Argument Licensing and Agreement - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Argument Licensing and Agreement write by Claire Halpert. This book was released on 2016. Argument Licensing and Agreement available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. The strikingly unrestricted syntactic distribution of nouns in many Bantu languages often leads to proposals that syntactic case does not play an active role in the grammar of Bantu. This book offers a different conclusion that the basis of Zulu that Bantu languages have not only a system of structural case, but also a complex system of morphological case that is comparable to systems found in languages like Icelandic. By comparing the system of argument licensing found in Zulu to those found in more familiar languages, Halpert introduces a number of insights onto the organization of the grammar. First, while this book argues in favor of a case-licensing analysis of Zulu, it locates the positions where case is assigned lower in the clause than what is found in nominative-accusative languages. In addition, Zulu shows evidence that case and agreement are two distinct operations in the language, located on different heads and operating independently of each other. Despite these unfamiliarities, there is evidence that the timing relationships between operations mirror those found in other languages. Second, this book proposes a novel type of morphological case that serves to mask many structural licensing effects in Zulu; the effects of this case are unfamiliar, Halpert argues that its existence is expected given the current typological picture of case. Finally, this book explores the consequences of case and agreement as dissociated operations, showing that given this situation, other unusual properties of Bantu languages, such as hyper-raising, are a natural result. This exploration yields the conclusion that some of the more unusual properties of Bantu languages in fact result from small amounts of variation to deeply familiar syntactic principles such as case, agreement, and the EPP.
Argument Licensing and Agreement in Zulu
Argument Licensing and Agreement in Zulu - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Argument Licensing and Agreement in Zulu write by Claire Halpert. This book was released on 2012. Argument Licensing and Agreement in Zulu available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. In this thesis, I examine some core grammatical phenomena - case licensing, agreement, the EPP - through the lens of the Bantu language Zulu. Zulu has a number of remarkable and puzzling properties whose analysis affords us new insight on the interaction between these components. Despite a number of unusual-looking properties in the domain of nominal distribution, I propose that Zulu has a both a system of asbtract structural case and a system of morphological case. This conclusion is notable because it has long been assumed that Bantu languages lack both of these types of case (e.g. Harford Perez, 1985). Though the type of case system that I propose for Zulu is at its core similar to our current understanding of case, there are a number of differences between the case system I argue for in Zulu and more familiar case systems. In particular, I demonstrate that the positions in which structural licensing occur in Zulu are not the familiar positions of structural licensing: none of the heads that function as structural licensers in a language like English - T0, v0 , and P0 - are licensers in Zulu. The absence of licensing from these positions gives rise to a system in which case-licensing and phi-agreement have no syntactic overlap. I show that the interactions between phi-agreement and morphological case in Zulu provide a novel argument in favor of treating phi-agreement as a syntactic process. I also argue that Zulu has a novel type of morphological case: the augment vowel functions as a freely-applying case-licenser for nominal that lack structural case. The existence of such a morpheme is notable because this type of element has been explicitly ruled out by various theories (e.g. Schutze, 2001) on the grounds that it would render the Case Filter vacuous. Finally, I build on this system of case in Zulu to analyze constructions that involve a puzzling agreement pattern: complex NPs and raised subjects appear to allow optional agreement in positions where Zulu otherwise requires it. I argue that the optional agreement effect in these constructions arises from the possibility for T to agree with a CP. From these construction, we gain insight into the properties of agreement and the EPP in Zulu. Specifically, these constructions demonstrate the inadequacy of a theory of "reverse agree" to capture the patterns in Zulu and the primacy of a syntactic EPP to Zulu syntax.
Arguments and Agreement
Arguments and Agreement - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Arguments and Agreement write by Peter Ackema. This book was released on 2006-09-28. Arguments and Agreement available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. This book brings together new work by leading syntactic theorists from the USA and Europe on a central aspect of syntactic and morphological theory: it explores the role of agreement morphology in the morphosyntactic realization of a verb's arguments. The authors examine the differences and parallels between nonconfigurational, pronominal- agreement languages; configurational languages which allow pronoun drop (for example, "Is coming" for "He is coming"); languages that allow pronoun drop in particular constructions only; and languages which always require overt syntactic determiner phrases as arguments. The book considers whether the morphological properties of agreement play a role in determining which of these types a language belongs to and how far languages differ with respect to the argumental status of their agreement and syntactic determiner phrases. The authors explore these and related issues and problems in the context of a wide range of languages. Their book will interest linguists at graduate level and above concerned with morphosyntactic theory, linguistic typology, and the interactions of syntax and morphology in different languages.
Arguments and Agreement
Arguments and Agreement - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Arguments and Agreement write by Peter Ackema. This book was released on 2006-09-28. Arguments and Agreement available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. This book explores the role of agreement morphology in the morphosyntactic realization of a verb's arguments. It examines the differences and parallels between configurational and nonconfigurational languages, languages that allow pronoun drop only in particular constructions, and languages which always require overt syntactic determiner phrases as arguments. These and related issues are explored in the context of a wide range of languages. The book will interest linguists at graduate level and above concerned with morphosyntactic theory, typology, and the interactions of syntax and morphology in different languages.
