ASPECT IN SYNTAX
A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University In Partial Fulfil...
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ASPECT IN SYNTAX
A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy
by Octav Eugen DeLazero January 2012
© 2012 Octav Eugen DeLazero
ii
ASPECT IN SYNTAX Octav Eugen DeLazero, Ph.D. Cornell University 2012
This work explores the syntactic dimension of verbal aspect, starting with a discussion of the role of argument structure in the definition of aspect. The proposal includes a theory of argument linking in a Distributed Morphology framework. I argue that the same aspectual opposition, revolving around the expression of transitions between situations by the Perfectives, is manifested in two kinds of contrast in Slavic: Perfective-Imperfective and determinate-indeterminate (in verbs of motion). This comparison suggests that goal-like arguments render a verb inherently Perfective, since the presence of a goal implies a transition between an event and a situation post-event, after the goal has been reached. This conclusion is exploited in a theory of theta-roles and their representation in syntax, with all arguments introduced by functional heads. Some prefixes associated with applicative heads also Perfectivize, when they add a path specification – e.g., the path followed by the action over an incremental Theme until the complete involvement of the Theme. As individual prefixes are associated with individual arguments, I propose that they incorporate into the functional heads introducing arguments, and combine by predicate modification, inheriting the modifier semantics from their original syntactic position as free adverbials. I also discuss prefixes which do not Perfectivize, particularly in comitative applicatives.
iii
The second part treats the syntax of outer aspect and actionality, and the role of the latter in the derivation of aspectual subtypes. A general conclusion is that Slavic(-type) aspect is a syntactically diffuse phenomenon, distributed on functional heads both inside and outside the VP, and reflecting its gradual appearance and systematization into one grammatical category. The analyses combine synchronic and diachronic approaches, comparing facts from IndoEuropean and Hungarian. I suggest that historical explanations are sometimes the best ones for synchronic facts, illustrating this point with cases of structure preservation in semantic change.
iv
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to acknowledge, first of all, my debt to my teachers and mentors these last five years. To my thesis advisors: Wayles Browne, for his generous advice in Slavic linguistics and much more; Molly Diesing, for her close guidance in matters syntactic and semantic; and Michael Weiss, for encouragement and direction in Indo-European. All three of them have been of invaluable help during my work both on this thesis and on the papers that preceded it, and I owe them an immense debt of gratitude. Thanks also to other teachers and graduate students at Cornell with whom I have consulted at various points about topics more or less closely connected to this project: John Bowers, for discussions and advice in morphology and syntax; Effi Georgala, for helpful suggestions and references in syntax; Wayne Harbert, for his wonderful teaching that kept alive and stimulated my interest in Celtic and Germanic; Carol Rosen, for discussions about various semantic issues. Special thanks also to the staff in the Linguistics Department, past and present, particularly to Angie Tinti and Sheila Haddad. My studies at Cornell were partially funded by a Sage Fellowship; I gratefully acknowledge their support.
v
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Abbreviations
x
1 Overview
1
2 Slavic-type aspect
4
2.1 Introduction
4
2.2 Situation aspect and viewpoint aspect
5
2.3 The semantics of Slavic-type aspect
10
2.3.1 The Perfective-Imperfective opposition
10
2.3.1.1 Distinction from viewpoint aspect
10
2.3.1.2 Imperfectives
13
2.3.1.3 Perfectives
17
2.3.1.4 Perfectives and Imperfectives in relation to each other
23
2.3.1.4.1 Complementary distribution
23
2.3.1.4.2 Temporal relations in aspectual pairs
24
2.3.1.4.3 The Imperfective general-factual
25
2.3.1.4.4 Aspectual choice in reference to sequenced events
26
2.3.1.4.5 Reversed and repeated actions
29
2.3.1.4.6 Processual and iterative readings of the Imperfective
31
2.3.2 The determinate-indeterminate opposition
33
2.3.2.1 General remarks
33
2.3.2.2 Indeterminate Imperfectives
37
2.3.2.3 Determinate Imperfectives
40
vi
2.3.3 The interaction between the two aspectual oppositions
42
2.3.3.1 Two functions of the determinate Imperfectives
42
2.3.3.2 Parallel uses of Perfectives and determinate Imperfectives
44
2.3.3.2.1 Transitions between situations as ‘restricted action’
44
2.3.3.2.2 Futurate interpretation of the present tense
45
2.3.3.2.3 Aspect in injunctions and prohibitions
48
2.3.3.2.4 Aspectual choice in negative and interrogative contexts
51
2.3.3.3 Two functions of the indeterminate Imperfectives
53
2.3.3.4 Determinate Imperfectives as biaspectual
54
2.3.3.5 Four aspectual oppositions in verbs of motion
58
3 The syntactic framework
63
3.1 Overview
63
3.2 Syntactic arguments, thematic relations, and theta-roles
64
3.2.1 Terminology and general remarks
64
3.2.2 Causers, Agents, and Themes
72
3.2.3 Locations and Affectees
76
3.2.4 Qualities and verbal concepts
87
3.2.5 Directional theta-roles
95
3.2.5.1 Theta-roles, event boundaries, and telicity
95
3.2.5.2 Theta-roles and Slavic-type aspect
98
3.3 The syntactic representation of theta-roles
101
3.3.1 Introduction
101
3.3.2 Argument structure
104
vii
3.3.3 The licensing and interpretation of arguments
110
3.3.4 Event boundaries from theta-roles
119
3.4 Arguments: applications of the theory
123
3.4.1 Causers and Agents
123
3.4.2 Verbs of positioning and Location arguments
130
3.4.3 Affectees
134
4 Aspect inside the VP: Slavic-type aspect
137
4.1 General remarks
137
4.2 The adverbial origin of verbal prefixes
138
4.3 The syntax and semantics of prefixation
143
4.4 Prefixes as applicative morphemes
155
4.4.1 Theme applicatives
155
4.4.1.1 Additional Theme arguments
155
4.4.1.2 Converted Theme arguments
159
4.4.1.3 Denominatives
162
4.4.1.4 Analysis
164
4.4.2 Completive prefixes
169
4.4.3 Directional applicatives
189
4.4.4 Locative applicatives
195
4.4.5 Multiple prefixation with different arguments
202
4.4.6 Comitative applicatives
207
viii
5 Aspect outside the VP: viewpoint aspect and actionality
232
5.1 Overview
232
5.2 Reference time and situation time in aspectual contrasts
233
5.3 Situation aspect and viewpoint aspect in Late Proto-Indo-European
242
5.3.1 Outline
242
5.3.2 The relative aspectual values of the overt aspectual categories
242
5.3.3 Neutral viewpoint aspect in Early Proto-Indo-European
252
5.3.4 Situation aspect features inherent in the verbal root
254
5.3.5 The derivation of the aspectual forms in syntax
257
5.4 Manners of action expressed by the present stem
263
5.4.1 Introduction
263
5.4.2 Survey of possibilities
266
5.4.3 Atelic non-duratives: attenuatives and semelfactives
273
5.4.4 Atelic duratives: statives and processuals
277
5.4.5 Phasal verbs with superlexical prefixes
297
5.5 The syntax of actionality
301
5.6 The semantics of the actionality morphemes
320
5.7 Conclusions and further issues
325
6 Summary
329
References
314
ix
ABBREVIATIONS
Languages
Grammatical categories
Bg.
Bulgarian
act.
active
Cz.
Czech
aor.
aorist
Fr.
French
caus.
causative
Gk.
Greek
det.
determinate
Gm.
German
f.
feminine
Goth.
Gothic
indet.
indeterminate
Hebr.
Hebrew
inf.
infinitive
Hitt.
Hittite
inj.
injunctive
Hun.
Hungarian
imp.
imperative
IE
Indo-European
ipf.
imperfect
Lat.
Latin
Ipfv.
Imperfective
Latv.
Latvian
itr.
intransitive
Lith.
Lithuanian
m.
masculine
MW
Middle Welsh
mid.
middle
Russ.
Russian
n.
neuter
SCr.
Serbo-Croatian
part.
participle
Slo.
Slovene
Pfv.
Perfective
Sp.
Spanish
pres.
present
OCS
Old Church Slavonic
tr.
transitive
OE
Old English
OFr
Old French
ON
Old Norse
PBSl
Proto-Balto-Slavic
PGmc
Proto-Germanic
PIE
Proto-Indo-European
PSl
Proto-Slavic
Pol.
Polish
Ukr.
Ukrainian
Ved.
Vedic
x
1 OVERVIEW
The main objective of this work is to explore the syntactic dimensions of the verbal category of aspect and to offer an articulated account of its manifestations. The central claim is that argument structure, as well as the syntactic structure in general, plays an important role in the definition of certain aspectual phenomena. This proposal includes a theory of argument structure as syntactic representation of precisely defined theta-roles. To this effect, I undertake an analysis based on the structural positions of aspectual morphemes which can account for their semantic interpretation, in a framework inspired mainly from the theses of Distributed Morphology about the derivation of words in syntax. The general approach is that of generative grammar – essentially X-bar theory – and compositional semantics, applied to both synchronic and diachronic analyses. The data come from IndoEuropean languages, especially the ones with a more conservative morphology, and accessorily from Hungarian. Chapter 2 is meant to introduce the major role played by arguments with theta-roles like Goal, Source, or Recipient, in what I term „Slavic-type aspect‟ – the aspectual opposition familiar from Slavic, and paralleled more or less closely in other languages like German, Latin, Hungarian, etc. I argue that this type of aspectual contrast, revolving around the expression of transitions between situations by the Perfectives, is manifested in two kinds of aspectual pairing in Slavic: on the one hand the Perfective-Imperfective opposition, and on the other hand the determinate-indeterminate opposition in unprefixed Imperfective verbs of motion (motion in one direction vs. motion without a definite direction). This comparison suggests that goal-like arguments render a verb inherently Perfective, because the presence of a goal implies a transition
1
between an event and a situation post-event, after the goal has been reached; as such, the determinate Imperfectives behave like the Perfectives when they have a Goal argument. This conclusion is exploited to its full extent in chapter 4, for which chapter 3 provides the theoretical framework. This consists of a theory of theta-roles and their representation in syntax, where all arguments are introduced by functional heads, as well as of applications to data from the languages considered in the subsequent chapters. In particular, I propose an expanded view of the nature and role of spatio-temporal „location‟ arguments, with the theta-roles of (static) Location, Goal, and Source. Chapter 4 discusses aspect „inside the VP‟, focusing on the prefixes which have a lexical, and often also an aspectual, contribution: the former consists in modifying the lexical meaning of the verbal root, and the latter in Perfectivization, where applicable. I start from the observation that some prefixes associated with applicatives also Perfectivize, when they add a specification of path – most commonly, the path followed by the action over an incremental Theme until the complete involvement of the Theme. As individual prefixes are associated with specific arguments, I propose that they form complex heads with the functional heads introducing arguments, with which they combine by predicate modification, preserving the semantic composition inherited from their original function as free modifiers. This chapter also discusses prefixes which do not Perfectivize, such as the comitative prefixes, whose function is always applicative. Chapter 5 treats aspect „outside the VP‟. This includes viewpoint aspect („outer aspect‟, e.g. imperfect vs. aorist in Greek), which provides a perspective on the event, and actionality (Aktionsart), which refers to properties of events such as duration, intensity, etc., or focuses various points of the event. This actionality component plays the main role in the derivation of
2
several aspectual subtypes in Slavic: secondary Imperfectives, semelfactive Perfectives, and Perfectives derived with phasal „superlexical‟ prefixes (inceptives, terminatives, delimitatives). A general conclusion of chapters 4 and 5 is that Slavic(-type) aspect is a syntactically diffuse phenomenon, distributed on functional heads both inside and outside the VP, and reflecting its gradual appearance and systematization into one grammatical category in the history of Slavic. The approach to the data is both synchronic and diachronic, comparing facts from genetically related languages (Indo-European), and using Hungarian examples when they can provide a better perspective by similarity or contrast. I argue that historical explanations are sometimes the most plausible ones for synchronic facts, and I discuss several cases where structures which are inherited from older stages of a language or acquired in lexical borrowings account for apparent exceptions to rules that otherwise hold quite well synchronically. The title „Aspect in Syntax‟ is meant to best describe the goal of this undertaking, which is precisely the examination of the syntactic dimension of aspect. It does not put forward any claim to universal applicability to languages other than the ones explicitly under discussion, although the theory which underlies the proposal is general enough to be tested elsewhere.
3
2 SLAVIC-TYPE ASPECT
2.1 Introduction The verbal systems of many languages display more than one aspectual opposition. The present chapter introduces three such oppositions – situation aspect, viewpoint aspect, and Slavic-type aspect –, and treats in more detail the last one. What I term „Slavic-type aspect‟ refers to contrasts of the kind Russ. čitat’ „read‟ (Imperfective) – pročitat’ „read (and finish the reading)‟ (Perfective), which have derivational and semantic parallels in other Indo-European languages, as well as in Hungarian. These languages typically have verbal prefixes or particles specialized in aspectual functions. To the extent that such parallels hold outside of Slavic, the conclusions which follow from the examination of Slavic material will carry over to non-Slavic languages. For instance, one of the most common functions of verbal prefixation is to denote the completion of the action expressed by the base verb (Hun. olvasni – elolvasni and Russ. čitat’ – pročitat’ „read‟ – „read through‟), and this function is identifiable as such, independently of how often or how systematically a given language makes use of prefixation. There are numerous differences in the manner and extent of the use of Slavic-type aspect in non-Slavic languages, but there is also a sizable amount of similarities which calls for a common explanation. The fact that the choice of an aspectually marked form in Gothic, Latin, or Hungarian, appears sometimes to be optional, cannot obscure the more significant fact that these forms still exist with a function which is very similar, if not identical, to the function of their Slavic counterparts.1
1
Cf. the comparative data in Dahl (1984) and Miller (1993), and the numerous contrastive analyses of Slavic and
German: Mehlig (1983), Dimitrova-Vulchanova (1999), Kątny (2000), Svenonius (2004), and many others. Balázs (1979), Kecskés (1989), Kiefer (1994), etc., compare the Hungarian and Slavic aspectual systems. 4
This discussion of Slavic-type aspect will focus on the relationship between the aspectual distinction in the pairs of manner-encoding unprefixed Imperfective verbs of motion of type Russ. bežat’ „run (once, in one direction)‟ (determinate) – begat’ „run (around, or in several directions, or several times in one direction‟ (indeterminate), and the more general PerfectiveImperfective opposition. The existence of this relationship is suggested by parallels in the syntactic behavior of the members in both types of aspectual pairs with respect to each other. The central claim is that both these oppositions are manifestations of Slavic-type aspect: the Imperfectives describe situations in themselves, the Perfectives describe transitions between situations, and the determinate Imperfectives can describe both situations and transitions. This dual nature of the determinate Imperfectives explains why they sometimes behave in relation to the indeterminate Imperfectives in the same manner as the Perfectives do in relation to the Imperfectives. Transitions are often associated with arguments having goal-like theta-roles and referring to situations post-event. The presence of such arguments inherently implies transitions from the situation where the goal has not yet been reached to the situation where the goal has been reached. Since transitions are expressed with Perfectives or determinate Imperfectives, verbs with goal-like arguments typically belong to one these two aspectual classes.
2.2 Situation aspect and viewpoint aspect A „situation‟2 in semantics can be defined as a triplet consisting of a spatio-temporal location, a proposition, and a truth-value (Barwise & Perry 1983). The sentence John killed Bill describes a situation taking place during a time interval in the base world if and only if the sentence is true
2
An equivalent term is „eventuality‟. 5
during that time interval. This is a linguistic (semantic) definition, not an ontological one: even if something happens during a time interval, if it is not described in a linguistic expression, it does not constitute a situation in semantics. One of the grammatical categories employed in the linguistic expression of situations is aspect. In her treatment of aspect as a category of Universal Grammar, Smith (1991/1997) distinguishes between situation aspect and viewpoint aspect,3 arguing that this distinction holds universally for all languages, and that all languages possess both aspectual categories. The aspectual interpretation of a sentence is the result of the interaction between situation aspect, viewpoint aspect, and pragmatic factors. Situation aspect comprises the basic situation types described by Vendler (1967: 106),4 and these are represented as clusters of semantic features (Smith 1997: 3, 20), where telicity refers to the property of a situation to have a natural ending:5 -
states are [-dynamic] (or [+static]): „knowing the answer‟, „loving Tom‟;
-
events are [+dynamic] (or [-static]), and include: -
activities, which are [+dynamic][+durative][-telic]: „laughing‟, „strolling in the park‟;
3
Equivalent terms are „inner aspect‟ and „outer aspect‟ respectively (Travis 1991).
4
Situations have been classified in many different ways – for instance, Comrie (1976) distinguishes between events
and states, Mourelatos (1981) between events, processes, and states, etc. Tatevosov (2002) provides an overview and a discussion of the taxonomy and terminology of various authors. 5
Several definitions of telicity have been proposed. For instance, Krifka (1989; 1992) links telicity to quantized
predicates: if such a predicate applies to two events x and y, then y cannot be properly included in x; Borer (2005) defines a predicate as telic if the event x it describes contains at least one sub-event y whose complement in x is not described by that predicate; Rothstein (2004) associates telic events with an abstract predicate BECOME; and according to Higginbotham‟s (2000), telicity involves a complex of two events, while atelicity involves only one event. 6
-
accomplishments, which are [+dynamic][+durative][+telic]: „building a house‟, „walking to school‟, „learning Greek‟;
-
semelfactives, which are [+dynamic][-durative][-telic]: „tapping‟, „knocking‟;
-
achievements [+dynamic][-durative][+telic]: „winning a race‟, „reaching the top‟.
With regard to states, there are several diagnostic tests for agentivity that also serve to distinguish activities from states, suggesting that a necessary condition for stativity is the absence of agentivity (cf. Rothmayr 2009: 51-52):
(1)
Progressive tenses:6 John is standing in that corner. #
The house is standing near the bank.
Clefting: What John did was stand in that corner (for one hour). #
What the house did was stand near the bank.
Intentionality adverbial: John deliberately stood in that corner for one hour. #
The house deliberately stood near the bank.
Purpose clause: John stood in that corner for one hour in order to please Bill. #
The house stood near the bank in order to please Bill.
6
Levin and Rappaport Hovav (1995: 127-128) argue that “verbs of spatial configuration” like stand, sit, and lie, are
unergartive with animate subjects, but unaccusative with animate subjects. The second example has an irrelevant reading where the state is temporary (e.g. when talking about a mobile home). 7
Complement of verbs of perception: I saw John standing in the corner. #
I saw the house standing near the bank.
This condition is not sufficient: in John fell down the stairs, the theta-role of John is not agent, yet the predicate is not stative. Some verbs can have both a stative and a non-stative reading: (2a) describes a state, but (2b) describes an activity if the house is regarded as opposing resistance to crumbling.
(2a)
John’s house stands near the bank. – state
(2b)
John’s house is still standing. – activity
The house in (2b) acts as an agent whose agentivity is manifested as inertia or passive resistance to motion. Lloyd (1979: 39-40) points out that both active and passive (inert) agents have in common the expenditure of energy – in the action or in the resistance to change respectively. 7 Intuitively, agentivity by its very nature entails dynamism, since it supplies an input of energy,8 therefore the feature [-dynamic] associated with states entails the lack of agentivity:
7
This kind of quasi-stativity can also be acquired by a verb diachronically without affecting its argument structure
and syntactic behavior: in modern Basque, the verb iraun means „stand, remain‟, but its sole argument bears the ergative case of subjects of transitive verbs, which in this case indicates agentivity. 8
Lloyd (1979) uses this physical concept, as well as other ontological considerations, in his discussion of aspect and
actionality in Gothic. 8
(3)
agent → event [+dynamic] state [-dynamic] → no agent
If [-dynamic] is simply equated with inertia in the physical sense, this ontological concept will have a cognitive status as well, and will be translatable linguistically as the situation type „state‟ – a situation dominated by inertia, due to the absence of an energy input. Activities and accomplishments are opposed as durative events to semelfactives and achievements, which are non-durative events, while accomplishments and achievements are opposed as telic events to activities and semelfactives, which are atelic events. The situation types are pre-linguistic cognitive categories, and situation aspect as such is not expressed overtly in grammar. According to Smith, there are no morphemes or syntactic configurations 9 whose function would be to express the situation types in a system of aspectual oppositions, although there are certain constraints on their linguistic realization – for instance, a quantized NP complement triggers an accomplishment reading (eating an apple), while a bare plural or a mass term only allows an activity reading (eating apples / bread). Unlike situation aspect, viewpoint aspect has the role of „rendering visible‟ the situations: “Aspectual viewpoints present situations with a particular perspective or focus, rather like the focus of a camera lens.” (Smith 1997: 2). The viewpoints are: -
perfective: a situation is focused in its entirety;
-
imperfective: only an internal part of a situation is focused, to the exclusion of its endpoints;
-
neutral: sentences with neutral viewpoint aspect are aspectually vague.
9
Several authors have expressed the opposing view, proposing syntactic accounts of inner aspect. MacDonald
(2008: 7-26) offers a survey of these proposals, and puts forward his own. 9
Although this classification is assumed to hold universally, the definitions of the viewpoints are only “general schemata [which] underdetermine the properties of the viewpoints; along certain dimensions they are realized differently in individual languages” (Smith 1997: 61). This proviso allows the analysis of the aspectual systems of typologically dissimilar languages to be carried out in a unitary theoretical framework, leaving enough leeway for language-particular applications. Canonical examples of perfective-imperfective oppositions are 3sg.pres.ind. Fr. simple past régna vs. imperfect régnait, or Gk. aorist ebasíleuse vs. imperfect ebasíleue of régner, basileúein „reign‟.
2.3 The semantics of Slavic-type aspect
2.3.1 The Perfective-Imperfective opposition
2.3.1.1 Distinction from viewpoint aspect Slavic(-type) aspect “revolves around the way in which the speaker conceptualizes the possible occasions for an event” (Timberlake 2004: 418). Smith (1997: 227-262) treats Russian aspect as a manifestation of viewpoint aspect. However, this assumption is a priori unlikely to be correct, because the function of the aspectual opposition in Russian is essentially the same 10 as the function of its formal counterpart in other Slavic languages, such as Old Church Slavonic, Bulgarian, or Sorbian, which also have a separate expression for viewpoint aspect, 11 and in 10
Dickey (2000) notes several variations in the values of the aspectual forms across Slavic, but these do not interfere
with the basic functions of these forms when compared with those of viewpoint aspect. 11
The aorist-imperfect opposition in Bulgarian is generally regarded as a form of viewpoint aspect (Aronson 1985;
Marovska 1991). 10
which the two distinctions do not overlap (cf. Galton 1962; Lindstedt 1986; Guentchéva 1995). In these languages, the perfective and imperfective viewpoints are expressed in the past tense by the aorist and the imperfect respectively, and there are Perfective imperfectives (Perfective imperfects) and Imperfective perfectives (Imperfective aorists). For instance, the past tense forms of Bg. pišai – napišap „I write‟ mark both viewpoint and Slavic-type aspect:12
(4)
VIEWPOINT ASPECT IMPERFECTIVE (IMPERFECT)
PERFECTIVE (AORIST)
pisašei „he was writing / / used to write‟ napisašep „he wrote / used to write (and complete the writing)‟
pisai „he kept writing for a while‟ napisap „he wrote (and completed the writing)‟
IMPERFECTIVE PERFECTIVE
SLAVIC-TYPE ASPECT
Perhaps more significantly, the languages which had viewpoint aspect from an earlier stage of their history would not have acquired Slavic-type aspect in the first place (by using adverbial particles as preverbs with aspectual value), if these two kinds of aspectual opposition had been identical. It is generally thought that Slavic-type aspect appeared at a later date than viewpoint aspect, both in the Indo-European languages and in Hungarian, and in most languages it is not grammaticalized (Bybee & Dahl: 1989).13 Slavic-type aspect is morphologically and functionally much less systematic than viewpoint aspect. Its morphological markers are diverse and often
12
I will refer to verbs in Slavic-type aspect by using capital initials („Perfective‟ and „Imperfective‟), in order to
distinguish the two members from their homonyms in viewpoint aspect („perfective‟ and „imperfective‟), and I will mark the relevant forms in Slavic with a superscript p for Perfective and i for Imperfective. The citation form of the verbs in Slavic is the infinitive, except in Bulgarian and Macedonian, where it has been lost; Bulgarian uses the 1sg. present indicative, and Macedonian the 3sg. present indicative. 13
Hungarian had viewpoint aspect in the past tense, but the imperfective (imperfect) fell out of use in the 19 th
century. Verbal particles are present in the earliest attestations of Hungarian (Bárczi 1963: passim). 11
lexical – numerous prefixes with their own meanings, as well as several suffixes –, whereas viewpoint aspect is typically expressed, in a given language, by only one morpheme, with few or no allomorphs. Functionally, Slavic-point aspect is optional in many non-Slavic languages, as well as apparently in some early attestations of Slavic, e.g. in Old Russian (Nørgård-Sørensen 1997: 17). This internal heterogeneity of Slavic-type aspect has been argued to reflect in Slavic a gradual development of the various functional classes of Perfectives and Imperfectives (Regnéll 1944; Kølln 1958; Forsyth 1972; Bermel 1997; Dickey 2007; Janda 2008). Viewpoint aspect consists of a binary opposition whose members – the perfective and the imperfective – are functionally homogenous: although there can be several morphological classes (e.g. s-aorists, root aorists, etc., in Indo-European), there are no functional or semantic distinctions, within either the perfective or the imperfective, that would be comparable to the various morphological classes of Perfectives or Imperfectives in Slavic. Specialized uses like the conative imperfect, the gnomic aorist, or the imperfect of the truth just realized (accompanied by a particle) in Greek, apply to the imperfect or the aorist as a class, and do not divide them into subclasses: in the appropriate context, any imperfect can perform a conative function, and any aorist can have a gnomic value.14 In viewpoint aspect, the perfective and imperfective forms can
14
In Greek, the aorist of stative verbs can have an ingressive reading: erksa „I became a ruler‟ (árkhein „rule‟),
enósēsa „I became ill‟ (noseĩn „be ill‟), etc. This might have arisen as a specialization of the aorist by focusing the beginning of the atelic event / state, since the beginning (as well as the end) is „visible‟ in the perfective viewpoint, but normally the end has another lexical expression, especially with states: a state will continue indefinitely unless interrupted, and when the interruption becomes relevant, its nature is expressed by another verb – e.g. a reign is terminated when the monarch dies, abdicates, etc. (The same observation applies, mutatis mutandis, to the Slavictype aspect, where the terminative Perfectives indicating the end of a state or atelic activity are extremely rare.) 12
have various functions, but these functions do not divide the perfectives and imperfectives into semantic classes with their own characteristic morphological markers, and any specializations of forms are confined to a few verbs – for example, from Gk. histánai „stand‟ the 1.sg. indicative root aorist tr. éstēsa vs. s-aorist itr. éstēn. By contrast, the Perfectives can be classified into a variety of morphosemantic categories (corresponding to Aktionsarten in the traditional sense), which constitute disjunct subclasses: completive, inceptive, perdurative, intensive, attenuative, semelfactive, etc. Likewise, certain Imperfectives can have specialized meanings, such as determinate vs. indeterminate (in verbs of motion), iterative, or frequentative. Many of these Perfective and Imperfective classes have characteristic morphological markers, e.g. Russ. za(inceptive: zapet’p „start singing‟ vs. pet’i „sing‟), na- + reflexive -sja (intensive resultative: naest’sjap „eat one‟s fill‟ vs. est’i „eat‟), Cz. secondary -vá- (habitual-frequentative: stříhávati „cut (usually)‟ vs. stříhati „cut‟), etc. Slavic-type aspect is a more diffuse phenomenon, this fact pointing to a variety of factors responsible for its manifestation, while viewpoint aspect is semantically and syntactically more circumscribed (as I will argue in the next chapter).
2.3.1.2 Imperfectives All Imperfective verbs in Slavic are used to express either activities or states, which are durative. This is true for all recognizable uses of the Imperfective: processual, iterative, and generalfactual, including reversed action (since the reversal of an action is subsequent to the action, and
What matters here is that Greek, unlike Slavic, did not assign the ingressive function to one particular affix. (In Slavic, the only relatively productive ingressive affix is the prefix za-.) 13
there must be a non-null time interval between the action and its reversal)15 – for instance, Russ. brat’i „take‟:
(5)
Poka ja brali knigu, Tanja čitala žurnal. – processual „While I was getting a book, Tanja read a magazine.‟ (Forsyth 1970: 15)
(6)
Ja často brali knigi domoj i čital ix. – iterative „I often took books home and read them.‟ (Forsyth 1970: 15)
(7)
Ja uže čital ètu knigu. Ja brali eë v biblioteke. – reversed action „I have already read that book. I had it out of the library.‟ (Forsyth 1970: 15)
This generalization holds for all Slavic languages, and all Slavic languages display these uses of the Imperfective. Since the aspectual form used in Slavic for „naming the action‟, or identifying it otherwise, is the Imperfective in its appropriate function (general-factitive, narrative, prohibitive, etc.), a sentence with an Imperfective identifies the state or activity expressed by the verb. Resorting to an Imperfective requires that the denoted situation be durative, i.e. that there should be a non-null time interval – a durative situation S – described with the Imperfective:16
(8)
S time
15
The distinction between the main functions of the Imperfectives (and of the Perfectives in the next section) is
based on Schlegel‟s (2002) descriptions of the use of aspectual forms in Russian. 16
Durativity has oftentimes been regarded as the defining feature of the imperfectives, starting with Mazon (1911). 14
This durativity requirement, or „condition of Imperfectivity‟ Ci, states that if a proposition pi, corresponding to an expression with an Imperfective, identifies a situation e, then e is durative:
(9)
Ci: pi(e) → Durative(pi)(e)
A durative situation can be described with a Perfective as well – for example, in conjunction with a duration adverbial in Russ. pročitat’p knigu za čas „read a book in one hour‟, or with frequency adverbs introducing a sub-framework into the narrative, such as Russ. každyj raz „every time‟ (examples in Comrie 1976: 31) –, but Ci does not apply to the Perfectives as a class, whereas it does to the Imperfectives. Sonnenhauser (2006) offers a detailed study of the Russian Imperfective. All of the readings of the Imperfective distinguished in her book (Sonnenhauser 2006: 27) have in common the feature of durativity. This is true by definition for the actual-processual, inactual/continuous, durative, iterative, habitual, and permanent, readings. The conative is durative because expending effort is construed as durative. The general-factual is durative by default: being of general application, it cannot be one-time, hence it cannot be instantaneous. (A repeated instantaneous event is iterative, therefore durative.) The potential is durative because possessing the ability to bring about a situation is a state, which is durative. Finally, the „atemporal‟ reading is in fact indistinguishable from the general-factual. It can be easily verified that Ci applies to all Imperfectives as a class, in all Slavic languages, and independently of what internal classification of Imperfectives is adopted. For
15
instance, the „habituals‟,17 which are more common in West Slavic and Serbo-Croatian (Browne 1993: 332), describe situations just like any other Imperfectives do – in this case, the situations are states whose relevant feature is the respective habit; e.g. in Czech, the habitual stříhávati „cut (usually)‟ is contrasted with the non-habitual stříhati „cut‟:
(10)
Stříhávalii jsme si naše stromy sami, ale ted’ k nám chodí zahradník a stříhái nám je. „We used to prune our trees ourselves, but now a gardener comes to us and prunes them for us.‟ (Lee 1964: 121/206)
Ci applies also to those secondary Imperfectives, common especially in Bulgarian, which are derived from prefixed Perfectives with the same lexical meaning as the base Imperfective in cases where other Slavic languages do not display such derivations, even though they would be morphologically possible – e.g. Bg. pročitami, derived from pročetap, derived from četai, all meaning „I read‟ with the respective aspectual values (Friedman 1985; Fielder 1993; Sell 1995). The meaning of these Imperfectives is iterative (11), unless they are used with the narrative present (12), as a processual durative providing a more vivid description of a past event; an iterative describes a situation as characterized by the repetition of an event:
(11)
Radka pročitai vestnika vseki den. (secondary Imperfective pročitami „I read‟) „Radka reads the paper every day.‟ (Ginina 1966: 126)
17
Mønnesland (1984) and Danaher (1996) discuss the meaning of these verbs and their treatment by earlier authors. 16
(12)
Ivan Vazov napisvai romana Pod igoto prez 1888 godina. (secondary Imperfective napisvami „I write‟) „Ivan Vazov wrote the novel Under the Yoke in the year 1888.‟ (Ginina 1966: 126)
2.3.1.3 Perfectives A Perfective by itself always refers to a transition between two situations. According to Bondarko (1995: 49), this characterization of the Perfectives (in Russian) as expressing transitions goes back to Maslov (1948/1984: 48): the Perfective vyjtip „go out‟ in Ja vyšelp iz domu „I went out of the house‟ describes “an action taken in its entirety, representing a transition into a new state – from being in the house to being outside the house”. Bondarko (1995) speaks in this connection of the “emergence of a new situation” (vozniknovenie novoj situacii). Bickel (1997) and Schlegel (1999; 2000), among others, also treat Slavic aspect in this perspective. The term „transition‟ encompasses all uses of the Perfectives, and subsumes several other formulations of Perfectivity proposed in the literature on Slavic aspect, such as “boundedness” (Jakobson 1957/1971; Avilova 1976; Lyons 1977; Padučeva 1996), “totality” (Maslov 1965; 1948/1984; Forsyth 1970; Bondarko 1971; Comrie 1976), or “initial and final endpoints” (Smith 1997: 3, in her identification of Russian aspect with viewpoint aspect). What a Perfective describes can be represented as the transition between two consecutive situations S1 and S2:
(13)
S1
S2 time
A sentence with a Perfective identifies the event which initiates S2, and this event constitutes the transition from S1 to S2. In English, John ate up the cake identifies the event initiating the state of 17
the cake having been eaten (by John), and the transition into this state is the event of John eating the cake. The denotation of a Perfective verb must satisfy a „condition of Perfectivity‟ Cp, which can be formulated by stating that a situation identified by a given proposition pp, corresponding to an expression with a Perfective, must constitute the transition into a new situation which is not identified by pp – in other words, if pp is true for a situation e, there must be a situation e' following e (such that the end of e is prior to the beginning of e', or any time point in e precedes any time point in e') where pp is false:18
(14)
Cp: pp(e) → e's[e < e' & pp(e')] e < e' := tietje'[ti < tj]
The event e described with a Perfective constitutes the transition S1-S2, while e' is the resultative state post-transition S2:
(15)
transition: e = S1-S2
result: e' = S2
S1
S2 time
Examples with Perfective types in English:
18
The consequence in (14) renders what Schlegel (1999) calls “the temporal precedence of the action with respect to
the reference time”, where “reference time” (Bezugsmoment) corresponds to e' in (14) and (15), not to Reichenbach‟s (1966) sense in which I use it in chapter 4. 18
(16)
Completive:
pp = „John eating up the apple‟ e = the eating event e' = the state of the apple having been eaten
Inceptive:
pp = „John falling asleep‟ e = the event of falling asleep e' = the sleep19
Semelfactive: pp = „John sneezing‟ e = the sneezing event e' = the absence of sneezing
Cp defines the Perfectives as a class, and is satisfied by all Perfectives, whether they refer to the end or the onset of the durative situation described with an Imperfective – the completion of the reading in (17) and the falling asleep in (18) respectively –, or if they describe instantaneous events like the sneezing in (19):20
(17)
Ivan pročitalp knigu. (Russian: completive pročitat’ p „read‟) „Ivan read / has read the book.‟ S1: „the book not having been read‟ // S2: „the book having been read‟ e = S1-S2: „Ivan reading the book‟
19
The time interval corresponding to the sleep can also be described as a state, in case there are doubts about the
situation type of the sleep itself (state or activity): „the state of not falling asleep‟. 20
Perfectivity cannot be equated with „completed action‟, cf. the critique of this misconception by Galton (1980). 19
(18)
Ivan zasnulp. (Russian: ingressive zasnut’p „fall asleep‟) „Ivan fell asleep.‟ S1: „Ivan not being asleep‟ // S2: „Ivan being asleep‟ e = S1-S2: „Ivan falling asleep‟
(19)
Ivan čixnulp. (Russ.: semelfactive čixnut’p „sneeze (once)‟) „Ivan sneezed.‟ S1: „Ivan not having sneezed‟ // S2: „Ivan having sneezed‟ e = S1-S2: „Ivan sneezing‟
The Perfectives which refer to the end of the durative situation described with an Imperfective include those expressing the „natural culmination‟ of the event described by an Imperfective, such as Russ. napisat’p vs. pisat’i „write‟, and also various other Perfective classes such as the rare „terminatives‟ of the type Russ. otljubit’p „stop loving‟ (Janda 2008: 254), the reflexive intensives (Russ. naest’sjap „eat one‟s fill‟), the „delimitatives‟ in po- (Russ. pospat’p „sleep for a while‟), or the pro-Perfectives (Russ. prospat’p „sleep for a certain time‟), etc.:
(20)
Ivan pospalp. (Russ.: delimitative pospat’ „sleep for a while‟) „Ivan took a nap.‟ S1: „Ivan not having taken the nap‟ // S2: „Ivan having taken the nap‟ e = S1-S2: „Ivan taking the nap‟
20
With these Perfectives, the event itself is included in the situation described by the noncompletion of the event: in (20), the time interval during which Ivan was taking the nap (the sleeping event S1b) is included in S1: „Ivan taking the nap‟ (21) S1a
S1b
S2 time
The Perfectives which refer to the onset of the event or state described by an Imperfective, such as Russ. zapet’p „start singing‟ (pet’i „sing‟), pojtip „set off (walking)‟ (idtii „walk‟), or uvidet’p „see, spot‟ (videt’i „see‟), likewise satisfy Cp, cf. (18). In this case, the situation S2a described by a sentence with an ingressive Perfective is a part of S2 (22a), unless it is construed as qualitatively different from S2b (22b) – e.g. „falling asleep‟, „spotting‟, or „finding out‟ as involving processes of a different nature than „sleeping‟, „seeing‟, or „knowing‟, respectively: „Ivan falling asleep‟ (22a) S1
S2a
S2b time
„Ivan falling asleep‟ (22b) S1a
S1b
S2 time
Only in the latter case is a secondary Imperfective (zasypat’i) derived to describe a process of falling asleep with no reference to its transitional character.
21
Cp is also satisfied by all Perfectives which refer to punctual events, such as Russ. dat’p „give‟ and čixnut’p „sneeze (once)‟, cf. (19). If the event itself is regarded as punctual (nondurative), it will itself constitute the transition in a complex of consecutive situations: „Ivan sneezing‟ (23) S1
S2 time
The validity of (15) can be verified for all Aktionsarten listed by Isačenko (1962: 385-418) as being expressed with Perfectives, therefore it can be regarded as a definition of Perfectivity. The existence of Cp explains why Perfectives cannot be used in the present tense for describing occurences strictly at the utterance time, with no reference to expected outcomes. If the utterance time U (assumed to be a non-null time interval) is situated before or after the transition, it will be included in either S1 or S2, but if it includes the transition, it will partake of both S1 and S2. In this case, the proposition will be both true and false during U, therefore a sentence with the Perfective will be a contradiction:
(24)
impossible (present tense) possible (future tense)
possible (past tense) [ U ] S1(p)
[U
] S2(p)
[U] time
22
2.3.1.4 Perfectives and Imperfectives in relation to each other
2.3.1.4.1 Complementary distribution Cp and Ci are satisfied by any Perfective and Imperfective respectively, but by themselves they do not exclude each other, for they are not contradictory. However, the opposition PerfectiveImperfective is binary, with no third term, because there is a pragmatic two-way correlation between the aspectual forms and the conditions associated with them: -
if the speech situation requires the description of a single situation, the aspectual form which must be used is the Imperfective; and
-
if the speech situation requires a reference to more than one situation, the aspectual form which must be used is the Perfective.
