In: Karlík a továrna na lingvistiku. Aleš Bičan, Jan Klaška, Petra Macurová a Jana Zmrsliková (eds.). Masaryk University Press, Brno, 98-124. , 2010
Indo-European morphological case systems exhibit considerably more syncretism between
nominative... more Indo-European morphological case systems exhibit considerably more syncretism between
nominative and accusative cases than between other pairs of cases. This refl ects
the fact that the two case-assigning categories for nominative and accusative, namely
the fi niteness constituent I and the lexical verb, are facets of the same basic category,
call it simply V. That is, I = V, +I and the verb = V, –I. Assuming further that case
morphemes are simply “Alternative Realizations” of the case assigners, then a nominal
projection with an alternatively realized V-feature that lacks further specifi cation as
either +I (nominative) or –I (accusative) has a neutralized case, called here “Super
Case”.
The paper analyses a range of morphological case regularities of Romanian, Latin,
German and Czech and demonstrates show that an undifferentiated “V-case” plays
a central role in these four quite different systems. Consequently, the four basic cases
of Go vernment and Binding research actually reduced to three, V-case (Super Case),
N-case (genitives) and P-case (obliques, i.e. dative, ablative, instrumental, etc.).
Further, investigation shows that so-called neuter gender in Latin, German and
Czech is a name for a subset of masculine inanimate nouns which have a special relation
to V-case but are otherwise regular. Lexical entries of neuter noun stems in Latin
and German have an inherent V-case feature, which makes suffi xal case morphemes
redundant on both Latin nouns and German singular determiners. The traditional classifi
catory terminology in Czech is reversed, in that its regular masculine inanimates are
those traditionally terms neuters (aut- “car”, masl- “butter”). While its masculine inanimate
nouns that carry an inherent V-case feature, making redundant (similar to Latin
neuters) any special V-case suffi xes, are those called “masculine inanimates” (hrad
“castle”, most “bridge”).
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In The Evolution of Literature: Legacies of Darwin in European Cultures. Nicholas Saul and Simon James (eds.). Rodopi, Amersterdam, 43-69. 2011.
Abstract
Several properties unique to human language arguably derive from its “Duality”: two superimposed combinatorial systems, phonology and syntax. Crucially, phonology atoms are meaningless, one crucial step in language evolution. Moreover the discreteness of both systems is generally overlooked. So also are many sharp distinctions between language’s grammatical morphemes and its open class categories. The former, a human language “trademark,” are strangely based exactly on categories plausibly present in primate vision, probably the only discrete categories in all primate cognition. The second fundamental evolutionary step was projecting just these discrete categories out of the “here and now” into a computational screen.
These two factors have led traditional scholarship to conclude that each stem-final segment should define a separate classification of noun suffixation or “declension”. As there are basically six types of final segment (a, o, u, i, e and consonants), each then gives rise to a different declension (stems with final i are often put in some other group or considered irregular), thus creating five (or six) declensions. Tradition then goes on to analyze stem-final vowels not as part of stems but as some kind of separate morphemes called “thematic vowels” (with no role in either syntax or phonology).
This essay argues rather that an unflinching modern and formal approach to inflectional allomorphy, exactly analogous to using phonology to reduce regular English plurals to a single lexical form, succeeds in sweeping away the sandcastle of Latin declensions and better captures the actual descriptive generalizations that account for Latin case inflection.
It is well known that Middle English (and its descendent Modern English) has a large number of words of Scandinavian origin. This is conventionally attributed to language contact and heavy borrowing of Scandinavian words into Early Middle English (not into Old English). However, this alleged borrowing was not limited to lexical words, counter to the normal case in contact situations; grammatical words and morphemes were also borrowed. This is unusual, and calls for an explanation. The explanation argued for here is that the roots of Middle English (and therefore Modern English) are North Germanic, with large borrowings from the Old English lexicon, rather than the other way around, as generally assumed, and that the fusion of the two lexicons dates back not to early Scandinavian settlement in England, but about 200 years later, especially the 12th c. during the full impact of the Norman Conquest.
Even more problematic is the fact that Middle English and Modern English syntax is Scandinavian rather than West Germanic. The languages share numerous syntactic properties (e.g. word order, P-stranding, infinitival and directional particles, auxiliaries, infinitival constructions, participles and case inflections), which reflect a deep and typologically significant relation of Scandinavian with Middle/ Modern English. With respect to all these characteristics Middle/ Modern English groups with North Germanic rather than West Germanic.
grammatical verbs, in particular have, get, want, need, see or hear. These
‘‘indirect passives,’’
as I call them, are shown here to be verbal
and not adjectival, and to not consist of embedded passive clauses containing simple passives, such as reduced relatives or other types
of
‘‘small clauses.’’
