Abstract
In this chapter, I look more closely at the syntactic heads that make up the predicate phrase. First, I argue that the functional category within the VP whose Spec is the landing site of certain derived objects is (Inner) Aspect. More specifically, I argue that the VP has shells, in the sense of Larson (1988) and that Aspect is a projection sandwiched within these shells. Morpheme orders in Tagalog and Navajo are used to show how the phrase structure proposed accounts for the interleaving of lexical and inflectional material. In the second half of the chapter, I argue for another functional category, E(vent), which is at the boundary between the lexical domain of the VP and the purely inflectional domain. Just as Inner Aspect is an event-related category at the edge of V2P, Event is an event-related category at the edge of V1P.
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Notes
- 1.
Cinque (1999) has a view of phrase structure that includes many functional categories, of which 18 are related to aspect (Cinque 1999: 130). Evaluating his analysis would take us far afield. As will become clear in my discussion of Navajo, there are fewer functional categories in the phrase structure I am presenting. One functional category, however, may host multiple morphemes the order of which is determined by semantics. My point right now is that at least one of these Aspect projections must be within the VP.
- 2.
Baker (1988) derives the descriptive content of the Head Movement Constraint from the Empty Category Principle (ECP). Since the current theoretical status of the ECP is not clear, and the descriptive content of the HMC is all that I require, I refer only to the HMC.
- 3.
In my discussion of Navajo, I will posit that one head can account for multiple morphemes, and the ordering in this case may be determined by semantic considerations. See the discussion in Section 3.2.2.
- 4.
This account of Tagalog reduplication appeared first as part of Travis (1991), but has also appeared in Travis (1992a, 2000a).
- 5.
As we will see throughout the book, transitivity alternations tend to be idiosyncratic. This is also true for Tagalog where we find b-um-ili ‘buy’ and mag-bili ‘sell’. This might suggest that the process is lexical rather than syntactic and that we are headed in the wrong direction by using the morphology of transitivity alternations as evidence for syntactic structure. At this point I ask the reader to bear with me and I will address this issue directly in Chapter 6 (Section 6.2.2.).
- 6.
As we have seen in Section 2.5.3, one of the central properties of many Western Malayo-Polynesian languages is the process whereby one of a number of DPs within a sentence may be singled out by the verbal morphology and by a marker on the DP or a particular position of this DP within the clause. There is much debate concerning how this DP should be represented structurally or even what it should be called descriptively (e.g., Schachter 1976; Kroeger 1993; Maclachlan 1996; Rackowski 2002; Aldridge 2004). In the text, I will be using the terms used by the original authors, at the risk of confusing the reader but in an attempt to stay true to the original literature.
- 7.
In order to show this, we have to use -um- verbs that are transitive because the verbs must have direct internal arguments. In the discussion in Chapter 6 (Section 6.2.2) on the difference between lexical causatives and syntactic causatives, we will raise the issue of why a transitive verb can apparently be marked as being inchoative/intransitive.
- 8.
Example sentences in (10) and (11) were provided by Raph Mercado.
- 9.
In Chapter 6, I will be looking more closely at the role of pag- in Tagalog. I will present an explanation for the morpheme deletion in (7) in Section 6.4.2 and will also discuss a more recent account of pag- given by Rackowski (2002) in Section 6.4.3.
- 10.
The need for a V1 for unaccusatives will become clearer in later sections of the book (e.g., Section 4.4.4).
- 11.
These, in fact, are both semantically related to Outer Aspect, one stacked above the other. I will claim, however, that the lower of the two can appear housed in Inner Aspect.
- 12.
The form magtumba can be used as an aspectless form, however. See Kroeger (1993: 16–17) and Schachter and Otanes (1972: 153ff).
- 13.
I use Schachter and Otanes’ (1972) terminology. Contemplated would mean something like future.
- 14.
French uses different terminology, which I have changed in order to be as consistent as possible. What I have labeled infinitive and contemplative, she labels basic aspect (bas) and proposed aspect (pro), respectively.
- 15.
Inflectional Template 2 has to do with infixation of the Asp1 morphology and not with reduplication.
- 16.
See a more recent paper by Mercado (2006) for a phase-based account of these options and Skinner (2009), who assumes that Asp2 is attached via lowering.
- 17.
I have taken these forms and the terminology from Ramos and Bautista (1986: 237). The exact meaning of the m/n-aka complex of morphemes is quite difficult to characterize. I discuss it more in Chapter 7, but other relevant references are Dell (1983), Phillips (1996, 2000), and Travis (2005c, d).
- 18.
In the discussion of Navajo in the next section, I do allow modificational material to be late-adjoined to a head. Since the +incomplete morpheme is not modificational, late adjunction is not an option. In fact, we will see several environments where progressive Outer Aspect appears to exert an influence on Inner Aspect. As mentioned in Chapter 1, this issue is one I am exploring in ongoing research.