(25)
Meaning:
one situation
two situations (transition)
Form:
Imperfective
Perfective
From the fact that Ci is satisfied by the Imperfective it does not follow that Ci cannot be satisfied by another aspectual form as well, but since the only other aspectual form available is the Perfective, which does not always satisfy Ci, it follows that Ci can only be associated with the Imperfective. Therefore, whenever a situation, rather than a transition between situations, is to be expressed, the speaker will have to resort to the Imperfective – and likewise for the association between Cp and the Perfective. The functions of the aspectual forms result from this expression of the singularity of situations by the Imperfectives and of their plurality by the Perfectives.
23
2.3.1.4.2 Temporal relations in aspectual pairs The Perfective can be employed, in conjunction with adverbial modifiers, in order to refer to a durative, gradual transition (26). However, at no point during Ivan‟s reading in this example will a sentence using the Perfective be true. The reading event itself, which is described with the Imperfective (27), is included in S1 (the situation before the completion of the reading), where (26) is false.
(26)
Ivan pročitalp knigu za čas. (Russ. pročitat’p „read‟) „Ivan read the book in one hour.‟
(27)
Ivan čitali knigu. (Russ. čitat’i „read‟) „Ivan was reading the book.‟ Ivan čitali knigu „Ivan was reading the book‟ is true
(28) 1 hour S1a
S1b
S2 time
Ivan pročitalp knigu (za čas) „Ivan read the book (in one hour)‟ is false
Ivan pročitalp knigu (za čas) „Ivan read the book (in one hour)‟ is true
All Imperfectives describe activities (or states), cf. Dowty‟s (1991a: 57) definition of activities: “If φ is an activity verb, then x φed for y time entails that at any time during y, x φed was true.” In Russian, Ivan čitali čas „Ivan read for one hour‟ entails Ivan čitali „Ivan read‟ at any moment during that hour. In sentences like (26), with a Perfective and an adverbial denoting duration, the
24
predicate describes an accomplishment: “If φ is an accomplishment verb, then x φed for y time does not entail that x φed was true during any time during y at all” (Dowty 1991a: 57). The predicate in (26) is telic (accomplishment), while the one in (27) is atelic (activity). In Russian, Ivan čitali knigu čas „Ivan read the book for one hour‟ (only the Imperfective form čitali is possible here) does not entail that Ivan pročitalp knigu „Ivan (has) read the book‟ (with the Perfective).
2.3.1.4.3 The Imperfective general-factual One of the functions of the Imperfectives is the „general-factual‟, 21 i.e. mentioning the occurrence of a situation. Since it is the Imperfective that describes situations in themselves, this function is fulfilled by the Imperfective:
(29)
Jesi li uspavljivaoi dete? (SCr. uspavljivatii „put to sleep‟) „Have you ever lulled a child to sleep?‟ (Dickey 2000: 97)
(30)
Odnaždy on uže polučali vygovor za opozdanie. (Russ. polučat’i „ receive‟) „He has already once received a reprimand for being late.‟ (Dickey 2000: 98)
Dickey discusses cases where the individual Slavic languages differ in their choices of aspectual forms, and notes that in the western area of Slavic (West Slavic minus Polish, plus Slovene),
21
See Rassudova 1975 (critiqued by Rul‟janickij 1977); Padučeva 1991; Dickey 2000: 95-125 for a discussion of
the situation in Slavic. 25
achievements (punctual events) are expressed with the Perfective (Dickey 2000: 100-102), even when the sense is general-factual:
(31)
Jako dziecko raz spadłemp z tego drzewa. (Pol. spaśćp „fall off‟) „As a child, once I fell off that tree.‟ (Dickey 2000: 101)
In such cases, since the event is conceived of as punctual, it can be construed as a transition between two situations, thereby falling into the functional domain of the Perfective:
(32)
achievement (punctual event)
S1
S2 time
I surmise that the western languages regard the event as a transition following from its punctual nature, and resort to the Perfective, whereas the eastern languages consider it under its generalfactual dimension, disregarding its punctual nature and its role as a transition, and therefore use the Imperfective.
2.3.1.4.4 Aspectual choice in reference to sequenced events If the western languages take into account the durative or punctual nature of the event to a greater extent than the eastern languages do, this could account for some other differences in aspectual use between the western and eastern areas of the Slavic-speaking territory noted by Dickey. One of these differences concerns the typical use of the Perfective, in all Slavic languages, in descriptions of sequenced events. Here too, the western languages, as well as the 26
eastern ones to a more limited extent, sometimes employ the Imperfective. In (33), the Imperfective šeli „went‟ is used because what is described here is the walking event, while the way in which this event follows another one, and hence the transition in the sequence of events, has already been expressed by the Perfective zvedlp se „got up‟ in its proper function. Likewise in (34), the transition into the writing situation, described with the Imperfective psali „was writing‟, has been initiated by the act of sitting down, described with the Perfective sedlp; an explicit expression of ingression, as in (35) and (36), is dispreferred because redundant (37).22
(33)
Zvedlp se tedy a šeli k vychodu. (Cz. zvéstp se „get up‟, jíti „walk‟) „Then he got up and went to the exit.‟ (Dickey 2000: 204)
(34)
Sedlp si a psali. (Cz. sednoutp si „sit down‟, psáti „write‟) „He sat down and started writing.‟ (Dickey 2000: 204)
(35)
Sedlp si a začalp psát. (Cz. sednoutp si „sit down‟, začítp „start‟) „He sat down and started writing.‟ (Dickey 2000: 205)
(36)
Sedlp si a rozepsalp se. (Cz. sednoutp si „sit down‟, inceptive rozepsátp se „start writing‟) „He sat down and started writing.‟ (Dickey 2000: 205)
22
There is a slight difference in meaning between the expression with a lexical verb denoting ingression in (35) and
the one with a derived ingressive Perfective in (36), which stems from the extent to which the event structure is explored in each sentence: (35) pays less attention to the subject‟s agentivity in starting the writing, while (36) explicitly states that the subject was the agent of the inception. I discuss this difference between ingressive expressions in more detail in section 5.4.5. 27
(37)
[začalp psát „started writing‟] [rozepsalp se „started writing‟] sedlp si „sat down‟
psali „was writing‟
S1
S2 time
Going through all of Dickey‟s (2000) examples in Chapter 7 of his book, which treats “The Imperfective in Sequences of Events and Other Expressions of Ingressivity”, it appears that they can all be accounted for by this diagram: what the Imperfective describes is the situation initiated by the Perfective; signaling the inception by means of an inceptive predicate, as in (35) and (36), is redundant, but not completely ruled out. The sequence of events occurring in (34)-(36) is [sitting down]–[starting writing]–[writing], where the first two are punctual, and the third one is durative; but since the writing event and the event of starting the writing are co-dependent, the expression of both („He sat down, started writing, and wrote‟) is redundant, and ruled out by the maxims of quantity and manner (the utterance contains redundant information). Otherwise, due to its function of describing situations, the Imperfective is resorted to as the background in a sequence of foregrounded events which constitute transitions between events. 23 In the more complex example in (38), the Imperfective describes the background situation (the subject sitting: seděli jsem) against which two punctual events (the train departing: hnulp se; and the subject starting sobbing: dalp jsem se do breku) occurred. In (39), the Imperfective seděti „sit‟ describes the situation S1+S2+S3, the Perfective hnoutp se „set out‟
23
Richardson (1994) discusses the same phenomenon in Old English (in Beowulf). Chvany (1985) presents cases of
backgrounded Perfectives and foregrounded Imperfectives in Russian. 28
describes the transition between S1 and S2, and the idiom with the Perfective dátp se do breku „begin sobbing‟ describes the transition from S2 to S3.
(38)
Ale když už jsem seděli ve vagóně a vlak se hnulp, já jsem se, pane, dalp do breku jako malý kluk. (Cz. seděti „sit‟, hnoutp se „set out‟, dátp „give‟) „When I was already sitting in the car and the train lurched forward, I began sobbing, sir, like a little boy.‟ (Dickey 2000: 206)
(39)
vlak se hnulp „the train lurched forward‟
dalp jsem se do breku „I began sobbing‟
the train being in motion
the subject sobbing
S1
S2
S3 time
seděli jsem „I was sitting‟ S1: „the train not in motion, the subject not sobbing‟ S2: „the train in motion, the subject not sobbing‟ S3: „the train in motion, the subject sobbing‟
2.3.1.4.5 Reversed and repeated actions Complex situations consisting of an action followed by its reversal are expressed in Slavic with the Imperfective. In (40), the window was opened, then closed, so the final situation is identical with the situation before the opening, and the aspect used here is the Imperfective in its general-
29
factual function of stating that the action has taken place, disregarding its consequences. On the other hand, if the window stays open, the Perfective will be required (41).
(40)
Kto zdes’ otkryvali okno? (Russ. otkryvat’i „open‟) „Who opened the window here?‟ (the window has been open, then closed) S: „the window being open‟
(41)
Kto zdes’ otkrylp okno? (Russ. otkryt’p „open‟) „Who has opened the window here?‟ (the window has been left open) S1: „the window not being open‟ // S2: „the window being open‟
The aspectual form required in (40) is the Imperfective, because what the question refers to is the occurrence of a state where the window had been open (stative adjective in English), which can only obtain after the event of the window being opened (passive in English). S1 and S3, during which the window is open, are qualitatively the same, and different from S2, when the window is closed:
(42)
state: the window being open event: opening the window
event: closing the window
S1
S2
S3 time
30
If the window is opened several times, the Imperfective otkryvat’i will be used again, in order to describe a situation characterized, as a whole, by the window being opened several times, i.e. by the repetition of the transition (expressed individually with the Perfective otkryt’p):
(43)
Kto zdes’ otkryvali okno? (Russ. otkryvat’i „open‟) „Who opened / used to open the window here?‟ S: „the window being opened‟
(44)
otkryt'p „open‟
time i
otkryvat’ „open‟
2.3.1.4.6 Processual and iterative readings of the Imperfective The Imperfective can describe situations consisting both of a single and of several occurrences of an event. Depending on the context, (40) can as well refer to a slow opening of the window („Who was opening the window here?‟) – slow enough to create a need to refer to it as a durative situation by itself (of opening the window), rather than as a transition from closed to open (41), where duration is irrelevant. When the Imperfective is used, the states S1 and S2 of the window being closed and open respectively become irrelevant, because the utterance is about S itself, rather than about the role of S as a transition between S1 and S2. The difference between the aspectual forms in (45) follows from considering the result state, via the transition (with the Perfective), or the transition as an event in itself (with the Imperfective).
31
(45)
otkryt'p „open‟
„opening‟ as transition between situations:
S1
S2 otkryvat'i „open‟
„opening‟ as a situation in itself:
(S1)
S
(S2) time
With the exception of some specialized Imperfectives, like the habituals in Czech and the iteratives in Bulgarian, mentioned above, any Imperfective in Slavic allows both a processual and an iterative reading (most often with the possibility for the latter to express the habitual as well):
(46)
Ivan otkryvali okno. (Russ. otkryvat’i) „Ivan was opening the window.‟ (processual reading) „Ivan opened / used to open the window.‟ (iterative reading)
In the following sections I will argue that the same opposition, based on different conditions of use, which exists between Perfectives and Imperfectives, applies at another level – namely, within the class of motion verbs, where it serves to distinguish determinate and indeterminate Imperfectives along the same lines as the Perfectives are distinguished from the Imperfectives.
32
2.3.2 The determinate-indeterminate opposition
2.3.2.1 General remarks All Slavic languages express, to various extents – maximal in Russian and Belorussian, and minimal in Serbo-Croatian, Macedonian, and Bulgarian –, an aspectual distinction which is confined to a closed class of unprefixed Imperfective verbs of motion which encode the manner of motion. Although there is not always complete agreement about the composition of this class in individual Slavic languages, it is always possible to isolate, in a given language, a core set of motion verbs whose aspectual behavior resembles the one of their counterparts in other Slavic languages, whether these verbs are cognates or not. Foote (1967: 6-7) and Piñón (1997: 469-474), among others, discuss the definitions of this distinction proposed by several authors, and opt for the labels „determinate‟ and „indeterminate‟. According to Piñón (1997: 474), the determinate motion verbs denote “motion processes [which are] single uninterrupted stretches of motion”, and the indeterminate ones are motion verbs which, by elimination, do not denote such motion processes. Since this definition of the determinate verbs accounts for all their uses in Polish (the language discussed by Piñón), as well as for their recognizably prototypical uses in all other Slavic languages, I will adopt his definition of the determinate aspect, and employ for “single uninterrupted stretch of motion” the term „path‟. A path is a route or itinerary on which the motion progresses; even when there are interruptions, there will still be an overall path which the mover follows, and the interruptions will be irrelevant for the motion as a whole. In their most basic and frequent uses, determinate verbs describe motion on one path, while indeterminate verbs describe a motion which does not follow one path, but either takes place randomly within a location, without a defined path, or follows the same path on several occasions (usually round-trips). Russian has perhaps the richest 33
set of determinate-indeterminate pairs (47), while West Slavic, Ukrainian and Slovene occupy an intermediate position, with fewer pairs recognized – e.g. Upper Sorbian in (48) (Šewc-Schuster 1984: 193).
determinate indeterminate
„walk‟ idtii xodit’i
„lead‟ vestii vodit’i
„wander‟ brestii brodit’i
„ride‟ exat’i ezdit’i
„convey‟ veztii vozit’i
„crawl‟ polztii polzat’i
„climb‟ lezt’i lazit’i
determinate indeterminate
„carry‟ nestii nosit’i
„fly‟ letet’i letat’i
„run‟ bežat’i begat’i
„swim‟ plyt’i plavat’i
„roll‟ katit’i katat’i
„drag‟ taščit’i taskat’i
„chase‟ gnat’i gonjat’i
determinate indeterminate
„walk‟ hići chodźići
„lead‟ wjesći wodźići
„ride‟ jěći jězdźići
„convey‟ wjezći wozyći
determinate indeterminate
„carry‟ njesći nosyći
„fly‟ lećeći lětaći
(47)
(48)
„run‟ běžeći běhaći
„climb‟ lězći łazyći „drag‟ ćahnyći ćahaći
With the exception of Slovene, the grammars of the modern South Slavic languages do not recognize such pairs, although the most characteristic uses of several cognates of verbs which come in aspectual pairs in East and West Slavic are the same in South Slavic. For example, SCr. ićii/p „go‟ and Slo. itii-det/p 24 „go‟ behave much like their Russian cognate idtii-det „walk‟ in that they denote a motion along a path, but differ from Russ. idtii-det in that they do not encode the
24
I will mark the determinate Imperfectives with a superscript i-det and the indeterminate Imperfectives with a
superscript i-indet in the languages where the existence of determinate-indeterminate pairs is recognized by traditional grammars. 34
manner of motion, and are biaspectual. Likewise, Slo. hoditii and SCr. hoditii / hodatii „walk‟,25 cognate with Russ. xodit’i-indet „walk‟, which do not always encode the manner of motion, resemble their Russian counterpart in most of their uses. Even in modern Bulgarian, where the cognate of SCr. ićii/p and Russ. idtii-det is only used with affixes (otivamp „I go‟, idvami „I come‟), the main uses of xodjai „go‟ correspond to those of SCr. hoditii / hodatii and Russ. xodit’i-indet (Venediktov 1961). Besides these areal features in the class of motion verbs in Slavic, the individual languages, ancient and modern, display various deviations from the aspectual pattern which is most systematically represented by languages like Russian or Polish. Some of these deviations are probably remnants of an older situation, obtaining prior to the grammaticalization of the aspectual distinctions (Dickey 2010) – e.g., OCS itii/p „go, walk‟ is biaspectual, and does not always encode the manner of motion, behaving in these respects like its Slovene and SerboCroatian cognates, and in Old Church Slavonic and Old Russian, the indeterminate Imperfectives (nositii-indet „carry‟, voditii-indet „lead, accompany‟, etc.) sometimes are employed in contexts where the East and West Slavic languages would use the determinate (Dostál 1954: passim; Cejtlin 1999: s.v.). Other deviations are more likely due to innovations – e.g., determinate verbs in Czech do not form the periphrastic future with býti „be‟, like other Imperfectives do, the Perfective non-past being used instead. On the other hand, these deviations, in an individual language, may not be uniform within the set of aspectually paired motion verbs: among the Old Church Slavonic indeterminate verbs, nositii-indet „carry‟ and voditii-indet „lead, accompany‟ can
25
The situation of motion verbs in Serbo-Croatian is more complex due to the derivation of explicitly
multidirectional Imperfectives unparalleled in other Slavic languages, e.g. nositii „carry‟ (Russ. nosit’i-indet) → nosatii „carry about‟ (Browne 1993: 332). 35
sometimes be translated by a determinate verb in Russian, but xoditii-indet „go, walk‟ is not attested with such function. Due to these variations, I will base the discussion in the following subsections mainly on examples from Russian, which is perhaps the most systematic Slavic language in the exploitation of the determinate-indeterminate opposition, but the conclusions will carry over to all other languages which display this opposition, for the cases in which they do. Even in the languages where the opposition is not recognized as such in the grammars (modern South Slavic, except Slovene), or the uses of the determinate and indeterminate verbs do not always coincide with those found in modern Russian – e.g. in Old Church Slavonic and Old Russian (Anstatt 1998), the determinate Imperfective most often serves to describe motion along a path, while the indeterminate Imperfective is generally used when there is no path. The distinction determinateindeterminate exists outside Slavic as well, the closest formal and functional parallels being found in Baltic (cf. section 5.4.4). The correspondence is much less systematic in other branches of Indo-European, and it is usually only functional, e.g. in Lat. īre „go‟ vs. ambulāre „walk around‟ (but not „go repeatedly / regularly‟) only the root of īre is cognate with OCS itii-det.26 Parallels exist in non-Indo-European languages as well: Hun. menni – járni, Basque joan – ibili, both meaning „go‟ vs. „go around / repeatedly‟. Taking Russian as a standard, the deviations in the usage of the non-Slavic aspectual pairs is not much greater than the ones observable in South Slavic.
26
From the same root, the present of Gk. iénai „go‟, has a future value in Attic, like the Slavic Perfectives and the
determinate Imperfectives, and its use is predominantly unidirectional; from another root, erkhesthai „go, come‟ does have multidirectional uses, so it might have been opposed to iénai in this respect, but it is also used as a unidirectional, making the parallel to the situation in Slavic less clear. 36
2.3.2.2 Indeterminate Imperfectives A motion event expressed with an indeterminate Imperfective must be confined to a location. This location can be delimited either „uni-dimensionally‟, as an „in-between‟ on an axis defined by two locations between which there is a one-time or a repeated round-trip, or „bi-/multidimensionally‟, as a location where the motion takes place:
(49)
V sredu my s bratom xodilii-indet na kinofestival’. (Russ.: round-trip, xodit’i-indet „walk‟) „On Wednesday I went with my brother to the film festival.‟ (Muravyova 1995: 46)
(50)
Njama da xodjai na kino dnes. (Bg.: round-trip, xodja’i „I walk‟) „I won‟t go to the cinema today.‟
(51)
On xoditi-indet v školu každyj den’. (Russ.: repeated round-trip, xodit’i-indet „walk‟) „He goes to school every day.‟
(52)
Več let že hodii-indet v Zagreb. (Slo.: repeated round-trip, hoditii-indet „go‟) „He has been going to Zagreb for several years.‟ (Greenberg 2006: 83)
(53)
On xoditi-indet vzad i vperëd po kabinetu. (Russ.: no overall direction, xodit’i-indet „walk‟) „He is walking around in the study.‟ (Muravyova 1995: 33)
(54)
Ta mesec letai-indet po Južni Ameriki. (Slo.: no overall direction, letatii-indet „fly‟) „This month he is flying around South America.‟ (Greenberg 2006: 82-83)
37
In a sentence with an indeterminate, the mover stays at a location. Even if the mover‟s location before the motion is different from the one after the motion, e.g. if the subject in (53) eventually leaves the room through a door other than the one through which he entered the room, that circumstance is left unexpressed. Likewise, the single or repeated round-trips in (49)-(52) take place between a source and a goal, so that the subject returns to the source, and the motion is confined to the one stretch between the goal and the source. If the source is different, the repeated round-trip must be broken down into single round-trips, and the individual sources must be expressed. All uses of the indeterminate Imperfective require that the motion event e be confined to a location; this condition Ci-indet can be formulated as below, for a proposition pi-indet corresponding to an expression with an indeterminate Imperfective:
(55)
Ci-indet: pi-indet(e) → Location(pi-indet)(e)
If this location is not specified, as in (56) and (57), the choice of the indeterminate over the determinate (both meaning „walk‟) results from the fact that the indeterminate here denotes an ability, so that the motion event e occurs during the time period lasting from the time when the subject has become able to walk unaided to the time when it loses the ability to walk (due to death, accidents, etc.), and the location can be regarded as the physical world, where the ability to walk can be exercised.
(56)
Naš rebënok uže xoditi-indet. (Russ.: ability to walk, xodit’i-indet „walk‟) „Our child can already walk.‟
38
(57)
Noga se je zacelila in zdaj hodii-indet brez težav. (Slo.: ability to walk, hoditii-indet „walk‟) „His leg has healed and now he can walk without difficulty.‟ (Greenberg 2006: 82)
Within the determinate-indeterminate opposition, the indeterminate Imperfectives are employed with the general-factual function that is characteristic of the Imperfectives within the PerfectiveImperfective opposition (cf. Janda 2008: n.3) discussed above, but Old Church Slavonic can use the determinate if the focus is on the change of location, leaving unexpressed in (60) the fact that the men did not remain at the palace:
(58)
On kogda-to tuda ezdili-indet. (Russ. ezdit’i-indet „ride, go by vehicle‟) „He went there once.‟
(59)
Xodixtei li na Vitoša v nedelja? (Bg. xodjai „I go‟) „Have you been to Vitosha on Sunday?‟
(60)
ona slavŭnaja mǫža ne iděastai-det prěžde vŭ polatǫ kŭ cru (OCS: specified goal, itii-det „go, walk‟) „Those two famous men had never before gone into the palace, to the emperor.‟ (Codex Suprasliensis 205.19-20; Cejtlin 1999: s.v. iti)
As in the examples with Imperfectives in sections 2.3.1.4.3 and 2.3.1.4.5, in these cases the request for information concerns the occurrence or non-occurrence of the situation described by the verb, and the implication in (58) and (59) is that the subject has returned from the trip: the
39
action is mentioned as having taken place, but the change of location subsequent upon a motion event is irrelevant.27 Ci-indet adds to Ci the specification that the motion event must be confined to a place: moving inside a location takes time, therefore C i-indet entails Ci as a more general case. The difference between these two requirements results from the way in which the relevant situation is described: by the event expressed with the Imperfective or by the location where the motion event takes place. In the next section I will argue that a similar parallelism can be shown to exist between the conditions of use for Perfectives and those for determinate Imperfectives.
2.3.2.3 Determinate Imperfectives A determinate verb is selected over an indeterminate one when the motion follows a path, and consequently results in a change of the mover‟s location. This is true whether the goal of the motion is specified (61)-(62) or not (63)-(64), and also when there is no indication of itinerary or path (65)-(66): 28
(61)
On idëti-det v kino / k ostanovke avtobusa. (Russ.: specified goal, idtii-det „walk‟) „He is walking to the cinema / towards the bus station.‟
(62)
Jedziemyi-det nad morze. (Pol.: specified goal, jechaći-det „ride, go by vehicle‟) „We are going to the seaside.‟
27
In this connection, Kagan (2010: 157) talks about “motion back as annulled result state”. Padučeva (1996) and
Kagan (2007; 2010) derive the return trip in sentences like (58) as an implicature. 28
Rakhilina (2004:7) notes that the motion expressed by determinate verbs is “always non-arbitrary”, therefore
“goal-oriented”, even when the goal is not stated. 40
(63)
Po tropinke idëti-det ženščina s korzinkoj. (Russ.: unspecified goal, idtii-det „walk‟) „A woman with a basket is walking on the path.‟ (Muravyova 1995: 8)
(64)
Najbolje je ićii/p osvijetljenom ulicom. (SCr.: unspecified goal, ićii/p „walk, go‟) „It‟s best to go down a well-lit street.‟ (Alexander 2006: 116)
(65)
On idëti-det. (Russ.: unspecified path and goal, idtii-indet „ walk‟) „He is walking.‟
(66)
Tomasz jechałi-det tym pociągiem. (Pol.: unspecified path and goal, jechaći-det „ride‟) „Tomasz was traveling on that train.‟
The choice of a determinate over an indeterminate Imperfective requires that the location (path) l of the motion event be different from the location (goal) l' reached after the motion. Since l is coextensive with the motion event in its spatial dimension,29 this requirement can be formulated as below, where then locations have the semantic type s of situations (or the type st, if nonreferential), constituting their spatial dimension, and „ > motion)
idti qua determinate PFV (transition: one-time motion to a location) i(-det) idti qua Imperfective IPFV (situation: motion)
poxodit’p PFV (transition: rest > > [motion at a location] > rest)
2.3.3.5 Four aspectual oppositions in verbs of motion The status of the Perfective sxodit’p is exceptional: it is only imperfectly paired with xodit’ i-indet qua Imperfective (it does not pass the test of transposition to the narrative present), and has no counterpart in the realm of non-motion verbs. There is no Perfective expressing, for instance, an opening followed by a closing: the Perfective counterpart of Russ. otkryvat’i „open‟ is otkryt’p, which can only denote an opening with no closing thereafter. In addition, unlike the pair otkryvat’i – otkryt’p, where the Imperfective is derived from the Perfective, in xodit’ i-indet vs. sxodit’p it is the Perfective sxodit’p that is derived from the Imperfective xodit’i-indet; in this respect, sxodit’p parallels some semelfactive Perfectives derived from Imperfectives, like Russ. kašljanut’p derived from kašljat’i „cough‟. The indeterminate Imperfectives qua indeterminate, i.e. with the sense (a) of xodit’ i-indet, can express both iteration and reversed action (round trip). It 58
is useful to distinguish between these two dimensions, bringing out the ambiguity of (a) as between one and several round-trips: a1) indeterminate Imperfectives qua iterative indeterminate: with this reading, xodit’i-indet is paired with sxodit’p, which describes a one-time round trip; a2) indeterminate Imperfectives qua reversed-action indeterminate: with this reading, xodit’ i-indet is paired with idti i-det, which describes a trip not followed by a return. The difference between (a1) and (a2) consists in the absence vs. presence of a path: „dropping by‟ one or several times (a1) implies not a path, but a deviation from a path –, whereas going to a place once or several times (a2) does involve a path. The two dimensions of the indeterminate Imperfectives qua indeterminate can be represented as in (102) – where the second member in each pair stands in the relation of a Perfective to the Imperfective first member, and denotes a transition, with the features [±path] and [±goal] applying to the Perfective member – or by integrating the sxodit’p-type Perfectives into (101) as in (103).38
(102)
38
[+path] xodit’i – idtii-det „go, walk‟ idtii-det – pojtip „walk‟ – „set off‟
[-path] xodit’i – sxodit’p „drop by (in a walk)‟ xodit’i – poxodit’p „walk‟ – „take a walk‟
MANNER: „WALK‟
[+goal] [-goal]
As the English glosses suggest, the distinction between the features [±path] and [±goal] (for a certain manner,
where applicable) can be applied to the compositional analysis of motion verbs / motion expressions in non-Slavic languages, too. 59
(103)
pojtip PFV (transition: rest > > motion)
PFV-IPFV:
idti(i-)det qua determinate PFV (transition: one-time motion to a location, with no return) idtii(-det) qua Imperfective IPFV (situation: motion)
xodit’ i(-indet) qua Imperfective IPFV (situation: motion at a location) xodit’ i(-indet) qua iterative indeterminate IPFV (situation: repeated round-trips) xodit’ (i-)indet qua reversed-action indeterminate IPFV (situation: one-time round-trip)
poxodit’p PFV (transition: rest > > [motion at a location] > rest) sxodit’p PFV (transition: round-trip not having occurred > > round-trip having occurred)
If the motion follows a path, but the goal is irrelevant, the motion event will be described with a determinate Imperfective qua Imperfective, and the transition from rest to motion by a po-Perfective, with the goal being optional: in Russ. pojtip v školu „go to school‟, v školu is not an argument, but an oblique: in the mere act of setting off, the goal of the motion is inaccessible – what is accessible is only the path of the motion event described by idtii-det qua Imperfective. Also the (irregular) imperative pošlip „let‟s go‟ refers to the act of setting off on a path, not to reaching a destination. If that path has a relevant destination, the motion event will have a goal, and idtii-det will act qua determinate, taking that goal as an argument.
PFV-IPFV:
When the motion event results in a pragmatically significant change of location, the event is described with a determinate Imperfective qua determinate. If there is 60
a pragmatically significant change of location followed by a return, so that the end result is a round-trip, the event is described by an indeterminate Imperfective qua reversed-action indeterminate. PFV-IPFV:
A complex motion event consisting of round-trip(s) as visit(s) deviating from an original path is described by a Perfective of type Russ. sxodit’p when talking about a single round-trip, and by an indeterminate Imperfective qua iterative indeterminate when referring to repeated visits.
PFV-IPFV:
If the motion is random, with neither a path nor a goal, it will be described with an indeterminate Imperfective qua Imperfective – or with a Perfective of type Russ. poxodit’p, if the motion is of limited duration.
The difference between the two functions of a determinate Imperfective – qua determinate and qua Imperfective – results from the presence of a goal argument in the first function and its absence in the second one. The behavior of the determinate Imperfectives qua determinate in relation to the indeterminate Imperfectives parallels the behavior of the Perfectives in relation to their Imperfective counterparts in aspectual pairs because the Perfectives, like the determinate Imperfectives, make reference to situations post-event, into which they express the transition. When the situation post-event is qualitatively different from the situation pre-event, the predicate with a Perfective is telic, as in Russ. pročitat’p knigu „read a book (to the end)‟; if there is no such difference, but the transition is between two qualitatively identical situations, as between „before‟ and „after‟ a sneeze or a nap that makes no difference in the overall state of affairs because it has no relevant consequences, the predicate with a Perfective will be atelic, e.g. with Russ. čixnut’p „sneeze (once)‟, pospat’p „take a nap‟.
61
Both the spatial goals of motion events and the resultative states of non-motion events have in common a goal-like quality which can be construed as temporal: a resultative state is a temporal goal, and a spatial goal constitutes a goal in so far as it denotes the location of the temporal goal of the motion, which is the state of the mover being at that spatial goal. I will discuss the aspectual role of goal-like arguments in more detail in the next chapter.
62
3 THE SYNTACTIC FRAMEWORK
3.1 Overview This chapter introduces the theoretical framework for the subsequent analyses. It consists of the theory of theta-roles and their representation in syntax (argument structure) that will form the basis for the discussion: all syntactic arguments are licensed by functional heads labeled according to their theta-roles, and obey a definite structural hierarchy which applies at least to the languages under discussion. I emphasize the difference between arguments and obliques, which is essential for the discussion of applicatives in chapter 4, as well as instances where a constituent can be interpreted as either an argument or an oblique, with both interpretations existing side by side and requiring different analyses. For instance, a predicate of the type find a ring in your nose allows two readings: 1) only ring is an argument, and in your nose is a locative oblique, the predicate find a ring being complete (test: find a ring – where? – in your nose); and 2) the argument is a „small clause‟ [s ring in your nose], and find a ring in your nose is interpreted as „find a ring to be in your nose‟ (test: find – what? – a ring [to be] in your nose). The assumptions made in the first half of this chapter with regard to theta-roles and argument structure, illustrated mostly with English examples, will be corroborated with data from other languages presented in the subsequent sections. For instance, assuming that direct objects with Theme theta-roles are licensed by functional heads, rather than being complements of the verb, will allow, in chapter 4, a more economical analysis of verbs where Themes are introduced as applicatives – e.g. sprinkle water (Theme argument) on somebody (oblique location / goal) →
63
besprinkle somebody (Theme argument) with water (oblique instrument), where I will argue that the prefix be- forms a complex head with Th0, introduces the new argument, and Perfectivizes the verb (cf. the overtly Perfective aspect of Theme applicatives in Slavic, illustrated in the following sections), due to its original lexical meaning of „surrounding the entire object‟. Likewise, structural hierarchies such as Recipient > Theme or Theme > Goal, and implicitly the syntactic distinction between Recipients (high) and Goals (low) (Pylkkänen 2008), are corroborated by data from languages where the order of prefixes is assumed to reflect the order of the arguments to which they correspond. A further remark regards cases where apparent deviations from the prevailing structural hierarchy are explainable by changes in theta-grids during the history of the individual languages, under preservation of the structural hierarchy.
3.2 Syntactic arguments, thematic relations, and theta roles
3.2.1 Terminology and general remarks In John quickly gave Bill an apple in London yesterday, the verb forms the syntactic and semantic core; the other constituents either are participants (John; Bill; an apple), or otherwise describe (quickly) or locate the situation in space (in London) or time (yesterday). Syntactic arguments are constituents in whose absence the predicate is perceived as incomplete, and the other DPs, PPs, or AdvPs, are obliques. In general, arguments supply essential information, whereas obliques contribute additional information. In the above sentence, John, Bill, and an apple are the only arguments. In John went from London to New York, a predicate went to New York is complete, therefore from London is an oblique; and since went by itself is incomplete, to New York is an argument. The prevailing view, which I adopt here, is that obliques are syntactic
64
adjuncts. On the other hand, the distinction between arguments and obliques cannot always be reduced to the essential vs. accessory nature of the information contributed to the sentence, but has also a syntactic dimension. In languages with agreement systems that include the direct and indirect objects, such as Basque, only arguments, but not adjuncts, trigger agreement on the verb. Sometimes, the same theta-role can be expressed as either an argument or an oblique – for instance, the beneficiary in the Basque sentences below, which are practically synonymous, is expressed as an argument in the dative in (104a), with indirect object agreement, and as an adjunct with a benefactive suffix in (104b), with no indirect object agreement:39
(104a) Iñakik atea ireki die neskei. Iñaki-k ate-a-Ø ireki-Ø di-Ø-e-Ø nesk-e-i. Iñaki.ERG door.DET.ABS(SG) open.PART AUX.DO3SG.IO3PL.S3SG girl.PL.DAT „Iñaki (has) opened the door for the girls.‟ 39
ERG = ergative, DET = determiner, ABS = absolutive, SG = singular, PART = participle, AUX = auxiliary, DO
= direct object agreement, IO = indirect object agreement, S = subject agreement, PL = plural, DAT = dative, G = genitive, BEN = benefactive. With some other verbs, slight semantic differences can be detected between the variant with a beneficiary argument and the one with a beneficiary oblique: (ia)
Iñakik opariak erosi dizkie neskei. Iñaki-k opari-a-k eros-i di-zki-e-Ø nesk-e-i. Iñaki.ERG present.DET.ABS(PL) buy.PART AUX.DO3PL.IO3PL.S3SG girl.(DET)PL.DAT „Iñaki (has) bought the girls presents.‟ / „Iñaki (has) bought presents to the girls.‟
(ib)
Iñakik opariak erosi ditu neskentzat. Iñaki-k opari-a-Ø eros-i d-it-u-Ø nesk-e-n-tzat. Iñaki.ERG present.DET.ABS(PL) buy.PART AUX.DO3PL.u(AUX).S3SG girl.(DET)PL.G.BEN „Iñaki (has) bought presents for the girls.‟ 65
(104b) Iñakik atea ireki du neskentzat. Iñaki-k ate-a-Ø ireki-Ø d-Ø-u-Ø nesk-e-n-tzat. Iñaki.ERG door.DET.ABS(SG) open.PART AUX.DO3SG. u(AUX).S3SG girl.PL.G.BEN „Iñaki (has) opened the door for the girls.‟
Jackendoff (1972) introduced the notion of “thematic relations” to describe the semantic relationships between the various XPs (DPs, PPs, or AdvPs), and the verb. For instance, in John went from London to New York, John is an agent, from London is a source, and to New York is a goal. An XP can cumulate several thematic relations: in John gave Bill an apple, John is both an agent and a source. In order to capture the correspondence between thematic relations and arguments, Chomsky (1981/1993) introduced the “theta-roles”, which are clusters of thematic relations expressed by an argument: the theta-role of John in John gave Bill an apple includes the thematic relations agent and source. Agentivity being usually perceived as more salient or „marked‟ than the source-like quality, which here is „unmarked‟, the agent thematic role is given precedence, and the theta-role is labeled as Agent. 40 In order to account for the numerous ambiguities in the assignment of theta-roles, Dowty (1991b) proposed a different approach, where the thematic relations / theta-roles are not discrete, but rather there is a continuum between the two „proto-roles‟, each defined by a set of entailments:
40
I use capital letters for theta-roles in order to distinguish them from homonymous thematic relations, and I
designate the arguments by their respective theta-roles, e.g. a Theme argument is an argument with a Theme thetarole. 66
-
Proto-agent entailments: “volitional involvement in the event or state; sentience (and / or perception); causing an event or change of state in another participant; movement (relative to the position of another participant); (exists independently in the event named by the verb)”;
-
Proto-patient entailments: “undergoes change of state; incremental theme; causally affected by another participant; stationary relative to movement of another participant; (does not exist independently of the event, or not at all”. (Dowty 1991b: 572)
In this approach, an argument is agent-like or patient-like according to whether the proposition where it appears has more proto-agent or more proto-patient entailments, with intermediate cases of arguments displaying variable numbers of proto-agent and proto-patient entailments – for instance, the recipient (Bill) in John gave Bill a book has fewer proto-agent entailments than the agent (John), and fewer proto-patient entailments than the theme (a book). Even if the ultimate linguistic or cognitive reality can be showed to consist of a continuum between two poles as in Dowty‟s proposal, the cross-linguistic syntactic and morphological evidence points to the existence of relatively uniform processes of aggregation along this continuum into discrete conceptual entities, which can be assimilated to the thematic relations or the theta-roles. For instance, as far as I could determine, the maximum number of arguments with which verbs in various languages can agree is three – namely, the subject, the indirect object, and the direct object –, and there is an overwhelming agreement across languages as to the respective theta-roles of each of these three arguments for verbs with equivalent meaning. Also, I am not aware of any language where the verbs would agree with location or goal arguments of motion verbs, and where such arguments would be distinct from the recipients or experiencers of verbs meaning „give‟, „help‟, etc. This kind of evidence suggests that, as long as the prototypical agents are generally subjects and the prototypical themes are generally direct
67
objects of monotransitive verbs, the theta-roles of Agent and Theme are useful theoretical constructs. The indirect objects are likewise very strong candidates for a distinct theta-role (Experiencer, Affectee, or some other label, with several subclasses: Recipients, Beneficiaries, Maleficiaries, etc.), if at least three facts are considered in conjunction: 1) indirect objects trigger agreement on the verb in some languages (cf. the Basque example above), which can be taken as evidence for their status as arguments, rather than obliques, at least in a syntactic (structural) sense; 2) in languages lacking indirect object agreement, such as English, the verbs whose theta-grids include Experiencers (or Affectees, Recipients, etc.) generally have as equivalents verbs with indirect object agreement in languages like Basque; 3) without ruling out the possibility that Experiencers, on the one hand, and Locations, on the other hand, might be derivationally related at some level of representation (cf. Baker 1997, among many others),41 there is substantial evidence that many languages tend to treat them as distinct theta-roles in syntax.42 41
The opposing view, based on a structural hierarchy of arguments Recipient > Theme > Location („>‟ = „higher
than‟) was advocated by Kiparsky (1987), Bresnan and Kanerva (1989), etc. The authors who argue for the identification of Recipients (typically in double object constructions: John gave Bill a book) and Locations assign primacy to either the former (e.g. Marantz 1993) or, more frequently, the latter (e.g. Larson 1988, Baker 1997). 42
Experiencer arguments in Basque (including Recipients of verbs meaning „give‟, „sell‟, „lend‟, etc.) are in the
dative and trigger indirect object agreement on the verb (ia), while Location arguments (including Goals of motion) do not trigger any agreement (ALL = allative): (ii)
Iñaki Bilbora joan da. Iñaki-Ø Bilbo-ra joa-n da-Ø. Iñaki.ABS Bilbao.ALL go.PART AUX.S3SG „Iñaki went to Bilbao.‟ 68
This last point suggests that spatio-temporal Locations are better treated as distinct from Experiencers. Further, there are arguments whose theta-role can best be described as „Qualities‟, and which cannot be assimilated to any of the theta-roles mentioned so far: John was / got sick. In the subsequent discussion, I will be assuming the following inventory of the theta-roles which can be expressed by arguments: Causer, Agent, Affectee, Theme, Location, and Quality, leaving open the possibility that Affectees might be ultimately related to, or derived from, Locations.