Rather, indirect passives are structurally parallel to the traditional (‘‘direct’’) passives, except that their auxiliaries are
transitive rather than intransitive verbs. Both passive and active participle phrases, of all subtypes, are argued here to be adjective
phrases (APs), whose verbs have word-internal right hand heads, the As -en and -ing. Passive auxiliaries in both direct and indirect
passives are then grammatical verbs that select adjective phrase complements.
The limitation of passive auxiliaries to grammatical rather than open class verbs provides crucial evidence for dividing lexicons into two
components, whose members enter syntactic derivations differently. Open class items, including the -en and -ing heads of lexically stored
adjectives, enter trees only when derivational phases begin, while closed class items, including auxiliaries and the inflectional endings -en
and -ing, can also enter derivations
‘‘late,’’
after a phasal domain is sent to Logical Form. Their
‘‘empty A heads’’
are neither interpreted as
properties nor visible during the next derivational phase t, prior to the late insertion of closed class items on t. Consequently, even though
they are distributionally and often morphologically APs, the inflectional participles (so called verbal passives and progressives) all exhibit
familiar internal V-headed syntactic patterns.
nominative and accusative cases than between other pairs of cases. This refl ects
the fact that the two case-assigning categories for nominative and accusative, namely
the fi niteness constituent I and the lexical verb, are facets of the same basic category,
call it simply V. That is, I = V, +I and the verb = V, –I. Assuming further that case
morphemes are simply “Alternative Realizations” of the case assigners, then a nominal
projection with an alternatively realized V-feature that lacks further specifi cation as
either +I (nominative) or –I (accusative) has a neutralized case, called here “Super
Case”.
The paper analyses a range of morphological case regularities of Romanian, Latin,
German and Czech and demonstrates show that an undifferentiated “V-case” plays
a central role in these four quite different systems. Consequently, the four basic cases
of Go vernment and Binding research actually reduced to three, V-case (Super Case),
N-case (genitives) and P-case (obliques, i.e. dative, ablative, instrumental, etc.).
Further, investigation shows that so-called neuter gender in Latin, German and
Czech is a name for a subset of masculine inanimate nouns which have a special relation
to V-case but are otherwise regular. Lexical entries of neuter noun stems in Latin
and German have an inherent V-case feature, which makes suffi xal case morphemes
redundant on both Latin nouns and German singular determiners. The traditional classifi
catory terminology in Czech is reversed, in that its regular masculine inanimates are
those traditionally terms neuters (aut- “car”, masl- “butter”). While its masculine inanimate
nouns that carry an inherent V-case feature, making redundant (similar to Latin
neuters) any special V-case suffi xes, are those called “masculine inanimates” (hrad
“castle”, most “bridge”).
a limited type of embedded clauses called indirect discourse. Among these are
certain transformational movements. Earlier generative studies stipulate that root
transformational movements are simply exempt from constraints on movements
deined on landing sites.
Two recent more restrictive theories remedy this. Rizzi (1997) restricts their
landing sites to SPEC and head positions of specially labeled projections such
as TopP and FocP. Emonds (2004) proposes rather that such root projections
(“Discourse Shells”) have no labels. his essay argues that root movements are
then subject, like all others, to Structure Preservation, and that their landing
sites are better conceived as SPECs and heads of “label-less” or a-categorial
projections.
Keywords: discourse shell; dislocation; focus movement; German Verb-second;
head movement; let periphery; rightward movement; root transformation;
structure-preservation; tensed-S constraint; topicalization
In The Evolution of Literature: Legacies of Darwin in European Cultures. Nicholas Saul and Simon James (eds.). Rodopi, Amersterdam, 43-69. 2011.
Abstract
Several properties unique to human language arguably derive from its “Duality”: two superimposed combinatorial systems, phonology and syntax. Crucially, phonology atoms are meaningless, one crucial step in language evolution. Moreover the discreteness of both systems is generally overlooked. So also are many sharp distinctions between language’s grammatical morphemes and its open class categories. The former, a human language “trademark,” are strangely based exactly on categories plausibly present in primate vision, probably the only discrete categories in all primate cognition. The second fundamental evolutionary step was projecting just these discrete categories out of the “here and now” into a computational screen.
These two factors have led traditional scholarship to conclude that each stem-final segment should define a separate classification of noun suffixation or “declension”. As there are basically six types of final segment (a, o, u, i, e and consonants), each then gives rise to a different declension (stems with final i are often put in some other group or considered irregular), thus creating five (or six) declensions. Tradition then goes on to analyze stem-final vowels not as part of stems but as some kind of separate morphemes called “thematic vowels” (with no role in either syntax or phonology).
This essay argues rather that an unflinching modern and formal approach to inflectional allomorphy, exactly analogous to using phonology to reduce regular English plurals to a single lexical form, succeeds in sweeping away the sandcastle of Latin declensions and better captures the actual descriptive generalizations that account for Latin case inflection.