- 19.
In Chapter 8, I summarize some similar observations made by Rice (2000) on Slave, a related language.
- 20.
The material presented in this section was first written up in Travis (1992b).
- 21.
Hale (2000) presents a different account for the order of the morphemes. The advantage of his account is that the voice/trans affix is part of the syntax. The disadvantage is that he cannot account for the noncompositionality of positions 1 and 6. I refer the reader to his account to make a comparison.
- 22.
In fact, he concludes that three elements that appear in position 6—the transitional, semelfactive, and seriative markers—are inflectional. I will discuss this briefly below.
- 23.
I could use one of the environments described in Speas’s work to define this domain. This is the environment shown in (29c) above as—CV(C)# (before the final syllable). This would explain the internal affixation, but we would still need the phrase structure that I am arguing for.
- 24.
McCarthy and Prince (1990) have argued that morphological processes may be sensitive to prosodic domains (prosodic circumscription), which also gives the appearance of infixes in certain contexts. Affixation in Navajo would be similar except that it would be sensitive to a morphological rather than a phonological context.
- 25.
I have changed the example slightly because German speakers that I consulted did not accept the example given by Newell for reasons irrelevant to the point that she was making. I thank Joan Maling for bringing this to my attention and Michael Wagner for providing a new example.
- 26.
A problem arises with Newell’s account because separable prefixes do not act like adjuncts in other ways (e.g. they appear to the right of the object and they can change the aspectual and argument structure properties of the verbs). In Newell (2008: 201) she addresses these issues and proposes that the separable prefix late adjoins to a null aspectual head. It is this null aspectual head which accounts for the changes in the properties of the predicate, not the separable prefix itself.
- 27.
I have sketched a head-final tree, though that is not crucial. I follow Baker’s analysis of polysynthesis (Baker 1996) so no XP arguments will be part of this structure. This becomes important in the discussion of West Slave in Chapter 8.
- 28.
I place some other cases of unproductive transitivity alternations (such as the ones discussed in Section 6.2.2 for Tagalog) within l-syntax, that is, not the pure lexicon. I do not think it is contradicting myself to say that some cases are semiproductive (i.e., in l-syntax) and others are no longer productive at all (i.e., in the lexicon). Pag- in Tagalog can be added to loan words, for example mag-slice (Magslice ka ng tomato. ‘You slice the tomato.’) It would be interesting to see whether the Navajo morphemes can also be affixed to loan words.
- 29.
This sentence is grammatical but with a different meaning (‘They sold the ice creams yesterday’).
- 30.
I have presented the Polish example without diacritics as this is the way it appears in the source.
- 31.
The example shows a case where reduplication has scrambled away from the merged Aspect position. Examples (38a) and (38b) were provided by Raph Mercado. Example (38a’) is from Kroeger (1993: 24). Example (38b’) is from Schachter and Otanes (1972: 336).
- 32.
I thank Raph Mercado for help with these data.
- 33.
Schachter and Otanes (1972) do not include ‘already’ in their translations.
- 34.
The [+incomplete] aspect appears outside of the plural marking, as the vowel length on the first CV in the triple CV sequence shows, though only some speakers produce the vowel length distinction. Vowel lengthening occurs with aspect reduplication and not with agreement reduplication. This ordering of affixes may indicate again that this is a case of Outer Aspect (progressive) having an effect on Inner Aspect.
- 35.
I thank both Norvin Richards and Raph Mercado for discussion of this point.
- 36.
Thanks to Raph Mercado and Eden Mercado for these data.
- 37.
For the time being, I label the intermediate position V inf for infinitival verbal forms.
- 38.
Pollock also discusses the position of French auxiliary verbs, but that discussion is not relevant here.
- 39.
The infinitival marker to can also appear in other positions as in Not to seem happy or Hardly to seem happy.
- 40.
See Duffield (2007), to appear for other uses of a projection similar to E in his analysis of Vietnamese.
- 41.
Pollock suggests in his footnote (12) that to may be generated in Agr, his position for short movement. Laka (1990) proposes that Tense must c-command negation. Since to is [—tense], it may appear below negation. Baltin (1993) also discusses the position of to and provides interesting data concerning its position with respect to not and interactions with VP deletion. As Pollock writes in his footnote, “Needless to say, neither this proposal nor the one made in the text exhausts what has to be said concerning to” (Pollock 1989: 375).
- 42.
In some cases, to may appear before not, as in To not leave would be difficult but this may be the constituent negator not.
- 43.
Frankly, I have some difficulties in evaluating these data since I suspect that the adverb may be in some sense modifying the predicate that it precedes.
- 44.
It may be that all future elements are generated in this position and that, when the clause is anchored to the present, we get the “pure” future meaning (see Baker and Travis 1997 for some views on this).