Goals of motion can also sometimes be expressed as Recipients in the dative with indirect object agreement (iiia), as an alternative to the unmarked expression with the locative (here, with directional / allative value) and no indirect object agreement (iiib), but the very existence of this second possibility, which is the more common way of expressing goals, together with the fact that Recipients can never be expressed in the locative or the allative (iv), shows that Goals and Recipients are distinct in Basque (LOC = locative). (iiia)
Iñakik zaldia etxeri sartu dio. Iñaki-k zaldi-a-Ø etxe-ri sar-tu di-Ø-o-Ø. Iñaki.ERG horse.ABS house.DAT enter.PART AUX.DO3SG.IO3SG.S3SG „Iñaki took the horse into the house.‟
(iiib)
Iñakik zaldia etxeri sartu du. Iñaki-k zaldi-a-Ø etxe-a-n sar-tu da-Ø. Iñaki.ERG horse.ABS house.LOC enter.PART AUX.DO3SG.S3SG „Iñaki took the horse into the house.‟
(iv)
*Iñakik opariak erosi ditu nesketara / nesketan. Iñaki-k opari-a-k eros-i d-it-u-Ø nesk-eta-ra / nesk-eta-n. Iñaki.ERG present.DET.ABS(PL) buy.PART AUX.DO3PL.u(AUX).S3SG girl.(DET)PL.ALL/LOC „Iñaki (has) bought presents to the girls.‟ 69
These six theta-roles can be ordered on an extended scale including Dowty‟s proto-roles. Causers43 are like Agents, except that they are not involved in the event: John is affected by his participation in the event in John (Agent) ate an apple, but not in John (Causer) made Bill (Agent) eat an apple. In both examples, the Agents inevitably undergo change, which is a protopatient entailment, whereas a change is much less obvious for the Causer; the Causer has less proto-patient entailments, and consequently is more Agent-like, than the Agent itself. At the other end of the spectrum, Locations are intuitively more passive than the Themes, in that their only feature is the pure existence or availability in space and time, and Qualities lack even the spatio-temporal existence. Neither Locations nor Qualities can be regarded as participants in the event: Locations supply a spatio-temporal background (as static Locations) or frame (as Goals or Sources) for the event, and atemporal Qualities cannot „participate‟ in any meaningful sense, because their „existence‟ is only conceptual. Talmy‟s (1985) distinction between Figure and Ground could be relevant in this respect, and provide a more comprehensive scale, with Causers as pure Figures, Locations as pure Grounds, and Qualities as something even more remotely „present‟ than Grounds. In addition, I will distinguish three subclasses of Affectees and Locations, in order to highlight their role in establishing limits on the event: -
Locations – static Location, Source, and Goal: John dwells in London (static Location); He went out of the room (Source); John went to London (Goal);
43
I will treat Causer as a theta-role (cf. Doron 1999), but an opposing view (Parsons 1990) regards it as a relation
between two events. Participants which abstain from causation or action can be assimilated to Causers (John let Bill go) or Agents (John spared Bill, e.g. did not kill him) respectively. (For a Causer interpretation of the subject of let speaks the fact that Gm. lassen „let‟, cognate of let, has come to function as a causative: kaufen lassen „make buy, tell to buy‟, lit. „let buy‟.) The label „Affectee‟ is used in the sense of Bowers (2010). 70
-
Affectees – Experiencer, Perdant, and Recipient: John (Experiencer) has a house; John (Perdant) lost his money; John deprived Bill (Perdant) of his rights (Theme); 44 John (Recipient) received some money; John gave Bill (Recipient) some money.
Grimshaw (1990) and Baker (1997) pointed out that Affectees in the absence of Agents manifest some Agent-like properties, and their syntactic behavior is indistinguishable from that of the Agents. For example, according to Baker, the subjects in John (Experiencer) hates Bill and John (Agent) killed Bill being both animate, their internal (mental) properties determine whether the situation described in the sentence occurs or not; likewise, the subjects of verbs of perception actively participate in the event by forming mental representations of the perceived objects (Themes). However, even if they share some properties with the Agents, these Affectees in subject position – more exactly, the Recipients – also have in common with other Affectees (Recipients) a property which I argue to be essential in determining the Perfective aspect of the verb: they constitute upper limits on the event, which constitutes an inherent transition, whence the Perfective aspect. In both John (Recipient) received some money and John gave Bill (Recipient) some money, the Recipients act like Goals, defining a situation post-event, even though in the first case the Recipient displays agentive properties and is syntactically indistinguishable from an Agent. For this reason, I will be treating these Recipients in subject position as Recipients, rather than as Agents, because their agentive qualities are less relevant for aspect.
44
In this example, Bill can also be interpreted as a Theme, with of his rights perhaps as a metaphorical or temporal
Source: „John took Bill out of (the state / condition where he still had) his rights‟. 71
3.2.2 Causers, Agents, and Themes If the physical concept of „energy‟ can be shown to have a cognitive status and be relevant in language, this will be what Causers, Agents, and Themes, have in common: a Causer and an Agent provide an input of energy, respectively effecting an event or affecting a Theme. With regard to Causers, Parsons (1990) argues that a causative relationship holds between two events, so that a causer interacts only externally with an event to which Agents, Themes, etc., are participants. For the syntactic analyses in the following sections, where causatives are marginal and their semantics is irrelevant for aspect, I will follow Doron‟s (1999) analysis of causatives as additional arguments licensed by functional heads, like the other arguments. Even if Causers are external to the event, they still act in certain respects as „additional Agents‟, although their agentivity is exerted upon the event they bring about, rather than upon a Theme proper. The caused events typically can have participants with various theta-roles: John (Causer) made Bill (Agent) kill Mark (Theme); John (Causer) made Bill (Experiencer) happy (Quality), John (Causer) made Bill (Perdant) lose money (Theme), or John (Causer) made Bill (Recipient) receive money (Theme). In John made Bill happy, the relationship between John and Bill cannot be assimilated to the one between an Agent and a Theme, for what John made Bill happy states is that John created the conditions for Bill‟s happiness, without necessarily acting directly upon Bill: John could have been repairing Bill‟s car (Theme), thereby making Bill happy, and the causing event („John repairing Bill‟s car‟) is distinct from the caused state („Bill being happy‟). The relations between Causers and other arguments (105)-(107) can be represented as in (108). An argument situated at a higher level in (108) is licensed by the positive value of the feature [±cause] on a lower argument (109), while [-cause] licenses an optional oblique causer in
72
passivized causatives: John[-cause] (Agent argument) was made by Bill (oblique causer) to eat the apple.
(105) Causer – Agent configuration: John (Causer) made Bill (Agent) kill Mark (Theme).
(106) Causer – Theme configuration: John (Causer) caused Bill (Theme) to be killed. John (Causer) had Bill (Theme) killed.
(107) Causer – Affectee configuration: John (Causer) made Bill (Experiencer) feel well (Quality). John (Causer) made Bill (Recipient) earn money (Theme). John (Causer) made Bill (Perdant) lose money (Theme).
(108) causative relations (
: „causes X to…‟)
Causer event Agent
Affectee
Theme
73
(109) argument licensing: 45 Causer
Causer
Causer
θCauser
θCauser
θCauser
Agent[+cause]
Theme[+cause]
Affectee[+cause]
Agents usually require a Theme upon which they can exercise an action – John (Agent) killed Bill (Theme) –, but they can cumulate the thematic relations of agent and patient: in John (Agent) went to Chicago, John both effects and undergoes the motion (has both proto-agent and proto-patient entailments). Here, assigning the label „Agent‟, rather than „Theme‟, to the thetarole, could be justified by the more salient role of agentivity, if a patient can undergo some effects with no identified Agent. Themes presuppose the existence of either an Agent (John ate an apple) or an Affectee: Experiencer (John feels pain), Recipient (John got an apple), or Perdant (John lost an apple). Although the thematic relation of a Theme to an Agent is intuitively quite different from the one of a Theme to an Affectee or a Location, the Theme undergoing two different kinds of change in an Aristotelian sense as explained below, I will apply the label „Theme‟ to all these cases, despite the perceptibly different thematic relations involved: -
when associated with an Agent, a Theme is a patient undergoing an internal change of state – including changes from being to non-being (destroy, demolish), or vice versa (create, build);
45
This is not theta-role assignment: theta-roles are assigned by the respective functional heads (Agent by Ag0, etc.).
What (109) means is that a positive value of [±cause] on a certain argument – here, Agent, Theme, or Affectee – licenses a Causer as an argument, rather than as an oblique, like in passives: Bill[-cause] 1 was made t1 by John to kill Mark. 74
-
when associated with an Affectee, as well as when being the implicit object of a motion verb as in John (Agent) took Bill (Theme) to London, the Theme either undergoes only a change of location, or affects the Affectee passively, by its presence; in either case, any change internal to the Theme remains irrelevant.
As suggested earlier, the distinguishing feature of Causers and Agents seems to be the existence of an amount of effective energy translated into actions and processes. Processes can be internal to sentient participants (Affectees), in which case Agents can cumulate the thematic relations of agent and recipient (beneficiary), as in John (Agent) took money from Bill, or of agent and perdant (maleficiary), as in John (Agent) gave money to Bill. The relations between Agents and other arguments (110)-(111) can be represented as in (112). An argument situated at a higher level in (112) is licensed by the positive value of the feature [±act] on a lower argument (113), while [-act] licenses an optional oblique agent in passives: John[-act] (Theme argument) was killed by Bill (oblique agent).
(110) Agent – Theme configuration: John (Agent) killed Bill (Theme). John (Agent) took Bill (Theme) home (Goal). John (Agent) gave the apple (Theme) to Bill (Goal). John (Agent) took / put Bill (Theme) out of his misery (Source > Quality).
(111) Agent – Affectee configuration: John (Agent) gave Bill (Recipient) an apple (Theme). John (Agent) deprived Bill (Perdant) of his rights (Theme).
75
: „acts upon‟)
(112) actional relations (
Agent
Affectee
Theme
(113) argument licensing: Agent
Agent
θAgent
θAgent
Theme[+act]
Affectee[+act]
3.2.3 Locations and Affectees Locations and Affectees have in common a certain conceptual classification of the members of both classes (the feature labels will be explained below):
(114)
STATIC ROLES
[-dynamic]
DYNAMIC ROLES SOURCE-LIKE
[I]
[+dynamic] GOAL- LIKE
[F]
Experiencer
Perdant
Recipient
AFFECTEE
[+sentient]
static Location
Source
Goal
LOCATION
[-sentient]
Both the goal-like and the source-like theta-roles are „directional‟, with opposite deixis. The two classes of theta-roles differ in that Affectees are endowed with „sentience‟, which I would define as the availability of a „point of view‟, or of an imaginary observer, internally to the Affectee. In John (Recipient) received a book, there is intuitively a point of view internal to the Recipient, 76
whereas in Bill went to John (Goal), there is no point of view internal to the Goal: the Goal (John) can be said to „receive‟ Bill only if a point of view is added in, and the action is presented from this point of view (which is John‟s), in which case the sentence must be rephrased as John (Recipient) received Bill. In John (Experiencer) has a book, the point of view is (at) John, who experiences the possession, whereas this is not the case in Bill (Theme) dwells at John’s place (Location): adding in John‟s point of view turns the sentence into John (Experiencer) has Bill (Theme) living at his place46. In the subsequent discussion of Locations I will suggest that they are always spatio-temporal, i.e. they are always situations, rather than entities, even when the arguments are entity-denoting nouns. Such is the case of the referent of John in Bill went to John (Goal), where the noun John denotes an entity, but its function in the sentence is to stand for, or signify, a situation – namely, the spatio-temporal goal „Bill being at John‟s location‟. This „sentience‟ can be real or figurative; here, the basic thematic relations are beneficiary, maleficiary, and experiencer. On the other hand, Locations are not „sentient‟ in the sense defined above – or if they are, this circumstance remains irrelevant: in John gave Bill (Recipient) an apple, Bill is supposedly involved in the act at least perceptively and cognitively, if not emotionally, while in John took an apple to Bill (Goal), Bill is construed merely as a spatial goal, and to Bill could as well mean „Bill‟s house / place‟. Recipients and Perdants as theta-roles usually include two thematic relations each: goal + beneficiary and source + maleficiary; but there are also Recipients / Perdants which can be construed as beneficiaries or maleficiaries with no transfer of an object, like the dative objects of Gm. helfen „help‟, nützen „benefit‟, or schaden „harm‟. Even so, beneficiaries and maleficiaries can be themselves regarded as the sentient counterparts of goals and sources respectively: a beneficiary receives something (even if only benefit or help) in the same way as a goal „receives‟ the mover, and a maleficiary 46
This sentence also has an irrelevant reading where John is a Causer, making Bill live at his place. 77
loses something, like a source „losing‟ the mover. Likewise, Experiencers seem to be little more than Locations endowed with sentience. As such, Affectee theta-roles seem to be compositional – at least conceptually, if not a semantically –, consisting each of the corresponding Location theta-role plus sentience as the distinguishing feature of their class, as in (114). The labels for theta-roles do not always reflect the concrete roles played by the respective arguments, and this is especially true for Locations and Affectees. Jackendoff (1976) speaks in this connection of a “cross-field generalization”, whereby Locations are applied to other ontological or conceptual levels – for instance, the Goal can be not only spatial (John went to London), but also temporal (The show lasted till 10 o’clock), identificational (The boy became a man), causational (Hard work resulted in high pay), etc. This cross-field generalization can account for the parallelism between Locations and Affectees mentioned above: a Recipient will be a „sentient Goal‟, and a Perdant a „sentient Source‟, the transposition between the spatiotemporal (locational) domain to the affectional one being no more difficult than the one from the spatio-temporal domain to the identificational domain, for instance. Many languages have the same morphological markers for Goals and Recipients (Turkish, Japanese), and a quite common way of expressing possession is by resorting to locative expressions, e.g. Russ. u menja est’ kniga, lit. „there is a book at me‟ (Location) (cf. Benveniste 1966: 199), and several other authors (Lyons 1967; Freeze 1992; Sørensen 1997) ascribed verbs of type „have‟ the underlying meaning „be at‟. 47 On the other hand, there seems to be no systematic, one-to-one correspondence in any given language between the members of the 47
Morphological parallelisms between Source and Perdant are much rarer, and Perdants are sometimes expressed by
the same means as Recipients, e.g. Fr. soustraire à „substract / steal from‟ vs. donner à „give to‟ / ajouter à „add to‟, or Hebr. ’ābad lī ha-kkeṣep „I lost the money‟, lit. „money went lost to me‟. In general, source-like participants are less prominent, and the respective thematic roles are less frequently expressed in arguments. 78
Affectee and Location classes of theta-roles. Heine (1997) describes four syntactic types of possessive constructions, including locative (static) and goal-like (with the possessor in the dative, e.g. Hun. nekem (D) van pénzem „I have money‟, lit. „there is my money to me‟). For these reasons – and assuming that the descriptions of the respective theta-roles for each class are accurate – I will keep Locations and Affectees distinct from each other. A verb can have maximally one Affectee or one Location argument: there are no verbs taking both a Location and a Goal argument, or an Experiencer and a Recipient (cf. Gruber 2001). On the other hand, directional theta-roles always presuppose patients or experiencers as thematic relations, even when these are only realized in participants with Agent theta-roles – as in John went to Chicago, where John cumulates the thematic relations of agent, patient (internal theme) and experiencer (of the motion). Also, all Affectees presuppose Themes, Locations, or Qualities (otherwise there would be nothing to affect them): John (Recipient / Perdant) received / lost money (Theme), bought / sold a house (Theme), learnt / remembered / forgot the word (Theme), spotted / lost sight of the bird (Theme); John (Experiencer) has / owns / knows / ignores / remembers / can see something (Theme); John (Experiencer) is happy (Quality). The examples in the preceding paragraph include verbs of perception and mental activities: see, remember, know, believe, etc. – to which can be added love, like, dislike, etc. –, whose the subject is an Experiencer. The objects of these verbs could be construed not only as Themes, but also as Locations. 48 The corresponding structural position is in any case
48
In this connection, Nesset (2010) treats the Perfectivization of verbs of “passive perception” (i.e. of type see, hear;
verbs of “active perception”, like look and listen, have an Agent and a Theme) in terms of spatial relations – e.g. Russ. uvidet’p „see, spot‟ is derived from videt’i with the suffix u-, which denotes “movement away from the speaker‟s domain of accessibility” (although the corresponding preposition is static: „at‟, and there are numerous 79
syntactically available: there is no other argument competing for a Location theta-role, and the sensation, perception, or mental object that is seen, known, remembered, liked, etc., can be regarded as the location where the subject acts as an experiencer, or where it shares in the existence of the experienced object by means of perception or mental activity. This might provide an explanation for the frequency of objects in the genitive (partitive for sharing: I will suggest below that the Locations might include partitives) with such verbs in several IndoEuropean branches like Greek or Slavic, or the locative and genitive with some psych-verbs in Sanskrit (e.g. snih- „love‟ + L/G/D) and Greek (érasthai „love‟ + G); cf. also think of / about something (G/L), believe in something (L).49 The object appears to be construed as a Location also in other verbs taking the genitive like Gk. árkhein „be the first to do, start‟ and Lat. potīrī „acquire‟ – perhaps with the object seen as a Goal to be partaken of. Locations are typically spatial (John lives / dwells in Chicago), but various cross-field generalizations are both conceivable and empirically supported, suggesting that some expansion of the function of Locations might be in order – maximally leading to a definition of the Location as „that whereof the subject partakes‟. The more concrete manifestations of this relational function of Locations are spatial, e.g. a subject (Experiencer) living in a certain place partakes of that place (Location). More abstract instances of partaking are the objects of verbs like participate (in), share (in), partake (of), accuse (of) („conceive of somebody as partaking in, i.e. being involved in, the object of the accusation‟), and possibly also, in languages like Finnish, the objects in the partitive. In the more conservative Indo-European languages, these objects are prefixed verbs where no ablative value of u- is recognizable), where the “domain of accessibility” is perhaps identifiable with the „point of view‟ that I proposed to be regarded as the definitory feature of Affectees. 49
Verbs of perception and mental activities are sometimes visibly related via evidentiality in IE languages, where
forms derived from the root meaning „see‟ occasionally acquire the meaning „know‟ < „have seen‟ (evidential). 80
typically in the genitive or locative, or the objects of prepositions: Gk. koinōneĩn / metékhein / metalambánein (G) „participate / share in‟, pínein (G) „drink‟, esthíein (G) „eat‟, Gm. sich an etwas beteiligen „participate in something‟, Pol. oskarżaći kogoś1 o coś2 „accuse somebody1 of something2‟, etc. Even in English, the objects of the verbs mentioned above are introduced by prepositions which otherwise introduce locations and „wholes‟ in part-whole relationships (in and of respectively). Given Barwise and Perry‟s (1983) definition of situations as spatio-temporal locations identified in linguistic expressions, this view of the Location arguments is entirely plausible: unless expressly considered as a physical object in its corporeality, a location is the spatial dimension of a situation, as a time interval is its temporal dimension. Since a situation has the semantic type s, both locations (as static locations, goals, or sources) and time intervals could have the same type, when referential. The common denominator of Themes and Locations could be rendered by the notion of „partaking‟: an Affectee can partake of a Theme (115) or of a Location (116) (apparently only Experiencers can, in certain idioms), but also a Theme can partake of a (dynamic) Location (117). This partaking relation can be represented as in (118), where an argument situated at a higher level in the chart is licensed by the positive value of a semantic feature on a lower argument (119): an Affectee is related to, or experiences, a Theme or a Location ([±relate]), and a Theme is located at a static Location, or moves towards a Goal or from a Source, partaking of it ([±partake]). Passivization, where possible, is associated with the negative value of the respective feature, which licenses the passivized arguments as optional obliques: The cat[-relate] (Theme argument) was found by John (oblique recipient); The top[-partake] (Location argument) was reached by the team (oblique agent & internal theme) in one hour.
81
(115) Affectee – Theme configurations: John (Experiencer) has a house (Theme). John (Recipient) found his cat (Theme). John (Perdant) lost his cat (Theme).
(116) Affectee – Location configurations: John (Experiencer) is in poverty / pain (static Location). John (Experiencer) got into trouble (Goal). John (Experiencer) got out of trouble (Source).
(117) Theme – Location configurations: John (Agent) took Bill (Theme) home (Goal). John (Agent) took / put Bill (Theme/Experiencer) out of his misery (Source). John (Theme) dwells in Chicago (Location). John (Theme) arrived in Chicago (Location).
(118) partaking relations (
: „experiences‟;
Affectee
Theme
Location
82
: „is located at / moves to, from‟)
(119) argument licensing:
Affectee
Affectee
Theme
θAffectee
θAffectee
θTheme
Theme [+relate]
Location[+relate]
Location[+partake]
Instances of Locations as sole arguments are very rare, and in any case marginal, because a location is a location only if something or something is there, a goal is a goal only if something or somebody reaches it, and a source is a source only if something or somebody leaves it: a table is a Location or a Goal (The knife is on the table; I put the knife on the table) only if construed as such, otherwise it is merely a physical object, or a portion of space(-time). Also temporal concepts like disaster or world (He is headed for disaster; He lives in another world) will not be Goals or Locations if nobody / nothing „partakes of‟ them, but remain finite or infinite intervals of space-time. On the other hand, an Agent can be an Agent even without a Causer, and a Recipient can be so without an Agent, because there are lower arguments (Affectees, Themes) which can license them as arguments with the respective theta-roles. Possible cases of Locations as sole arguments might be verbs like loom, Lat. impendēre and imminēre or Gm. bevorstehen „be imminent‟, where the subject seems to be neither an Agent nor a Theme (and even less an Affectee), but rather a Location featuring certain properties, so that whoever happens to get under its scope will feel the consequences. I will argue later in this chapter that what licenses the Location argument in the Latin and German examples is the prefix: the subject will be a Theme in Gm. Der Bahnhof ist da drüben „The train station is over there‟, but a Location in Folgenreiche Änderungen stehen bevor „Significant changes are imminent‟.
83
More debatable cases are SCr. Došlop je do rata „A war ensued / resulted‟ (lit. „It came to a war‟) and Pol. W tym domu straszyi „That house is haunted‟ (lit. „In that house it frightens). In the first example, the Goal is certainly an argument, but there might be a covert Theme subject meaning „the context‟ (whence the neuter gender agreement on the participle došlo „arrived‟). In the second one, the location might not even be an argument, the real arguments being a covert Agent („whatever is in the house‟ – but precisely, one does not know what there is, whence the apprehension) and a covert non-specific Experiencer („one‟).50 Even so, the semantic proximity to loom suggests that an interpretation where the locative expression w tym domu „in that house‟ is a Location argument is possible. The nature of the Location in the Polish example differs from the one with the English, Latin, and German verbs in the preceding paragraph, because it lacks the „remoteness‟ effect of the latter: what looms is usually seen or visualized as being remote in time or space („looms large‟), and so are the possible sole Locations arguments in the stative deadjectivals to be discussed in section 5.4.4, of type Lat. albēre „be white‟ and Russ. belet’i in the stative sense „be white‟, rather than the processual „become white‟. Such verbs are employed to describe visual impressions of distant and massive „things‟, such as a lake or the sky, whose large dimensions render insignificant any trace of corporeality, so that they are normally referred to as „there‟, rather than as „that‟. These verbs would not be used to describe objects that can be held in hand, moved, or otherwise manipulated.
50
I owe the Slavic examples to Wayles Browne. 84
The relationships between arguments mediated by the semantic features discussed above can be presented synoptically as in (120), with the Causer as the pole of agentivity (with no proto-patient entailments), and the Locations as the pole of passivity (with no proto-agent entailments). If verbs with Locations as sole arguments exist, they can be causativized (in improbable constructions like Gm. bevorstehen lassen „make something be imminent‟), and all logical relations between arguments (120) will be actualized.
(120) relations between arguments:
partaking
(
: „partakes of‟)
actional
(
: „acts upon‟)
causative
(
: „causes X to…‟)
Causer event Agent
Affectee
Theme
Location
85
(121) argument licensing:
Causer
Causer
Causer
Causer
θCauser
θCauser
θCauser
θCauser
Agent[+cause]
Affectee[+cause]
Theme[+cause]
Agent
Agent
Agent
θAgent
θAgent
θAgent
Affectee[+act]
Theme[+act]
Location[+act]
Affectee
Affectee
Theme
θAffectee
θAffectee
θTheme
Theme [+relate]
Location[+relate]
Location[+cause]
Location[+partake]
In the history of the Indo-European languages, numerous oscillations can be noticed in the ability to express partitives: some languages (Slavic) have preserved it more than others, some others have either extended (Fr. boire de l’eau (Partitive) vs. Lat. aquam (Acc) bibere „eat bread‟) or reduced it (remember with an accusative object vs. Goth. gamunan with a genitive object). These variations point to an affinity in terms of thematic relations between the theta-roles Theme and (static) Location which can be represented as in (122), where Themes and Locations share at least an „object‟ thematic relation, meaning an object which participates passively in a situation to a certain extent – either partly or totally. When this extent is regarded as relevant, the object becomes a partitive with a Location theta-role (typically marked with a partitive genitive: Fr. boire du thé, Russ. pit’i čaju „drink tea‟), otherwise it is expressed as a Theme (in the accusative: 86
drink tea). (122) can also represent the close affinity between Themes and Experiencers, based on a shared „patient‟ thematic relation, which focuses on the role of a passive object, rather than on the extent of its participation in a situation. A diachronic development in the expression of patients like Lat. me pudet (1.sg. Acc complement: Theme) > Fr. j’ai honte (1.sg. N subject: Experiencer) „I am ashamed‟ can be regarded then as a „leftward drift‟ of the patient thematic relation from Theme to Experiencer, by acquiring extra agent-like proto-roles (here: sentience).51
(122) Experiencer
patient
Theme
Fr. j’ai honte < Lat. me pudet
object
Location
Lat. aquam bibere > Fr. boire de l’eau
3.2.4 Qualities and verbal concepts In English, Qualities as arguments may accompany apparently any kind of other argument, in what can be termed „qualifying configurations‟ (comments on the examples will be given below):
(123) Causer – Quality configuration: The clouds (Causer) caused darkness (Quality). The clouds (Causer) made it get dark (Quality).
51
In methinks (1.sg. D complement) > I think (1.sg. N subject), the theta-role is Experiencer in both cases: the case
is the dative, cf. OE þyncan, Goth. þugkjan, both with the dative, the original sense being „it seems to me‟. 87
(124) Agent – Quality configuration: John (Agent) used to dress elegantly / with taste (Quality). John (Agent) acts / behaves like a fool / foolishly / in a foolish manner (Quality). Jean (Agent) fait le pitre (Quality). (French) „John acts like a clown.‟ (lit. „John makes the clown.‟)
(125) Theme – Quality configuration: The beer (Theme) is / got warm (Quality). That car (Theme) costs 20,000 dollars (Quality).52 John (Agent) painted the door (Theme) white (Quality). John (Agent) called Bill (Theme) a fool (Quality). John (Experiencer) considers Bill (Theme) intelligent / a genius (Quality).
(126) Affectee – Quality configuration: John (Experiencer) feels well / like a fool (Quality). John (Experiencer) was / felt / became sad (Quality).
(127) Location – Quality configuration: The room (Location) is / became empty (Quality). The forest (Location) is dark (Quality). The sky (Location) is / became cloudy (Quality). The day (temporal Location) is grey (Quality).
52
But the price is probably an instrumental oblique in John (Agent) sold the car (Theme) for 20,000 dollars. 88
The second example in (123) can be interpreted with the theta-grid Causer-Quality to the extent that Qualities can be sole arguments, which is the case as long as it is felt to be non-referential: it is dark meaning „there is darkness‟, rather than „the day is dark‟ (temporal location) or „this place is dark‟ (spatial location). If there is a covert spatial or temporal Location argument like „here‟ or „today‟, this will not be a good example. In (124), the Qualities appear to be arguments, contributing essential information, and the choice of the verb is less important: John dresses elegantly essentially means that John is elegant, and John acts like a fool can be paraphrased as John behaves like a fool, where the quality is an argument (*John behaves is incomplete). The second example in (123) also illustrates the variety of syntactic categories which can appear as Quality arguments. (125) features several typical patterns of Theme-Quality, including resultative constructions and „small clauses‟. In (126), the subject‟s theta-role is intuitively that of Experiencer, which usually, and perhaps always, can be shown to be the case by a using the verb like feel to differentiate the Experiencer-Quality configurations from the Theme-Quality ones: John (Experiencer) is / feels happy / warm vs. the beer (Theme) is / #feels warm. The thetarole of the subjects in (127) might seem debatable, yet there are adjectives which typically describe locations, rather than objects in their material dimension (empty, full), or describe only locations, like dark (not when applied to colors). In this sense, the forest is dark / cold can be paraphrased as it is dark / cold (Quality) in the forest (locative oblique?), said by somebody who is in the forest or who imagines himself (or the addressee, or somebody else) as being surrounded by darkness or feeling cold in the forest. The forest is dark cannot be said when pointing to a forest in the distance and describing the visual impression, unless dark refers to the color of the shape (spot, or line) in which the forest appears, so that the „remoteness effect‟ associated with Locations as sole arguments, alluded to above, is reversed with this type of
89
adjectives. Likewise, The forest is cold describes a different kind of sensation than This ice cube is cold, where the tactile element is more directly involved. Meteorological phenomena are probably on the borderline between corporeality and locational nature: the subject in The rain is cold can be interpreted as a Theme, referring to the substance (the drops of water), or as a Location, when the sentence can be paraphrased as It is cold in the rain. In The clouds are dark, the primary interpretation of the subject is probably as a corporeal Theme, but this is less clear when a mass of clouds accumulates and becomes a distant location more difficult to grasp visually as a single object; in this case, dark, referring this time to the color, can be applied to a distant location, as with the verbs of type Lat. albēre „be white‟ alluded to above. Qualities are non-referential, being outside of space and time, and their semantic type will be et or st, according to the type of the arguments they qualify. In the sections on argument structure in this chapter, I will use the notion „verbal concept‟ to designate the meaning of the verbal root, and I will consider that it has the type st. Verbal concepts and Quality arguments are both non-referential, and not infrequently the same predication can be expressed in either way, especially when the verbal concept is stative, e.g. John rejoices / is happy. Themes can be represented as participating in a quality or a verbal concept (i.e. in the kind of action, state, process, etc., denoted by the latter) by means of the positive value of the feature [±partake] introduced above. 53 To complete the picture, I will introduce a feature [±locate] to license Locations from verbal roots and Qualities, given that the only definitory aspect of Locations is 53
The expressions of qualification, typically having a Theme or an Experiencer as the subject and a Quality as an
internal argument, is not uniform across languages: in Irish, the quality can be denoted by a non-referential noun, and the qualified entity by a locative expression, in a Theme-Location configuration: scolaire atá ionam „I am a scholar‟, lit. „(it is) a scholar which is in me‟; Éireannach atá ann „he is Irish‟, lit. „(it is) an Irishman that is in him‟ (observation due to Michael Weiss). 90
their existence in space and time, and a feature [±qualify] by means of which a verbal root licenses Quality arguments (via a functional head Qua0), if clear examples of Qualities as sole arguments can be found. (128)-(133) are possible examples of predicates with sole arguments, licensed by the verbal root.
(128) verbal concept – Causer configuration: God (Causer) causes (verbal concept), but is not caused. L’homme (Agent) propose (verbal concept), Dieu (Causer?) dispose (verbal concept). „Man makes projects / proposes, but God decides.‟ (French)
(129) verbal concept – Agent configuration: John (Agent) is running (verbal concept). – unergative John (Agent) is reading (verbal concept). – antipassive
(130) verbal concept – Affectee configuration: John (Affectee) rejoiced (verbal concept). – unaccusative
(131) verbal concept – Theme configuration: John (Theme) disappeared (verbal concept). – unaccusative
(132) verbal concept – Location configuration: Disaster (temporal Location) looms (verbal concept). The war (temporal Location) began / ended (verbal concept).
91
(133) verbal concept – Quality configuration: It’s getting (verbal concept) dark / late (Quality).
Qualities as arguments appear to qualify subjects only at stage-level, when they describe a temporary state of the subject (134a). On the other hand, individual-level predications, describing a definitory quality or permanent state of the subject (134b), do not identify situations located in space-time, and do not allow locative modifiers (with either spatial or temporal value), whereas even when Qualities appear as sole arguments, with no subject, such a modification is permitted (134c):
(134a) John is happy (today / in Chicago). (134b) John is a man (#today / #in Chicago). (134c) It’s getting dark (now / in here).
With individivual-level subjects (134b), the Qualities, which are themselves atemporal, will not be licensed by a feature [+qualify] of the verbal root, as they are in (133). It can be argued that in this case they do not need to be licensed at all, since they inherently belong to the subject, and do not combine with anything to produce a new situation. All other predications, involving all other types of arguments, combine these arguments and the verbal concept in the description of a situation; also the cases where there is only one argument (128)-(133), this argument combines with the verbal concept, thereby identifying the situation. (135) integrates Qualities and verbal concepts into the synopsis in (121). Causers, Agents, Affectees, Themes, Locations, and Qualities, are licensed as arguments by the positive
92
values of the features [±cause], [±act], [±relate], [±partake], [±locate], and [±qualify] respectively: a Causer causes; an Agent acts; an Affectee relates to the situation by being sentient, or having a „point of view‟; a Theme participates passively in situations, partakes of spatio-temporal locations, or instantiates qualities; a Location exists in space-time and can functions as a spatio-temporal frame or background for a situation; and a Quality can qualify another participant or the entire situation as an attribute (133) conceptualized in the absence of a spatio-temporal support.
(135) argument licensing: Causer θCauser Agent[+cause] / Affectee[+cause] / Theme[+cause] / Location[+cause] / Quality[+cause] / vb.con.[+cause] Agent θAgent Affectee[+act] / Theme[+act] / Location[+act] / Quality[+act] / verbal concept[+act] Affectee θAffectee Theme [+relate] / Location[+relate] / Quality[+relate] / verbal concept[+relate] Theme θTheme Location[+partake] / Quality[+partake] / verbal concept[+partake]
93
Location
Quality
θLocation
θQuality
Quality[+locate] / verbal concept[+locate]
verbal concept[+qualify]
For instance, a person can: cause an event without participating in it, by acting upon a participant which is [+cause] (is „caused to…‟) (136a); cause an event by participating in it, acting upon another participant which is [+act] (is acted upon) (136b); experience a temporary condition which is [+relate] (is experienced) (136c); or be at / „partake of‟ a location which is [+partake] (is occupied by something) (136d). Likewise, a day as a temporal Location, can be described as sunny, this quality being [+locate] (is located in, or actualized by, the day) (136e), and a Quality as sole argument can be licensed by a vague verbal concept which is [+qualify] (is completed with the essential information provided by the Quality argument) (136f).
(136a) John (Causer) made Bill (Affectee[+cause]) angry (Quality[+relate]). (136b) John (Agent) ate the apple (Theme[+act]). (136c) John (Affectee) was feeling lonely (Quality[+relate]). (136d) John (Theme) lives in Chicago (Location[+partake]). (136e) The day (Location) is sunny (Quality[+locate]). (136f) It’s getting (verbal concept[+qualify]) late (Quality).
This system will remain in place even if it the inventory of theta-roles is reduced or expanded: if Affectees turn out to be a kind of Locations in some or all languages, they can be eliminated from the condensed version of (135) in (137) by deleting the sixth row and the third column.
94
(137)
Causer
Agent
Affectee
Theme
Location
Quality
verbal
verbal
verbal
verbal
verbal
verbal
concept[+cause]
concept[+act]
concept[+relate]
concept[+partake]
concept[+locate]
concept[+qualify]
Quality[+cause]
Quality[+act]
Quality[+relate]
Quality[+partake]
Quality[+locate]
Location[+cause] Location[+act]
Location[+relate] Location[+partake]
Theme[+cause]
Theme[+act]
Theme [+relate]
Affectee[+cause]
Affectee[+act]
Agent[+cause]
Finally, there can be verbs with no arguments, where the predicate consists only of the verbal concept, which itself completely identifies the situation, if there are no identifiable participants. Such is the case of verbs describing meteorological and some other natural phenomena. However, if a participant is imagined, they can acquire arguments – e.g. the Agent in Gk. Zeùs húiei „Zeus rains‟.
