abstract light verb

the head position of a vP can be occupied by a phonetically empty light verb.

adjunction

a type of movement where a new position is formed as a result of the movement creating an adjunction structure, like the (simplified) movement of the PP in the following tree structure representation where the S node is doubled:

agent

one of the thematic or theta-roles, where the argument deliberately performs an action, as Jamie in Jamie sang a song or Robert in Robert kicked the cat. In terms of the UTAH the agentive theta-role is assigned to the specifier position of vP, similarly to experiencer arguments.

agreement

a syntactic process whereby certain constituents must share certain features, e.g. subjects must agree with the inflection on the verb in person and number.

arguments

the participants minimally involved in an action defined by the predicate. The complements and the subject, the latter also called an external argument.

binding

an element that can be coreferential with another element (the most typically pronouns and anaphors) is bound by that element. This relationship is called binding. In the sentence Peter and Mary love each other the constituent Peter and Mary binds each other.

bound morpheme

a morpheme that has to attach to another morpheme, it cannot stand on its own, e.g. ed, ment, un . See also free morpheme

D(eep)-structure

the structure before movement takes place, a representation of thematic relations.

ergative verb

a verb that can appear in a VP either (a) with a single theme argument functioning as the subject of the clause (The ship sank), similarly to unaccusative structures or (b) in the presence of a light verb together with an agentive subject (They sank the ship), when the structure is similar to the structure of transitive verbs. As opposed to unaccusative verbs, ergative verbs cannot appear in the existential there construction (unless they are ambiguous between the two readings), and they are typically verbs expressing a change of state, like break, explode, grow.

event structure

verbs can express simple or complex events. Event structure describes what sub-events an event expressed by a certain verb is made up of. This has an effect on the syntactic organisation of elements within the VP. There is supposed to be an isomorphism between event structure and the structure of the VP: a VP breaks up into sub-vPs/VPs in a one-to-one correspondence with the sub-events.

inflection

(a) a morpheme added to the end of words of a given category in sentence structure as required by the given structure, e.g. s in Peter like s his dog or er in Peter is clever er than Tony.

(b) the head of an Inflectional Phrase. It can be realised as a modal auxiliary or a zero agreement morpheme. Information about tense can be found in a separate vP directly under IP.

isomorphism

a one-to-one correspondence between the members of two sets.

language

a system that enables people who speak it to produce and understand linguistic expressions.

light verb

a verb occupying the head of a vP used in combination with another element, typically a noun or verb, where the light verb’s contribution to the meaning of the whole construction is less than that of a fully thematic main verb, e.g. to take a shower=to shower. Certain verbs expressing aspectual (be, have) or modal (let) meaning also belong here. According to the proposals in the present book the following constituents can appear within the vP in a visible or abstract form (see also vP-shells):

– agentive arguments in the specifier positions

– experiencer arguments in the specifier position

– goal arguments in the double-object construction as specifiers

– the passive -en morpheme in the head of vP

– the aspectual morphemes -en and -ing in the head of vP

– the tense morpheme in the head of vP

morpheme

the smallest meaningful unit. Words can be made up of one or more morphemes. See also bound morpheme, free morpheme.

movement

S-structure constituents do not always appear in the position where they are base-generated in D-structure, they often move from their base positions to other structural positions. There can be various reasons motivating movement, see wh-movement and DP-movement.

phonology

the study of the sound patterns of language.

predicate

the part of the clause excluding the subject giving information about the subject: Mary [is clever/likes chocolate/is waiting for Jamie/was in bed/is a university student].

Projection Principle

lexical information is syntactically represented.

semantics

the study of meaning. It covers both lexical meaning and the meaning of sentences with special emphasis on their truth conditions (under what circumstances a sentence is true/false).

specifier position

a position defined by X-bar Theory. The specifier is sister to X', daughter of XP. It is a phrasal position, the nature of the phrase depends on what it is the specifier of. E.g. the specifier of IP is the subject, the specifier of DP is the possessor in possessive structures.

S(urface)-structure

post-movement structure containing the traces of moved constituents.

tense

a syntactic category with the help of which we can locate an event or situation in time. In syntactic representation information about tense can be found within the vP appearing directly under the IP in the form of -s, -ed or the zero tense morpheme.

theme

one of the thematic roles where the argument is not affected by the action described by the verb e.g. in Peter saw John nothing directly happens to John as a result of being seen. In terms of the UTAH the theme theta-role is assigned to the specifier position of the VP.

there-construction: see existential there-construction.

theta role

the semantic role of the participants as required by the predicate. E.g. verbs define what kind of semantic relationship is to be established between the verb itself and the arguments of the verb, and arguments are selected accordingly. The verb kick calls for an agent subject, so its subject position cannot be occupied by e.g. my CD-player.

