Voice Systems and the Syntax/Morphology Interface
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The topic of this paper is the manner in which syntactic voice alternations (and syntactic configurations more generally) relate to voice morphology, and the implications of this for theories of voice and theories of morphology/syntax interactions. I argue based on the voice system of Modern Greek for three primary points: first, that treatments taking voice morphology as corresponding to a syntactic argument of the verb (see references below) will not work for voice systems like Greek; second, that voice morphology in Greek must be analyzed as related to a morphological feature which is added post-syntactically in specific syntactic configurations; and, third, that this analysis has consequences for the study of syntax/morphology interactions more generally. These points and their implications are discussed within the context of the theory of Distributed Morphology (Halle and Marantz (1993) and related work.) In order to establish these points certain sets of theoretical background assumptions must be highlighted; in the following paragraphs I review the major points of this discussion and provide an overview of previous theoretical treatments.Keywords:
Morphology
Argument (complex analysis)
Feature (linguistics)
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GoalsThe causative/anticausative alternation has been the topic of much typological and theoretical discussion in the linguistic literature.This alternation is characterized by verbs with transitive and intransitive uses, such that the transitive use of a verb V means roughly 'cause to Vintransitive' (see Levin 1993).The discussion revolves around two issues: the first one concerns the similarities and differences between the anticausative and the passive, and the second one concerns the derivational relationship, if any, between the transitive and intransitive variant.With respect to the second issue, a number of approaches have been developed.Judging the approach conceptually unsatisfactory, according to which each variant is assigned an independent lexical entry, it was concluded that the two variants have to be derivationally related.The question then is which one of the two is basic and where this derivation takes place in the grammar.Our contribution to this discussion is to argue against derivational approaches to the causative/anticausative alternation.We focus on the distribution of PPs related to external arguments (agent, causer, instrument, causing event) in passives and anticausatives of English, German and Greek and the set of verbs undergoing the causative/anticausative alternation in these languages.We argue that the crosslinguistic differences in these two domains provide evidence against both causativization and detransitivization analyses of the causative/anticausative alternation.We offer an approach to this alternation which builds on a syntactic decomposition of change of state verbs into a Voice and a CAUS
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This chapter argues that the patterns of voice morphology can be accounted for if there are at least three structures involved in the formation of anticausatives in Greek. It proposes that anticausatives are formed on the basis of an intransitive vBecome/Result which embeds either an AdjectiveP, or a VoiceP, or a possessive construction. The chapter is structured as follows. Section 4.2 presents the factual background for our discussion, namely the distribution of ‘special’ morphology on the intransitive variants of alternating verbs. Section 4.3 presents theoretical assumptions and an explanation that has been proposed in the literature for the distribution of this special morphology. Section 4.4 turns to a discussion of the Greek verb classes and considers the morphological patterns these exhibit. Sections 4.5 and 4.6 discuss the regularities that emerge from the distribution of ‘special’ morphology in Greek and offer an explanation for the differences among the various patterns.
Possessive
Morphology
Section (typography)
Alternation (linguistics)
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Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Linguistics and Philosophy, 1992.
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A classic work that situates linguistic theory in the broader cognitive sciences, formulating and developing the minimalist program. In his foundational book, The Minimalist Program, published in 1995, Noam Chomsky offered a significant contribution to the generative tradition in linguistics. This twentieth-anniversary edition reissues this classic work with a new preface by the author. In four essays, Chomsky attempts to situate linguistic theory in the broader cognitive sciences, with the essays formulating and progressively developing the minimalist approach to linguistic Building on the theory of principles and parameters and, in particular, on principles of economy of derivation and representation, the minimalist framework takes Universal Grammar as providing a unique computational system, with derivations driven by morphological properties, to which the syntactic variation of languages also restricted. Within this theoretical framework, linguistic expressions are generated by optimally efficient derivations that must satisfy the conditions that hold on interface levels, the only levels of linguistic representation. The interface levels provide instructions to two types of performance systems, articulatory-perceptual and conceptual-intentional. All syntactic conditions, then, express properties of these interface levels, reflecting the interpretive requirements of language and keeping to very restricted conceptual resources. In the preface to this edition, Chomsky emphasizes that the minimalist approach developed in the book and in subsequent work is a program, not a theory. With this book, Chomsky built on pursuits from the earliest days of generative grammar to formulate a new research program that had far-reaching implications for the field.
Minimalist program
Transformational grammar
Universal Grammar
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Causative
Inflection
Semitic Languages
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Argument (complex analysis)
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Abstract 'Unaccusative syntax' is understood as referring to cases in which an external argument is not projected. Unaccusative syntax is found both in unaccusatives in the standard sense, as well as in passives, which are syntactically intransitive in lacking an external argument, but nevertheless agentive. The structural factor uniting these contexts, the absence of an external argument, underlies a number of cross-linguistically common syncretisms—that is, cases of identical morphological realization in distinct syntactico-semantic contexts. Syncretisms of this type, in which disparate syntactic constructions show 'the same' or similar morphology, are crucial to the understanding of the manner in which syntax and morphology relate to each other and to other parts of the grammar. Much of the chapter is devoted to showing the role that unaccusative syntax plays in defining such syncretisms as those mentioned. Section 5.2 discusses the importance of the unaccusative analysis of reflexives in the analysis of patterns such as that alluded to above. Section 5.3 discusses the nature of the morphological syncretism that centres on unaccusative syntax, and shows that it arises by morphology being sensitive to the absence of an external argument. Section 5.4 discusses alternatives to the analysis presented in sections 5.2 and 5.3, while Section 5.5 concludes.
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