3.2.5 Dynamic theta-roles
3.2.5.1 Theta-roles, event boundaries, and telicity Since intuitively “the Source has the sense of a preceding Location, and the Goal of a subsequent one” (Gruber 2001: 258), it is possible to regard the state of the Theme being at the Goal or Recipient as the upper boundary of the event, and the state of the Theme being at the Source or Perdant as the lower boundary of the event. An event expressed by a verb with an argument of this type contains an inherent transition between a „before‟ and an „after‟: before vs. after leaving the Source / Perdant, or before vs. after reaching the Goal / Recipient. In the former case, the event is subsequent to a state during which the Theme is located at the Source, or is in the
95
Perdant‟s possession; in the latter case, the event is prior to a state when the Theme is located at the Goal, or is in the Recipient‟s possession. After the Theme leaves the Source / Perdant, and before it reaches the Goal / Recipient, there is an event of change of location (motion) or transfer of possession. I will represent the boundaries of events as the semantic features [I] („beginning‟) and [F] („end‟): Sources and Perdants have the feature [I], and Goals and Recipients have the feature [F]. Correspondingly, any verb with one of these four types of arguments will express syntactically a boundary of the event, hence a transition between situations. Involving a transition between two heterogenous situations, these verbs are also inherently telic:
(138) John went to Chicago[F] (Goal). John left Chicago[I] (Source). John[F] (Recipient) received an apple / remembered the song. John gave Bill[F] (Recipient) an apple. John[I] (Perdant) lost his money / forgot the song. John deprived Bill[I] (Perdant) of his rights.
A goal-like argument stands for, or signals, a situation that is construed as a goal: the Recipient Bill in John gave Bill a book, and the Goal to Chicago in John went to Chicago, denote the direction towards the location where the goal situation will obtain. (The same holds, mutatis mutandis, for Perdants and Sources, but they are less frequently expressed as arguments than Recipients and Goals are.) This location can also be conceptual or metaphoric, rather than spatiotemporal, as in John brought the task to (its) completion, in which case it can be interpreted as a Quality – more exactly, completion was a Goal and bring a motion verb at the time when the
96
idiom was created, after which the semantic bleaching of the verb accompanied the reinterpretation of the complement as a Quality argument. In John brought the task to completion, the DP completion denotes / denoted the goal of the action, which is the state of the task having been completed. In this case, the goal is the state of the task having been completed. Even when a goal-like argument denotes an individual, it also presupposes that the action is meant to reach a temporal goal: in John gave Bill a book, the state of the book being with Bill, or in Bill‟s possession, constitutes the goal of the action of giving. Likewise, in John went to Chicago, the DP Chicago denotes the spatial goal of the action, but also stands for, or signals, a temporal goal (John being in Chicago).54 As such, verbs with goal-like arguments are inherently Perfective, because the goals of the actions expressed by them coincide with the states identified in the respective sentences.
54
Due to their prospective value, goal-like arguments also have an affinity with the future tense, whence periphrastic
means for the expression of the future tense (Binnick 1974; Halpern 1975) – English I am going to read this book, Spanish voy a leer este libro, French je vais lire ce livre, Welsh yr wyf i’n mynd i ddarllen y llyfr hwn –, as well as with imperatives: in colloquial Basque, the imperative form goazen „let‟s go‟ is used instead of the regular imperative auxiliaries to combine with the allative of the verbal noun, e.g. goazen liburu hau irakurtzera „let‟s read this book‟, lit. „let‟s go to the-reading-this-book‟ (irakurtze- „reading‟). In these expressions, a verbal noun or an infinitive is used with or without an allative marker (English to, Spanish a, Welsh i, Basque -ra, French Ø) to refer to a temporal situation which constitutes a goal. Several idioms with motion verbs, like this came to mean… or this goes to prove…, illustrate the same transposition of temporal goals into more abstract relations. Also various expressions of modality in various languages contain phrases what ultimately denote goals, e.g. have to or need (to) plus an infinitive describing a situation which is the goal towards which the subject tends (cf. Haegeman‟s 1989 discussion of the conditions of usage of the construction be going to in English). 97
3.2.5.2 Theta-roles and Slavic-type aspect Given the fact that Perfectives always involve transitions, it is to be expected that verbs with one of these four types of arguments in Slavic will be Perfective or at least allow a Perfective reading (like the determinate Imperfectives qua determinate), and this is indeed the case. For instance, in all but one of the Russian equivalents of the verbs in (138), the Perfective or determinate Imperfective functioning qua determinate (i.e. having a Goal argument) is the morphologically basic form, from which the aspectual counterpart is derived in general by suffixation: exat’i-det „go (by vehicle)‟ (ezdit’i-indet), uexat’p „leave (by vehicle)‟ (uezžat’i), dostat’p „receive‟ (dostavat’i), vspomnit’p „remember‟ (vspominat’i), dat’p „give‟ (davat’i), zabyt’p „forget‟ (zabyvat’i), lišit’p „deprive‟ (lišat’i), but terjat’i „lose‟ (poterjat’p), with a well-behaved nearequivalent utratit’p (utračivat’i) used in slightly different contexts. Furthermore, most of the (originally) primary – i.e. morphologically simple – Perfectives in Slavic were verbs with such arguments. Dostál (1954: 100-101) classifies the primary Perfectives in Old Church Slavonic according to lexical-semantic criteria, and notes that most of them denote some kind of motion – whether concrete, as in pastip „fall‟, sěstip „sit down‟, leštip „lie down‟, statip „stand up, rise‟, vrěštip „throw‟, skočitip „jump‟, stavitip „set‟, vratitip „turn‟, varitip „pass ahead, outstrip‟, stǫpitip „step‟, pustitip „let go, leave‟, or involving some kind of transfer, as in datip „give‟, jętip „catch, take‟, kupitip „buy‟, desitip „come upon, find‟. In other primary Perfectives or biaspectuals, belonging to several of Dostál‟s morpho-semantic classes, the temporal Goal (the effect) is much more prominent than the action it follows (the cause), as in resultatives: reštip/i „say‟, (j)avitip „show, reveal‟, jazvitip „wound‟, vrěditip „harm‟, živitip/i „make alive‟, roditip „give birth‟, svoboditip „free‟, prostitip „free‟, gonozitip „save‟, krĭstitip/i „baptize‟, svętitip/i „hallow‟, sramitip „put shame on‟, mĭstitip „take revenge‟, truditip/i „bother /
98
overcome‟, pečatĭlětip „seal‟.
55
Isačenko (1962: 352-355) provides a list of what are
synchronically primary perfectives in Russian, and the semantic characterizations of these perfectives coincide with those in Old Church Slavonic, although many of the primary perfectives in modern Russian are historically derived forms, where the prefixation has become morphologically opaque – e.g. skazat’p „say‟, umeret’p „die‟. The most typical arguments associated with Perfectivity are those denoting locations or physical objects which constitute the goals of motions or the recipients in actions involving some kind of transfer, whether concrete or figurative. The verbs with such arguments are the most prone to function as Perfectives, because the presence of a Goal, Recipient, Source, or Perdant argument can be readily construed as indicating the inherent existence of a transition. (Although the Perfective nature of such verbs results from the existence of the respective arguments via the telicity these arguments imply, not all Perfectives are telic – and therefore not all Perfectives have this type of arguments –, because, as I argued earlier, the transitions presupposed by Perfectivity can also result from the nondurative / punctual nature of the semelfactives, which are atelic.) A motion or a transfer can bring about a resultative state either instantaneously – as in „falling‟, „throwing‟, „giving‟, „taking‟, „leaving‟, etc., where there is a real or an imagined transition between contiguous locations –, or duratively, as in „walking‟, „riding‟, „flying‟, and other manners of motion, where the source and the goal are not contiguous, and the distance between them takes time to cover, given the cognitive impossibility of ubiquity. Probably any situation can be conceived of as durative, especially with plural participants (John is throwing stones, The squad entered the building, cf. Vendler 1967), so that the respective verbs can form Imperfectives as well, which denote the situation in itself, rather than marking a transition to
55
The other verbs listed by Dostál as primary perfectives have infinitives derived with the suffix -nǫ-. 99
another situation defined by being at a location (goal). On the other hand, a motion between two non-contiguous locations can very easily be conceived of as a durative situation, because covering a distance takes time, but also as a transition, given the presence of a spatial goal indicating a situation (temporal goal) to be reached. The other class of lexical Perfectives are those describing events commonly conceived of as instantaneous, because punctual events can more easily be treated as marking a transition between a „before‟ and an „after‟ than as situations in themselves. Many of these verbs in Slavic have infinitive stems derived with the suffix -nǫ- or its reflexes (OCS kosnǫtip „touch‟, SCr. krenutip „move‟, Russ. kriknut’p „shout‟, Pol. ciągnąćp „pull‟, etc.), or present stems with the reflexes of the suffix -ne/o- (OCS statip „stand up, rise‟, 1sg. stanǫp; SCr. pastip „fall‟, 1sg. padnemp; etc.). On the other hand, verbs with static Location arguments are Imperfective, and generally denote states, e.g. Russ. žit’i „be alive, live / dwell‟, Pol. mieszkaći „live, dwell‟, and also the type Russ. belet’i „be white‟ zelenet’i „be green‟, if the arguments are Locations in the stative uses of such verbs. Since being at a Location involves time, the respective verbal concepts are durative (stative), and the verbs are Imperfective. Among Affectees, the Experiencers are the counterparts of the static Locations, but not all verbs with Experiencers arguments are Imperfective – although many of them are, e.g. OCS bolětii „be ill‟, imětii „have‟, also vidětii/p „see‟, slyšatii/p „hear‟ –, for an Experiencer can be as well affected in a punctual event, e.g. in the Perfective variants of OCS vidětii/p and slyšatii/p mentioned above, with the meanings respectively „spot‟ and „hear (suddenly)‟.56
56
A different theory of theta-roles and argument linking than the one developed here might affect these conclusions,
but for the purposes of this discussion I will continue implementing this theory. 100
3.3 The syntactic representation of theta-roles
3.3.1 Introduction In order to be pronounced, arguments must receive „case‟, which can be morphologically marked or not. Chomsky (1981/1993) distinguished between structural Case and non-structural case: the former is associated with specific syntactic positions, while the latter constitutes the morphological expression of grammatical relations like subject, direct object, and indirect object.57 For the present analysis of the interaction between argument structure and aspect, only non-structural case is relevant: for instance, in Indo-European languages, a Theme will typically have accusative case (non-structural); if it does not receive case in situ, it has to move to a position where it can get Case (structural), but such movement is outside the scope of this discussion.
57
Within the category of non-structural case, Woolford (2006) further distinguishes between lexical and inherent
case, the former being more idiosyncratic because selected by lexical heads, and the latter more regular, being associated with certain theta-positions, such as dative for Goals and ergative for Agents. She also claims that lexical case is proper to Themes, and inherent case is proper to Agents and Goals. This distinction may be relevant for the more conservative IE languages: I will suggest that locations, goals of motion, and objects of sensory perception and mental activities are closer to the verb, as are Themes (objects and experiencers), with the first group of arguments being licensed by a Locative / Goal head and having respectively locative, accusative / dative, or genitive case, and the Themes being licensed by a theme head and usually having accusative case. There will be a variety of lexical cases assigned by the functional heads (Locative / Goal and Theme respectively) that are closer to the verb, whereas the arguments that do not receive lexical case from a head immediately above the verb would have a more regular inherent case – typically, the dative for Recipients, including beneficiaries, and maleficiaries (arguments of verbs meaning „give‟, „send‟, „help‟, „harm‟ in Gm. jemandem (D) schaden, etc.), and also accusative for Agents in causative constructions (in Sanskrit). 101
The VP structure that I will assume here is partly the traditional one, with the Agent argument generated higher than the Theme, except that every argument is licensed by a corresponding functional head, which assigns it non-structural case. In this sense, every such head can be described as an applicative morpheme, although applicatives proper introduce additional arguments to a base verb. An applicative morpheme either increases a verb‟s valency by adding a new argument to its theta-grid, or specifically marks the existence of a certain type of argument.58 In the following example from Ainu (Shibatani 1990: 65), the location is denoted in the first sentence (with a non-applicative verb) by the PP [poro cise ta], which is an oblique, but in the second sentence by the DP [poro cise], which is an argument of the applicative verb:
(139) poro big
cise
ta
house in
horari live
„He lives in a big house.‟
(140) poro big
cise
e-horari
house APPL-live
„He lives in a big house.‟
There is no difference between arguments introduced by applicatives and arguments with the same theta-role which belong to the basic theta-grid of the verb (i.e. are not applicatives proper).
58
“Applicative constructions are a means some languages have for structuring clauses which allow the coding of a
thematically peripheral argument or adjunct as a core-object argument.” (Peterson 2007: 1) 102
In this framework, and assuming UTAH, 59 a Theme argument will be licensed by a Theme head Th0 in the specifier of a Theme phrase ThP, an Agent argument will be licensed by an Agent head Ag0 in the specifier of an Agent phrase AgP, etc. There is crosslinguistic evidence for the existence of each one of these heads, which can either be filled by applicative morphemes or lack phonological content; in the latter case (phonologically null heads), the existence of a Ø morpheme is manifested in case assignment to the respective argument. The VP (or the voice phrase vP, cf. Kratzer 1996) will be replaced by an XP, where X0 is the highest argument head. The verbal root will be in the complement of the lowest argument-introducing head and will undergo head movement, collecting the affixes it finds in the heads; the surface forms will result from head-movement. For instance, a proposition with a transitive verb will usually be expressed in an AgP, and this AgP will correspond to the VP/vP in the traditional view:
(141)
AgP John
VP ↔
Ag' Ag0
John
V0 read-[+active]
ThP a book Acc
V'
Th' Th0 Ø[+act]
a book Acc
Root read-
John reading a book The Theme is commonly regarded as a „direct object‟ and a complement of the verb. However, the data presented in the following sections, where the arguments which can be introduced as
59
The Uniformity of Theta Assignment Hypothesis: “Identical thematic relationships between items are represented
by identical structural relationships between those items at the level of D-structure.” (Baker 1988: 46). 103
applicatives by prefixes are not only Goals, Locations, Recipients, etc., but also Themes – and they are among the most frequent applicatives in Indo-European and Hungarian – strongly suggest that the status of the Themes is not different from the one of other arguments. Agents are generally considered to be „external arguments‟ licensed in a „voice head‟ v 0 (Kratzer 1996); in this discussion, Ag0 corresponds to v0.
3.3.2 Argument structure It might seem that the individual theta-roles can be realized syntactically by arguments in various structural positions. For instance, in sentences with a Location and a Theme argument, the subject is seemingly either the Location or the Theme, and likewise with Experiencers and Themes (attribution of theta-roles cf. Gruber 2001):
(142) John (Experiencer) has a book (Theme). The book (Theme) belongs to John (Experiencer).
(143) The books (Theme) are in the bag (Location). The bag (Location) contains books (Theme).
With other sets of theta-roles, the syntactic representation is more uniform, e.g. in a set of Agent, Theme, and Goal, the Agent will be the subject, and in a set of Recipient and Theme, the subject will usually be the Recipient.60 On the other hand, (142) and (143) allow each an alternative analysis. In (142), to John in the second example might as well be interpreted as a Location, if
60
Gruber (2001: 262) refers to such regularities as “projection asymmetries of simple thematic functions”. 104
this example is compared with John (Theme) belongs here (Location). In both cases, the complement of belong designates the place of the Theme in a conceptual space where everything belongs to a certain place, or where some regulations, customs, etc., obtain which assign possessors to some things:
(142') John (Experiencer) has a book (Theme). The book (Theme) belongs to John (Location).
For the second example in (143), 61 I suggest that the reason why two arguments can have different structural positions lies in the diachrony: contain inherits the argument structure of Lat. continēre „hold together‟ (later „contain‟), whose arguments were originally an Agent and a Theme, because continēre preserves the argument structure of tenēre „hold‟, from which it is derived by prefixation. (In the section treating completive prefixes, I show that these prefixes, of which con- is one of the most typical in Latin, do not modify the argument structure of the base verbs.) Later in Latin, when continēre acquired the new meaning „contain‟, the subject modified its theta-role from Agent to Location, but the hierarchical structure remained unchanged, and was taken over as such at the time when contain was borrowed into French and English: Agent – Theme > Location – Theme. A similar development took place with the unprefixed verb from Latin to Spanish: Lat. tenēre „hold‟ has Agent – Theme, but Sp. tener „have‟ ended up with Experiencer – Theme. Likewise, verbs with the meaning „have‟ in several branches of IndoEuropean developed from roots meaning „hold‟ (> „keep‟ > „have‟) or „take‟: Lat. habēre (< PIE
61 ?
The bag has books is rather bad, due to the selectional properties of have when used for alienable possession.
With inalienable possession, The bag (Experiencer) has a small handle (Theme) is fine. 105
*gheb(h)-), Goth. haban (< PIE *kap-), OCS imětii „have‟ vs. -jęti „take‟ (both from PIE *h1em-), and Gk. ékhein originally meaning „keep, hold‟ (< PIE *se h-, cf. Skr. sah- „endure, withstand‟). With the exception of Gk. ékhein, these verbs contain a stative suffix, and their argument structure is Experiencer – Theme, as opposed to the Agent – Theme structure of the root when used in non-stative formations. The import of these remarks is that irregularities in the structural hierarchy of arguments, as in the second example of (143) with Location – Theme, can have a historical explanation. The hierarchy Theme – Location, as in the first example, is much more common both in English and cross-linguistically, and the reverse order is not the result of an inversion of the more common one, but of a modification of theta-roles: the structure is preserved even when the theta-roles of the respective arguments change; in the following sections I will present several such cases of structure preservation. A further conclusion following from this discussion is that, at least in the Indo-European languages, as well as in Hungarian, structure seems to be fairly stable diachronically and rigid synchronically, in the sense that there is a prevailing structural hierarchy of arguments – with explainable exceptions, like the one in (143). This syntactic hierarchy in (144) is amply corroborated by data from the most common patterns of linear order of arguments in English (145) and many other languages,62 and it provides a reliable framework for the analysis of verbal prefixation later in this chapter.
62
Several authors have suggested that Affectees are generated higher than Locations. For instance, Pylkkänen‟s
(2008) distinguishes between „high applicatives‟ (Affectees / Recipients) and „low applicatives‟ (Locations / Goals). As a rule, I rely in this discussion on data from languages with relatively rigid word order, like English. The list in (145) is not an exhaustive catalogue of theta-grids, but is only intended to illustrate (144). 106
(144) Prevailing hierarchy of argument heads: Caus0 > Ag0 > Aff0 (Exp0 / Rec0 / Perd0) > Th0 > Loc0 (Loc0 / Go0 / So0)63 > Qua0
(145) Caus0 > Ag0 > Th0: John (Causer) made Bill (Agent) kill Mark (Theme). Caus0 > Aff0 > Qua0: John (Causer) made Bill (Experiencer) feel well (Quality). Caus0 > Aff0 > Th0: John (Causer) made Bill (Perdant) lose money (Theme). Caus0 > Aff0: Tornadoes (Causer) frighten John (Affectee). Ag0 > Aff0 > Th0: John (Agent) deprived Bill (Perdant) of his rights (Theme). Ag0 > Aff0 > Th0: John (Agent) gave Bill (Recipient) an apple (Theme). Ag0 > Th0 > Loc0: John (Agent) took Bill (Theme) to London (Goal). Ag0 > Th0 > Loc0: John (Agent) gave an apple (Theme) to Bill (Goal). Ag0 > Th0 > Qua0: John (Agent) painted the door (Theme) white (Quality). Ag0 > Loc0: John (Agent) went to London (Goal). Ag0 > Loc0: John (Agent) exited the building (Source). Aff0 > Th0: John (Experiencer) owns a car (Theme). Aff0 > Th0: John (Experiencer) likes / fears dogs (Theme). Aff0 > Th0: John (Recipient) received an apple (Theme). Aff0 > Th0: John (Perdant) lost an apple (Theme). Aff0 > Th0: John (Experiencer) enjoys the heat (Theme). Aff0 > Th0 > Qua0: John (Experiencer) considers Bill (Theme) intelligent (Quality).64 63
I will keep Loc0 as both a generic label for Locations, including Goals and Sources, and as a specific one for static
Locations, disambiguating when necessary. 64
The attribution of theta-roles is debatable if one considers Baker‟s (1997) observation that the Affectees, when
subjects, have agent-like properties, in that they form mental representations of the affecting factor (the Theme), so 107
Aff0 > Loc0: John (Experiencer) rejoiced at (hearing) the news (temporal Location). Aff0 > Qua0: John (Experiencer) feels sad (Quality). Aff0 / Th0 > Qua0: John (Experiencer / Theme) is / got old (Quality). Th0 > Loc0: John (Theme) lives in London (Location). Loc0 > Qua0: The bottle (Location) is empty (Quality). Loc0 > Qua0 This winter (temporal Location) is very cold (Quality).
I will regard unergatives (John came to London / danced) as Agents with agent and theme thematic relations („internal theme‟), and unaccusatives (John arrived in London) as Themes. Recipients / Perdants and Locations / Goals / Sources apparently do not co-occur as arguments: in John gave Bill a book in London, there is a Recipient argument (Bill), but in London is an adjunct, as the predicate is complete without the latter (gave Bill a book), but not without the former (*gave a book – even when uttered as such, a Recipient is always understood: „to somebody‟, or „away‟, except in special uses like Cows give milk). Likewise, in John sent a book to London for Bill, there is a Goal argument (to London), and the recipient or beneficiary (Bill) is an adjunct: sent a book to London is a complete predicate, while *sent a book is not („to somebody‟, „somewhere‟, „away‟, etc. is understood if unexpressed). Consequently, I will be assuming that, at least in the languages treated here, a verb can have maximally three arguments (not counting Causers): Ag0 > Rec0 / Perd0 > Th0; Ag0 > Th0 > Go0 / So0; Exp0 > Th0 > Qua0; Ag0 > Th0 / Exp0 > Qua0 (in „small clauses‟: John considers John intelligent / happy); and Ag0 > that an alternative theta-grid of the verb in this example could be Agent(John)-Theme(Bill)-Quality(intelligent). This might prove useful in cases of apparent violations of UTAH, like John (Agent, not Affectee) considers Bill (Affectee) unhappy (Quality) – where the adjective unhappy normally qualifies sentient Affectees, rather than Themes, for which sentience is irrelevant. 108
Th0 / Exp0 > Qua0 (in resultative constructions: John painted the door white). The first two templates accomodate cases like John sent Mary a book vs. John sent a book to Mary or their Polish equivalents Jan wysłałp Marii książkę vs. Jan wysłałp książkę do Marii: the indirect object is a Recipient in the first member, and a Goal in the second member. A hierarchy Ag0 > Rec0 > Loc0 might be envisaged if the (metaphorical) Location in Gm. Hans half mir (Recipient) bei dieser Aufgabe (Location) „Hans helped me with this task‟ is an argument, i.e. if the predicate half mir „helped me‟ by itself is understood as having an extra argument taking its reference from the context (referring to the task for which the help is provided). Otherwise, if half mir is a complete predicate, the theta-grid will be Ag0 – Rec0. A structure Ag0 – Rec0 would be conceivable in beistehen „stand by, help‟, if the underlying metaphor „stand by‟ were dissolved and the subject‟s agentivity were regarded as more salient than its original theta-role as an Experiencer of the proximity to the helped party – Er (Agent) ist mir (Recipient) beigestanden „He helped me‟ as originating in Er (Experiencer) ist mir (Location) beigestanden „He stood by me‟. The semantic shift, if completed, is in any event not reflected in syntax, as the choice of the perfect auxiliary (sein „be‟ rather than haben „have‟) suggests. Furthermore, the Recipient‟s original thematic role as a Location is still conspicuous in the fact that the object to which the help applies is an adjunct: in Er ist mir (bei der Durchführung dieser Aufgabe) beigestanden „He helped me (in carrying out this task)‟, the bracketed constituent is dispensable to a larger extent than it is in Er hat mir viel (dabei) geholfen „He help me a lot (with it)‟ when talking about a specific task known from the context. Also, viel „a lot‟ cannot be felicitously used in Er ist mir ganz oft / *viel beigestanden „He helped me quite often / a lot‟, for this adverb does not make much sense when used to qualify an entity‟s presence at a location, which was the original meaning of the sentence.
109
3.3.3 The licensing and interpretation of arguments This section presents the syntactic framework for the subsequent analyses. It consists of a minimal set of working assumptions which are consistent with the data and allow a maximally economical explanation. I first state the entire theory, and illustrate it afterwards with examples. Arguments are licensed by functional heads and either receive non-structural case in situ or have to move to another position where they can get structural Case and become subjects. I will be assuming that non-structural case is assigned by the positive value of the binary semantic features in (135) / (137) on the functional heads: -
Caus0 has no such feature, and a Causer always moves: a Causer is always a subject;
-
Ag0 can have the feature [±cause]: -
[+cause]: there is a Causer (subject), and the Agent receives case in situ;
-
[-cause]: there is a passivized Causer (as an optional adjunct), and the Agent moves for Case and becomes a subject;
-
no [±cause]: there is no Causer, and the Agent moves for Case and becomes a subject; Agents in non-causative or passivized causative sentence are always subjects;
-
Aff0 can have one of the features [±cause] and [±act]: -
[+cause]: there is a Causer (subject) causing the Affectee to be affected;
-
[+act]: there is an Agent (subject) affecting the Affectee; the Agent theta-role includes the thematic relations of source or goal (or giver or taker respectively);
-
[-cause] or [-act]: there is a passivized Causer or Agent; the Affectee moves for Case and becomes a subject, if the language allows this move, for reasons which remain to be explained;
110
-
neither [±cause] nor [±act]: there is no Causer or Agent, and the Affectee becomes a subject – with the proviso that these subject Affectees might in fact be Agents, with all the theoretical implications set forth by Baker (1997);
-
Th0 can have one of the features [±cause], [±act], or [±relate]: -
[+cause]: there is a Causer (subject) causing the Theme to be acted upon;
-
[+act]: there is an Agent (subject) acting upon the Theme;
-
[+relate]: there is an Affectee (subject) affected by the existence, appearance, or disappearance of the Theme in its sensory or mental universe;
-
[-cause], [-active], or [-relate]: the Causer, Agent, or Affectee, are optional adjuncts, and the Theme moves for Case and becomes a subject;
-
no [±cause], [±act], or [±relate]: there is no Causer, Agent, or Affectee, and the Theme is a subject;
-
Loc0 can have one of the features [±cause], [±act], [±relate], or [±partake]: -
[+cause]: there is a Causer (subject) causing the Location to fulfill this role: John causes the war to threaten;
-
[+act]: there is an Agent (subject) moving to the Goal or from the Source;
-
[+relate]: there is an Affectee (subject) affected by its existence at the Location, reaching the Goal, or leaving the Source;
-
[+partake]: there is Theme (subject) located at, reaching, or leaving, the location;
-
[-cause], [-act], [-relate], or [-partake]: the passivization of Location is extremely restricted cross-linguistically;
-
no [±cause], [±act], [±relate], or [±partake]: the Location moves for Case and becomes a subject (War is imminent);
111
-
Qua0 can have one of the features [±cause], [±act], [±relate], [±partake], or [±locate]: -
[+cause]: there is a Causer (subject) causing the Quality to actualize: The clouds caused darkness;
-
[+act]: there is an Agent (subject) performing an action in the way described by the Quality – examples where the Quality is an argument, rather than a modifier adjunct, are not very numerous: John dressed elegantly could be one, as long the properties of the dressing are regarded as essential for the predicate‟s meaning;
-
[+relate]: there is an Affectee (subject) affected by its own Quality;
-
[+partake]: there is Theme (subject) displaying the Quality;
-
[+locate]: there is a Location (subject) featuring a role-specific Quality (emptiness, darkness, etc.);
-
[-cause], [-act], [-relate], [-partake], or [-locate]: I am not aware of instances of passivization of Qualities;
-
no [±cause], [±act], [±relate], [±partake], [±locate]: the Quality moves for Case and becomes a subject, if the language allows it, e.g. Hun. Csend van / lett „It is / became quiet‟ (csend „quietness‟).
Since the feature [+act] involves energy, it applies only to directional arguments: Recipients, Perdants, Goals, and Sources (146). (And perhaps static Locations are only rarely sole arguments precisely because their „energy level‟ is too low to become manifest by itself.)
112
(146) „energy chain‟: Agent
Recipient / Perdant / Experiencer
Theme
Goal / Source / Location
The assymetries in the possibility of passivization across theta-roles might find a partial explanation in functional terms, if the (main) function of passivization can be shown to be the foregrounding of individual arguments by promoting them into the subject position. (In several languages, another function of passivization is to derive sentences with impersonal Agents, Recipients, etc.) Agents and Themes are by far the most frequent subjects of passive sentences: John (Agent) was made to eat the apple by Bill (passivized Causer); John (Theme) was greeted by Bill (passivized Agent); John (Theme) was seen by Bill (passivized Experiencer / Agent? – cf. Baker 1997). There is an enormous discrepancy between the number of verbs which take Themes as internal arguments, or Agents in causative sentences, and the number of ditransitive verbs which take Affectees as middle arguments (assuming they are lower than the Agents and higher than the Themes), or Locations or Qualities as the lowest arguments. With causatives, Agents can be made to act, eat, hunt, dictate, walk, run, travel, talk, laugh, cry, etc. Likewise, Themes as internal arguments can be seen, heard, beaten, shaken, said, conceived of, created, destroyed, etc. – the list includes perhaps the vast majority of the verbs in any language. On the other hand, the ditransitive verbs which take Affectees are lexical variations on „give‟ and „take from‟ – give, sell, present with, lend, show, and deprive respectively, plus maybe a few others; if
113
these Affectees (Recipients and Perdants) are to be foregrounded as subjects, verbs with meanings in the area of „receive‟ and „lose‟ are usually available, give / present → receive, show → see, deprive → lose (Affectee subjects), sell → buy, lend → borrow (Agent subjects):
(147) X gave / presented / sold / showed / deprived Y (with / of) Z → → Y received / bought / saw / lost Z (from / to X)
Since the Affectees of both concepts „give‟ and „take from‟ can be subjects of „receive‟ and „lose‟, there is far less need for passivizing Affectees than there is for passivizing Agents and especially Themes, which can be combined as internal arguments with a potentially infinite variety of verbal concepts. Creating new verbs in the lexicon in order to foreground Themes would double the already very large number of verbs which take Themes as internal arguments – there would have to be independent lexical items meaning „be seen‟, „be written‟, etc. –, so that the task of foregrounding Themes is assigned to the syntax, where passivization can produce forms for any verb with an internal Theme argument. As for Agents, since the expressions involving a Causer and an Agent are periphrastic in English (make / have somebody write, etc.), passivization is the most convenient way to foreground the Agents, because it can apply freely to any agentive verb, with no morphological obstacles (such as phonological restrictions in the derivation). Locations and Qualities are hardly ever passivized (the Qualities apparently never), because contexts requiring their ad hoc foregrounding are unlikely: Locations essentially define spatio-temporal backgrounds and frames for the situations, and Qualities denote non-referential atemporal notions akin to verbal concepts, which are equally unlikely to need foregrounding. Besides, the verbs with Location arguments appear to be variants of „be (at)‟, „go (to)‟, and
114
„come (from)‟,65 and those with Quality arguments seem to be variations on „be‟ and „become‟ (cf. their analysis by means of lexical-semantic templates by Levin and Rappaport Hovav 1985). For instance, feel in John (Experiencer) feels well (Quality) could be analyzed as „be‟ with an external Experiencer argument, where the selection of feel over be serves to make explicit the role of the external argument as an Affectee (Experiencer), rather than a Theme or Location: The table (Theme) is / #feels red; The winter (temporal Location) is / #feels cold. I will be assuming throughout the general principles of Distributed Morphology (Halle & Marantz 1993), stating that words are built in syntax, with the syntactic structure of a sentence being established before the insertion of the morphemes making up words, as well as Baker‟s (1988) Mirror Principle, which states that morphological derivations must reflect syntactic derivations (and vice versa). The XPs introducing arguments embed each other according to the hierarchy in (144), and the lowermost X0 takes the verbal root as its complement, which undergoes head movement. The structure of a VP with several arguments Xi with the respective theta-roles Rolei introduced by functional heads Argi0 with morphological exponents Ai (which can be null) will be as in (148). As I mentioned above, the maximum number of arguments seems to be three; I only consider here the „event-internal‟ arguments: Causers do not enter into this discussion yet.
65
The number of these variants largely can be increased by the expression of the manner of motion, as in the verbs
of motion in Slavic, or by expressing properties of the participants, e.g. the shape of the object in Navajo. 115
(148)
ArgnP Xn
Argn' Argn0 An
fn-1
… Arg2P X2
Arg2' f1
Arg20 A2
Arg1P X1
Arg1' Arg10 A1
f0 Root Root
All ArgiPs, as well as the Root, are interpretable: in John give- Bill an apple, the root (give-) denotes the verb‟s lexical meaning („give‟, rather than „sleep‟ or „be‟); give- a book (linear order is irrelevant here) can be significantly contrasted with other expressions, e.g. give- an apple; give- Bill a book is a predicate; and John give- Bill a book is a proposition.66 If an ArgiP is represented as a function fi of type st, 67 and the Root as f0, then the denotations of the morphological exponents of a head Argi0 (i.e. Ai) and a phrase ArgiP (i.e. fi) will be as below for
66
Cf. Marantz‟s (1993) analysis of applicatives as taking predicates of events and introducing new arguments.
67
The extension of the use of this semantic type from propositions to fragments of predications of type give- or give-
a book or give- Bill a book should be unproblematic: each of these fragments can either be described as an act of „giving‟ / „giving a book‟ / „giving a book to Bill‟ or it cannot, and the final step of checking whether the act can be identified by the proposition „John giving Bill a book‟ does not differ from the preceding steps in any significant way. The concept of „giving‟ by itself describes one aspect of an event (its „nature‟) in the same way in which a verb with no arguments (rain, etc.) does, except that in the latter case it is the only aspect of the event (pure occurrence, with no participants). 116
arguments of semantic type e, where fi(e) means „the event e involves fi‟, and Rolei(x)(e) means „x has Rolei in e‟:68
(149) [[Ai]] = λfstλxeλes[f(e) & Rolei(x)(e)]
(150) [[fi]] = [[Ai]] ([[fi-1]] )([[Xi]] ) = λes[fi-1(e) & Rolei(Xi)(e)]
i = 1 for the argument closest to the root, and Root denotes the verbal concept:
(151) [[A1]] = λfstλxeλes[f(e) & Role1(x)(e)]
(152) [[f1]] = [[A1]] ([[f0]] )([[X1]] ) = [[A1]] (Root)(X1) = λes[Root(e) & Role1(X1)(e)]
For the next argument:
(153) [[A2]] = λfstλxeλes[f(e) & Role2(x)(e)]
68
Pylkkänen (2008: 35) uses a similar approach for her „low applicatives‟ (Recipients, etc.): the denotation of the
functional head is a function λxeλyeλfestλes[f(e, x) & Theme(e)(x) & to-the-possession(x,y)], with the order of the arguments following from the syntactic structure on which she bases her analysis. In (149), Rolei is a function of type est, i.e. the roles Causer, Agent, Affectee, Theme, Location, and Quality are functions of this type. In a transposition from metalanguage to object language, these labels preserve the semantic type est, because they are relational nouns – an entity (type e) can be an agent only in an event (type s) where its agency is exercised: the noun agent has therefore type est – so that the formulation in (149) is consistent with an extension of the inventory of denotations of common nouns in order to take into account their relational quality. 117
(154) [[f2]] = [[A2]] ([[f1]] )([[X2]] ) = λes[f1(e) & Role2(X2)(e)] = = λes[Root(e) & Role1(X1)(e) & Role2(X2)(e)]
Finally, when the third argument is added, which is most frequently an Agent, the end result is an event identification (cf. Kratzer 1996, who introduces Agents as „external arguments‟ via event identification): in (156), the proposition f3 identifies an event e by the lexical meaning of the verb (Root) and the roles of the participants:
(155) [[A3]] = [[Agent]] = λfstλxeλes[f(e) & Agent(x)(e)]
(156) [[f3]] = [[A3]] ([[f2]] )([[X3]] ) = λes[f2(e) & Agent(X3)(e)] = = λes[Root(e) & Role1(X1)(e) & Role2(X2)(e) & Agent(X3)(e)]
A special case is the event-external argument (the Causer), for which the counterparts of (149)(150) will be as below, where fi-1 is the non-causative proposition:69
(157) [[Caus0]] = λfstλxeλes[Causer(x)(e) & e's[e = CAUSE(e') & f(e')]]
(158) [[CausP]] = [[Caus0]] ([[fi-1]] )([[X]] ) = = λes[Causer(X)(e) & e's[e = CAUSE(e') & fi-1(e')]]
69
In her discussion of causatives, Pylkkänen (2008) gives the denotation of a “universal causative element” as
λpstλes[e's[e = CAUSE(e') & p(e')]], where the Causer is not introduced as an argument. 118
3.3.4 Event boundaries from theta-roles The presence of a directional argument (Goal, Source, Recipient, or Perdant) entails a transition – either from the event to a state post-event (goal-like arguments: Goal and Recipient) or from a state pre-event to the event (source-like arguments: Source and Perdant) –, and verbs with such arguments are Perfective. As such, for a given directional argument Xm with the theta-role Rolemd, the condition Rolei(Xi)(e) in (150) entails that the event e which it identifies constitutes a transition (159): a mover does not move after reaching a goal, and a Perdant has not yet lost the object before actually losing it.