Uniform Theta-role Assignment Hypothesis (UTAH)

a Θ-role is assigned in the same structural position in all structures in which it is present.

word category

a set of expressions that share certain linguistic features, a grouping of words that cluster together, e.g. noun, verb. See also functional category, thematic category.

previous next

Basic English Syntax with Exercises

5.2.3.2 Light verbs and ergatives

One way to solve all these problems in one go would be to assume that the structure of the transitive alternate of an ergative verb is as follows:

(50)

Under this analysis, the UTAH can be maintained as each argument sits in exactly the position it should according to our previous analyses: the theme is the specifier of the main verb and the agent is the specifier of the abstract light verb. Moreover the event structure is represented in an isomorphic way with there being two parts to the syntactic structure each of which relate to the relevant sub-event.

The disadvantages of this analysis are: i) there is an empty light verb and ii) the wrong word order is predicted. The supposition of the empty verb is, of course, not a problem in itself. We have seen a number of instances of empty categories that are well justified and enable us to provide accounts for phenomena that would otherwise be mysterious. As long as we can independently justify the assumption of an empty element, given that language apparently makes use of such things, there is no problem in the assumption itself. There is both semantic and syntactic evidence of the existence of the empty light verb. We will return to the latter, but the semantic evidence is fairly obvious: the structure is interpreted as a causative and the presence of this meaning justifies the assumption of a light verb which provides it. Similarly, the presence of a ‘causer’ argument justifies the assumption of a predicate which assigns the relevant Θ-role. As there is no such visible predicate which can do such things in (48b) our conclusion is that this predicate is ‘invisible’.

But how can we even consider (50) as a possible analysis when it obviously gets the word order wrong? The thing to remember is that what we are discussing here is the organisation of the VP at D-structure and we know that things tend to move about before we get to S-structure. Thus, if there is a plausible movement analysis which will re-arrange things so that the right word order is achieved at S-structure, then this objection will have been answered. The obvious way to achieve the correct word order would be to have the verb move to the light verb position:

(51)

The analysis claims that the main verb moves to adjoin to the empty light verb. This is a perfectly possible movement given what we know about other movements. The movement is neither too far, violating bounding conditions, nor in violation of the Projection principle by changing lexically stated information. The movement is also structurally preserving in the way that adjunction is structurally preserving.

Of course, showing something to be a possible movement and showing it to be an actual movement are two different things. In order to justify the movement analysis in (51) we might consider a similar construction in Hungarian. Consider the following:

(52)alegurította a labdát
down-rolled-3.s the ball-acc
‘he rolled the ball down’
ba labda legurult
the ball down-rolled
 
(53)aépítette a házat
built-3.s. the house
‘he built the house’
ba ház felépult
‘the house (became) built’
 
(54)aelmozdította a dobozt
away-moved-3.s. the box-acc
‘he moved the box’
ba doboz elmozdult
‘the box moved’
 
(55)agépesítette a mezogazdaságot
mechanised-3.s. the farmland
‘he mechanised the farmland’
ba mezogazdaság gépesült
‘the farmland (became) mechanised’

As we see in these examples, Hungarian has a similar alternation with a set of ‘change of state’ verbs. Moreover, the transitive versions all have a causative reading, just like the English examples we have been looking at. The interesting point is that the Hungarian causative verbs have a special form with the morpheme ít indicating causative:

(56)pre-verbstemcausativetenseagreement
le-gur-ít-ot-ta
(fel-)ép-ít-et-te
el-mozd-ít-ot-ta
gépes-ít-et-te

Putting aside the issue of tense and agreement inflections, it is possible to give a very similar analysis of the Hungarian causative verbs to the one we proposed for English causatives, with a causative light verb introducing the causative interpretation and the agent subject:

(57)

The difference between English and Hungarian, however, is that the causative element is not phonologically empty in Hungarian. The ít morpheme, however, is a bound morpheme, which means that it must attach to some appropriate stem, i.e. a verb, and this is the trigger for the movement:

(58)

Thus the main verb stem moves to the causative light verb morpheme in order to bind it. The product of the movement would obviously have to undergo further morphological processes in order to show the appropriate tense and agreement forms, but this is unimportant for the point being made here. Suppose English works in exactly the same way as this. The English causative light verb is a bound morpheme, though a phonologically null one, and differs only in this way from the non-null causative make. Thus it must be attached to the main verb and this happens by the main verb moving to adjoin to it. This would then give us an independent motivation for the movement of the verb.

previous next