntactic behaviour from unambiguous possessive NPs in examples like ‘I saw John’s car’. At the same time, both the “Possessor + Possessee” complex and unambiguous possessive NPs in Gban only partially correspond to the theoretical expectations for an “ideal” possessive NP. They answer to these expectations in the more syntax-oriented properties, but deviate from them in the more pragmatic~semantic properties. One of these latter properties which seem unusual for NPs is the ability of both the “Possessor + Possessee” complex in the second construction and unambiguous possessive NPs to be sharply pragmatically “split”. While one part (Possessor) is fully active and topical, the other part (Possessee) can be unidentifiable and part of the focus. Cf. the possibility of questions such as, literally, “Your WHAT is there?” (‘What do you have’) or “Their WHAT did you see?” (‘What did you see of theirs?’). In the second predicative possessive construction there is also a semantic “split” — what looks and behaves syntactically as a single possessive NP here expresses, in fact, two participants of the (semantic) predicate at the same time. After that, I briefly discussed another phenomenon that demonstrates similar behaviour. There exists in Gban an alternative way of coding recipient and recipient-benefactive participants: by an adnominal NP inside the direct object NP (lit. “I bought [his clothes]” for ‘I bought clothes for him’). And in these contexts we again observe the same pragmatic “split”, and also a semantic “split”, with a single NP expressing both the undergoer and the recipient(-benefactive). To sum up, possessive noun phrases in Gban seem to have an unusual degree of pragmatic and semantic flexibility. This flexibility can be best seen in the “adnominal”-type predicative possessive construction and in the adnominal coding of recipients/recipient-benefactives. And we can also make a conjecture that probably it is this flexibility in the first place that allows such peculiar NP-based constructions to arise in a language.
Non-verbal predication in Gban. “Adnominal” predicative possessive construction
2015
In this talk I gave an overview of the constructions used for non-verbal predication in Gban (< South Mande) and presented three connected case studies. The first one concerned the distribution of the two main formal types of all non-verbal constructions, the second one — the distribution of the two predicative possessive constructions. The third case study was dedicated to the “adnominal” predicative possessive construction (lit. “John’s car exists”), its information structure and constituency properties. Although it has been doubted that predicative possessive constructions of this formal type in the languages of the world can indeed contain a genuine single NP such as [John's car], Gban does seem to provide such a case. The “Possessor + Possessee” complex here shows many properties of a single constituent and shows no differences in the syntactic behaviour (according to the tests that have been applied) from a genuine possessive NP (in examples like “I’ve seen [John’s car]”).
The Morphosyntax of the Maltese Determiner Phrase
2019
Based in the Distributed Morphology and Minimalist frameworks, this dissertation provides an in-depth analysis of the DP in Maltese, an area of the language that has largely gone untouched by generative frameworks. In doing so, it focuses on two separate areas of interest: adjectival definite marking and construct states.
Possessives within and beyond NP
Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, 2014
The paper considers possessives in two ezafe-constructions in Tatar, a language without articles. More specifically, possessives in the so-called ezafe-2 and ezafe-3 constructions are distinguished formally by the presence of the genitive case on the possessive and the agreeing form of the possessive marker on the head in ezafe-3, but not in ezafe-2. The two types of possessors appear in distinct structural positions in the elaborate structure of a noun phrase, though neither of them remains inside NP. The two types of possessives themselves are of different size: the possessive in ezafe-3 is a full-fledged DP, but the possessive in ezafe-2 is a Small Nominal . Testelets, and the audience at BLS 2013, the Tromsø Conference on Differential Object Marking, and WAFL-9 for helpful discussions, comments, and suggestions. We are also grateful to our Tatar consultants for their invaluable help. Finally, we thank the anonymous reviewers for helpful questions, comments, and suggestions for improvement.
Universals in possessive morphology
Glossa: a journal of general linguistics
In this paper, we test the hypothesis that possessive pronouns have the same basic structure containing the genitive pronoun, plus, in some languages, some extra structure, as suggested by Caha (2009). In order to unravel the structure of these pronouns, we use the same logic applied by Caha (2009) and Bobaljik (2012) that excludes so-called ABA-patterns. If possessive pronouns are built on top of the genitive, we derive several predictions. First, we predict that there are languages in which the possessive pronoun comprises the genitive pronoun plus an extra affix (complex morphology). Furthermore, we predict that there are no possessive pronouns that have the same form as the accusative, or the nominative pronoun, to the exclusion of the genitive (*ABA). And thirdly, we expect that any syncretisms between possessives and other pronominal forms respect the proposed hierarchy in the sense that only structurally adjacent forms may be syncretic. Our data provide ample evidence for the claim that possessive pronouns are "bigger" structures than the accusative or ergative pronouns, suggesting that the possessives are indeed constructed from these structures. However, the data in our sample do not give crucial evidence for the claim that the possessives are more complex than the genitive. The data leave open the possibility that the genitive is in fact "bigger" than the possessive. Only in a few languages do we find ABA-patterns. We argue that these ABA-patterns are only apparent counterexamples to the proposed structure. Therefore, we conclude that there is broad typological evidence for the hypothesis that possessives are built from pronouns expressing a dependent (accusative/ergative) case.