(159) Rolemd(Xm)(e) → e's[e < e' & Rolemd(Xm)(e')] – Xm is goal-like Rolemd(Xm)(e) → e's[e' < e & Rolemd(Xm)(e')] – Xm is source-like
A goal is not a goal after the end of a motion event, but rather a static location, and likewise a recipient is an experiencer after the receiving has been completed, a source is still a location before the motion away from it, and a perdant is still an experiencer before the losing occurs:
(160) Goal(x)(e) → e's[e < e' & Location(x)(e')] → e's[e < e' & Goal(x)(e')] Recipient(x)(e) → e's[e < e' & Experiencer(x)(e')] → e's[e < e' & Recipient(x)(e')] Source(x)(e) → e's[e' < e & Location(x)(e')] → e's[e' < e & Source(x)(e')] Perdant(x)(e) → e's[e' < e & Experiencer(x)(e')] → e's[e' < e & Perdant(x)(e')]
(159)-(160) are instances of the condition of Perfectivity Cp as formulated in (14) – in the reverse direction on the time axis, for the entailments of source-like arguments –, which explains why 119
verbs with directional arguments are lexical Perfectives. The denotation of a proposition fn with a directional argument Xm being as in (161), it entails that „if a situation S is identified by f n, then S is the transition into or out of a state e'‟ (162), which makes fn Perfective:
(161) [[fn]] = [[An]] ([[fn-1]] )([[Xn]]) = = λes[Root(e) & Role1(X1)(e)…& Rolemd(Xm)(e)…& Rolen(Xn)(e)]
(162) Lexical Perfectives with goal-like arguments (Goals and Recipients): [[fn]] (S) = [Root(S) & Role1(X1)(S)…& Rolemd(Xm)(S)…& Rolen(Xn)(S)] Rolemd(Xm)(S) → e's[S < e' & Rolemd(Xm)(e')] [[[fn]] (S) → e's[S < e' & Rolemd(Xm)(e')]]
Lexical Perfectives with source-like arguments (Sources and Perdants): [[fn]] (S) = [Root(S) & Role1(X1)(S)…& Rolemd(Xm)(S)…& Rolen(Xn)(S)] Rolemd(Xm)(S) → e's[e' < S & Rolemd(Xm)(e')] [[[fn]] (S) → e's[e' < S & Rolemd(Xm)(e')]]
fn is not a verb, but a proposition, and the Perfectivity derived in (162) applies to it, rather than to the verb. For Perfectivity to apply to the verb itself, it is sufficient to consider (25), which shows that a transition is necessarily expressed by a Perfective, therefore the aspectual form required by fn will be the Perfective. Other lexical Perfectives are verbs whose Themes have the similar entailments by virtue of their theta-role. The Perfectivity in (162) can be obtained not only from (159), but from any
120
entailment of transition by other arguments. The only case of this kind is that of non-incremental Themes in non-statives, which are affected in their entirety. In this case, there is no part xmi of a Theme Xm that is not involved in the event – I formulate this condition conventionally as Theme(xmi)(e):
(163) [Theme(Xm)(e) & xmiXm[Theme(xmi)(e)]] → e's[e < e' & Theme(Xm)(e')]
Non-incremental Themes of punctual verbs like die, kill (achievement) and hit (semelfactive / achievement) have the same entailments, and these verbs are also Perfective – in Russian, the Perfective is primary, and the Imperfective is derived by suffixation: umeret’p „die‟ (umirat’i), ubit’p „kill‟ (ubivat’i), udarit’p „hit‟ (udarjat’i). A non-incremental Theme can only be involved as a whole in the event, its involvement marking the limits of the event. It is important to note that this delimitative role of non-incremental Themes in non-stative contexts follows from their theta-role – which can be regarded as a subcategory of Themes: Themenon-incremental – and has nothing to do with the identity of the entity performing that role, e.g. whether the Theme is quantized or not, because quantized Themes do not impose limits on any event. For instance, a wall in itself cannot be described as incremental or non-incremental, but its Theme role is incremental in John painted the wall, and non-incremental in The ball hit the wall. The quantized or non-quantized character of the Theme is relevant in situation aspect, where a quantized Theme can turn an activity into an accomplishment by contributing telicity to the event: activity John drank water (non-quantized Theme) → accomplishment John drank a glass of water (quantized Theme). In situation aspect, the upper boundary of the event is contributed in SpecThP by a contingency (the presence of a quantized Theme), whereas in Slavic-type aspect a non-
121
incremental Theme is marked as such in Th 0, so that any XP in SpecThP must be nonincremental, and the verb is lexically Perfective for a structural reason – the denotation of the head Th0. It can be said that Slavic-type aspect „pins down‟ on the syntactic tree – more exactly, in the argument-introducing heads – the event boundaries whose presence in situation aspect is contingent upon the identity of the arguments. Russian can express the process of reading a book (quantized Theme) with the Imperfective (164), whereas only the Perfective is possible with a non-incremental Theme when reporting a non-iterated event (165); using the Imperfective would imply a slow killing or have a conative nuance, with the right context, in which case the Theme will be incremental:70
(164) Ivan čitali knigu. (čitat’i „read‟) „Ivan was reading the book.‟ Ivan pročitalp knigu. (pročitat’i „read‟) „Ivan read the (entire) book.‟
(165) Ivan ubilp Kolju. (ubit’p „kill‟) „Ivan killed Kolja.‟ Kogda Miša vošël v komnatu, on uvidel, kak Ivan ubivali Kolju. (ubivat’i „kill‟) „When Misha entered the room, he saw how Ivan was trying to kill Kolja.‟
The Perfectivity which results from the presence of non-incremental Themes in non-statives reflects the Cp contributed by this kind of Themes:
70
The use of the Imperfective in (165) can also have a general-factual value, which is irrelevant here. 122
(166) Themenon-incremental(x)(e) → e's[e < e' & Themenon-incremental(x)(e')]
(167) Lexical Perfectives with non-incremental Themes: [[fn]] (S) ↔ [Root(S) & Role1(X1)(S)…& Thememnon-incr.(Xm)(S)…& Rolen(Xn)(S)] Thememnon-incremental(Xm)(S) → e's[S < e' & Thememnon-incremental(Xm)(e')] [[[fn]] (S) → e's[S < e' & Thememnon-incremental(Xm)(e')]]
In the following sections I will test the validity of this analysis on several examples. I will not discuss prefixed verbs yet, as they will form the object of a more detailed treatment in the next chapter.
3.4 Arguments: applications of the theory
3.4.1 Causers and Agents Pylkkänen (2008: 84-86) classifies causatives into “non-voice-bundling” and “voice-bundling”; in a “voice-bundling” causative, the Causer includes the agent thematic relation. This distinction can apply not only cross-linguistically 71 but also language-internally: Sanskrit has causative morphology and both kinds of causative constructions. For example, with the causative nāyaya„make lead / have (smth.) led‟ (non-causative present stem naya- „lead‟), the first construction has three arguments: a Causer, an Agent (in the accusative), and a Theme (168), while the second construction has a Causer and a Theme as arguments, with the agent (in the instrumental)
71
Pylkkänen contrasts the non-voice-bundling causatives in Finnish and Japanese with the voice-bundling ones in
English. 123
being optional (169). If there is no Causer, but only an Agent directly acting upon the Theme, the verb is not causative (170).72
(168) Rāmaḥ Vijayaṃ (Acc) aśvaṃ nāyayati „Rāma makes Vijaya lead a horse.‟
(169) Rāmaḥ Vijayeṇa (I) aśvaṃ nāyayati „Rāma has a horse led by Vijaya.‟ (170) Vijayaḥ aśvaṃ nayati „Vijaya is leading a horse.‟
The first causative construction (168) closely parallels its English gloss, while the second one (169) is structurally identical to Hungarian causatives (vezettetni „have (smth.) led‟ vs. vezetni „lead‟), where only the causer and the object are arguments, the agent being optional:
(171) Ráma lovat vezettet Vidzsajával (I). „Rāma has a horse led by Vijaya.‟
In English, the lower verb (lead) will move up to Ag0, but this head movement is arrested at this level, because it encounters the trace left by make-. The root make- moves from Caus0 to get inflection, so lead- cannot raise farther up, and this derives the correct linear order:73 72
The Sanskrit examples, except the Vedic ones, are with resolved sandhi. Examples from Vedic in Hock (1991),
Classical Sanskrit in Speijer (1886/1993), and Middle Indo-Aryan in Bubeník (1998). 124
(172) Non-voice-bundling causatives:
CausP Rāmaḥ
CausP Rāma
Caus' Caus0
Caus0
AgP
-ay- + ablaut Vijayaṃ
Acc
Caus' AgP
make-
Ag' Ag0 Ø[+cause]
ThP
aśvaṃ
Acc
Ag'
Vijaya
Acc
Ag0 Ø[+cause]
Th' Th0 Ø[+act]
ThP
Root
Acc
nī-
Rāmaḥ Vijayaṃ aśvaṃ nāyayati
Th'
a horse
Th0 Ø[+act]
Root lead-
Rāma makes Vijaya lead a horse
„Rāma makes Vijaya a lead a horse‟
(173) Voice-bundling causatives:
CausP
CausP (Vijayena)
Rāmaḥ
(Vidzsajával)
Caus' Caus0
Caus'
Ráma
Caus0
ThP
-ay- + ablaut
ThP
-tetaśvaṃ
Acc
Th' Th0 Ø[+act]
Rāmaḥ (Vijayena) aśvaṃ nāyayati
Th'
lovat
Root nī-
Acc
Th0 Ø[+act]
Ráma lovat vezettet (Vidzsajával)
„Rāma has a horse led (by Mahendra)‟
73
I will be representing all syntactic trees as head-initial in order to facilitate cross-linguistic comparison. 125
Root vezet-
The Causer always has to move from SpecCausP, because there is no feature with a positive value to assign it case.74 While Agents are licensed by Ag0 and receive case in situ when Ag0 is marked as [+cause], the instances where they have to move for Case will be those when there is no Causer argument – in this example, when Ag0 is not marked as either [+cause] or [-cause]:
(174)
AgP Ag'
Vijayaḥ
Ag0 Ø
ThP aśvaṃ
Acc
Th' Th0 Ø[+act]
Root nī-
Vijayaḥ aśvaṃ nayati „Vijaya is leading a horse‟
Just as the presence vs. absence of the feature [±cause] on Ag0 translates the presence vs. absence of a Causer as argument or modifier (resulting from passivization), the relationship between an intransitive (unaccusative) and a homonymous transitive in English can be represented as the absence vs. presence of an Agent argument:
74
This entails the theoretical point that the lack of case assignment is not the result of the negative value of a feature,
but of the absence of a feature‟s positive value: both the absence and the negative value of a feature leave the respective argument caseless. 126
(175)
AgP Ag'
John
Ag0 Ø
ThP the window
Th'
Th0 Ø
ThP the window
Root
Acc
break-
the window broke
Th' Th0 Ø[+act]
Root break-
John broke the window
While Sanskrit has both voice-bundling and non-voice-bundling constructions with the same causative morpheme, Hungarian can have both types of causatives on the same verb. The causative suffix -(t)a/et- can be voice-bundling (173) or non-voice bundling, as in occasional double causatives with the same suffix: kigombozni „unbutton‟ (here „button up‟) → kigomboztatni „make (somebody) button up‟ → kigomboztattatni „make (somebody) have (something) buttoned up‟.
(176) sűrű könnyeimmel kigomboztattatom (folk song) „I will make somebody have it buttoned up with my dense tears‟
Voice-bundling only are the suffixes -ít- (építeni „build‟ vs. épülni „get built‟, with different derivational suffixes from an adjectival root ép(p)- „whole‟), which is productive, and -t- (tr. akasztani vs. itr. akadni „hang‟, with an old change d > sz [s] before t), which is unproductive – provided these are real causatives, and not transitive agentives (with the suffix probably in Ag0). The sequence of morphemes in verbs derived with two (or more) suffixes suggests the order Caus20 > Caus10: transitive építeni „build‟ derives causative építtetni „have (smth.) built‟, with the 127
sequence ép-ít-tet-. The non-voice-bundling causative is higher than the voice-bundling one, which includes the agent thematic relation, and the agent thematic relation expressed by the voice-bundling Causer1 in SpecCaus1P relates to the theme thematic relation of the argument with Theme theta-role, which contains also a theme thematic relation (the theme of „getting built‟). This Causer1 (causer + agent) is not expressed as an argument, because there is no positive value of a feature on Caus10 to assign it case – causative heads have no feature at all –, and it cannot move for Case because the structural slots are already occupied by the higher Causer2, which moves (177). The derivation of (177) proceeds by applying (149), (150), (157), and (158), as in (178).
(177)
Caus2P Caus2'
János
f2
Caus20
Caus1P
-tet-
Caus1'
PRO
f1
0
Caus1
ThP
-ít-
Th'
házat
Acc
Th0 Ø[+cause]
f0 Root ép-
János házat építtet „János has a house built‟
(178) Th0: ThP (f1):
[[ Ø]] = λfstλxeλes[f(e) & Theme(x)(e)] [[házat ép-]] = [[ Ø]] ([[f0]] )([[házat]]) = = λes[get-built(e) & Theme(a house)(e)] 128
Caus10:
[[-ít-]] = λfstλxeλes[Causer(x)(e) & e's[e = CAUSE(e') & f(e')]]
Caus1P (f2):
[[házat épít-]] = [[-ít-]] ([[f1]] )([[PRO]] ) = = λes.[Causer(somebody)(e) & e's[e = CAUSE(e') & f1(e')]] = = λes.[Causer(somebody)(e) & e's[e = CAUSE(e') & & get-built(e') & Theme(a house)(e')]]
Caus20:
[[-tet-]] = λfstλxeλes[Causer(x)(e) & e's[e = CAUSE(e') & f(e')]]
Caus2P:
[[házat építet-]] = [[-tet-]] ([[f2]] )([[János]] ) = = λes[Causer(János)(e) & e's[e = CAUSE(e') & f2(e')]] = = λes[Causer(János)(e) & e's[e = CAUSE(e') & Causer(somebody)(e') & & e''s[e' = CAUSE(e'') & get-built(e'') & Theme(a house)(e'')]]]
This absence of features on Caus0 heads accounts for the similar situation with double non-voicebundling causatives: with kigomboztattatni, Causer1 is not an argument (just as in the case of építtetni), and it cannot be an oblique either, because it could not be distinguished from the agent – the thematic relations in this verb are causer 2, causer1, agent, and theme –, since both the agent and the causer1 as obliques would be in the instrumental: one would be unable to tell which is which, and word order is apparently not sufficient or reliable enough for this purpose. A more special class of voice-binding causatives is constituted by the verbs of positioning (lay, set, etc.), where the caused situation is a state described by the posture of a Theme at a Location.
129
3.4.2 Verbs of positioning and Location arguments
The distinction between Location and Goal arguments cannot be made in syntax, because they are mutually exclusive semantically: in John went to school in Chicago, only to school (goal) is an argument, because went to school is a complete predicate (and went is not, unless „away‟ is understood). On the other hand, the analysis of Location and Goal as generated in the same head has the desirable consequence of capturing the morphological and semantic relationship between intransitive (unaccusative) and transitive verbs of position of type lie vs. lay and sit vs. set. I will refer to the transitive members in such pairs as „verbs of positioning‟. In the second pair, the first member goes back to PGmc *setan(an), with e-grade of the root (PIE *sed-) and null suffix, and the second one to PGmc *satjan(an), with o-grade of the root and *-j- suffix. This Germanic suffix, although continuing the causative PIE *-eie/o- (which derives the Sanskrit causative nāyaya- mentioned above), synchronically might seem to produce not causatives, but agentives: unlike its Sanskrit cognate, it does not appear to add a Causer argument to an agentive verb, but only marks transitivity or transitivizes intransitives, i.e. it introduces an Agent, rather than a Causer. As such, Goth. sitan „sit‟ (< PGmc *set(j)an < PIE *sed-) and satjan „set‟ (< PGmc *satjan < PIE *sod-eie/o-), although differing in transitivity, will have the Location argument in the same position.75 In order to preserve the connection with theta-roles, I keep separate labels for Locations and Goals as LocP and GoP, even though they are structurally in complementary distribution, both standing between ThP and the root (179).
75
I assume for the sake of this and the next examples that Location is an argument with verbs of position and
positioning. 130
(179)
AgP Ag'
sa manna
Ag0
ThP sa manna
Th0 Ø
ThP
ablaut + -jþata barn
Th' LocP ana sitla
Acc Loc'
Loc0 Ø[+partake]
Th' Th0 Ø[+act]
Loc/GoP ana sitl
Loc/Go'
Loc/Go0 Ø[+partake]
Root *set-
Root *set-
sa manna sitiþ ana sitla
sa manna satjiþ þata barn ana sitl
„the man is sitting on a chair‟
„the mann is putting the child on a chair‟
Since the Goal argument provides an inherent final endpoint, one would expect the verb to be Perfective, yet it derives several prefixed variants, including one with the most „neutral‟ Perfectivizer (gasatjan „put‟). Also in Slavic, its cognate and semantic counterpart OCS saditii/p has a Perfective reading only in Old Church Slavonic, and it became a primary Imperfective in the other Slavic languages, e.g. SCr. saditii (posaditip) „set, plant‟.76 There seems to be a principled reason for the causatives of the verbs of position(ing) to be, or tend to become, Imperfectives, for also in Hungarian the causatives ültetni „set, plant‟ (stative ülni „sit‟) and fektetni „lay‟ (stative feküdni „lie‟) are perceived as primary Imperfectives describing durative processes (a Perfective reading normally arises only when the verb is prefixed). The explanation seems to lie in the event-external nature of the causative: if X set / 76
This is also the case with Goth. ligan „lie, liegen‟ (static) / „lie down, sich legen‟ (dynamic) vs. lagjan „lay‟. In
Slavic, the Imperfective is primary, although suppletive, e.g. Russ. klast’i „lay‟ (the Perfective is typically suppletive: Russ. položit’p „lay‟, with the simplex Imperfective found in the reflexive form ložit’sjai „lie down‟.) 131
laid X on Z is equivalent to X caused [event Y to sit / lie on Z], there is no inherent final (or initial) endpoint to the causation, because X can induce the state of „Y sitting / lying on Z‟ by holding Y on Z indefinitely. In this case, Goth. lagjan and satjan will have to be regarded as preserving the causative structure of their Indo-European predecessors, in that AgP would actually still be analyzed as a CausP. This is manifestly the case in Sanskrit, where the cognate root sad- derives the present stems itr. sīda- „sit‟ (static: Gm. sitzen) / „sit (down)‟ (dynamic: Gm. sich setzen) and caus. sādaya- „set, put‟ (Gm. setzen), the latter with unambiguously causative morphology. However, considering the theta-role of the locative argument of satjan as being a Location, rather than a Goal, is rather unlikely, given that the case of this argument is most often the accusative (ana sitl in the example with satjan),77 which implies motion and is contrasted with the dative-locative denoting rest (ana sitla in the example with sitan). As such, the accusative case of the Goal argument renders the interpretation of the sentence sa manna satjiþ þata barn ana sitl „the mann is putting the child on a chair‟ as sa manna CAUSE [þata barn sitan ana sitla] „the man CAUSE [the child to be seated on a chair]‟ quite improbable. One solution would be to consider that the Goal (when expressed with the accusative: ana sitl) does supply an inherent endpoint to the event, but since this endpoint is internal to the event of sitting, this is irrelevant at the CausP level, where there is no endpoint of the causation, therefore the outcome is an Imperfective. This would imply that the causatives as a class are durative and atelic (i.e. the causative morpheme is marked as [+durative] and [-telic]), which might be a factor in the morphological similarity between the causative and atelic durative formants in Indo-European (cf. chapter 4). In
77
The dative-locative is used occasionally with verbs of positioning, in constructions with the prepositions in
„in(to)‟ and ana „on(to)‟. 132
Hungarian, a form like kitisztíttat- „have (smth.) cleaned up‟ (cf. Imperfective tisztít- „clean‟ and Perfective kitisztít- „clean up‟) is structurally unambiguous: only [[ki-tisztít-]tat-] „have (smth.) cleaned up‟ is a possible structure, and *[ki-[tisztít-tat-]] is impossible because the corresponding meaning of „have (smth.) cleaned and finish having (it) cleaned‟ is not the correct one for kitisztíttat-. This constitutes rather strong evidence for the analysis of completive prefixes, in Indo-European as in Hungarian, as generated lower than the causative morphemes. Sk. sīda- displays another type of duality. When meaning „start sitting‟, dynamic sīda- is the inchoative of static sīda-, and as such it carries the feature [I] encoding the beginning of a sitting state. In Slavic, the semantic equivalents of sīda- in the static (stative) and dynamic (inchoative) senses are Imperfective and Perfective respectively, e.g. Pol. siedzieći „be seated‟ and siąśćp „sit down‟ (→ siadaći). The relationship between the two argument structures of sīdainvolves a dual interpretation of the subject: as a Theme in the static variant, and as an Agent in the dynamic one.78 The Slavic equivalents of dynamic sīda- are Perfective, because the presence of a Goal argument in SpecGoP entails an inherent final endpoint of the event; unlike in Goth. satjan, GoP makes a predicate describing an event of sitting down, rather than a state of being seated.
78
Here I am extrapolating from English, where the subjects of sentences with verbs of reflexive positioning are
unergative (the subjects are Agents, generated in SpecAgP), and cannot appear with there-inversion: *There sat / lay down two people on the sofa. With unaccusatives (Theme subjects), this inversion is possible: There were / lived / died two people here. According to this test, also the subjects of (some) motion verbs are unaccusative: There came / arrived two people here; ?There went two people there – the subject is a Theme in the former, and an Agent in the latter. 133
(180)
ThP Rāmaḥ
AgP Rāmaḥ
Th' Th0 Ø
Ag' 0
LocP
GoP
Ag
Ø āsane
L
āsane/-aṃ
Loc' Loc0 Ø[+partake]
Root
L/Acc
sad-
Go'
Go0 Ø[+act][F]
Rāmaḥ āsane sīdati
Rāmaḥ āsane / āsanaṃ sīdati
„Rāma is sitting on a couch‟
„Rāma is sitting down on a couch‟
Root sad-
3.4.3 Affectees When there is no Agent expressed (as the source of giving, helping, or harming), the Recipient fails to receive non-structural case, just like a Theme or an Agent remains caseless and has to move when there is no Agent or Causer respectively:
(181)
AgP
RecP Ag'
John
Ag0 Ø
Rec0 Ø[F]
RecP Rec'
Bill
D
Rec'
Bill
f2
Rec0 Ø[+act][F]
a book
Acc
Th' Th0 Ø[+relate]
Root receive-
Th'
a book
Acc
ThP
f1 ThP
(from John)
Th0 Ø[+relate]
John giving Bill a book
f0 Root give-
Bill receiving a book (from John)
134
The denotation of John giving Bill a book makes reference to a transition (to the state where the book is at Bill, or in Bill‟s possession) due to the presence of a Recipient:
(182) Th0:
[[Ø]] = λfstλxeλes[f(e) & Theme(x)(e)]
ThP (f1):
[[give- a book]] = [[ Ø]] ([[f0]] )([[a book]]) = = λes[give(e) & Theme(a book)(e)]
Rec0:
[[Ø]] = λfstλxeλes[f(e) & Recipient(x)(e)]
RecP (f2):
[[give- Bill a book]] = [[ Ø]] ([[f1]] )([[Bill]]) = =λes[give(e) & Theme(a book)(e) & Recipient(Bill)(e)]
Ag0:
[[Ø]] = λfstλxeλes.[f(e) & Agent(x)(e)]
AgP:
[[John give- Bill a book]] = [[ Ø]] ([[f2]] )([[John]]) = = λes[give(e) & Theme(a book)(e) &Recipient(Bill)(e) & Agent(John)(e)]
[[John give- Bill a book]] (S) = [give(S) & Theme(a book)(S) & & Recipient(Bill)(S) & Agent(John)(S)] Recipient(Bill)(S) → e's[S < e' & Recipient(Bill)(e')] [[[John give- Bill a book]] (S) → e's[S < e' & Recipient(Bill)(e')]] e': „the book being at Bill‟
Given that the Recipient constitutes an inherent final endpoint of the action, the verbs with Recipient arguments are Perfective. In these verbs in Slavic, the Perfective is primary, and the Imperfective is derived: e.g. Pol. daćp → dawaći „give‟, dostaćp → dostawaći „get‟, otrzymaćp → otrzymywaći „obtain‟, odebraćp → odbieraći „receive‟. Likewise, Goth. giban „give‟ and niman
135
„receive‟ act as lexical Perfectives (Lambdin 2006: 16). 79 This is also the case when there is no transfer involved that would be limited spatially (and implicitly temporally as well) – namely, when the Recipient has a beneficiary or maleficiary thematic relation: in Polish, pomócp → pomagać „help‟ does conform to the aspectual pattern proper to verbs with Recipient arguments, but this is so because pomócp is derived from móci „can‟. On the other hand, in Pol. szkodzići → zaszkodzićp (and frequentative szkadzaći) „harm‟, the Imperfective is primary, because the verb is denominal (from szkoda „harm‟), meaning „inflict harm‟ – an action which does not involve an inherent ending, and can be easily construed as durative or habitual. In section 3.2.5.1 I introduced the event features [I] and [F], standing respectively for the beginning and the end of a situation. I also argued that directional arguments – both Locationtype (Goals, Sources) and Affectee-type (Recipients, Perdants) – inherently express one of these features, and that both features are present with non-incremental Themes, which are affected in their entirety. In the next chapter I will discuss cases where these event features are introduced by verbal prefixes, when these prefixes have a directional meaning. In Indo-European, the directional or static meaning of most preverbs results from their original function as free adverbials.
79
In the sense „take‟, where the subject is an Agent, niman can act as an Imperfective, with a Perfective ganiman. 136
4 ASPECT INSIDE THE VP: SLAVIC-TYPE ASPECT
4.1 General remarks Svenonius (2004) classifies Slavic preverbs into “lexical” (VP-internal) and “superlexical” (VPexternal). Perfectives derived with lexical prefixes are idiosyncratic in their semantic relation to the base verb, whereas the ones derived with superlexical meanings are more uniform and predictable, typically denoting Aktionsarten (inceptive, delimitative, etc.). I discuss the first class of prefixes in the remainder of this chapter, and the second one in the next chapter. The most conspicuous morphological mechanism for the expression of Slavic-type aspect is prefixation. This chapter examines the role of verbal prefixes in this respect, as well as other functions of prefixation, which are not aspectual, but whose discussion supports the overall analysis. The first section discusses the historical origin of prefixes: originally they were free adverbial particles, which were later specialized ad-nominally, as prepositions or postpositions, or ad-verbally, as verbal prefixes or (post-verbal) particles, e.g. read through vs. Gm. durchlesen „read through, peruse‟. This specialization can be followed from the earliest attestations of the Indo-European languages, and instances of univerbation are common even in the later stages of these languages, e.g. in Gm. zu Grunde legen „lay to the basis (of)‟ → zugrunde legen → zugrundelegen „take as a basis‟, the entire PP zu Grunde „to (the) basis‟ is incorporated into the verb. This fact renders analyses of verbal prefixation as incorporation by head movement of prepositions from P0 into V0 diachronically untenable and synchronically implausible. Section 4.3 presents the syntactic analysis of prefixes as adjoining argument-introducing functional heads and the semantic combination within the framework introduced in the previous chapter. In the evolution from free adverbials to verbal prefixes, the mechanism of the semantic
137
compositionality is preserved: both free adverbials and preverbs combine by predicate modification, rather than function application. The subsequent sections treat the role of prefixes in complex applicative heads and their aspectual contribution, starting with cases where their applicative function is most obvious, as in licensing Theme arguments. The discussion proceeds to classes of Perfectives where the prefixes specify the path followed by the action towards its completion (Russ. vypit’p „drink up‟) or to a goal (Russ. vyjtip „go out‟), as well as verbs where the prefixes do not Perfectivize, but describe the metaphorical spatial configurations of the arguments (Russ. podležat’i „underlie‟) in locative applicatives. The final discussion treats comitative arguments introduced as applicatives.
4.2 The adverbial origin of verbal prefixes The particles that became verbal prefixes or pre-/postpositions in the attested stages of IndoEuropean were originally adverbs. Saussure (1915/1985: 247) illustrates this evolution with two examples:
(183) “aller au-devant de la mort”: īre mortem ob
īre [PP ob mortem] obīre mortem
(184) “je viens de la montagne”
óreos baínō katá
[PP katà óreos] baínō katabaínō óreos
More examples with adverbial uses of particles which more frequently function as preverbs and prepositions in Greek (185)-(186), Latin (187), and Gothic (188):
138
(185) mélanes anà bótrues ēsan (Iliad 18.562) „up above there were bunches of black grapes‟
(186) en dè ía psukh (Iliad 21.569) „there is only one soul inside‟
(187) satis superque uixisse (Cicero, Tusculanae disputationes 1.110) „having lived enough and more‟ (lit. above)
(188) du þaim þoei faura sind (Philippians 3.14) „to those who are outside‟
In (183), ob „in front‟ starts out as an adverb, and is subsequently reanalyzed as either a preposition taking an accusative object (mortem „to death‟), or as a preverb (in obīre „go to meet‟). In either variant, the original allative-accusative noun mortem of the intransitive80 verb īre „go‟ preserves its case, with the effect that ob, become a preposition, is interpreted as assigning accusative case to its nominal complement, and the prefixed verb obīre is treated as a transitive, with mortem as its direct object. Likewise in (184), katá „down‟ starts out as an adverb, and is subsequently reanalyzed either as a preposition taking a genitive object (óreos 80
The accusative in some Indo-European languages, like Latin and Sanskrit, is associated with at least two distinct
theta-roles: Theme and Goal. The original accusative case assignment to Goals is visible in several other branches, where prepositions taking directional complements assign them accusative case, as opposed to the static Location complements, which receive other cases, depending on the language and the case syncretisms that occurred in each situation (locative, ablative, dative-locative, genitive-ablative, or instrumental). 139
„from (the) mountain‟), or as a preverb (in katabaínein „descend‟). (I discuss this reanalysis in the next section.) In both instances, the original ablative-genitive noun óreos preserves its case, so that, once katá has become a preposition, it is interpreted as assigning genitive case to its complement, and the prefixed verb katabaínein is treated as assigning genitive case to its object. In this connection, Elizarenkova (1982: 382) states that “in Vedic, there are no verbal prefixes that could be described in derivational morphology”, and there is no way to determine whether these „prefixes‟ are free or bound morphemes. She gives the following example, where the prefix and the verb constitute a “semantic unit”, whether they are separated (ava „off‟ + vraśc- split‟; veśyā avrścat) or contiguous (pra- „to‟, yam- „give, offer‟):
(189) ava sraktīr veśyāvrścad índraḥ prāyacchad víśvā bhójanā sudāse (RgVeda 6.16.17) „Indra split off the edges, and offered all the provisions to Sudāsa.‟
In Homer, these particles “can be used absolutely, next to a verb as adverbs or preverbs, or next to a noun as prepositions” (Chantraine 1963: 82), and the particle can follow the verb (below apo-enarízein „despoil‟):
(190) óphr᾽ hoì toùs enárizon ap᾽ éntea marmaíronta (Iliad 12.195) „while they were stripping them of their shining weapons‟
On the other hand, in numerous cases, the role of a particle as a preverb, rather than as an adverb or a preposition, is disambiguated by the grammatical context. In (191), the particle apo- is unambiguously interpreted as a preverb (aphaireĩn „take‟), rather than as the preposition apó
140
„from, off‟, which takes the genitive, because the noun following it (Aineías „Aeneas‟) is in the accusative.
(191) hoús pot’ ap’ Aineían helómēn (Iliad 8.108) „[horses] of which I deprived Aeneas‟, lit. „[horses] which I took-from Aeneas‟
In Germanic, this evolution is still visible in Gothic (West 1981),81 where verbal prefixes count for Wackernagel‟s law (clitics are placed after the first constitutent). In the following example, the enclitic conjunction -uh „and‟ stands between the prefix and the base verb, which otherwise occur together as insandjan „send‟.
(192) inuhsandidedun andbahtans þai Fareisaieis (John 7.32) „and the Pharisees sent officers‟
When unprefixed, the corresponding particle appears as either the preposition in „in / into‟ or as the adverb inn „within‟ (directional). The effect of the prefixation on the verb is said to be Perfectivizing (Lambdin 2006: 18 for insandjan as Perfective of sandjan „send‟). Ryder (1951: 211-212) mentions cases where “compounding forms are preposed with late verbs in the main clause”:
81
In North Germanic, the adverbial particles remained independent morphemes – either adverbs or prepositions. 141
(193) ƕaiwa agluba þai faihu habandans inngaleiþand in þiudangardja Gudis (Luke 18.24) pōs duskólōs hoi t khr mata ékhontes eis t n basileían to Theo eisporeúontai „how difficult it is for those possessing riches to enter the kingdom of God‟
The particle appears sometimes as both preverb and preposition, as in the above example. The spelling inngaleiþand belongs to the modern editions of the Gothic Bible (the codices do not separate words), possibly under the influence of the Greek original (eisporeúontai), and creates the impression that inn was cliticized to galeiþan „walk, go‟, which otherwise is considered biaspectual (no aspectual specification in Lambdin 2006: 26; the base -leiþan „walk, go‟ is attested only with prefixes). I find little reason to regard such cases as any more than collocations of adverb plus (prefixed or non-prefixed) verb – inn galeiþan / gaggan82 / atgaggan „enter‟ and inn atbairan / attiuhan „carry in‟ are the only instances –, because the Gothic corpus contains no instances of verbs with more than two prefixes, and the prefix appears otherwise as in-: insandjan „send‟, inniman „take in, receive‟, etc. In Old English and Old High German, the prefixes are much more independent than in Gothic (Harrison 1892) – e.g. OE ætstandan „stand next to‟:
82
A spelling inngaggan, if genuine – i.e. if inngaggan was a prosodic unit – could have conceivably rendered a non-
velar pronunciation of the prefix-final nasal ([ingaŋgan] or rather than [iŋgaŋgan]), because the sequence [ŋg] otherwise appears only morpheme-internally in Gothic. Also, the adverb inn „within‟ (directional) is the only instance of tautosyllabic nn, but this doubtlessly rendered a genuine geminate [nː], as opposed to the non-geminate [n] in the preposition in, because Old Norse has í (preposition) vs. inn (directional adverb), showing that the forms were pronounced distinctly in Proto-Germanic. As such, inn would be the regular development from the assumed Proto-Germanic etymon *enin- < PIE *en- plus “a disputed increment” (Lehmann 1986: s.v. inn; but this form itself is problematic, because unparalleled outside Germanic, cf. Lambdin 2006: 290). 142
(194) ða stod him sum mon æt ðurh swefn (Bede, Historia ecclesiastica 342.27) „in his dream, a man was standing next to him‟
Also Old Irish retains the possibility of separating particles from verbs (or rather keeping them separate), e.g. with an object pronoun in fot·gaibiu „I find thee‟ (fo·gaib „find‟) and forda·canat „they teach her‟ (for·cain „teach‟). In Lithuanian, the reflexive pronoun regularly intervenes between the prefix and the base: nusidirbti „overwork oneself‟ (dirbti „work‟), apsikloti „cover oneself‟ (apkloti „cover‟). There are occasional instances of tmesis in Latin too, most of them formulaic, e.g. ob uos sacro „I conjure you‟ and sub uos placo „I implore you‟ (Carmen Saliare in Festus 190) for Classical uos obsecro and uos supplico respectively (Meillet & Vendryes 1927: §812). Even though the adverbial origin of the verbal particles left numerous traces in the attested languages, it has been argued that their specialization as ad-verbal particles can be noticed already in Anatolian (Luraghi 2001). A separate case is represented by the post-verbal particles in English, Scandinavian, and Celtic languages; some of them can appear in various positions after the verb.
4.3 The syntax and semantics of prefixation Dvořák (2010) discusses ditransitive verbs in Czech where the indirect object is a Location argument, and the verb is prefixed (podříditp „adjust‟ in the example below), claiming that the verb contains a PP with a Path theta-role, headed by a phonologically null P0 which assigns case to the indirect object; the phonologically null preposition “conflates” with the verb, which undergoes head movement:
143
(195)
vP v'
Karel
v0
VP
podřídil
Acc
V'
svoje plány
V0
PP P0 Ø
Marii
D Karel podřídilp svoje plány Marii. „Charles adjusted his plans to Mary.‟
This analysis, even if proved to be correct synchronically, fails to capture the morphological complexity of the verb, where the individual meaning of the morphemes is retrievable („adjust X to Y‟ < „place X under the scope of Y‟, with pod „under‟ and říditi „drive, direct‟), as well as the diachrony: from PIE to Czech, the evolution was not preposition > preverb, but adverb > preverb / preposition. The case of the indirect object is the dative, although the preposition pod takes the instrumental or the accusative. In many cases, and in all Indo-European languages, there is a close correlation between the case assigned by a particle functioning as a preposition on the one hand, and the case of the verbal argument introduced by the same particle acting as a preverb on the other hand, but the exceptions are numerous enough. Dvořák could not assume that pod was in P0 because the case assignment would not have worked. There are several proposals which treat verbal prefixes as functional heads, e.g. the articles in Kiss & Riemsdijk (2004).
144
I propose an approach to such verbs in which a positively valued feature on a head (here, Go0) assigns case to the argument in the specifier (here, the indirect object in GoP), and the root moves from the lowest position in the tree and collects the affixes it finds in the heads. The prefix specifies the position of the Theme (the plans) with respect to the Goal (Mary) as „under‟, and its feature [+partake] assigns lexical case (dative) to the goal. In Dvořák‟s formulation, the prefix is associated with a path – except that the path describes here the spatial configuration of the situation and the relative positioning of the participants, and it is not a theta-role or a thematic relation.83
(196)
AgP Ag'
Karel
Ag0 Ø
ThP Th'
svoje plány
Acc
Th0 Ø[+act]
GoP Go'
Marii
D
Go0
Root
pod-[+partake][F]
říd-
Karel podřídil svoje plány Marii. „Charles adjusted his plans to Mary.‟
83
The alternate word order Karel podřídilp Marii svoje plany, which is also possible, would suggest, if no
scrambling or other processes are assumed, that Maria is in a higher position than svoje plany, i.e. that it is a Recipient (beneficiary) in SpecRecP. The distinction between recipients / beneficiaries and goals, especially in figurative uses as with podříditp, can become quite vague. 145
In will assume that synchronically the preverb is an adjunct to a functional head (this would be Go0 in the Czech example), with which it forms a complex head, and that diachronically this is the result of a reanalysis of the adverbial particle as a preverb. In (197), the complex head is Th0; here, the Source is reinterpreted as a Theme, because it also contains a path thematic relation.
(197)
AgP
AgP Ag'
pro 0
Ag Ø
DP
f1
0
SoP
Ag
ThP
So'
DP
órous
Th' f0
órous
AP G(Abl)
Ag'
pro
Th0
So' G(Abl)
katá
So0 Ø[+act][F]
Root
Root ban-
kata-
Ø[+act][F]
ban-
óreos baínō kata
katabaínō órous
„I walk down the mountain‟
„I descend the mountain‟
This is an instance of univerbation, whereby a phrasal constituent (kata was originally an AP) is incorporated into the verb, and there are numerous such cases in both Indo-European (Miller 1993) and Hungarian. The preverb will describe the spatial configuration in which the respective argument participates in the situation. In the following sections I will detail the meaning of this spatial configuration, which can be a certain path towards a goal-like argument, a path from a source-like argument, a specific position of a Theme or an Experiencer with respect to a Location, or the „path over the theme‟ followed by an action applied to an incremental Theme:
146
(198)
Source / Perdant
Goal / Recipient
Theme Theme Location
Agents are not associated with any configuration, presumably because they only participate as sources of energy.84 Some other prefixes seem to select specific arguments, e.g. Gm. be- (and cognates and synonyms denoting encircling motion) are associated with Themes, but hardly ever with Goals, Recipients, or other arguments; and Gm. ver- and cognates from IE *pro-/per- „all the way through‟ are not used with Theme – Location structures, because these prefixes describe motion (real or metaphorical) with no possible reference to a final position (unlike for instance Gm. unter- or über-), so they are typical with Goals, Recipients, Sources, Perdants, and also with Themes, as paths over / through the Themes. I will not be discussing here prepositions (or postpositions), but I am making at this point the observation that the analysis of preverbs as adjoining a functional head, preserving the modifier semantics from their adverbial origin, suggests the application of the same mechanism to ad-nominal particles: the free particles will be incorporated into a (functional) head, which could be the equivalent of either P0 or D0 – the latter variant cf. Szabolcsi‟s (1994) analysis of determiners in Hungarian as the equivalents of the complementizers in the nominal domain –,
84
This correlates with Tenny‟s (1994) observation that external arguments do not play any role in the delimitation of
events. She also points out that: (1) direct objects (in fact, incremental Themes) measure the progress of the event – this enables their semantic contribution to be modified by path adverbials, which can also surface as preverbs or prepositions; and (2) “oblique internal arguments” (in the terms of my analysis: Locations and Affectees) determine the (upper) limit of the event. 147
whose function is to introduce nouns (as DPs or NPs, depending on the analysis adopted) into the sentence, by marking through inflection their syntactic status (e.g. the nominative as structural Case) or theta-role / thematic relation (dative, accusative, etc., if they are non-structural cases). For instance, in Gm. in dem Zimmer „in the room‟, with the structure in (199a), P0 could be a complex head [P0 in Ø[case]],85 where Ø[case] determines the case agreement on the noun and article (as well as adjectives, if they are present) as a marker of the Location theta-role (if the PP is an argument) or location thematic relation (if the PP is an oblique), and in specifies this theta-role or thematic relation as an inessive „being-in‟ (200a). In a DP-as-CP analysis (199b), the complex head will be [D0 in d(e)-],86 with the article (dem) determining the case agreement on all nouns, adjectives, and determiners, in the DP (200b).
