Argument structural restrictions on word-formation patterns (original) (raw)

Complex Predicates, Complex Words, and the Morphological Parameterization Hypothesis

 Can cross-linguistic variation be factored out of the computational component of syntax, and derived instead from lexical/morphological characteristics that are independently required to vary? (cf. among others  What would it mean, exactly, for cross-linguistic variation in syntax to be tied to lexical or morphological knowledge? Would the languageparticular properties of syntax derive from the presence/properties of individual morphemes in the lexicon? Characteristics of the paradigms of overt inflectional morphology? Properties of (phonetically null) functional categories? (cf. discussion in Snyder 1995b, Snyder & Senghas 1997)

12. Word-formation in construction grammar

An International Handbook of the Languages of Europe, 2015

The notion 'construction' that plays a central role in Construction Grammar, is an indispensable notion for the analysis of word formation patterns. In the study of word formation, we investigate the systematic correspondences between form and meaning at the word level. Constructional schemas provide an adequate format for expressing these systematic correspondences. Moreover, they are part of a hierarchical lexicon in which both complex words and morphological patterns of various levels of abstraction can be specified. An important advantage of the Construction Morphology approach is that it can express the relevant similarities between morphological and phrasal lexical expressions, and the paradigmatic relations between morphological and phrasal schemas. Thus, lexical knowledge is characterized as a complicated network between words and phrasal expressions at a range of levels of abstractions, varying between individual words and completely abstract patterns.

Morphological theory and English

This paper presents a review of a number of recent issues in the field of generative morphology, with their implications for the description of English. After an introduction to the field two types of question are considered. First, 1 examine the nature of word structure and illustrate two competing approaches, one of which assurnes that words have a constituent structure (much like the phrase structure of syntax) and the other of which rejects this assumption. Then we look at the way morphologicai structure interacts with syntax. We examine the extent to which syntactic principles can account for the behaviour of certain types of compounds and aiso the expression of syntactic arguments in nominaiizations.

Lexical Approaches to Argument Structure

2014

"This paper compares various approaches to argument structure. We start out presenting the lexical proposal that we want to defend in this paper. We then introduce phrasal proposals that are common in Construction Grammar. A historical section describes the oscillation between early lexical proposals in Categorial Grammar, phrasal approaches in phrase structure grammar (early Transformational Grammar, GPSG) back to lexical approaches in HPSG and Minimalism. We argue that there were good reasons for returning to lexical models and that the respective issues are not addressed in phrasal approaches. We go on discussing approaches that assume that sematnically compatible verbs are inserted into phrasal constructions and point out that lexical specification of valence plays an important role in various levels of description and that phrasal models can not account for this. A similar criticism applies to so-called Neodavidsonian approaches, which are discussed in a separate section. We will show that certain relations between constructions cannot be captured with inheritance or unification but require transformations or lexical rules, and hence in non-transformational syntax the lexical approach is the only option. Three sections are devoted to arguments from language acquisition, psycholinguistics, and statistics. We show that contrary to frequent claims the respective experiments do not provide evidence for phrasal constructions. We conclude that argument structure properties should be represented together with lexical items. "

Complex phrase structures within morphological words: Evidence from English and Indonesian

Lingua, 2010

In this paper, I explore the issue of the division of labor between syntax and morphology within the context of the lexicalist vs. nonlexicalist debate on the basis of case studies of phrasal compounds in English and ber-constructions in Indonesian. I first show what challenges these phenomena raise for various existing versions of the lexicalist theory to have a clear grasp of what aspect(s) of the theory must be dropped or improved upon. I then propose (non-lexicalist) alternative accounts of the two phenomena. I show that phrasal compounds can be explained on a par with regular compounding of two simplex roots as a natural consequence of the Multiple Spell-Out model of the Minimalist Program. I provide evidence that ber-constructions in Indonesian are derived via head movement, rejecting potential alternative lexicalist accounts in terms of lexical compounding. I also briefly discuss several architectural design specifications that any model of the morphology-syntax interface must meet. I conclude that the firewall theory of the interface, which determines the degree of the interpenetration between syntax and morphology on a language-particular basis, not only meets these specifications, but also serves as an explanatory model within which the syntax-morphology interaction can be productively pursued. Crown

On the relation between morphology and syntax.

The Oxford Handbook of Linguistic Interfaces, 2007

According to the traditional view, the relation between morphology and syntax is the following: while morphology builds up word forms-typically by combining roots with other roots and with affixes, but also by applying other operations to them, syntax takes fully inflected words as input and combines them into phrases and sentences. The division of labour between morphology and syntax is thus perfect: morphology only operates below the word level whereas syntax only operates above the word level.

Between word-formation and syntax: Cross-linguistic perspectives on an ongoing debate

Zeitschrift für Wortbildung / Journal of Word Formation, 2020

The relation between word-formation and syntax and whether they form distinct domains of grammar or not has been discussed controversially in different theoretical frameworks. The answer to this question is closely connected to the languages under discussion, among other things, because languages seem to differ considerably in this regard. The discussion in this paper focuses on nominal compounds and phrases. On the basis of a great variety of data from a total of 14 European languages, it is argued that the relation between compounds and phrases, and, more generally, between word formation and syntax, should be characterized not in terms of a categorical but instead in terms of a gradient distinction.