Aspect and Argument Licensing in Neo-Aramaic
Aspect and Argument Licensing in Neo-Aramaic - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Aspect and Argument Licensing in Neo-Aramaic write by Laura Mennen Kalin. This book was released on 2014. Aspect and Argument Licensing in Neo-Aramaic available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. This dissertation explores interactions between grammatical/viewpoint aspect and argument licensing in several endangered Northeastern Neo-Aramaic languages. The most pervasive of these interactions are the aspect-based agreement splits attested across Northeastern Neo-Aramaic (Doron and Khan 2012), where the agreement pattern of the imperfective is partially or completely reversed in the perfective. There are two language types that are of core interest in the dissertation, which form a natural class in that they have a consistent nominative/accusative alignment across aspects and have a restriction on objects in the perfective: (i) partial agreement reversal, with objects that are specific banned in canonical perfective aspect (Senaya), and (ii) complete agreement reversal, with objects that are non-third person banned in canonical perfective aspect (Christian Barwar, Jewish Zakho, Telkepe, i.a.). The dissertation includes novel data and novel observations from languages of both types, namely Senaya (fieldwork by Laura McPherson, Kevin Ryan, and myself) and Jewish Zakho (my own fieldwork). The two aspect splits described above are the topic of Chapter 2, where it is argued that such splits arise because imperfective Asp (in addition to finite T) can license an argument, while perfective Asp cannot (Kalin and van Urk To Appear); additionally, it is argued that v is not an argument licenser in these languages. There is therefore a fundamental distinction between the argument-licensing capacity of canonical perfective aspect (all licensing must come from T) and canonical imperfective aspect (licensing comes from both Asp and T). The ban on specific objects in the perfective in Senaya (partial reversal) is a result of there only being one argument licenser in canonical perfective aspect, T, which will always license the higher argument, the subject. The ban on non-third person objects in the perfective in complete reversal languages is a result of person and number on T probing separately, with only the number probe reaching the object; this induces a Person Case Constraint effect: the object must be third person, because first/second person nominals require agreement with a person probe (Bejar and Rezac 2003). The analysis is couched in a Minimalist framework (Chomsky 2000, 2001), with argument licensing (Case valuation) resulting from phi-agreement. In Neo-Aramaic, argument licensing is spelled out on the probe as morphological agreement, not as morphological case on the nominal. Having a complete picture of how these Neo-Aramaic aspect splits work depends also on understanding the languages' secondary strategy for expressing perfective aspect (whose argument-licensing pattern looks like that of the imperfective), which is taken up in Chapter 3. I propose that there are two adjacent high aspect projections in the clause. The Neo- Aramaic secondary perfective stacks perfective aspect on top of imperfective aspect, and thus has the additional licensing capacity of imperfective aspect (lower Asp is a licenser) while ultimately being perfective semantically. The lower aspect head, which is imperfective, combines with the verb root to determine the root-and-pattern verb base, while the higher aspect head, which is perfective, is spelled out as the prefix qam-. I propose a compositional semantics for the secondary perfective and draw, in particular, parallels with the affixal aspect `stacking' that is seen in Slavic languages (Babko-Malaya 2003, Svenonius 2004, Ramchand 2008, Gribanova 2013, i.a.). A final crucial component of understanding these Neo-Aramaic aspect splits, taken up in Chapter 4, involves characterizing the pattern of Differential Object Marking (DOM) that arises in these languages---only specific objects trigger/require phi-agreement. I propose that differential marking arises from the interaction of two factors that can vary crosslinguistically: (i) where in nominal structure uninterpretable Case merges, and (ii) where in clause structure argument licensers (obligatorily or optionally) merge. I assume that unvalued features do not need to be valued in the course of a derivation (contra Chomsky (2000, 2001) and following Preminger (2011)), and further, that it is possible for a feature to simply be unvalued (and not uninterpretable) (Pesetsky and Torrego 2007). I maintain (with Chomsky (2000, 2001) and Pesetsky and Torrego (2007)) that uninterpretable features do need to be valued in the course of a derivation. My novel proposal for accounting for DOM is that (unlike in existing proposals) all nominals bear unvalued Case, but only some nominals additionally bear uninterpretable Case; all nominals, then, can be valued for Case (all have a Case feature), though only nominals with uninterpretable Case require licensing, i.e., Case valuation. In the Neo-Aramaic language Senaya, uninterpretable Case is introduced inside nominals on the projection that encodes specificity. In imperfective aspect, Asp is the obligatory Case locus (i.e., the obligatory argument licensing locus), while in perfective aspect, the obligatory Case locus is the one and only Case locus, namely, T. Nonspecific nominals in Senaya do not bear uninterpretable Case, and therefore only have their Case feature valued when they are the closest nominal to an obligatory Case locus, i.e., in subject position. Nonspecific nominals in object position do not get their Case feature valued, because they are not in the scope of an obligatory Case licenser, and can in fact surface in a position where Case/licensing is never available, namely, as the object in a canonical perfective. My claim, then, is that unmarked objects in DOM languages are unmarked precisely because their Case feature is unvalued (which does not cause a crash). Overall, this dissertation contributes to our understanding of argument licensing and the aspectual middlefield: aspectual heads are potential argument-licensing loci and can effect agreement/Case-based aspect splits; aspect-based splits need not involve any ergativity; there are two high aspectual projections; and finally, all nominals have a Case feature, but not all nominals require licensing.