(199a) [PP in [DP dem [NP Zimmer]]] (199b) [DP in-dem [NP Zimmer]]
85
In languages with no adjective-noun agreement (Hungarian, Basque), instead of Ø there can be an overt
morpheme (suffix), attaching to the leftmost constituent in Basque, as well as in the accusative (and possibly also the dative) in Hungarian. In Hungarian, the demonstrative (which is structurally higher than the article) does agree in case with the noun, but it can be argued to be an appositive (Rákosi & Laczkó 2005). If this is correct, the counterpart of CP in the nominal domain will be this omnipresent PP or some equivalently high projection, rather than the DP. Zwarts‟ (2005) conclusions about case government in PPs in German go in the same direction: “It is descriptively helpful to be able to say that bei governs DATIVE case, but we can never make this to mean more than: bei cooccurs with or is used with DATIVE case. There is no grammatical system behind it in the way in which there is a system behind the way NOMINATIVE and ACCUSATIVE are assigned to subject and object, respectively.” 86
If the preposition and the article belonged together in a close local configuration (same head), this could
presumably facilitate their morphological merger (in dem > im, etc.). 148
P0
(200a)
Ø[case]
in
D0
(200b) in
d(e)-[case]
For an arbitrary argument Xi introduced by a functional head Argi0 – consisting of a morpheme (Ø or otherwise) bearing a certain semantic feature (e.g. [±active]) and assigning theta-roles to the constituent in its specifier – to which a preverb Pfxi is adjoined, the preverb will combine by predicate modification:87
Argi0
(201) Pfxi
Ai
(202) [[Ai]] = λfstλxeλes[f(e) & Rolei(x)(e)] [[Pfxi]] = λfstλxeλes[f(e) & Configurationi(x)(e)] [[Pfxi-Ai]] = PM([[Pfxi]] , [[Ai]] ) = λfstλxeλes[f(e) & Rolei(x)(e) & Configurationi(x)(e)]
The denotation of the So0 head in the VP [pro1.sg. órous kata-ban-] „I descend- the mountain‟ in (197) will be derived as below:
(203) [[Ø]] = λfstλxeλes[f(e) & Source(x)(e)] [[kata-]] = λfstλxeλes[f(e) & down(x)(e)] [[kata-Ø]] = PM([[kata-]] , [[Ø]] ) = λfstλxeλes[f(e) & Source(x)(e) & down(x)(e)]
87
Wunderlich (1983) treats the compositionality of preverbs in German in a somewhat similar manner. 149
If there is more than one prefix, predicate modification will apply recursively, e.g. Gk. enkatatithénai „put into‟:
Loc0/Go0
(204)
Ø en-
kata-
(205) [[Ø]] = λfstλxeλes[f(e) & Location(x)(e)] [[kata-]] = λfstλxeλes[f(e) & down(x)(e)] [[en-]] = λfstλxeλes[f(e) & in(x)(e)] [[kata-Ø]] = PM([[kata-]] , [[Ø]] ) = λfstλxeλes[f(e) & Location(x)(e) & down(x)(e)] [[en-kata-Ø]] = PM([[en-]] , [[kata-Ø]] ) = = λfstλxeλes[f(e) & Location(x)(e) & down(x)(e) & in(x)(e)]
The syntactic mechanism of the incorporation of adverbs as preverbs and prepositions is perhaps best described as a structural operation of XPs, consisting of the merger of branches, following a principle of structural economy at the level of the matrix clause. Three cases can be distinguished (206)-(208), each abundantly instantiated cross-linguistically, where an XP can be compressed to one or two branches; what structural nodes remain after incorporation is determined by their order of precedence: the head X0 will always remain (or else the XP could not be projected), and SpecXP remains after incorporating the adjunct, but will be itself incorporated into the head, in polysynthetis. In all three cases, the incorporated element adjoins a head in a local configuration (possibly merging sometimes into a simple head by a subsequent operation), and the incorporation can be best regarded as a type of reanalysis (rather than involving a new type of
150
movement). 88 In (206)-(208), the constituents which do not participate in the incorporation are bracketed, and the part of the structure which is affected is highlighted:
(206)
specifier-head incorporation (deletion of the X' node):
XP YP
XP X'
X0
(207)
X0
>> (ZP)
X0
YP
adjunct-head incorporation (deletion of the X" node): XP (YP)
XP X''
WP
>>
(YP)
X' X0
X' X0
(208)
(ZP)
(ZP)
X0
WP
adjunct-(head-of-)specifier incorporation (deletion of the X" node): XP YP
XP X''
WP
>>
YP
X' X0
X' Y'
X0
(ZP)
Y0
(ZP) WP
88
(ZP)
Y0
The theory does not rule out the possibility of attaching WP to SpecYP in (208), if other data support this analysis.
Otherwise, attaching WP to Y0, and having only head adjunction, is at least more consistent with (206) and (207). 151
(206) represents polysynthesis, whereby an argument is integrated into the verb. This can occur in Indo-European languages as well, as in the univerbation example in section 4.1 with Gm. zugrundelegen „take as a basis‟, where the Goal argument zu Grunde „to (the) basis‟ is incorporated into the verb (209). (207) and (208) are the mechanisms which probably underlie the verbal prefixation and the creation of prepositions from adverbs respectively, e.g. detailing the analysis of (184) in (210) and (211).
(209)
GoP PP
GoP Go'
Go0
>>
Root
zu Grunde
Go0 Ø
Root
PP
leg-
zugrunde-
Go0 Ø
leg-
zu Grunde legen
zugrundelegen
„lay to the basis (of)‟
„take as a basis‟
(210)
SoP DP/PP
SoP/ThP So''
>>
DP/PP
órous
órous
AP
So'
So'/Th'
So0/Th0
Root
katá
ban-
So0 Ø
Root
AP
ban-
kata-
So0/Th0 Ø
óreos baínō kata
katabaínō órous
„I walk down the mountain‟
„I descend the mountain‟
152
(211)
SoP DP/PP
SoP So''
>>
DP/PP
So'
órous
AP
So'
So0 Ø NP/DP
D'/P'
katá 0
So Ø
0
Root
0
D /P
ban-
Root ban-
órous 0
AP
D /P Ø
katá
óreos baínō kata
0
kat órous baínō „I walk down the mountain‟
If the semantics is preserved after incorporation in (206) and (208), as I argue to be the case in the verbal prefixation following the template in (207), the prepositions will combine with the D0/P0 by predicate modification, and the arguments probably by functional application. If both preverbs and prepositions combine by predicate application, like adjunct modifiers do, this could be taken to support the analysis proposed here, because there are cases where the same particle appears as a preverb and a preposition in the same XP, e.g. v(-) „in(to)‟ in Russ. vxodit’i v komnatu „go into the room‟. 89 Syntactically, there can be several modifiers in a sentence, expecially several locative or directional modifiers (which is what verbal prefixes originally were) – e.g. John flew to Chicago (Goal argument) to O’Hare (goal modifier) to see Bill (purpose / temporal goal modifier) last Sunday (temporal location modifier). And semantically, even if the denotations of these modifiers are identical, as in the Russian example above, their combination by predicate modification inside the XP has the same final output.
89
I owe this suggestion to Molly Diesing. 153
In specifier-head incorporation, the functional head hosting the incorporated argument must first combine with this argument, so the denotation of the argument-introducing functional heads in (149) must adapt to the incorporation by inverting the order of the functional application in the first two arguments of the function (149'), with the end result being the same as in the absence of argument incorporation (150') = (150):
(149') denotation of functional head with incorporated argument: [[Ai]] = λxeλfstλes[f(e) & Rolei(x)(e)]
(150') [[fi]] = [[Ai]] ([[Xi]] )([[fi-1]] ) = λes[fi-1(e) & Rolei(Xi)(e)]
Since this order of the function‟s arguments in (149') is a precondition for incorporation, Baker‟s “polysynthetic parameter” might be based in fact on the two possible ordering of arguments in the argument-introducing heads – polysynthesis if (149'), no polysynthesis is (149) –, and the transition between polysynthesis and independent expression of arguments in either direction will amount to a reordering of the functional arguments between (149') and (149). If verbs with Affectee, Location, and Quality arguments are semantically decomposable (cf. the discussion in section 3.3.2) and contain abstract verbs / roots like GO, BE, or BECOME, then these roots can incorporate arguments. For instance, Basque oheratu „go to bed‟,90 from the DP/PP ohera „to bed‟ (ohe „bed‟ + allative suffix -ra) is formed by incorporating the Goal argument into Go0, with the Root consisting of the phonologically empty verb GO:
90
Actually a perfect participle, which is the citation form of verbs in Basque. 154
(212)
GoP
GoP
PP
Go'
ohera
0
Go Ø
Go0
>> Root
PP
GO
ohera- Ø
ohera GO
Root Go
0
GO
ohera„go- to bed‟
The incorporation of adjuncts can apply several times in the same structure, for instance in the case of multiple prefixation – either a lower (adverbial) adjunct will incorporate first, followed by a higher one, or they will merge into a compound and incorporate together into the verb –, and perhaps also in the formation of compound prepositions like into. Starting with the next section, I discuss in more detail the syntactic position and semantic contribution of the preverbs.
4.4 Prefixes as applicative morphemes
4.4.1 Theme applicatives
4.4.1.1 Additional Theme arguments In Sanskrit, some preverbs can have a transitivizing effect (Renou 1961: 138-139) – for instance, ruh- „grow‟ (itr.) vs. adhi-ruh- „climb‟ (tr.), with adhi- „on top of‟:
(213) yaḥ tu enam viṣamācāraḥ pāpakarmā adhirohati (Rāmāyaṇa 3.73.34) „But he who has evil behavior and acts wrongly will climb it [enam – referring to a certain mountain].‟
155
Likewise, with the same prefix vas- „dwell‟ (with a complement in the locative) vs. adhi-vas„occupy (a position)‟ (tr.); also, the prefixed compounds of krudh- „be angry with‟ and druh- „be hostile to‟ (with a complement in the dative) are transitive, e.g. with abhi- „close to‟ in the grammarian‟s example Devadattam abhikrudhyati „is angry with Devadatta‟ (Pāṇini, Aṣṭādhyāyī 1.4.38) as well as in text:
(214) na tām abhikruddhaḥ muniḥ (Vikramorvaśī 36.2, ref. as in Böhtlingk & Roth 185591) „The sage is not angry with her [tām].‟
The prefix abhi- has a transitivizing effect with quite numerous roots. In many cases, this effect can be specified as turning a locative oblique into a direct object, e.g. abhi-vrṣ- „rain (upon smb.)‟ or „shower (smb.)‟ (e.g. with arrows) vs. vrṣ- „shower‟ (with double object, e.g. arrows (Acc) on somebody (L); or with a single object, like abhi-vrṣ-). Examples can be found in both Vedic and post-Vedic Sanskrit:
(215) ávarṣīr varṣam úd u ṣ grbhāya (RgVeda 5.83.10) „you have shed rain; now, cease altogether‟
(216) bhrātarau bhrātaraṃ yudhi / śaraiḥ vavarṣatuḥ (Mahābhārata 8.2704) „the two brothers showered their brother with arrows in the battle‟
91
For these examples, Böhtlingk & Roth (1855: v.2 s.v. krudh-) note that an interpretation of the preverb as a
postposition to the noun is also possible, which would be [Devadattam abhi] krudhyati and [tām abhi] kruddhaḥ respectively. This obviously applies to prefixes in general, cf. Saussure‟s schema presented earlier. 156
(217) yád īm enāṁ uśató abhy ávarṣīt / trṣyāvataḥ… (RgVeda 7.103.3) „when he rained upon them – the eager, the thirsty…‟
(218) kusumaiḥ abhyavarṣan (tam) (Bhāgavata-Purāṇa 6.12.34) „they showered him with flowers‟
The original meaning of abhi- was „around‟, preserved in a few compounds like abhí-vīra“surrounded by men” and abhítaḥ “all around, on all sides” (Mayrhofer 1992: s.v. abhí), and corroborated by the meaning of its cognates Lat. amb-, Gk. amphí, Goth. bi, Gm. be- and um-, OCS o(bŭ)-, Lith. apie, ap(i)-, Latv. ap-, etc. (all from PIE *h2embhi92). When used as preverbs with intransitive bases, these cognates often have the same transitivizing effect, and so do the particles with similar meaning (Gk. perí, Lat. circum „around‟).93 This effect consists of adding a Theme argument to an intransitive verb. In German, for instance, this is often the role of the prefixes be-, um-, and a few others94 (Michaelis & Ruppenhofer 2000):
(219) fall upon somebody1 (Goal) → befall somebody1 (Theme) irgendwohin1 (Goal) treten → etwas1 (Theme) betreten „tread on something‟ auf etwas1 (Location) sitzen „be seated on something‟ → → etwas1 (Theme) besitzen „occupy something‟ 92
Probably derived from *h2nt- „forehead‟ + an element -bhi-. (I owe this information to Michael Weiss.)
93
These prefixes are not always transitivizing, but often only add the directional specification „around‟. Here I only
discuss the cases when they contribute a new Theme argument. 94
The verbs prefixed with be- and aus- that have this semantics retain the old stress on the root (the preverb is not
detachable): beˈlachen vs. ˈauslachen. 157
jemandem1 (Affectee) dienen → jemanden1 (Theme) bedienen „serve somebody‟ über jemanden1 (Location) lachen „laugh at somebody‟ → → jemanden1 (Theme) belachen / auslachen „deride, ridicule somebody‟ um etwas1 / jemanden1 (Location) gehen / drängen → etwas1 / jemanden1 (Theme) umgehen / umdrängen „surround / press something / somebody‟
(220) Gothic qiman „come‟
biqiman „befall, come upon‟
sitan „sit‟
bisitan „sit with / near / about‟95
hlahjan „laugh‟
bihlahjan „deride, mock‟
rinnan „run‟
birinnan „run about (smth.)‟
arbaidjan „work, toil, suffer‟ biarbaidjan „aspire to‟ skeinan „shine‟
biskeinan „shine on, illuminate‟
laikan „leap for joy, play‟
bilaikan „mock‟
(ga)leiþan „walk, go‟
bileiþan „leave, forsake, abandon‟
speiwan „spit‟ (itr.)
bispeiwan „spit upon‟
ƕairban „walk‟
biƕairban „press, crowd around‟
Greek
95
érkhesthai „go, come‟
amphérkhesthai „come around (smth.), approach‟
khoreúein „dance‟
amphikhoreúein „dance around (smth.)‟
gánuthsai „be joyful‟
amphigánusthai „enjoy (smth.)‟
píptein „fall‟
amphipíptein „fall upon / embrace‟
mákhesthai „fight‟ (itr.)
amphimákhesthai „fight around (smth.)‟
tromeĩn „tremble‟
amphitromeĩn „tremble for‟
théein „run‟
amphithéein „run around (smth.)‟
pétesthai „fly‟
amphipétesthai „fly around (smth.)‟
baínein „walk, go‟
amphibaínein, peribaínein „walk around (smth.)‟
iénai „go‟
periiénai „go around (smth.)‟
Cf. Gm. besitzen „occupy‟ with derived meaning. 158
hodeúein „travel‟
periodeúein „tour‟
hístasthai „stand‟
amphiperiístasthai „stand around (smth.)‟
Old Church Slavonic itii-det – xoditii-indet „walk‟
obitip – obŭxoditii „surround‟
graditii „build‟
ograditip „build around (smth.)‟ > „protect‟
kajatii sę „repent‟96
okajatip „feel pity for (smb.)‟
plakatii „weep‟
oplakatip „mourn‟
sijatii „shine‟
osijatip „illuminate‟
Lithuanian eiti „go‟
apeiti „go around (smth.)‟ (also itr. „go around‟)
bėgti „run‟
apibėgti „run around (smth.)‟ (also itr. „run around‟)
lėkti „fly‟
aplėkti „fly around (smth.)‟ (also itr. „fly around‟)
raudoti „weep‟
apraudoti „mourn, bemoan‟
Latin īre „go‟
ambīre, circumīre, circumambīre „go the round of, encircle‟
fluere „flow‟
circumfluere „flow around (smth.)‟ (also itr. „flow around‟)
sedēre „sit‟
circumsedēre „surround (sitting)‟ (also itr. „sit around‟)
stāre „stand‟
circumstāre „surround (standing)‟ (also itr. „stand around‟)
4.4.1.2 Converted Theme arguments Another manifestation of this transitivizing force is changing the theta-role from Location, Recipient, etc. into Theme, as an object directly affected by the action, or to which the action applies directly. What changes here is the „point of application‟ of the action:
(221) sprinkle something1 (Theme) on something2 → besprinkle smth.1 (Theme) with smth.2
96
This is not an ideal example, because in kajatii sę the verb itself is transitive, taking the reflexive pronoun as its
direct object, but the addition of the prefix still has the effect of „opening up‟ the verb to objects other than the reflexive pronoun, even if the valency of the verb remains unchanged. 159
über etwas1 (Theme) sprechen „talk about something‟ → → etwas1 (Theme) besprechen „discuss something‟ jemandem1 etwas2 (Theme) rauben „steal something2 from somebody1‟ → → jemanden1 (Theme) einer Sache2 berauben „rob somebody1 of something2‟
jemandem1 etwas2 (Theme) neiden → jemanden1 (Theme) um etwas2 beneiden „envy somebody1 for something2‟ etwas1 (Theme) auf etwas2 malen „paint something1 on something2 → → etwas2 (Theme) bemalen / ausmalen „paint something2‟ (222) Gothic satjan „set, put‟
bisatjan „beset, set around‟
wandjan „turn‟ (tr. / itr.)
biwandjan „shun‟
(us)windan „wind‟
biwindan „wrap around (smth.), swaddle‟
domjan „judge‟ (tr. / itr.)
bidomjan „judge (smb.), pass sentence on‟
graban „dig / till‟
bigraban „surround with an embankment or palissade‟
(af)swairban „wipe out‟
biswairban „wipe (a surface)‟
(ga)smeitan „smear, apply‟
bismeitan „smear, anoint‟
swaran „swear (an oath)‟
biswaran „swear to (the truth of smth.), conjure‟
tiuhan „lead, guide, draw‟
bitiuhan „go about, visit‟
maitan „cut, hew‟
bimaitan „circumcise‟97
Greek bállein „throw‟
amphibállein „envelop‟
histánai „set, place‟
amphistánai „encircle (with smth.)‟
kulíndein „roll (smth.1: Acc)‟ amphikulíndein „make (smth.1: D) roll around (smth.: Acc)‟ lakhaínein „dig‟
97
amphilakhaínein „dig around (smth.)‟
The role of the prefix in this case is both concrete („cutting around‟) and transitivizing, with the latter role deriving
from the former one. 160
légein „talk‟ („about smth.‟:
amphilégein „discuss‟ (smth.: τι1)
perí / amphí tinos1)
(vs. itr. perilégein „speak in a roundabout way‟)
Old Church Slavonic daritii „make a present of‟
odaritip „present with‟ (also denominal, cf. darŭ „present‟)
krastii „steal‟
okrastip „rob (smb.)‟
Lithuanian barstyti „strew‟
apibarstyti „bestrew‟
purkšti „sprinkle‟
apipurkšti „besprinkle‟
pilti „pour‟
apipilti „pour over (smth.)‟
karstyti „hang‟
apkarstyti „decorate with, Gm. behängen‟
dovanoti „present (smth.1: apdovanoti „award, decorate (smb.2: Acc; with smth.1: I)‟ Acc; to smb.2: D) Latin iacere „fling‟
amīcere, circumīcere „envelop‟
quarere „search for (smth.1)
anquīrere „accuse (smb.2 of smth.1)‟ – but no change of thematic
(in smb.2)‟
roles in the meaning „inquire into (smth.1)‟
struere „arrange‟
circumstruere „build around (smth.)‟
d cere „lead‟
circumd cere „surround‟ (also without change of thematic roles)
fodere dig‟
circumfodere „dig around (smth.)‟
For instance, with OCS darovatii/p vs. odarovatip „present‟:
(223) mŭnogomŭ slěpomŭ darovai/p prozĭrěnie (Codex Marianus, Luke 7.21) „[Jesus] restored the sight (Acc.) to many blind people‟ vs. odarip i […] světomĭ tvoimĭ (Euchologium Sinaiticum 33a.25) „grant her (Acc.) your light‟
161
4.4.1.3 Denominatives A third way of producing transitives with this prefix, most common in Germanic and (Balto)Slavic, is by deriving denominatives (factitives). In general, the direct object of such verbs is „surrounded with‟, hence affected in various ways by means of, the concept denoted by the base noun: a beguiled person was affected by means of a guile, eine benachrichtigte Person has received a Nachricht, etc.98 On the other hand, as these denominatives do not have non-prefixed counterparts, another possibility is that they might be derived in the lexicon. Their derivational relationship to the base nominal is different, too: denominatives have not only prefixes, but also various suffixes – in the next example set most clearly visible in benachrichtigen vs. Nachricht, and also Skr. tapasya- „practice austerities‟ vs. tapas „heat‟ > „austerity‟, etc. It is far from clear whether the Theme is introduced as an argument in syntax by the prefix, by the suffix, or at all by a derivational affix.99 I include denominatives here tentatively as a possible third class of Theme applicatives mainly because they use the same prefixes, and these prefixes are associated with Theme arguments, as in the case of other Theme applicatives.
98
There are exceptions, at least in Germanic: befriend means „make smb. a friend‟ / „behave friendly towards smb.‟ /
„become somebody‟s friend‟, not „endow somebody with a friend‟, unless examples like John befriended Bill are interpreted as „John1 endowed Bill with himself1 as a friend‟. Constructions like *John befriended Bill with Mark are possible in German: Ja, ich befreundete ihn, den irdenen, mit der Unendlichkeit (Rilke) „Yes, I made him, the earthling, acquainted with / a friend of the infinite‟. A parallel function is performed by the prefix with the opposite sense of „depriving of‟, e.g. Gm. bewaffnen „arm‟ vs. entwaffnen „disarm‟. 99
As far as I can determine, all denominatives in the languages discussed here have at least a Theme, e.g. Skr.
śithilaya- „make loose‟ (Agent and Theme) and śithilāya- „become loose‟ (Theme) from śithila- „loose‟. 162
(224) guile → beguile Mann „man‟ → bemannen „man (a ship)‟ Nachricht „news‟ → benachrichtigen „inform‟ Grenze „border, limit‟, Lager „camp‟ → umgrenzen „delimit‟, umlagern „enclose‟ Kleid „piece of clothing‟ → umkleiden100 „clothe‟
(225) Gothic baurgs „city, town‟
bibaurgeins „encampment‟ (deverbal noun from *bibaurgjan)
Old Church Slavonic101 zarja „light, dawn‟
ozaritip „illuminate‟ → ozarjatii
mrakŭ „darkness‟
omračitip „darken‟ → omračatii
dŭždĭ „rain‟
odŭžditip „irrigate‟ → odŭždatii
glasŭ „voice‟
oglasitip „admonish, edify‟ → oglašatii
lice „face, image‟
obličitip „reveal, expose‟ > „convict‟ → obličatii
plŭkŭ „crowd / troop‟
oplŭčitip sę „make ones. ready for combat‟ → oplŭčatii sę
darŭ „present‟102
odaritip „present (smb.: Acc; with smth.: I)‟ (Russ. odarjat’i) – vs. daritii and darovatii/p „present (smth.: Acc; to smb.: D)‟
100
umˈkleiden „clothe‟ vs. ˈumkleiden „change clothes‟: only the first (older) compound has the meaning relevant
here – and likewise umˈbauen „surround‟ vs. ˈumbauen „rebuild‟, and a few other pairs. All compounds with um are transitive, many of them having become so due to the prefixation. The same remarks hold for the Dutch cognates: omˈkleden vs. ˈomkleden, etc. Unlike be-, um- is used only sporadically, when the semantics („going around the Theme‟) requires or prefers it, e.g. umschiffen „steer clear of‟. 101
I only illustrate instances where a base verb is a denominal Perfective; in other cases, a denominal Imperfective is
derived by suffixation, and a Perfective is derived from it by prefixation with o(bŭ)-. For instance: žena „woman‟ → ženitii/p → „make possible for (a man) to marry‟ → oženitip (not žena → oženitip → *oženjatii); zŭloba „evil‟ → zŭlobitii „humiliate‟ → ozŭlobitip (not zŭloba → ozŭlobitip → *ozŭlobljatii). 102
In some cases it is difficult to tell apart base nouns from deverbal back formations. 163
Slavic also forms deadjectival transitive Perfectives with the meaning „impart quality X to‟: 103 (226) Old Church Slavonic
bogatŭ „rich‟
obogatitip „enrich‟→ obogaštatii
novŭ „new‟
obnovitip „renew‟ → obnavljatii
svętŭ „holy‟
osvętitip „consecrate‟ → osvęštatii (besides svętitii/p)
skvrĭnĭnŭ „impure‟
oskvrĭnitip „defile‟ → oskvrĭnjatii (besides skvrĭnitii)
(root skvrĭn-) golŭ „empty, naked‟
ogolitip „bare, strip‟ (Russ. ogoljat’i)
žestokŭ „hard‟ (root žest-)
ožestitip, ožestočitip „harden‟ (Russ. ožestočat’i)
4.4.1.4 Analysis All prefixes discussed in this section introduce new Theme arguments, acting as applicative morphemes in Th0. They add a Theme to the theta-grid of the derivational base, whether the base had no Theme (in transitives derived from intransitives, nouns, or adjectives – if these are considered to be derived in syntax), or the Theme of the base was different (change in the „point of application‟ of the action: John sprinkling water on Bill vs. John besprinkling Bill with water). Even though the effect of these prefixes is „transitivizing‟, it applies to the Theme, rather than to the Agent, because the prefixes denote the way in which the Theme is affected by the action of the new verb – namely, by comprising the entire Theme in the scope of that action. Due to their semantics, these prefixes also act as Perfectivizers: encircling the object by applying the action denoted by the root, or by a nominal or adjectival concept, on the entire circumference of the object, implies affecting the object in its entirety, therefore the action
103
I only give examples of derivations adjective → base Perfective → secondary Imperfective; in other cases, a
sufixed Imperfective is primary: radŭ „happy‟ → radovatii (sę) „enjoy‟ („make oneself happy‟), obradovatip „make happy‟. 164
denoted by these verbs is inherently telic: it has a natural endpoint, or culmination, because a circle is closed. These prefixed Perfectives derive secondary Imperfectives in Slavic, which possesses the morphological means to do so, but remain biaspectual in the other branches of Indo-European. The prefix will carry the feature [F], indicating the fact that it contributes an inherent culmination to the verbal concept expressed by the root:
(227)
(AgP)
AgP
(misfortune) (Ag')
(Ag0)
misfortune
Ag0 Ø
ThP Th'
misfortune
Th0 Ø
Ag' ThP Th'
John
GoP
Acc
Th0
Root
be-[+act][F]
fall-
Go'
upon John
Go0 Ø[+partake] misfortune falling upon John
Root fall-
misfortune befalling John
The misfortune in (227) can be interpreted as an Agent, if what befalls somebody is conceived of as having agentive qualities. A thing that falls (on somebody) may not be an Agent in ontology, but there are instances where it can be construed as such in cognition: if a rock falls on John‟s hand, he could get angry and hit the rock, irrationally attributing it intention, hence agency. Here, the meaning of fall would be more like „throw itself upon‟. Or even if the rock is at rest, and John sprains his wrist sliding on a slope and hitting his wrist against the rock, he could get angry at the rock, construing it as an agent. Also, if misfortune befalls somebody, one can curse it,
165
again regarding it as an agent. On the other hand, befall is not the best example, because it is archaic, and its subject can only be eventive: a rock can fall on people, but cannot befall them; also, expletive there is possible here with a word order which suggests that Fleeming and Jurgis in the next examples are not Themes, but rather remained interpreted as Goals after prefixation: There befell Fleeming a terrible alarm… (R.L. Stevenson), And then one day, there befell Jurgis the adventure of his life (Upton Sinclair) vs. *There ate an apple (Theme) a man (Agent), but There came to our town (Goal) two horsemen (Agent).104 The semantics of the complex head Th 0 in the structure above expresses Perfectivity as a transition into a state of completion, by applying (163):
Th0
(228) be-[F]
Ø[+act]
(229) [[Ø]] = λfstλxeλes[f(e) & Theme(x)(e)] [[be-]] = λfstλxeλes[f(e) & all-around(x)(e)] [[be-Ø]] = PM([[be-]] ,[[Ø]]) = λfstλxeλes[f(e) & Theme(x)(e) & all-around(x)(e)] [all-around(X)(e) → [xiX[Theme(xi)(e)]]] → → [[Theme(X)(e) & all-around(X)(e)] → [Theme(X)(e) & xiX[Theme(xi)(e)]]] [Theme(X)(e) & xiX[Theme(xi)(e)]] → → [e's[e < e' & Theme(X)(e')] & e''s[e" < e & Theme(X)(e'')]]
104
Thanks to Molly Diesing for the discussion and examples in this paragraph. 166
In the next example, Bill is first an oblique location, then a Theme argument, and water is first a Theme argument, then an oblique instrument:
(230)
AgP
AgP (on Bill)
(with water)
Ag'
John
Ag0 Ø
Ag0 Ø
ThP Th'
water
Acc
Ag'
John
Th0 Ø[+act]
ThP Th'
Bill
Root
Acc
sprinkle-
John sprinkling water on Bill
Th0 be-[+act][F]
Root sprinkle-
John besprinkling Bill with water
If denominatives are derived in syntax, they will be as below:105
(231)
AgP Ag'
John
Ag0 Ø
ThP Th'
Bill
Acc
Th0 be-[+act][F]
Root guile-
John beguiling Bill
105
But the denominative suffix would have to find a place too, even when it is null. Most likely it would be
contained in the Root, so that the Root can be verbal, rather than nominal. 167
(232)
AgP Ag'
pro2.sg.
Ag0 Ø
ThP Th'
lice zemli
Acc
Th0
Root
ob-[+act][F]
nov-
obnovišip lice zemli (OCS: Psalterium Sinaiticum, Psalm 103.30) „thou wilst renew the face of the Earth‟
For all the verbs discussed in this section, I have assumed that their new argument is a Theme, the reason being that these verbs are all transitive, and an Agent is generally associated with a Theme undergoing the action, rather than with a Location. In the absence of an Agent, the new argument could have been interpreted as a Location: surrounding something is a stationary action taking place at a location, and the act of surrounding can be conceived of as delimiting a location, and thereby introducing it as an argument. Occasionaly, other prefixes might seem to act as Theme applicatives, as in OCS bytii „be‟ → zabytip „forget‟, where the subject is not an Agent, but an Experiencer experiencing a Theme. However, the semantics of the prefix suggests the possibility that the object could have been a Location at the time when this verb was derived: za- „behind, beyond‟ + bytii „be‟ > zabytip „be behind / beyond (smth.)‟ > „forget‟ – the epistemic subject is situated behind / beyond the entire object (particular memory), hence the Perfective aspect; only the entire object can be left behind,
168
otherwise one is not behind / beyond that object.106 Conceiving of a memory or recollection as the location of the epistemic subject correlates with the fact that the objects of verbs of perception and mental activities („see‟, „remember‟, „know‟, „believe‟, „love‟ etc.) could be regarded as Locations, as I suggested earlier. Weiss (2010: 101) compares several applicatives constructions in Indo-European, noting that Lat. adolēre “means „to consume with fire, to cremate‟ and typically requires a completely affected object”. The same remark applies to several other prefixes denoting linear direction (as opposed to the ones discussed so far, which refer to the enclosing of an object) as a path over the Theme, or the path followed by the Theme towards completion of the action, i.e. towards a state where the theme is entirely affected.
4.4.2 Completive prefixes The prefixes denoting circular movement are not the only ones that both license Themes and are Perfective. The choice of the prefix depends on the shape of the object: if the object can be covered in its entirety in a linear motion, like the slope of a mountain, a directional prefix will assign case to the object, as in (197). Most instances of such transitives are derived from motion verbs, or verbs which denote actions that can be metaphorically assimilated to motion, as in the German examples below:
106
I discuss Location applicatives in a later section. The vast majority of those applicatives are Imperfective, being
stative, and zabytip is an exception presumably for the reason mentioned above (only the entire object can be left behind). 169
(233) durch etwas1 lesen „read through something‟ → etwas1 (Theme) durchlesen „read something through‟ durch etwas1 gucken → etwas1 (Theme) durchgucken „peep through something‟ durch etwas1 leben → etwas1 (Theme) durchleben „peep through something‟
(234) Gothic saiƕan „see‟
þairhsaiƕan „see through‟
arbaidjan „work, toil‟
þairharbaidjan „work through (e.g. the night)‟
gaggan „go‟
þairhgaggan „pierce‟
(ga)leiþan „walk, go‟
þairhleiþan „go through‟
Greek érkhesthai „go, come‟
katérkhesthai „descend‟; diérkhesthai „cross‟
baínein „walk, go‟
katabaínein „descend‟; anabaínein „ascend‟; probaínein „approach‟; diabaínein „cross‟ probaínein „promote, advance‟107
théein „run‟
katathéein „make an incursion into‟; diathéein „claim (the prize in a race)‟
trékhein „run‟
diatrékhein „run across‟
iénai „go‟
katiénai „descend‟; proiénai „exit‟ (tr.)
Old Church Slavonic itii-det – xoditii-indet „walk‟
proitip → proxoditii „cross (walking)‟
vějatii „blow‟ (itr.)
provějatip „blow through, fan‟
plakatii „weep‟
proplakatip sę „weep oneself through‟ > „burst into tears‟
světitii „shine‟
prosvětitip → prosvěštatii „shine through, illuminate‟
Lithuanian
107
eiti „go‟
praeiti „pass through, cross‟
bėgti „run‟
prabėgti „pass (running) through, cross (running)‟
lėkti „fly‟
pralėkti „cross (flying)‟
plaukti „swim‟
praplaukti „cross (swimming)‟
Hapax with this valency: 3.sg. future probásei (Pindar, Olympiaka 8.63). 170
Latin īre „go‟
transīre, pertransīre „cross‟
gradī „walk, step‟
transgredī „cross‟
uādere „go, advance‟
peruādere „penetrate, invade‟
scandere „climb‟ (itr.)
ascendere „ascend‟; descendere „descend‟; transcendere „climb‟ (tr.)
uolāre „fly‟
transuolāre „fly through‟
uadum „ford‟ (noun)
transuadere „ford‟ (tr.)
In (235) there is no Goal argument; going through the Tiber does not need a goal, and the motion verb behaves like a Slavic determinate Imperfective qua Imperfective, in that it only denotes the act of motion, with no direction or goal: 108
(235)
AgP Ag' Ag0 Ø
AgP (trans Tiberim)
Ag' Ag0 Ø
ThP Th'
Tiberim
Root
Acc
*ei-
Th0 trans-[+act][F]
trans Tiberim īre
Tiberim transīre
„go through the Tiber‟
„cross the Tiber‟
Root *ei-
The prefixes in (234), many of which continue PIE *pro- and *per- and have the general meaning „going all the way through / covering (the Theme)‟, are frequently used as
108
Even in contexts like „cross to the other shore‟, the other shore is not a Goal argument, but a goal adjunct:
Tiberim transīre „cross the Tiber‟ is a complete predicate. 171
Perfectivizers in Slavic: the action of „going all the way through the Theme‟ is metaphorically109 interpreted as „affecting the entire Theme‟, e.g. in Polish:
(236) czytaći ‘przez’ książkę
→
„read all the way “through” the book‟
przeczytaćp książkę „read the entire book‟
Even when the base Imperfective is transitive and takes the same kind of object as the derived Perfective (czytaći książkę „read a book‟), the derivation still has to proceed via a construction like the one above. The morpheme which appears as a free adverb, a preposition, or a prefix, describes the path over the Theme: „across‟, „into‟, „out of‟, „down‟, „up‟, etc. – respectively, OCS pro- / prě-, vŭ-, iz-, sŭ-, vŭz-. The resulting verb is Perfective, because the Theme is covered in its entirety, entailing the transition from the state of „Theme not entirely affected‟ to that of „Theme entirely affected‟. The metaphorical derivation of the Perfectives is what accounts for the occasionally expressed opinion (e.g. Isačenko 1962; Maslov 1965) that even the derivation of those Perfectives which are aspectually paired with non-prefixed Imperfectives (in the sense that the latter replaces the former in the present narrative in Russian) „adds something‟ to the meaning of the base Imperfective. What this „semantic addition‟ exactly amounts to is the spatial metaphor, expressible by the collocation of the base Imperfective treated as a motion verb (here, czytaći) with an adverbial denoting the path of the action (przez książkę). If the semantic contribution of a certain prefix is minimal compared to that of other prefixes used with the same 109
„Metaphor‟ is to be taken here in its etymological sense: Gk. metaphor ~ Lat. translatio. The action of the
Imperfective upon its Theme is translated / specified in spatial terms, and paraphrasable – in Slavic as in other languages – through a prepositional construction, which derives an applicative (the Perfective), as illustrated by the glosses in this chapter. 172
base Imperfective, the derived Perfective is treated in Slavic (except Bulgarian) as aspectually paired with the base Imperfective. Bulgarian systematically, 110 and the other Slavic languages very occasionaly, derive secondary Imperfectives from such derived Perfectives:
(237) base Imperfective
path
derived Perfective
secondary Imperfective
„through the Theme‟
read through
-
Gm. lesen
durchlesen
-
Pol. czytaći
przeczytaći
-
Bg. četai
pročetap
pročitamp
Engl. read
Th0
(238) prze-[F]
Ø[+act]
(239) [[Ø]] = λfstλxeλes[f(e) & Theme(x)(e)] [[prze-]] = λfstλxeλes[f(e) & all-way-through(x)(e)] [[prze-Ø]] = PM([[prze-]] ,[[Ø]]) = λfstλxeλes[f(e) & Theme(x)(e) & all-way-through(x)(e)] [all-way-through(X)(e) → [xiX[Theme(xi)(e)]]] → → [[Theme(X)(e) & all-way-through(X)(e)] → [Theme(X)(e) & xiX[Theme(xi)(e)]]] [Theme(X)(e) & xiX[Theme(xi)(e)]] → → [e's[e < e' & Theme(X)(e')] & e''s[e" < e & Theme(X)(e'')]]
110
These secondary Imperfectives in Bulgarian denote the same kind of action as the base Imperfective, but add a
nuance of iterativity (repeated reaching of the culmination of the event as described by the Perfective), and replace the Perfective in the present narrative where the other Slavic languages resort to the base Imperfective. 173
When the metaphor involves a more radical departure from the typical way in which the base Imperfective affects its Theme, a Perfective with a specialized meaning is derived, which is not aspectually paired with the base Imperfective, but rather derives its own Imperfective (in Slavic), or remains biaspectual (in the other branches, as well as in Hungarian):
(240) base Imperfective Lat. scribere
path
derived Perfective
„from A to B‟
transcribere (Pfv. → Ipfv.)
