The UNCONSCIOUS, IRRESPONSABLE CONSTRUCTION in Modern Icelandic (original) (raw)

The Voice-adjunction theory of agentive ‘ by ’-phrases and the Icelandic impersonal passive *

2016

We investigate ‘by’-phrases in the Icelandic impersonal passive and argue that they are grammatical, contra previous reports in the literature. However, it is only acceptable to use them when there are agent-specific pressures to realize the agent on the linear right, i.e., when the agent expresses new information or when it is phonologically heavy. We develop a formal analysis in the spirit of the Voiceadjunction theory of ‘by’-phrases and consider facts from historical syntax.

The unintentional causer in Icelandic

The theory of applicatives, as introduced by Marantz (1993) and developed by , , and others, proposes that various oblique DPs across languages are not direct arguments of the main predicate, but are instead related to it by applicative heads which vary in featural content and semantic interpretation. Among the phenomena to be accounted for is the use of a dative/oblique-marked DP with a changeof-state unaccusative, which is common in languages with productive use of oblique cases. This DP can be interpreted as an unintentional causer of the change-of-state event, as illustrated with the German example in (1). As noted in Schäfer (2008) and discussed below, the notion of unintentional causation encompasses several readings. (1) dem the.DAT Hans John zerbrach broke die the Vase vase 'The vase broke and John unintentionally caused this.' (Schäfer 2008, 107)

On the Interaction of Reflexives and Periphrastic Causatives in Icelandic

2021

Cross-linguistically, reflexive verbs frequently show puzzling behavior when they are embedded under causatives. We focus on two ways that this pattern manifests itself in Icelandic Indirect Causatives, formed with the light verb láta ‘let/make/have’: (i) verbs that normally cannot be embedded are allowed with reflexives, and (ii) a pleonastic use of the causative verb becomes available in imperatives with oblique subjects. We propose that these facts follow from the syntax of long-distance reflexives (which involves a “point-of-view” operator OPPOV), and a Voice-stacking analysis of indirect causatives, where two Voice heads are added on top of a single vP. The claim is that there is a limited set of ways to interpret the Voice-stacking structure, and reflexives provide one particular way to do this that is not otherwise available. Assuming that either Voice head can introduce a thematic interpretation or be expletive, we propose that in principle, there are four ways to interpret ...

Building resultatives in Icelandic

Proceedings of the 34th Western Conference on …, 2007

This paper considers how analysis of adjectival resultatives in German, such as the example in (1), extends to Icelandic.

On the Implicit Argument of Icelandic Indirect Causatives

Linguistic Inquiry, 2020

The goal of this article is to understand the syntax of Icelandic indirect causatives (ICs), especially with respect to the implicit causee. We show that the complement of the causative verb must be at least as large as a VoiceP, and that it shares some properties with active VoicePs and others with passive VoicePs. We make sense of this state of affairs by proposing that the causee, while phonetically silent, has an explicit syntactic representation, but as a φP rather than a DP. We further propose that ICs are built by stacking a second VoiceP on top of the lexical verb’s first VoiceP, and that this configuration, along with the underspecified interpretation of φP, leads to a special thematic interpretation of both the causer and the implicit causee. Our analysis suggests that there are certain core ingredients involved in building ICs—such as stacked VoicePs and an underspecified causee—but that the source of these ingredients can vary across languages and constructions, dependin...

The speaker and the perfective auxiliaries hafa and vera in Icelandic

Language Sciences, 2003

Icelandic has two auxiliary verbs, hafa 'have' and vera 'be', to express two types of perfectivity assigned to the sentence, which are called in this paper 'experiential perfect' and 'perfect of result'. This paper seeks to explain the behavior of these auxiliaries from semantic and pragmatic perspectives with a special focus on vera. We argue that the most important factor in understanding the distinction between hafa and vera is that the perfect of result interpretation, encoded mostly in vera-sentences, arises in association with the speaker's different roles in speech events. We propose that the speaker is taken as a vantage point in the interpretation of vera-sentences and the resultant state is portrayed in accordance with his various involvements in the events. Properties of aspect such as telicity or the inferable eventual position of an entity, which have been proposed as key components in accounts of auxiliary selection, are shown to play no decisive role in Icelandic. #

Impersonal passives in Icelandic

Linguistica, 2000

This paper argues that /celandic impersonal passives have a constructional property that expresses generic events. After having demonstrated their basic characteristics, it is shown that the notion of 'activity' is inadequate for the explanation of why the construction is licensed. The behaviour of the adverbial ser moovitandi is diagnosed to show indefiniteness tied up with the construction.