It is well known that Middle English (and its descendent Modern English) has a large number of words of Scandinavian origin. This is conventionally attributed to language contact and heavy borrowing of Scandinavian words into Early Middle English (not into Old English). However, this alleged borrowing was not limited to lexical words, counter to the normal case in contact situations; grammatical words and morphemes were also borrowed. This is unusual, and calls for an explanation. The explanation argued for here is that the roots of Middle English (and therefore Modern English) are North Germanic, with large borrowings from the Old English lexicon, rather than the other way around, as generally assumed, and that the fusion of the two lexicons dates back not to early Scandinavian settlement in England, but about 200 years later, especially the 12th c. during the full impact of the Norman Conquest.
Even more problematic is the fact that Middle English and Modern English syntax is Scandinavian rather than West Germanic. The languages share numerous syntactic properties (e.g. word order, P-stranding, infinitival and directional particles, auxiliaries, infinitival constructions, participles and case inflections), which reflect a deep and typologically significant relation of Scandinavian with Middle/ Modern English. With respect to all these characteristics Middle/ Modern English groups with North Germanic rather than West Germanic.
grammatical verbs, in particular have, get, want, need, see or hear. These
‘‘indirect passives,’’
as I call them, are shown here to be verbal
and not adjectival, and to not consist of embedded passive clauses containing simple passives, such as reduced relatives or other types
of
‘‘small clauses.’’
Rather, indirect passives are structurally parallel to the traditional (‘‘direct’’) passives, except that their auxiliaries are
transitive rather than intransitive verbs. Both passive and active participle phrases, of all subtypes, are argued here to be adjective
phrases (APs), whose verbs have word-internal right hand heads, the As -en and -ing. Passive auxiliaries in both direct and indirect
passives are then grammatical verbs that select adjective phrase complements.
The limitation of passive auxiliaries to grammatical rather than open class verbs provides crucial evidence for dividing lexicons into two
components, whose members enter syntactic derivations differently. Open class items, including the -en and -ing heads of lexically stored
adjectives, enter trees only when derivational phases begin, while closed class items, including auxiliaries and the inflectional endings -en
and -ing, can also enter derivations
‘‘late,’’
after a phasal domain is sent to Logical Form. Their
‘‘empty A heads’’
are neither interpreted as
properties nor visible during the next derivational phase t, prior to the late insertion of closed class items on t. Consequently, even though
they are distributionally and often morphologically APs, the inflectional participles (so called verbal passives and progressives) all exhibit
familiar internal V-headed syntactic patterns.
nominative and accusative cases than between other pairs of cases. This refl ects
the fact that the two case-assigning categories for nominative and accusative, namely
the fi niteness constituent I and the lexical verb, are facets of the same basic category,
call it simply V. That is, I = V, +I and the verb = V, –I. Assuming further that case
morphemes are simply “Alternative Realizations” of the case assigners, then a nominal
projection with an alternatively realized V-feature that lacks further specifi cation as
either +I (nominative) or –I (accusative) has a neutralized case, called here “Super
Case”.
The paper analyses a range of morphological case regularities of Romanian, Latin,
German and Czech and demonstrates show that an undifferentiated “V-case” plays
a central role in these four quite different systems. Consequently, the four basic cases
of Go vernment and Binding research actually reduced to three, V-case (Super Case),
N-case (genitives) and P-case (obliques, i.e. dative, ablative, instrumental, etc.).
Further, investigation shows that so-called neuter gender in Latin, German and
Czech is a name for a subset of masculine inanimate nouns which have a special relation
to V-case but are otherwise regular. Lexical entries of neuter noun stems in Latin
and German have an inherent V-case feature, which makes suffi xal case morphemes
redundant on both Latin nouns and German singular determiners. The traditional classifi
catory terminology in Czech is reversed, in that its regular masculine inanimates are
those traditionally terms neuters (aut- “car”, masl- “butter”). While its masculine inanimate
nouns that carry an inherent V-case feature, making redundant (similar to Latin
neuters) any special V-case suffi xes, are those called “masculine inanimates” (hrad
“castle”, most “bridge”).
a limited type of embedded clauses called indirect discourse. Among these are
certain transformational movements. Earlier generative studies stipulate that root
transformational movements are simply exempt from constraints on movements
deined on landing sites.
Two recent more restrictive theories remedy this. Rizzi (1997) restricts their
landing sites to SPEC and head positions of specially labeled projections such
as TopP and FocP. Emonds (2004) proposes rather that such root projections
(“Discourse Shells”) have no labels. his essay argues that root movements are
then subject, like all others, to Structure Preservation, and that their landing
sites are better conceived as SPECs and heads of “label-less” or a-categorial
projections.
Keywords: discourse shell; dislocation; focus movement; German Verb-second;
head movement; let periphery; rightward movement; root transformation;
structure-preservation; tensed-S constraint; topicalization