Engl. write
write over (Pfv. → Ipfv.)
Gm. schreiben
um-/abschreiben (Pfv. → Ipfv.)
Hun. írni
átírni (Pfv. → Ipfv.)
Pol. pisać
przepisaćp
i
(241)
secondary Imperfective
AgP
przepisywaći
AgP Ag'
Ag0 Ø
Ag' Ag0 Ø
ThP coś
Acc
coś
Th' Th0 Ø[+act]
ThP
Root
Th'
pis-
pisać coś „write something‟
Th0
Root
prze-[+act][F]
pis-
Acc
przepisać coś „copy something‟
The path is not always over the Theme, but can be the path along which the Theme proceeds:
(242) base Imperfective Engl. pour
path
derived Perfective
secondary Imperfective
„out of a recipient‟
pour out (Pfv. → Ipfv.)
Gm. gießen
ausgießen (Pfv. → Ipfv.)
Pol. laći
wylaći
174
wylewaćp
In instances like Lat. ob mortem īre vs. mortem (Acc) obīre „go to one‟s death‟ – and similar cases like adīre in its occasional meaning „attack‟, etc. –, the motion verb has a Goal argument, and it acts like a Slavic determinate Imperfective qua determinate. This Goal is reanalyzed as a Theme (as in death falling upon John vs. death befalling John), and the verb is Perfective, because the goal (which will become a Theme) constitutes a transition – from the state of not having reached the goal to the state of having reached it. As I argued earlier, the feature [F] is inherent in a Goal head, because a goal constitutes an inherent final endpoint of the action (243). In the semantic evolution Lat. adīre „approach‟ > „attack‟, the Goal is reanalyzed as a Theme (unless the evolution „approach‟ > „attack‟ is an illusion, and exists only in the translation) (244).
(243)
AgP
AgP Ag'
Ag0 Ø ob mortem
Ag' Ag0 Ø
GoP Go' Go0 Ø[+act][F]
GoP mortem
Root
Acc
*ei-
ob mortem īre
mortem obīre „go to one‟s death‟
175
Go' Go0 Root ob-[+act][F] *ei-
(244)
AgP
AgP Ag'
Brutus
Ag0 Ø
Ag'
Brutus
GoP
Ag0 Ø
>>
GoP
Go'
ad Caesarem
Go0 Ø[+act][F]
Go'
Caesarem
Root
Acc
*ei-
>>
Go0
Root
ad-[+act][F]
*ei-
Brutus ad Caesarem it
Brutus Caesarem adit
„Brutus goes to Caesar‟
„Brutus goes up to / approaches Caesar‟
AgP Ag'
Brutus
>>
Ag0 Ø
ThP Th'
Caesarem
Th0
Root
ad-[+act][F]
*ei-
Brutus Caesarem adit „Brutus attacks Caesar‟
The prefixes meaning „through‟ and „forth‟ are among the most frequent Perfectivizers in IndoEuropean. Latin per- usually indicates the completion of the action denoted by the base verb, e.g. perficere „accomplish‟, peragere „carry out‟ (facere „do, make‟, agere „perform‟):111 111
In the first example, per- has a superlative function in perfacile „very easy‟, and its cognate PSl *per- (OCS prě-)
is used in the same way. The basic meaning „through(out)‟ applies to both verbal and adjectival concepts, manifesting itself as a superlative degree of an action or a quality respectively. 176
(245) perfacile factu esse illis probat conata perficere (Caesar, De bello Gallico 1.3.6) „he proves to them that accomplishing [their] attempts was very easy to do‟
(246) receptus est reus neque peractus ob mortem opportunam (Tacitus, Annales 4.21) „the accusation against him had been received, but no measure was taken because of an opportune death‟
In Balto-Slavic, *pro-, and sometimes *per-, derive perdurative Perfectives from atelic verbs, with the meaning „spend a certain amount of time doing (the action denoted by the base verb)‟.112 For instance, Lith. leisti „spend (time)‟ → praleisti „spend (a certain amount of time)‟, gaišti „loiter / linger‟ → pragaišti „waste (a certain amount of time)‟ (247), Latv. dzīvot „live‟ → pārdzīvot „experience‟ (248), 113 Russ. rabotat’i „work‟ → prorabotat’p „work (for a certain duration)‟ (249), SCr. spavatii „sleep‟ → prospavatip / prespavatip „sleep (for a certain time)‟ > „miss (by sleeping)‟ (250). Both Serbo-Croatian examples in (251) – where policijski uviđaj „police investigation‟ is an event, rather than a duration – and (252) show that time length can be indicated indirectly, e.g. by equating it with the distance covered during it.
(247) Lietuviai dažniausiai piktinasi, kad puse laiko pragaišo veltui. „The Lithuanians were most often exasperated, when they linger in vain half of the time.‟
112
Genis (1997) relates the frequency of Pol. prze- to this base meaning.
113
Cf. Gm. erleben, with the prefix being a variant of ver- < *per-; an equivalent of Slavic perduratives is (Zeit)
verbringen „spend time‟. Semantically very close is durch-, e.g. durchleben as meaning „live through‟. Latv. pār(and par-, with different intonation) continues *per- (Karulis 1992: s.v). 177
(248) Pēc dziļas krizes kuru pārdzīvojām devindesmito gadu sākumā… „After the deep crisis which we experienced at the beginning of the 1990s…‟
(249) Ty zdes’ vtoroj god, a my s nim tridcat’ let prorabotalip vmeste. „This is [only] your second year here, but we have been working together for 30 years.‟
(250) Nekako smo prospavalip hladnu noć i probudili se najljepšim pogledom na obližnja brda. „Somehow we managed to sleep through the cold night, and woke up with a vista on the nearby hills.‟
(251) Zanimljivo je da je dečak prespavaop i policijski uviđaj. „What is curious is that the child slept through the police investigation, too.‟
(252) Prospavalip smo u busu skroz do Zagreba. „We slept on the bus all the way to Zagreb.‟
This perdurative function of *pro-/per- in Balto-Slavic is clearly applicative, in that the prefix introduces a specific Theme (time duration), which is most often a DP in the accusative, but can also be a PP – e.g. SCr. prospavatip [PP kroz noć] „sleep the night through‟, „sleep through the night‟, or better „spend the night sleeping‟ (to highlight the Theme theta-role of the duration). In any case, the time duration is an argument, not an adjunct.114
114
The Experiencer can be sometimes reanalyzed as an Agent, if it is regarded as having control over the action
(agentivity as resistance to change): He slept through the night in order to be fresh in the morning. (But ?He slept 178
(253)
ExpP Exp'
Jovan
Exp'
Jovan
Exp0 Ø
(cijelu noć)
ExpP
Exp0 Ø
>> Root
ThP cijelu noć
Acc
sp-
Th' Th0
Root
pre-[+relate][F] sp-
Jovan je spavaoi cijelu noć
Jovan je prespavaop cijelu noć
„Jovan slept all night‟
„Jan slept the whole night through‟
In the spatial domain, Slavic employs the prefix *pro- to form Perfectives denoting the passing of a mover, with or without a conveyed object, concretely or figuratively, past or through a spatial reference. Here, the Perfectivization follows from the idea that it is the mover and / or the conveyed object in its entirety that passes along or through that spatial reference. This is the case, for instance, in OCS itii-det – xoditii-indet „go, walk‟ → proitip – proxoditii „pass, cross‟ mentioned above in its transitive variant (accusative object). The theta-role of the argument is on the borderline between a Theme and a Location, depending on whether it is construed as affected or not affected by the motion. There are cases where it is clearly a Location, as in the next example, where the PP is an argument:115
through the night in order to please Mary is less good, perhaps because the context is less plausible. – I owe this example to Molly Diesing.) 115
The Slavic motion verbs prefixed with *pro- can be used absolutely – i.e. without an argument of the type
discussed here – in some particular cases, e.g. Russ. proxoditi vremja „time goes / elapses‟ or provestip – provodit’i „lead (people) / spend (time)‟. 179
(254) i bystŭ idǫštiju emou vŭ Imĭ. і tŭ proxoždaažei [PP meždju Samariejǫ i Galilěajǫ] (Codex Marianus, Luke 17.11) „Now it happened as he was going to Jerusalem that he was passing between Samaria and Galilee.‟
In Greek and Sanskrit, the meaning of *pro- is closer to its original sense of „forth‟ (cf. Benveniste 1966) as spatial or temporal precedence: Gk. probaínein „go forth, advance‟ (baínein „go‟), proárkhein „start first‟ (árkhein „be first, start‟) (Letoublon 1992); Sk. pra-bhā- „shine forth‟ (bhā- „shine‟), pra-khyā- „publish, announce‟ (khyā- „tell, relate‟), prathita- „well-known‟ (< „sent forth‟, from sthā- „stand‟: causative sthāpaya- „send‟), pra-nam- „bow before, salute‟ (nam- same sense), etc. The Perfectivizing effect of *pro- in Latin and Balto-Slavic, based on the notion of „passing all the way through‟, is proper to other prefixes in Sanskrit. Renou (1961: 136137) notes that the function of preverbs in pre-Classical Sanskrit is often to mark an intensified degree of the action, in some cases up to the point where the goal of the action is overtaken, e.g. nī- „lead‟ vs. ati-nī- „lead to and beyond‟ (ati- „over, beyond‟):
(255) na svargaṃ lokaṃ atinayet (Chāndogya-Upaniṣad 1.8.5) “qu‟il ne nous fasse pas manquer le ciel (en voulant nous y conduire)” (Renou 1961: 136) „so he does not make us miss heaven (wanting to lead us there)‟
In the later history of the language, this function becomes largely “ornamental”, meant to give more phonetic weight to discourse-relevant lexemes or, in Buddhist Sanskrit, to distinguish between technical terms. (Renou 1961: 137).
180
The effect of the Old Irish preverb ro· (< *pro- „through‟) is described as resultative, turning a preterit form into the equivalent of a perfect, in that the outcome indicates the present relevance of a past action (Thurneysen 1909: 319-320; Stifter 2006: 250-251). This morpheme intervenes between the prefix(es) and the root, in the manner in which the temporal augment and the root reduplication stand between prefix and root (ad·ro·anac[h]t in the example below):
(256) ad·opart Crimthann in port-sin du Pátricc, ar ba Pátric du·bert baithis du Chrimthunn 7 i Slébti ad·ranact Crimthann (Thesaurus Palaeohibernicus ii 242.9-10) „Crimthann offered that place to Patrick, for it was Patrick who conferred baptism upon Crimthann, and (it is) in Slébte that Crimthann was / is buried.‟ (Stifter 2006: 250)
All the verbs in this example are prefixed, but the function of ro· is visibly different from that of the other prefixes: even if these were used to Perfectivize the verbs as prefixes in other IndoEuropean languages do, it is only ro· that has a resultative meaning, acting like a perfect, rather than like a Perfective.116 On the other hand, in subordinate clauses in habitual contexts, ro· is employed to describe actions followed by other actions, in the same way as Perfectives are resorted to in the narration of sequenced events. 117 The next example has the „substantive verb‟ biid „be, exist‟ preceded by ro· and taking a complement of time duration in the accusative, like Slavic perdurative pro-Perfectives (Russ. probyt’p „spend (a certain amount of time)‟). In both Old Irish and Russian, the narration uses prefixed verbs with Perfective value in both clauses:118 116
Wedel (1987) discusses cases where prefixed verbs in Old High German are employed to render Latin perfects.
117
“With the imperfect (iterative), ro expresses the fact that the same action has repeatedly reached completion in
the past; therefore it occurs in sentences like: „any time this occurred, that occurred too.” (Thurneysen 1909: 319) 118
In the main clause: co·n-accae and uvidet’p „spot‟ vs. base verbs (ad·)cí and videt’i „see‟. 181
(257a) ó ro·boí dá laa 7 dí aidchi forsin muir, co·n-accae a dochum in fer isin charput íarsin muir (Immram Brain 32) „When he had been two days and two nights on the sea, he saw a man in a chariot coming towards him along the sea.‟ (Stifter 2006: 250)
(257b) Kogda on probylp na more dvoe sutok, uvidelp muža… „When he had been two days and two nights on the sea, he saw a man…‟
ro· could have evolved from a Perfectivizing prefix to a marker of the perfect,119 first indicating the transition to a resultative state (completed action), then the resultative state itself. 120 The same function as a perfect is occasionally performed by other preverbs, too – most frequent being ad· and com· –, and the choice is partly lexical and partly phonologically conditioned
119
In Modern Irish this perfect became a preterite: ro·boí in the quoted example became a „conjunct‟ preterit form
(raibh) of the substantive verb used in subordinate clauses, after negation, and after the interrogative particle. 120
The Old Irish prefix ro· also derives potentials when combining with the present and the future, and optatives
when combining with the subjunctive (observation due to Michael Weiss). The potentiality contributed by ro· contrasts with the Perfectivizing effect of its cognates in Indo-European, but in Old Irish it is consistent with the stativity associated with the perfect, which denotes a resultative state: potentiality and expectation or desire are stative, and the idiosyncrasy of ro· lies not in deriving potentials and optatives, but in its association with states – resultative states in the perfect, and states of potentiality or expectation in the potential and the optative –, so that the function of ro· here seems to be the derivation of states in the present, where the present is the reference time: the perfect as a retrospective from the present, and the potential as a prospective from the present. 182
(Thurneysen 1909: 321-322; Stifter 2006: 252-253). OI co(m)· and MW ky(n)- have the two main meanings of their Latin cognate co(m)-, when these are distinguishable:121 -
convergent motion or action (concrete or figurative), whence the Perfectivizing role (since any convergent motion has a natural endpoint): OI con·rig „bind together, tie‟ (rigid „stretch‟), con·gair „call, summon‟ (gairid „shout, call‟); MW kynnullav „gather together‟, kymynu „break down‟;
-
association or sharing: OI con·gní „help, assist‟(gniïd „do, make‟), con·mesca „mix together‟, and also in nouns: comarbae „heir‟, comáes „coeval, of same age‟; MW kyueillt „companion‟, kyuarwyd „guide‟, kywir „truthful, trustworthy‟ („having truth‟).
The Perfectivizing role of Lat. co(m)- has often been discussed and distinguished from its comitative / sociative function.122 The difference between the two uses of co(m)- is represented by Haug (2007: 82) as in (258): tōgædre denotes the convergent motion of a plural or collective subject, and, by extension, of a subject „gathering itself together‟ in order to carry out an action. Haug (2007) provides examples where this notion follows from the action having an expressed goal, which „polarizes‟ and „orients‟ the subject, e.g. commeāre „go frequently to‟ (259).
→
(258) →
←
→
OE tōgædre, Lat. in unum „together‟
121
OE ætgedere, Lat. unā cum „together with‟
This observation is only valid synchronically, since the prefix in question, at least in Latin, appears to continue at
least two prehistoric particles (Rosén 1992; Haug 2007). The prefix cy(n)- has been profusely used throughout the history of Welsh: cynghanedd „metrical consonance‟ (in traditional Welsh poetry; cf. Lat. concantāre „sing together‟), cyngerdd „concert‟ (Lat. concertāre „fight together‟), modern cysylltu „connect‟. 122
Garnier (1909), Ahlman (1916), Rosén (1992), Haug (2004; 2007). 183
(259) postquam in urbem crebro commeo, dicax sum factus (Plautus, Truculentus 682) „Since I often go to the city, I have become talkative.‟ (Haug 2007: 83)
The Perfectivization does not need a spatial goal, the prefix by itself being sufficient to contribute the completive nuance, e.g. in comedere „eat up‟:
(260) ipsus se comest (Plautus, Truculentus 593) lit. „he is eating himself [with grief]‟
The second case („together with‟), which I will discuss later, involves togetherness during an event, e.g. cohabitāre and commanēre „live together‟, consedēre „sit together with‟, cohaerēre „stick together‟, congaudēre „share in joy‟, etc. (Ahlman 1916: 16-25). For instance:
(261) mundus ita apte cohaeret, ut dissolui nullo modo queat (Cicero, Timaeus 15) „the world fits together so well, that it cannot be dismantled in any way‟
The existence of Slavic-type aspectual distinctions in Gothic and other older Germanic languages – Old High German, Old Saxon, and Old English – has long been debated.123 Especially Gothic displays tempting parallels with Slavic, in the sense that verbal prefixes very often serve to indicate the completion of an action. Lloyd (1979) discusses the role played in aspect by “verbal velocities”, meaning the tendency of the verbal concept expressed by the verb root to inherently
123
Lloyd (1979: 5-14) provides an overview of the various approaches to aspect in Gothic. Scherer (1964) and
Lindemann (1965) treat the semantics of Goth.ga- and OE ge- more specifically. 184
express non-durative events (telic or atelic): events of typically high velocity are described with primary Perfectives, while states and events of typically low velocity are referred to with primary Imperfectives. This view implies a continuum between Perfective and Imperfective, the transition between the two poles being enabled by increasing the “verbal velocity” via prefixation: a prefix adds directionality, therefore the action can proceed faster along a traced path to its completion. A further implication is that prefixes can be optional, being resorted to only in contexts of “increased velocity”, which naturally lead to completion, and in Slavic require Perfectives. By comparing the Gothic and Old Church Slavonic translations of the New Testament with the original Greek, it should be possible to determine the degree of consistency in the use of verbal prefixes in Gothic to indicate aspectual contrasts that are rendered in Old Church Slavonic by contrasted uses of Perfectives vs. Imperfectives. The comparison should be both with the Greek text (as has traditionally been done in discussions on the prefixation of Gothic compared with the Greek aspectual forms) and with the Old Church Slavonic one, in order to find out whether there are the patterns of aspectual correlation common to Gothic and Old Church Slavonic. I illustrate this approach below, on a short text sample. Lambdin (2006: 16) quotes the Gothic translation of Luke 16.6-7 to exemplify the inconsistent use of completive prefixes. The Gothic version of this passage differs from the Old Church Slavonic one by an apparently inconsistent use of Perfective forms in the imperative in Goth. gameleia/meleib vs. OCS napišipa,b (Gk. aor. grápsona,b) „write‟, although the aspect of the other imperative in the sentence is consistent in both versions: Goth. nimi,j, OCS priimipi,j (Gk. aor. déksaii,j „take‟):
185
(262) [6] þaruh qaþ1: taihuntaihund kase alewis. jah qaþ2 du imma: nimi þus bokos jah gasitands sprauto gameleia fim tiguns. [7] þaþroh þan du anþaramma qaþ3: aþþan þu, ƕan filu skalt? iþ is qaþ4: taihuntaihund mitade kaurnis. jah qaþ5 du imma: nimj þus bokos jah meleib ahtautehund. [6] onŭ že rečep1 sŭtomĭ měrŭ otŭ olěa і rečep2 emou: priimii boukŭvi tvoę. i sědŭ skoro napišipa pǫtĭ desętŭ. [7] i po tomĭ že drougoumou rečep3: ty že kolicěmĭ dlŭženŭ esi. onŭ že rečep4 sŭtomĭ korecŭ pĭšenicę. i gla.i5 emou: priimiij boukŭvi tvoę i napišipb osmĭ desętŭ (Codex Marianus) [6] ho dè eĩpen1: hekatòn bátous elaíou. ho dè eĩpen2 autōi déksai sou t grámmata ka kathísas takhéōs grápsona pent konta. [7] épeita hetérō eĩpen3: sù dè póson opheíleis? ho dè eĩpen4: hekatòn kórous sítou. légei5 autōi déksaij sou tà grámmata kaì grápsonb ogdo konta. [6] „And he said: “A hundred measures of oil.” So he said to him: “Take your bill, and sit down quickly and write fifty.”‟ [7] „Then he said to another: “And how much do you owe?” So he said: “A hundred measures of wheat.” And he said to him: “Take your bill, and write eighty.”‟
Both qiþan and reštip „say‟ are primary Perfectives (qiþan does not derive aspectually contrasted Perfectives, and the instances of Imperfective uses of reštip are very rare), because „saying‟ is inherently telic – as opposed to „speaking‟, which is atelic. Also, both niman and (pri)jętip „take, receive‟ are Perfective, since the concept of „taking‟ is inherently telic: the prefix pri- in prijętip is directional and deictic, with no aspectual contribution (cf. atniman vs. niman, with same meaning), while ganiman means „take with oneself‟, where ga- is directional because it denotes
186
convergent motion cf. Lat. co(m)- etc.; otherwise, the Perfectivizing force of ga- and its cognates with other verbs in other languages is due to their expressing convergent motion: convergence always involves a terminus, hence the situation is inherently telic, therefore the verb must be Perfective, as discussed earlier. Resorting to “verbal velocity” might explain the choice of gameljan over meljan „write‟ in a context of „higher velocity‟ of the action, as signaled by the presence of the adverb sprauto „quickly‟ in Luke 16.6. A search in the Gothic corpus shows that sprauto, when meaning „quickly‟, rather than „soon‟, quite regularly co-occurs with Perfectives or with verbs denoting transitions between two spatial or temporal situations, whose Old Church Slavonic counterparts are all Perfective: usgaggan ~ izitip „go out‟ (Luke 14.21), briggan ~ iznestip „bring‟ (Luke 15.22), gameljan ~ napisatip „write‟ (Luke 16.6), gawrikan ~ sŭtvoritip mĭstĭ „avenge‟ (Luke 18.8), urreisan ~ vŭstatip „arise‟ (John 11.29), usstandan ~ vŭstatip „stand up‟ (John 11.31), qiman ~ priitip „come‟ (1 Timothy 3.14; 2 Timothy 4.9). This distribution suggests that the choice in (262) of the Perfective gameljan, recognizable as the aspectual counterpart of Imperfective meljan, might be due to the injunction expressly referring to the desired completion of the action, while in the absence of sprauto, the Imperfective meljan could have been felt as sufficient. Finally, among the Gothic – Old Church Slavonic pairs mentioned above, briggan is a primary Perfective, because the deixis it involves renders it inherently telic; also in Old Church Slavonic, as in all Slavic languages, the Perfective of „bring‟ is primary (morphologically unmarked): OCS iznestip vs. iznositii. sprauto occurs in a negative context (1 Timothy 5.22) with the Imperfective lagjan „lay‟ (Pfv. galagjan), rendered in Old Church Slavonic also by an Imperfective vŭzlagatii, because negative contexts regularly select the Imperfective. One
187
example (John 13.27) has an Imperfective in Gothic (taujan „do‟, Pfv. gataujan) where OCS has the Perfective sŭtvoritip, contrasted with its Imperfective counterpart tvoritii immediately preceding it: Goth. þatei taujis, tawei sprauto ~ OCS eže tvorišii sŭtvori skoro ~ Gk. hò poieĩs poíēson tákhion. Wulfila might have preferred to preserve here the alliteration and assonance of the Greek original (even between the Greek and Gothic variants there is some assonance). When sprauto means „soon‟, it refers to the beginning of a state or action, not to its completion, and as such the Imperfective is selected in Old Church Slavonic to describe that state / action, while Gothic has in these cases verbs that are either Imperfective (wisan waila hugjands ~ biti ouvěštaęi sę „be in agreement (with someone)‟ in Matthew 5.25) or biaspectual (ubilwaurdjan ~ zŭloslovitii „speak evil of‟ in Mark 9.39, and afwandjan ~ prělagatii „turn away‟ in Galatians 1.6). What these data suggest is that the Perfectivizing effect of the directional suffixes follows from an accelerative Aktionsart associated with a preestablished path: 124 one proceeds faster towards a goal – which in this case is the temporal state of the Theme being completely affected – if the path is traced in advance. The accelerative Aktionsart often translates into an intensive (Dressler 1968), since a higher input of energy can be expended by increasing either the speed in a motion towards a goal or the force applied to an object, e.g. Rus. ubit’p „kill‟ vs. bit’i „hit‟. Directional suffixes indicate the path towards completion, thereby implying that there is a goal towards which this path leads. When there is already a goal- or source-like argument in the base verb, these suffixes convey various nuances modifying the meaning of the unprefixed base. 124
This is how the Perfectivizing effect of prefixes has been commonly interpreted in the literature on non-Slavic
languages which have Slavic-type aspect (Greek, Latin, Gothic, etc.): Meltzer (1902), Brunel (1939), and especially Thumb (1915) for Greek, Lloyd (1979) and Wedel (1976; 1987; 1997) for Germanic. An important contribution seems to be Milovanović (1995), inaccessible to me. 188
4.4.3 Directional applicatives Some Slavic Perfectives introduce a directional argument – for instance, in Polish the object onto which something is sewn is an argument, the predicate being incomplete without it: szyći coś1 „sew smth.‟ → przyszyćp (→ przyszywaći) coś1 do czegoś „sew something1 to something‟. The derived verb is Perfective because the action underwent by the theme goes „all the way‟ to the goal denoted by the new argument (cf. Filipović 2007): in the example below, the button (the whole of it) goes into the state of being sewn to the shirt. The morpheme that contributes both the new argument (Goal) and the completion of the action (feature [F]) is again the prefix:
(263)
AgP Ag' Ag0 Ø
AgP Ag' Ag0 Ø
Th'
guzik
ThP
Acc Th'
guzik
Acc
ThP
Th0 Ø[+act]
Th0 Ø[+act]
GoP Go'
do koszuli
Go0
Root szy-
Root
przy-[+partake][F] szy-
szyći guzik
przyszyć guzik do koszuli
„sew a button‟
„sew a button to a shirt‟
The new argument can be a DP as well as a PP, and be assigned case by the prefix. In the example below, a goal argument is added to a verb whose only argument is an Experiencer (or a Theme, depending on the interpretation: whether the subject is construed as experiencing, or
189
being aware of, his reaching old age), as in żyći „live‟ → dożyćp (→ dożywaći) czegoś (goal) „live until‟:
(264)
ExpP Exp'
Jan
ExpP (do późnego wieku)
Exp0 Ø
GoP
późnego wieku
Exp'
Jan
Exp0 Ø
Root
Go0
G
ży-
Go'
do-[+relate][F]
Jan żył do późnego wieku
Jan dożył późnego wieku
„Jan lived to an old age‟
„Jan reached an old age‟
Root ży-
When a certain preposition is only used in a locative sense, lacking a directional variant (cf. Gm. in: locative with the dative and directional with the accusative), like Pol. przy + L (only locative) and its cognates in other Slavic languages, and is used to derive a Perfective with a Goal argument that has a directional case, this directional case is manifestly assigned by the feature [+relate] of Go0, not by the preposition, cf. the earlier discussion of Cz. podříditp „adjust‟ in Dvořák‟s (2010) example. The derivation of Pol. przypisywaći coś1 (Acc) czemuś2 (D) „ascribe smth.1 to smth.2‟ from pisaći coś (Acc) „write smth.‟ must have proceeded (diachronically) through the intermediary stage of making an optional goal-denoting adjunct into an argument. The prefix was added in order to signal the new argument by specifying the abstract spatial relationship between the Theme and the Goal as one of proximity (the preposition przy means „at, by‟); this spatial relationship is the way in which the Theme „partakes‟ of the Goal, whence
190
the feature [+partake] and the case assignment to the goal argument. The Goal constitutes an inherent endpoint, whence the feature [F] and the Perfectivity: pisaći coś „write smth.‟ → pisaći coś1 komuś2 „write smth.1 to smb.2‟ → przypisywaći coś1 komuś2 „ascribe smth.1 to smb.2‟.
Akt10 125
(265)
-ywa-[+durative][-telic]
… AgP
Ag' Ag0 Ø
AgP
coś
Ag' Ag0 Ø
ThP coś
Acc
ThP
Acc
Th0 Ø[+act]
GoP komuś
Th' Th0 Ø[+act]
Th'
Root
D
pis-
Go' Go0
Root
przy-[+partake][F] pis-
pisaći coś
przypisywaći coś komuś
„write something‟
„ascribe something to somebody‟
Likewise in Lat. adscribere aliquid1 (Acc) alicui2 (D) „ascribe smth.1 to smb.2‟, the Goal argument alicui2 is in the dative, although the preposition ad only takes the accusative:
(266) tu eius perfidiae (D) uoluntatem tuam adscripsisti (Cicero, Philippicae 2.79) „you added your consent to his perfidy‟
125
See the next chapter for the syntax and semantics of Imperfectives. 191
By contrast, the beneficiary in the following example is not an argument, since the regards are added to the letter, not to the beneficiary (tibi „to you‟):
(267) salutem tibi plurimam adscribit (Cicero, Ad Atticum 1.5.8) „he adds [to the letter] many regards for you‟
When a prefix is added to a verb that already has a Goal argument, it specifies the direction to the goal. In Slavic for instance, this is the case with two classes of verbs: a) base Imperfectives: determinate Imperfectives qua determinate (acting as Perfectives in relation to the corresponding indeterminate Imperfectives), e.g. Pol. nieśći-det „carry‟ → przynieśćp „bring‟, wynieśćp „take out‟, etc.;126 b) base Perfectives: verbs of spatial and figurative transfer („give‟, „buy‟, „throw‟, „jump‟, etc.), e.g. Pol. rzucićp „throw‟ → wyrzucićp „throw out‟, skoczyćp → wskoczyćp „jump in‟, daćp „give‟ → dodaćp „add‟, sprzedaćp „sell‟, kupićp „buy‟ → przekupićp „bribe‟, etc.127
126
One might be tempted to include into this class the verbs of positioning („set‟, „sit down‟, „set up‟, „lay‟, „hang‟),
where the relationship between the members of the aspectual pairs is obscured by idiosyncratic developments in the individual languages, e.g. Pol. kłaśći – położyćp „lay‟, with unused *łożyć(i) deriving włożyćp „put in‟. (The suppletivism in aspectual pairs like włożyćp – wkładaći „put in‟ ~ położyćp – kłaśći „lay, put‟ parallels the one in motion verbs: wnieśćp – wnosići „carry in‟ ~ nieśći-det – nosići-indet „carry‟.) However, as I argued earlier, these verbs are causatives where the caused event contains an Agent, a Theme, and a Location (rather than a Goal). 127
The derivational status of these verbs is sometimes different from English and other languages: come and go are
independent from each other, but Pol. przyjśćp „come‟ is derived from iśći-det „go‟; also, both buy and sell are morphologically simple, but in Polish, kupićp „buy‟ is simple, while sprzedaćp „sell‟ is derived from daćp „give‟. 192
The base verb in both cases assigns carries the feature [F] in Go 0, because the presence of a goal constitutes a final endpoint of the action, involving a transition between the state of the goal not having been reached to the state of the goal having been reached. [F] is responsible for both the Perfective aspect of the Perfective and the Perfective behavior of the determinate Imperfectives qua determinate in relation to their indeterminate counterparts, which do not have a Goal argument. Implicitly, the Perfective prefixed verbs of motion are derived from the determinate Imperfective qua determinate, which already have a Goal:
(268)
AgP … ThP coś
Acc
AgP … ThP coś
Th' Th0 Ø[+act]
GoP gdzieś
Acc
Th0 Ø[+act]
GoP gdzieś
Go' Go0 Ø[+partake][F]
Th'
Go' Go0
Root nies-
w-[+partake][F]
nieśći-det coś gdzieś
wnieśćp coś gdzieś
„carry something somewhere‟
„bring something in somewhere‟
Root nies-
Quite similar are the prefixed ditransitive verbs with a Recipient argument. As a rule, the base verb is Perfective (due to the Recipient constituting an inherent final endpoint), and the prefixes add various nuances by specifying spatial configurations between the arguments, e.g. Pol. daćp → oddaćp „give back / deliver (mail, etc.)‟:
193
(269)
AgP … RecP komuś
D
AgP … RecP komuś
Rec' Rec0 Ø[+act][F]
ThP
D
Rec' Rec0
ThP
od-[+act][F] coś
Acc
coś
Th' Th0 Ø[+relate]
Root
Acc
da-
Th' Th0 Ø[+relate]
Root da-
daćp komuś coś
oddaćp komuś coś
„give somebody something‟
„give back something to somebody‟
There are numerous instances where the spatial configuration of the arguments (or the path of the action, etc.) is specified by more than one prefix, e.g. Russ. vosprinjat’p derived with the preverb vz-/voz- meaning usually „upwards‟ from prinjat’p „receive‟, which is itself derived with the preverb pri- „next to‟ from a synchronically irretrievable root going back to PSl *im-, which derives both the stative imet’i „possess‟ and the inchoative prinjat’p „come to possess‟ > „receive‟. Here, the semantic relationship between vosprinjat’p and prinjat’p is relatively straightforward, but there are many other instances where this is not so, like in Russ. prinadležat’i „belong‟ (to be discussed later), which does not derive from nadležat’i „be incumbent upon‟, but rather both verbs derive from ležat’i „lie‟. Therefore, I will regard such cases of multiple prefixation as having clusters of prefixes in one syntactic head, leaving the derivational relationship open: a stem Prefix 2-Prefix1-Root- could be derived from a stem Prefix1-Root-, if the latter exists and its the semantic relationship to the more complex derivative
194
is sufficiently transparent, or from the unprefixed base (Root-), even when this does not form a simple verb synchronically.
(270)
RecP
RecP Rec'
Rec0
Rec'
(pri-)[F] čto-nibud’
Acc
Rec0
→
ThP
ThP
voz-pri-[F] čto-nibud’
Th' Th0 Ø[+relate]
Root
Acc
*im-
(pri)njat’p čto-nibud’
vosprinjat’p čto-nibud’
„receive something‟
„perceive something‟
Th' Th0 Ø[+relate]
Root *im-
4.4.4 Locative applicatives The derivation of locative applicatives consists of adding a Location argument to an atelic verb (in general of existence or position), where a Theme or an Experiencer is situated at a certain Location:
(271) lie under something1 → underlie something1 (Location) X (Experiencer) stand with (original sense: „opposite‟) something1 → → X (Experiencer) withstand something1 (Location) → X (Agent) withstand something1 (Theme) bei jemandem1 stehen „stand by somebody → → jemandem1 (Location) beistehen „stand by somebody‟ > „assist, help somebody‟
195
zum Grunde einer Sache1 liegen → einer Sache1 (Location) zugrundeliegen128 „lie at / constitute the base of something‟
The prefixes used in various languages indicate the position of the theme with regard to the location (some of the Latin, Gothic, and Old Church Slavonic formations are probably calques on Greek):129
128
In German and Dutch, separable prefixes like bei- and zusammen- were probably incorporated at a later stage
than the inseparable prefixes (e.g. in unterˈliegen „underlie‟, widerˈstehen „withstand‟ – the fact that these verbs have cognates in English suggests that their formation goes back to common West Germanic). A possible diachronic scenario is the following: -
in the older stage, the prefixes were unstressed (as in the rest of Indo-European), and they attached to the root raised through the functional head, moving on attached to the root;
-
in the newer stage, the prefixes became stressed (uniform word-initial stress, as in Hungarian), so they probably did not attach to the root, but stayed in place.
In zugrundeliegen, there will have been first PP-incorporation; I discuss another case of constituent incorporation (Lat. crucīfigere „crucify‟) in the next section. (More common is the incorporation of bare nouns: manhandle, Gm. fernsehen „watch television‟, radfahren „ride a bicycle‟, Russ. blagodarit’i „thank‟, lit. „give a blessing‟, etc.; it is also important to note that the incorporated constituent is generally non-referential.) 129
The Indo-European languages use the same prefixes and prepositions to denote direction and location (but they
are usually distinguished in adverbs), because originally the distinction between direction and location was expressed by the case of the noun: accusative for direction and locative for location. In Hungarian, where the directional (to and from) and locative „case‟ morphemes were originally independent, the distinction between direction, source, and location, is carried by „case‟ morphemes, postpositions, adverbs, and preverbs, e.g. directional fel- „upwards‟ (felmenni „go up‟) vs. positional fenn- „up‟ (fenntartani „maintain‟); directional alá- „under‟ (aláírni „sign‟, aláíró „signing, signatory (authority, party)‟) vs. positional alul- „under‟ (alulírott „undersigned (in a document, underneath the text)‟); directional rá- „onto‟ (rábeszélni „persuade‟) vs. positional rajta- „on‟ (rajtakapni 196
(272) Gothic ligan „lie‟
atligan „lie in, be within‟; ufligan „lie under‟
sitan „sit‟
andsitan „take into consideration‟ < „sit opposite‟
standan „stand‟
andstandan „withstand, resist‟;130 atstandan „stand near‟; faurastandan „stand before / near > rule, govern‟; instandan „be at hand / persist‟; miþstandan „stand together with‟
Greek eĩnai „be‟
apeĩnai „be far from‟; pareĩnai „be present at‟; perieĩnai „be around (smth.)‟
histánai „stand‟
aphistánai „be separated / different from‟; periistánai „surround (with hostility)‟
keĩsthai „lie‟
sunkeĩsthai „lie together with‟; hupokeĩsthai „lie under‟; epikeĩsthai „be on top of‟
ménein „stay‟
paraménein „stay by‟
Old Church Slavonic ležatii „lie‟
nadŭležatii „be on top of‟ priležatii „be next to‟ > „take care of‟
stojatii „stand‟
otŭstojatii „be far from‟
sědětii „sit‟
prisědětii „sit next to‟
Latin esse „be‟
adesse „be with‟; prodesse „be useful to‟; deesse „be unavailable to‟; superesse „be left over after‟
iacēre „lie‟
subiacēre „be under‟; obiacēre „lie in front of‟; circumiacēre „be situated around‟
„catch by surprise‟); directional be- „into‟ (bemenni „go in‟) and bele- „inwards‟ (be(le)lépni „step in‟) vs. positional benn- „within‟ (benntart „retain‟); directional ki- „outwards‟ (kimenni „go out‟) vs. positional kinn- „without‟ (kinnmaradni „stay out‟). The positional prefixes are homonymous with their adverbial counterparts, but their status as bound morphemes (prefixes) is secured by the only partial homonymy with the adverbs (adverb fent / fenn but preverb only fenn-), as well as by the prosodic unity of the prefixed verb: ˈfennmaradni / ˈfennˌmaradni vs. ˈfent ˈmaradni. 130
The same semantic development as with withstand: Goth. and- as a prefix means „opposite‟. 197
stāre „stand‟
adstāre „stand next to‟; superstāre „be on top of‟
sedēre „sit‟
supersedēre „sit on top of‟; adsedo „assessor‟
More frequently, the verbs derived by prefixation from stative verbs are used with a covert Location argument – a pro-form whose reference is supplied by the context:
(273) quod [SpecLocP satietati eius] superfuit (Cicero, In Verrem 1.13) „what still remained after his satiation‟
(274) non multum aestatis [SpecLocP pro] supererat (Caesar, De bello Gallico 5.22.4) „not much was left of the summer‟ – proLoc = „the calendric duration of the summer‟
(275) nam et Lycaonia et Phrygia utraque et Pisidia omnis et Chersonesus, quaeque circumiacent [SpecLocP Europae], in uestra sunt potestate (Livy, Ab urbe condita 37.54.11) „For Lycaonia, both parts of Phrygia, all Pisidia, and Chersonessus, as well as all [lands] around Europe, are under your authority.‟
(276) neque multo post extinguitur, ingenti luctu provinciae et [SpecLocP pro] circumiacentium populorum (Tacitus, Annales 2.72) „And not long afterwards he passed away, to the great sorrow of the province and of the neighboring peoples.‟ – pro = „the province (Syria)‟
In some cases, the Location argument is never overt because it is always the same:
198
(277) estimate something [above the usual level]1 → overestimate something [SpecLocP pro] etwas [unter dem üblichen Niveau]1 schätzen → [SpecLocP pro]1 etwas unterschätzen
These prefixes do not Perfectivize, because being at a location, in the position denoted by the prefix, presupposes continuity; in Slavic, the verbs derived in this manner are all Imperfective, as long as the prefix has stative value: in SCr. podcijenitip – podcjenivatii „underestimate‟,131 where the Perfective is basic (derived first), the prefix pod- „under‟ probably has directional value, as in the parallel calque (on German and Latin) Hun. alábecsül „underestimate‟, where alá- „under‟ is directional (the stative form is alatt „under‟, as a postposition). The subject is a Theme or an Experiencer, and the prefix in Loc0 introduces a Location argument, usually assigning it the same lexical case that the corresponding preposition assigns to its object when this is a Location, rather than a Goal. In the following example, the case assigned by the feature [+partake] in Loc0 is the dative-locative, rather than the accusative, because there is no motion involved.