- 45.
Rajemisa-Raolison (1971: 100) suggests that the appearance of no- or ho- rather than n- or h- is conditioned by stress rather than topic choice. I leave this for future work.
- 46.
Often some idiosyncratic CV sequence is added to the root of the verb before any suffixes are added. In this case, the CV sequence is zi (see Erwin 1996 for an analysis of the different realizations of the CV sequence). There are other passive (i.e., Theme Topic) forms in Malagasy that will not be discussed here: root, voa-, and tafa- passives. These will be discussed in Chapter 7.
- 47.
There are instances where this morpheme appears and yet no obvious preposition has been incorporated (e.g., Paul 2000: Section 4.3 for a discussion). I leave this issue aside for now, tentatively assuming the existence of a zero preposition.
- 48.
I assume that Tagalog m-/-um- has the same analysis as Malagasy m-.
- 49.
Here I use a simple VP structure, as it is sufficient for the present purpose.
- 50.
Depending on which Case framework is being used, further details must be worked out. I will assume here that there is an agree relation, as in Chomsky (2000), between F and Spec, VP. It must have the effect of allowing this DP to stay in situ and another lower DP to move to Spec, TP.
- 51.
I have no explanation for the disappearance of to in (64a). Fabb (1984: 71–72) ties verbal morphology to verbal case and notes that the morphology is unnecessary when the matrix verb is active and can assign case. It would be interesting to apply his observation, recast within the Minimalist Program, to account for the data in (64).
- 52.
Other linguists working on Malagasy have interpreted productive causatives as having complex morphology, but none, to the best of my knowledge, in exactly the way Hung has. For example, Malzac (1908: 15) analyzed mampanoratra as man+pa+noratra. He did this to make it more similar to the Tagalog pag+pa. This analysis misses the point, however, since the nasal at the beginning of the root soratra is not explained. Furthermore, there is only one instance of the morpheme (m)an-. In the analysis presented here, the morphological decomposition would be m+an+f+an+soratra.
- 53.
Hung posits f- rather than p- because f- is a common reference-related morpheme—one that is used, for example, to form deverbal nominals. There is a regular phonological change in Malagasy whereby a continuant becomes a stop following a nasal. This is discussed in more detail in Section 6.2.2.
- 54.
In Higginbotham’s (1985) article, the determiner was assumed to be in the specifier position of NP. With revised phrase structure, the parallel between Infl and Det is much clearer. The notion of R as Referential is taken from Williams (1981).
- 55.
Stowell (1995) proposes a Z(eit) Phrase, which like E, theta-binds the event theta-role introduced by the V. Thus, ZP and EP, are similar in some respects. They are different enough, though, to assume that they represent two very different proposals. ZP is much more like a Tense phrase in that it orders events. I assume that EP does not have that role. Harley (1995) also proposes an Event Phrase but hers, in introducing the external argument, is much closer in function to my V1. Carstens and Kinyalolo (1989) relabel this intermediate functional category Asp(ect).
- 56.
I have no account of have, though I would be tempted to generate it in E and have it act as a higher version of the ha-/ka- Malagasy/Tagalog morpheme discussed in Chapter 7. Much of the literature on lexical causatives points to the observation that, unlike productive syntactic causatives, they encode just one event (see Fodor 1970; Shibatani 1972, 1976). This is discussed more in Chapter 6.
- 57.
I pick Cheng’s presentation of the facts not because I will necessarily use the details of her account but just to set up the comparison. This construction is often called wh-scope marking in the current literature (I thank a reviewer for pointing this out). I prefer the label partial wh -movement as it focuses on the part of the construction that interests me—–the movement of the lower wh-XP. Many other have worked on this construction. Among them are Dayal (1994, 2000), Fanselow (2006), Fanselow and Mahajan (2000), Lipták (2001), and Bruening (2004). A good overview of the issues is presented in Lutz et al. (2000).
- 58.
The ungrammaticality of (70c) seems to be dialectal. I would assume that the dialect variation is a superficial one involving morphological representations of features.
- 59.
(71a) comes from McDaniel (1989) via Cheng (2000: 80). I have changed the gloss of glaubst to be consistent with the data provided by Cheng.
- 60.
As expected, the external argument will move to Spec, TP when it itself is the Subject/Topic giving a VSO order.
- 61.
This mechanism could be used to explain other constructions where a nom XP appears within the VP such as psych predicates in languages like Italian and Icelandic. I leave this for future research.
- 62.
There is a significant problem with this view that is raised in the Bare Phrase structure/Minimalist framework. Movement to a low Spec cannot be triggered by a feature that is introduced into the structure later. Whatever technology allows intermediate wh-movement should be able to allow intermediate DP-movement.
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Travis, L.d. (2010). Inner Aspect and Event. In: Inner Aspect. Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, vol 80. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-8550-4_3
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