(278)
ThP Th' ThP (unter einer Täuschung)
Th' Th0 Ø
131
Th0 Ø
LocP Loc'
einer Täuschung
Root
D
lieg-
Loc0
Root
unter-[+partake] lieg-
unter einer Täuschung liegen
einer Täuschung unterliegen
„be under a mistake‟
„be mistaken‟
Thanks to Wayles Browne for this observation. 199
Locative arguments can also be licensed by a cluster of prefixes, which together specify the spatial configuration of the arguments, e.g. Russ. ležat’i → prinadležat’i „belong‟ (pri- „next to‟, nad- „above‟), with both preverbs in Loc0, since the prinadležat’i does not derive from nadležat’i „be incumbent on (smb.)‟ by licensing an extra argument, but rather both nadležat’i and prinadležat’i add one argument to the theta-grid of ležat’i. If the objects of verbs of perception and intellectual activities are locative arguments and their subjects are Experiencers, as I suggested earlier, the prefixes which contribute an inchoative and non-durative reading („spotting‟ as beginning of „seeing‟, „realizing‟ as beginning of „knowing‟) must be in Loc0 and carry both [I] and [F], since the events described with the resulting verbs are typical achievements: Pol. słyszeći „hear‟ → usłyszećp „hear (suddenly)‟ (instantaneous). In this case, the object of słyszeći is in the partitive-genitive (the hearer is sharing perceptually in what he hears), but the object of usłyszećp is in the accusative. I would surmise that what suddenly awakens the subject‟s attention is an entire sound emission (hence the accusative, rather than the partitive-genitive); even if this emission proves afterwards to be only a segment of a longer one, this knowledge is not available, due an the indeterminacy of the feature [I], whose presence means that the sudden perception (an achievement) can be the beginning of a state of perception, but does not have to: usłyszećp can be used also when the noise that is heard suddenly does not continue, and the perception remains instantaneous, so that [I] only denotes the beginning of an instantaneous event, which practically coincides with its end. In the first case, usłyszećp is the inchoative of słyszeći, but in the second one, it is a semelfactive (279). Another possible theta-grid for the verbs of sudden perception or mental activity is suggested by the semantic closeness to Russ. vosprinjat’p „perceive‟ mentioned earlier, whose subject appears to be a Recipient, to judge from the derivation from prinjat’p „receive‟. In
200
this case, the subject would be construed as the recipient of a perception, recollection, insight, etc. („spot‟, „realize‟, „forget‟, „fall in love‟, etc.), and the object as a Theme (280); these verbs are inchoative, if they denote an achievement initiating a state – such is the case of the verbs of mental activities (a sudden recollection, understanding, forgetting, etc. is inevitably followed by the corresponding state), but not of the verbs of perception:132
(279)
ExpP
ExpP Exp'
Jan
Exp0 Ø
Loc0 Ø[+relate]
LocP piosenkę
Loc'
piosenki
132
Exp0 Ø
LocP
G
Exp'
Jan
Root
Acc
słysz-
Loc' Loc0
Root
u-[+relate][I][F] słysz-
Jan słyszałi piosenki
Jan usłyszałp piosenkę
„John was hearing a song‟
„John heard a song (suddenly)‟
Unlike the „external‟ ingressive constructions (to be discussed later), where the subject is an Agent, the subject of
these verbs are Experiencers. They focus the beginning of a perception by, or mental activity of, the subject, whether this is regarded as a Recipient or as an Experiencer. 201
(280)
RecP Rec'
Jan
Rec0 Ø
ThP piosenkę
Acc
Th' Th0
Root
u-[+relate][I][F]
słysz-
Jan usłyszałp piosenkę „John heard a song (suddenly)‟
4.4.5 Multiple prefixation with different arguments The head hierarchy assumed in the preceding sections, in conjunction with the rationale given for the placement of individual prefixes in specific applicative heads, accounts for the order of prefixes in multiple applicatives, according to the Mirror Principle.133 In (281), Skr. sam-ā-nī- „bring (smth. entirely)‟ (sam- „converging‟ + ā- „hither‟ + root nī- „lead‟) contains a completive prefix sam- „together‟ 134 in Th0 and a directional prefix ā„hither‟ in Go0. The linear sequence of prefixes corroborates the head hierarchy Th0 > Go0 assumed so far. Both prefixes contain [F] – the one in Th0 because the entire Theme is supposed to be affected in the action (the addressee, which is Rāma, is brought in his entirety), and the one in Go0 because the action is supposed to go all the way to the Goal, which is Raghunandana 135.
133
Cf. its application by Speas (1991) to the analysis or prefix ordering in the Navajo verb.
134
In order to illustrate the completive value of sam-, one must choose examples with a singular Theme, otherwise
the sense could be interpreted as directional (convergent motion): the most frequent meaning of sam-ā-ni- is „gather‟, with a plural or collective Theme. 135
A character in the Rāmāyaṇa. 202
As such, [F] on Th0 and [F] on Go0 both refer to the same natural culmination of the event, which is the moment when Rāma has reached Raghunandana. The denotation of the proposition in this preceding example entails that transitions exist both when the Goal is reached and when the Theme is completely affected, but these transitions coincide pragmatically, because both the Goal and the Theme participate in the same event, which is described as an act of „carrying‟ the Theme to the Goal: if the Goal is not reached, the Theme is not completely affected by the „carrying‟, and vice versa. In (282), the fact that Raghunandana in e (the bringing event) is a Goal, rather than a static Location, entails that there is a situation e' (the state where the addressee has been brought to, i.e. is at, Raghunandana‟s place) in which Raghunandana is a static Location, and not a Goal, cf. (160). Likewise, the fact that the addressee is completely affected in e entails that there is a situation e" where it is not a Theme, cf. (166)-(167). (e' and e'' must be considered separately from each other, otherwise the addressee in e' will still be a Theme – this time not the Theme of the bringing event e, but the Theme of the state e', when it is located at Raghunandana‟s place.)
203
(281)
AgP 136
Ag'
PRO
Ag0 Ø
ThP
(adya eva)
tvāṃ
Acc
Th' Th0
GoP
sam-[+act][F] Raghunandanaṃ
Acc
Go'
Go0 ā-[+partake][F]
Root nī-
icchāmi tvāṃ samānetuṃ adya eva Raghunandanaṃ (Rāmāyaṇa 6.36.8) „I want to bring you already today to Raghunandana‟
(282) [[tvāṃ Raghunandanaṃ sam-ā-nī-]] = λes[carry(e) & & Goal(Ragh.)(e) & hither(Ragh.)(e) & Themenon-increm.(tvam)(e) & converged(tvam)(e)]
[e's[e < e' & Goal(Raghunandana)(e')]] & e''s[e < e' & Theme(tvam)(e'')]] → → [[[tvāṃ Raghunandanaṃ sam-ā-nī-]] (S) → → [e's[S < e' & Goal(Raghunandana)(e')] & e''s[S < e'' & Theme(tvam)(e'')]]
In some other cases, however, the sequences of prefixes is not what would be expected – e.g. in Skr. sam-pra-dā- „give over, hand over‟, derived from the root dā- „give‟ with completive sam-
136
PRO is coindexed with the subject of the matrix clause (1.sg.). 204
„together‟ and directional pra- „forth‟. 137 If the indirect object is a Recipient, as it is with unprefixed dā- assuming the head hierarchy Rec0 > Th0, one would expect the sequence *prasam-dā-. On the other hand, considering the quasi-synonymy between sam-pra-dā- and the causative sam-arpaya- „hand over‟, derived with completive sam- from the root r- „go, progress‟, 138 as well as the locative use of verbs, or derivatives from verbs, with the base meaning „give‟ in several languages,139 there seems to be little point in regarding the indirect object of sam-pra-dā- as a Recipient rather than a Goal (if this distinction holds for Sanskrit at all).140 I have presented earlier several examples where a root undergoes changes in theta-grid and argument structure, so that an ambiguity between a Recipient and a Goal interpretation of what I called a „goal-like theta-roles‟ (as in John gave Mary an apple vs. John gave an apple to Mary, assuming that the indirect object is a Recipient in the first sentence and a Goal in the second one) might suggest a reanalysis of the indirect object of sam-pra-dā- as a spatial goal,
137
With each one of these prefixes: pra-dā- „offer [respect / veneration (Acc) to somebody (D / L)]‟, sam-dā- „give
[something (Acc) entirely to somebody (D)]‟. In the former example, the Recipient is apparently construed either as a Recipient in the dative, or as a Goal in the locative (in Sanskrit, the locative can be used for Goals, too). 138
Both saṃpradā- and samarpaya- are attested in post-Vedic Sanskrit. The dative can sometimes be used for goals
in Sanskrit – both as arguments (sarvaṃ atimātraṃ doṣāya (D) „all that is excessive becomes reprehensible‟, lit. „will lead to a fault‟) and as obliques (angānāṃ bhangāya (D) ār ḍhaḥ bālaiḥ prākāraḥ „the children climbed the wall only to break their limbs‟, lit. „to the effect of breaking of their limbs‟) (examples from Coulson 1992: 71). 139
Examples: Lat. indere „put, place, introduce into‟ (in „in(to)‟ + dare „give‟), Gk. endidónai in the sense „flow
into‟ (about rivers) (en- „in(to)‟ + didónai „give‟), Gm. eingeben „insert‟ (ein- „in(to)‟ + geben „give‟), Russ. vdat’sjap „protrude, jut out (into)‟ (v- „in(to)‟ + dat’p „give‟ + reflexive -sja), Hun. ráadni „put (clothes, etc. on somebody)‟ (rá „onto him/her/it‟ + adni „give‟), Hebr. nātan „he gave / put‟. 140
This discussion will obviously have to be formulated in different terms if Affectees can be shown to ultimately
derive from Locations. 205
given that the prefix itself suggests a spatial interpretation: the transfer is not just a transfer of possession, but a spatial transfer from the giver to a receiver constituting a spatial goal. If this is correct, sam-pra-dā- will behave like sam-ā-nī-:
(283)
AgP Ag'
pro2.sg.
Ag0 Ø
ThP āsanaṃ
Acc
Th' Th0
GoP
sam-[+act][F] tasmai
D
Go' Go0
pra-[+relate][F]
Root dā-
āsanaṃ tasmai saṃpradāya (Mahābhārata 2.148) „having given him the seat‟
As in the preceding example, here too both Th0 and Go0 contain [F] – Th0 because the entire Theme is supposed to be affected in the action (the seat is transferred in its entirety), and Go0 because the action is supposed to proceed all the way to the Goal. As such, [F] on Th0 and [F] on Go0 both refer to the same natural culmination of the event, which is the moment when the seat in its entirety has been transferred to the Goal. My intuition is that, in general, space intervenes when there is an overt directional element, in which case the Recipient is interpreted accordingly as a Goal, e.g. the directional adverb over in John gave over a document to Mary (Goal) vs. *John gave Mary (Recipient) over
206
a document or *John gave over Mary (Recipient) a document. Also, deliver / Gm. liefern, as opposed to give / Gm. geben, usually involves space, and the indirect object in the dative is mostly restricted to pronouns; otherwise it is a PP, like the Goal arguments of motion verbs: deliver to / Gm. liefern an. If this is so, there is little room left for prefixes in Rec 0, and cases of type Pol. oddaćp „give back‟ could as well involve Goals, rather than Recipients. In any event, this change would be inconsequential for Perfectivization. An alternative analysis of the Sanskrit examples in this section would be to reconsider the role of the prefix sam- as denoting not the complete involvement of the Theme in the action, but rather the convergence of the Theme towards the goal – even when the Theme is in the singular: the entire body of the addressee converging on Raghunandana‟s location in (281), and the entire seat converging on the third party‟s location in (283). If so, the prefix complex sam-ā- would be in Go0 – and implicitly the order of prefixes would reveal nothing about the structural hierarchy of the functional heads. The two alternative analyses are not mutually contradictory, and I doubt that it is possible to exclude either one of them. Rather, they reflect two possible interpretations of the respective sentences. The most common cases of multiple applicatives involve comitative prefixes, to be discussed in the next section. These prefixes differ from all those discussed so far in that the derivational relationship of the prefixed verb to the base verb involves the expansion of the thetagrid by one argument with the same theta-role as one of the arguments of the base verb.
4.4.6 Comitative applicatives Prefixes denoting comitativity and sociativity like Gm. mit- in mitgehen „go with‟ introduce new participants („comitatives‟) into the situation as new arguments of the same type as one of the
207
existing arguments of the base verb, and the new argument (the comitative) joins the old argument with the same theta-role. In the German verbs prefixed with mit-, the old argument is usually an unpronounced pro taking its reference from the context:
(284) machen → mitmachen: Agent comitative X1 (Agent) macht Y2 (Theme) „X makes Y‟ → → Z (comitative Agent) macht pro2 (Theme) [zusammen mit]pro1 (Agent) mit „Z joins in (Y together with Z)‟ fühlen → mitfühlen: Experiencer comitative X1 (Experiencer) fühlt Y2 (Theme) „X feels Y‟ → → Z (comitative Experiencer) fühlt pro2(Theme) [zusammen mit]pro1 (Experiencer) mit „Z sympathizes (with X in Y)‟ brennen → mitbrennen: Theme comitative X (Agent) brennt Y1 (Theme) „X burns Y‟ (e.g. on a CD) → → X (Agent) brennt Z (comitative Theme) [mit]pro1 (Theme) mit „X burns Z (together with Y)‟
I will be assuming that these new arguments are introduced in a ComP (comitative phrase). In all branches of Indo-European, the comitative prefix is leftmost, which points to a position of ComP higher than that of at least the „internal‟ arguments (i.e. all arguments other than the Agent), because only the internal arguments can have prefixes in the respective functional heads. In cases where the comitative is an Agent, ComP in a German verb prefixed with mit- will be above AgP as well, this position being suggested by the compositionality (as shown in the derivations
208
below), and the semantic feature on Com0 will determine the selectional properties of the prefix: a comitative Agent, Theme, or Experiencer is the comitative of an Agent, Theme, or Experiencer, respectively. As a working hypothesis, I will further assume that Com 0 is immediately above the functional head whose theta-role it shares; I have not found data to prove or disprove this, though. There is no violation of UTAH, because what the comitative head does is to provide precisely a mechanism for the association of a new participant to an existing one in a given thetarole, the result being a collective participant with that theta-role. The pro-forms in (285) take the reference from the context. I represent this by coindexing them with their counterparts in the unprefixed verb: when describing a situation where the Prussians make an attack, either with or without the Bavarians joining in, the theme is indexed with 1, and the originally single agent with 2.
(285)
[[pro1]] = „an attack‟
ComP die Bayern
Com0
AgP
[[pro2]] = „the Prussians‟
Com' AgP
mit-
Ag'
die Preußen2
Ag0 Ø
Ag0 Ø
ThP
einen Angriff1
Acc
Ag'
pro2
Th'
Th0 Ø[+act]
ThP Th'
pro1
Root mach-
Th0 Ø[+act]
Die Preußen machten einen Angriff.
Die Bayern machten mit.
„The Prussians attacked.‟
„The Bavarians joined in.‟
209
Root mach-
Com0 is a complex head composed of Ø, whose feature [±cause] selects the Agent (this is the feature proper to Agents), and the prefix mit-, which denotes concomitance. The denotation of the complex head will state the comitativity of the new Agent, which joins the Agent of the base verb. The comitative prefix must combine by function application, rather than predicate modification, because it does not modify the way in which an argument (the comitative) participates in the event, but rather adds that new argument to the theta-grid. Compositionally, a comitative morpheme behaves like a functional head applied to another functional head. While the prefixes discussed in the preceding sections transfer the mode of combination (by predicate modification) from clause level (as adverbs) to head level (as preverbs), the comitative prefixes in a certain sense „transfer‟ the mode of combination (by function application) of functional heads, introducing arguments at clause level, into the functional heads themselves. The relative formal complexity of the denotation of the comitative prefixes in (287) and (288) compared to the denotations of the other prefixes might explain their limited distribution in Indo-European, as well as their belonging to a certain level of cultured discourse, as I will suggest below. In (286)(287), if there is no identified Agent, the function application crashes at Com0 level, and the sentence remains uninterpretable – in this example, Die Bayern machten mit is uninterpretable if one does not know what party the Bavarians joined in the attack. The derivation in (288) of the comitative example in (285) proceeds by applying (287).
Com0
(286) mit-
Ø
(287) [[Ø]] = λes[ye[Agent(y)(e)]] [[mit-]] = λgseλfstλxeλes[f(e) & with(g(e))(x)(e)]
210
[[mit-Ø]] = [[mit-]] ([[Ø]]) = λfstλxeλes[f(e) & with(ye[Agent(y)(e)])(x)(e)]
(288) AgP: [[pro2 pro1 mit-mach-]] = λes[make(e) & Theme ([[pro1]] )(e) & Agent([[pro2]] )(e)] [[die Bayern pro2 pro1 mit-mach-]] = [[mit-Ø]] ([[pro2 pro1 mit-mach-]] )(the Bavarians) = = λes[[[pro2 pro1 mit-mach-]] (e) & with(ye[Agent(y)(e)])(the Bavarians)(e)] = = λes[make(e) & Theme ([[pro1]] )(e) & Agent([[pro2]] )(e) & & with(ye[Agent(y)(e)])(the Bavarians)(e)] = = λes[make(e) & Theme ([[pro1]] )(e) & Agent([[pro2]] )(e) & & with([[pro2]] )(the Bavarians)(e)] [[[pro1]] = „an attack‟ & [[pro2]] = „the Prussians‟] → [[die Bayern pro2 pro1 mit-mach-]] = = λes[make(e) & Theme(an attack)(e) & Agent(the Bavarians)(e) & & with(the Prussians)(the Bavarians)(e)]] [[die Bayern pro2 pro1 mit-mach-]] (S) = 1 iff S is an attack and the Prussians are the agents in S and the Bavarians join the Prussians in S
Different from „simultaneous‟ comitatives like the ones mentioned above are „sequential comitatives‟, e.g. Gm. nachmachen „imitate‟ (lit. „make after‟) or vorhergehen „precede‟. (The distinction „simultaneous‟ vs. „sequential‟ applies to simple verbs as well: accompany is simultaneous, follow and precede are sequential.) For an arbitrary theta-role with a feature [±α]:
Com0
(289) nach-
Com0 Ø[±α]
vorher-
Ø[±α]
211
(290) [[Ø[±α]]] = λes.ye[Role(y)(e)]
[[nach-]] = λgseλfstλxeλes[f(e) & after(g(e))(x)(e)] [[vorher-]] = λgseλfstλxeλes[f(e) & before(g(e))(x)(e)]
Gm. mitverzehren „eat / consume with‟, derived from verzehren „consume‟, contains two prefixes: comitative mit- and completive ver-. The second one carries the feature [F], imparting the Perfective meaning „consume‟ due to its origin (< PIE *per- „all the way through‟), but the first one does not: comitativity is not Perfective, because it only denotes an accompaniment for the duration of an action, with no contribution of [I] or [F]. The sense of etwas1 mitverzehren is always „consume something1 together with something2‟, where something2 (the Theme of the base verb verzehren) is a pro-form whose referent is retrievable from the context. The Perfectivity of ver- refers to the eating of the fruit‟s pulp first, and only accessorily to that of the skin: one cannot use verzehren to describe the eating of the skin if the eating of the pulp would be better described by zehren (an) „eat at‟. 141 In the next and the following examples with comitative Themes, the accusative case of the comitative Theme in SpecComP is assigned by the feature [+act] in Com0, as in all other functional heads – not by the prefix itself (the prefix as a preposition assigns the dative-instrumental).
141
zehren (an) is actually used now only figuratively: „wear down, sap (the strength)‟. 212
(291)
[[pro]] = „the pulp of the fruit‟
AgP Ag'
man
Ag0 Ø
ComP die Schale
Acc
Com'
Com0
ThP
mit-[+act]
pro
Th' Th0 ver-[+act][F]
Root zehr-
Man kann die Schale mitverzehren. „One can eat the skin (together with the pulp of the fruit), too.‟
(292) [[Ø]] = λes[ye[Theme(y)(e)]] [[mit-]] = λhseλfstλxeλes[f(e) & with(h(e))(x)(e)] [[ver-]] = λfstλxeλes[f(e) & all-way-through(x)(e)]
The old argument can sometimes be overtly expressed in a PP or a DP with the dativeinstrumental. This is most often the case in Greek and in the calques from Greek in other languages, e.g. Gk. sumpáskhein, Lat. compatī „experience the same feelings like (smb.)‟, or Gk. sumbio n, Goth. miþliban „live together with‟. Transitive verbs with comitative prefixes have a comitative argument with the theta-role of the argument it joins (Agent or Theme) and the old argument in an DP with the dative-instrumental or a PP. The predicate sunāidei ōid n „sings a song‟ below is incomplete by itself, without the DP in the dative-instrumental tini „along with
213
somebody‟, 142 or at least an original agent retrievable from the context, as in the German example with mitmachen:
(293) āidein → sunāidein: Agent comitative X1 (Agent) āidei ōid n (Theme) „X sings a song‟ → → Z (comitative Agent) sunāidei tinì1 (Agent) ōid n (Theme) „Z sings a song along with somebody‟
(294)
ComP Com'
tis2
Com0
AgP
AgP
sun-
Ag'
tis1
Ag0 Ø ōid n
142
Ag0 Ø-
ThP
Acc
Ag'
tini1
ōid n
Th' Th0 Ø[+act]
ThP
Root
Acc
āid-
Th' Th0 Ø[+act]
Root āid-
āidei tis1 (N) ōid n
sunāidei tís2 (N) tini1 (D) ōid n
„somebody1 sings a song‟
„somebody2 sings a song along with somebody1‟
The dative case of tini is not assigned by Ag0, but probably by a silent preposition – cf. the proposal I made
earlier that DPs are always introduced into clauses by PPs, even when the preposition is covert (manifesting its presence by case agreement inside the DP, in the languages where this happens. The old argument can be expressed in a PP as well. 214
The comitative prefix sun- is not used along with a locative-positional prefix to introduce two DP arguments, presumably because both the comitative and the Locative arguments would be in the dative and it would be difficult to tell apart in some contexts (although the cases of double accusative are quite common in Greek; the dative of the comitative resulted from the syncretism dative-instrumental, and the dative of the locative resulted from the syncretism dative-locative). For instance, sunephistánai (sun-epi-histánai „with-on-stand‟) „be on top of (together with somebody)‟ > „oversee (together with somebody)‟ has only one locative argument, with dative case assigned by epi-, as in ephistánai (epi-histánai) „stand on top of‟, and the comitative is introduced in a PP metá tinos „with somebody‟, but is nevertheless an argument. The Theme or the Experiencer (of an erect posture, with a locative oblique in histánai and a Location argument in ephistánai) is reanalyzed as an Agent in the semantic development of this verb, with concomitant reanalysis of the Location as a Theme (I assume here that the location is an argument, rather than an adjunct).
(295)
ThP X1 ThP X1
Th0 Ø
(epí tinos2)
Th' Th0 Ø
Th' LocP Loc'
tini2
Root
D
hista-
Loc0
Root
epi-[+partake] hista-
X1 hístēsi (epí tinos2)
X1 ephístēsi tiní2
„X1 stands (on top of something2)‟
„X1 stands on top of something2‟
215
ComP Y3 ThP
Com' Com0
(metá tinos3)
ThP
sun-
X1
Th' Th0 Ø
Th0 Ø
LocP Loc'
tini2
D
Th'
metá tinos1
LocP Loc'
tini2
Loc0
Root
epi-[+partake]
hista-
D
Loc0
Root
epi- [+partake] hista-
X1 ephístēsi tinì2 (metá tinos3) „X1 stands on top of something2 (together with somebody3)‟
Y3 ephístēsi tinì2 metá tinos1 „Y3 stands on top of something2 together with somebody1‟
ComP Y3
Com' Com0
AgP
sunmetá tinos1
Ag'
Ag0 Ø
ThP Th'
tini2
Th0
Root
epi-[+act]
hista-
Y3 sunephístēsi tinì2 metá tinos1 „Y3 oversees something2 together with somebody1‟ 216
In this reanalysis of theta-roles, the prefix epi- in sunephisánai „oversee‟ does not inherit a feature [F] from sunephistánai „stand on top of together with‟, and sunephisánai „oversee‟ is an Imperfective – it only describes activities. This is so because epi- in sunephistánai „stand on top of together with‟ verb it was in Loc0 and therefore had no [F], cf. the discussion of locational applicatives. The reanalysis of theta-roles seems to result from a structural „sliding‟ of couples of associated theta-roles along a conceptual axis (or a continuum of proto-roles) due to the inclusion of an „energy‟ factor which turns a state of being on top of something into an activity of overseeing it, whereby the Experiencer becomes an Agent (it starts acting as an overseer), and the Location becomes a Theme (it is overseen by the Agent) 143:
(296)
[+dynamic] [-dynamic] Ag > Exp / Rec / Perd > Th > Loc / Go / So sunephistánai „stand on top of with‟ (state): sunephistánai „oversee‟ (activity):
Exp Ag
Loc Th
Also cases where the comitative is a DP and the Location is a PP are encountered in Greek. For instance, pareĩnai (para-eĩnai) „be present at, assist at‟ is constructed with a Location argument in the dative, but the compound sumpareĩnai does not have a further complement in the dative, although both prefixes introduce such arguments when they do not co-occur on the same verb, cf. the examples mentioned in the section about location applicatives. In the example below (Ahlman 1916: 34), the Greek verb and its Latin counterpart *compraeesse (of which only the 143
This resembles the relation between see (Experiencer – Location) and watch / look (Agent – Theme), if the object
of verbs of perception is construed as a Location whereof the Experiencer partakes perceptually. 217
participle is attested) take only one complement, but the location is understood from the context (it is a place in Antioch):
(297) taĩs sumparoúsais moi ekklēsíais (Ignatius of Antioch, Epistula ad Trallianos 12.1) cum compraesentibus mihi ecclesiis dei „to the gatherings that are with me‟
sun- introduces a new comitative argument in addition to the Location argument, with an extra focus upon the referent (the gatherings) of the comitative oblique in the construction with the base verb. Ignatius finds himself at the specific location in Antioch, or attends the specific event in Antioch, that circumstance being indicated by the argument introduced by para- (tēi leitourgíāi „at the mass‟ in the following example). In the doubly prefixed verb, the old Experiencer is a DP – as in (294), I assume that this DP is actually a PP headed by an unpronounced preposition, since Exp0 is not [+act] and therefore cannot assign case to the argument in its specifier –, and the DP-argument of pareĩnai is introduced as a PP ([PP parà tēi leitourgíāi]) with sumpareĩnai:
218
(298)
ComP hai ekklēsíai
Exp0
Com'
Com0
ExpP
sunIgnatíōi
Exp'
Ignátios
Exp0 Ø
Exp0 Ø
LocP
tēi leitourgíāi
D
Exp'
parà tēi leitourgíāi
Loc' Loc0
para-[+relate]
LocP
Root es-
Loc' Loc
para-[+relate]
Root es-
Ignátios párestin tēi leitourgíāi „Ignatius is present at the service‟
hai ekklēsíai sumpáreisin Ignatíōi parà tēi leitourgíāi „the gatherings are present together with Ignatius at the mass‟
The Greek compounds with meta- in its comitative value behave in a similar way, and assign dative case (with comitative-instrumental value due to case syncretism) to the backgrounded argument, like the corresponding preposition metá did in the most ancient attestations with this comitative value: metalankhánei tís3 (N) tiní1 (D) tinos2 (G) „somebody3 partake of / share (in) something2 together with somebody1‟ vs. lankhánei tís1 (N) tinós2 (G) (metá tinos3) „somebody1 shares in something3 (together with somebody3)‟. As in other comitative compounds, the derivation can further involve a change of theta-roles: -
metalankhánein has a comitative Experiencer (the party which joins in the sharing), which becomes the subject, an old Experiencer in the dative (the party which was sharing), and a Theme or Location (the object of the sharing) in the genitive; 219
-
lankhánein (G) has an Experiencer (the passive sharer), which becomes the subject, and a Theme or Location (the object of the sharing) in the genitive; and
-
lankhánein can also have a Theme in the accusative and mean „obtain, receive‟; the subject is a Recipient, which cannot receive case and has to move.
(299) lankhánein (Acc)
comitative
Affectee
Theme / Location
-
Recipient
Theme
tis1 (subject, N)
ti2 (Acc)
Experiencer
Location (partitive)
tis1 (subject, N)
tinos2 (G)
„X1 obtains Y2‟ lankhánein (G)
-
„X1 shares in Y2‟ metalankhánein
Experiencer
Experiencer
Location (partitive)
„Z3 shares in Y2 with X1‟
tis3 (subject, N)
tini1 (D)
tinos2 (G)
The potentially ambiguous interpretation of the theta-role of the direct object, as either Theme or Location, is analogous to the one in share something vs. share in something, with two ways of considering the object: either as the undergoer (Theme) of the sharing, or as the Location where the sharing takes place. The prefix meta(-) in metalankhánein, which can function as adverb, preposition, and preverb (Luraghi: n.d.), might have had originally both a „simultaneous‟ and a „sequential‟ meaning. The simultaneous interpretation is available in adverbs and prepositions: as an adverb in metà dè glaukōpis Ath nē „in their midst stands bright-eyed Athena‟ (Iliad 2.446), and as a preposition + D (instrumental-sociative) / G (ablative?) meaning „among, with‟. The sequential interpretation is likewise available both as an adverb, e.g. metà Tudéos huiòn hépousan „following the son of Tydeus‟ (Iliad 10.516, about Athena) and as a preposition + Acc (allative?) meaning „after‟: X metà Y „X after Y‟ can be represented as an allative: X → Y, cf. Gm. nach(-) „after‟ in nachahmen „imitate‟ < „make after‟. If the reverse sequence X ← Y is rendered as an 220
ablative, cf. Gm. vorher „before‟ in vorhergehen „precede, go before‟, the relationship between „before‟ and an ablative is not inconceivable, cf. Fr. peur / crainte de (ablative) vs. Gm. Furcht vor („before‟) „fear of‟, which would suggest an originally sequential ablative meaning for the use of meta with the genitive-ablative, with a later disappearance of the semantic difference between simultaneous meta + D and sequential-ablative meta + G. If so, meta would have been a comitative able to function in three ways: simultaneous with the dative (instrumental-sociative), sequential-ablative with the genitive (ablative), and sequential-allative with the accusative (allative). Rosén (1992) and Haug (2007) show that the comitative function of Latin co(m)originates in Greek models first in nominal, then also in verbal compounds, e.g. Lat. conseruus ~ Gk. súndoulos „fellow slave‟ (Rosén 1992: 360) vs. Lat. seruus, Gk. do los „slave‟; Lat. colludere alicui (D) ~ Gk. sumpaízein tiní (D) „play with somebody‟. The nominal compounds are well attested in several branches: Sk. sahabrahmacārin „fellow student‟ (brahmacārin „student‟), 144 OCS sǫsědŭ „neighbor‟ (root sěd- „sit‟), Goth. gajuka „companion‟ (root juk„join‟). They are also formed in the modern languages, e.g. Pol. współpracownik (pracownik „worker‟) and Lith. bendradarbis (darbas „work‟) after Gm. Mitarbeiter and Fr. collaborateur, and the corresponding verbs Pol. współpracować, Lith. bendradarbiauti, Hun. együttműködni cf. Gm. zusammenarbeiten, Fr. collaborer. Like mitarbeiten, zusammenarbeiten and the calques after it in the modern languages do introduce a comitative argument, which is overt (here, a PP), 144
The comitative-sociative value of Sk. sa(ha)- is conspicuous in the contrast between these compounds and the
nouns derived with suffixes meaning „possessed of‟ and bahuvrīhi (exocentric) compounds: saputra- „accompanied by his son‟ (putra- „son‟) – e.g. saputraḥ āgacchati „he is coming accompanied by his son‟ – vs. putrin- „having a son‟ and mrtaputra- „whose son is dead‟ (mrta- „dead‟). (The latter is an exocentric compound, which contains a reference to an entity different from the noun which the compound adjective qualifies.) 221
unless it is co-referential with the collective or plural subject, meaning „jointly‟ / „together‟ / „with each other‟ (an overt argument, as miteinander would be instead of PRO in (302), is felt as pleonastic):
(300) Sie müssen mit ihm zusammenarbeiten. Oni muszą współpracować z nim. Privalo bendradarbiauti su juo. Együtt kell működniük vele. „They must work together with him.‟
(301) Alle1 müssen besser PRO1 zusammenarbeiten. Wszyscy1 muszą lepiej współpracować PRO1. Visi1 privalo geriau bendradarbiauti PRO1. Mindenkinek1 kell jobban PRO1 együttműködni. „All must work better together.‟ – PRO = „with each other‟
The nouns mentioned in the preceding paragraph have themselves comitative arguments, i.e. they are relational: a collaborator or co-worker can be described as such only if he works together with someone else.145 The Latin verbs with comitative co(m)- became much more common in the post-classical language (Ahlman 1916: 16), and in the other branches too they are formed on foreign models – in Slavic and Baltic on German and Romance or Latin, in German perhaps also at least partly
145
Observation owed to Wayles Browne. 222
under Latin influence, the entire procedure going back ultimately to Greek, which constantly supplied both Classical and Christian Latin with models that were readily imitated: Lat. Christo (D) concrucifixus sum ~ Gk. Khristōi (D) sunestaur mēn „I was crucified together with Christ‟ (Itala, Galatians 2.20 apud Ahlman 1916: 23). In the Latin verb in this example, the noun meaning „cross‟ is the incorporated indirect object (Goal argument) of the verb figere „fasten, attach‟, but preserves the dative case assigned to it in the specifier of GoP, assuming that the univerbation proceeds by way of demoting the goal argument from SpecGoP to Go 0:146
(302)
AgP … ThP Christum
Acc
AgP … ThP Th'
Th0 Ø[+act]
Christum
GoP crucī
D
146
Acc
Go Ø[+partake][F]
Goal argument) Th'
Th0 Ø[+act]
GoP crucī-
Go' 0
(incorporation of the
Root fig-
Root fig-
Christum crucī figere
Christum crucīfigere
„attach Christ to the cross‟
„crucify Christ‟
There are other instances of incorporation of phrasal constituents where they remain in the functional head as
prefixes, e.g. Gm. zugrundegehen „die‟, lit. „go to the ground‟. 223
AgP … ComP Com'
aliquem
Acc
(comitative applicative)
Com0
ThP
con-[+act] 147 Christō
Th'
Th0 Ø[+act]
GoP crucī-
Root fig-
aliquem Christō concrucīfigere „crucify somebody together with Christ‟
In a compound like Russ. soprovodit’p „accompany / append to, add as attachment to‟, derived with s(o)- „with‟ and pro- „past, through‟ from vodit’i-indet „lead‟ („lead something1 together with something2‟ > „send something1 with something2 attached / appended‟), the comitative prefix s(o)- denotes comitativity all through the path described by pro-. In one use, this verb has a comitative Theme (the accompanied person), and the backgrounded (old) Theme is a covert argument co-referential with the Agent: „X accompanies Y‟ = „X leads Y in X‟s company‟. Adding s nami „along with us‟ in SpecThP would be repetitive, because the old Theme here is co-referential with the subject, as in the German compounds with zusammen- (co-reference with a plural or collective subject).
147
As in the previous examples, I assume that the dative case of Christō is assigned here by an unpronounced
preposition. 224
(303)
AgP Ag'
pro(1.pl.)1
Ag0 Ø
ComP Com'
vas
Acc
Com
ThP
so-[+act]
Th'
PRO1
Th0 Ø[+act]
GoP do domu
Go0
Go' Root
pro-[+partake][F] vod-
Razrešitep soprovodit’p vas1 do domu1. „Please allow us to accompany you1 home1.‟
As in English, the Goal argument in Russian refers to the home of the accompanied party, 148 because both Russ. do domu and English home are indexicals, unlike house (of), which is not, so that John accompanied Bill to his house is usually ambiguous as to whose house it is. This coindexation proves that the underlying construction refers to the motion of the accompanied party, rather than of the accompanying one. In the figurative sense „append to, add as attachment to‟, the old Theme is different from the Agent, and the Goal is arbitrary (PROarb) because it does not matter whereto the appended object will „accompany‟ the object to which it is appended. The verb is Perfective in both its uses
148
Bill1 goes home1; John1 accompanies Bill2 home2/*1; but: John1 takes Bill2 home1/2; John1 takes Bill2 home1/*2 with
him1; John1 leads Bill2 home1/(?)2. Thanks to Wayles Browne for these examples and observations. 225
(it derives an Imperfective soprovoždat’i), due to the existence of the Goal argument introduced by pro-, even though in the second case the goal of the action is irrelevant.
(304)
AgP Ag'
pro2.pl.
Ag0 Ø
ComP
zajavlennuju temu doklada
Acc
Com0
Com' ThP
so-[+act] kratkoj annotaciej
Th'
Th0 Ø[+act]
GoP Go'
PROarb
Go
Root
pro-[+partake][F] vod-
Zajavlennuju temu doklada prosimi soprovodit’p kratkoj annotaciej. „Please append a short note to the paper topic you announced.‟ (lit. „Please accompany the paper topic you announced with a short note.‟)
I believe that the presence of a comitative argument can account for an apparent incongruity about soprovodit’p: this verb is Perfective, yet it is formed from the indeterminate Imperfective vodit’i-indet, whereas indeterminate Imperfectives derive Imperfectives paired with Perfectives formed from their determinate counterparts – for instance, the determinate-indeterminate pair vestii-det – vodit’i-indet „lead‟ derives by prefixation with pro- the Perfective-Imperfective pair provestip – provodit’i „take (to), lead‟. The Perfectivity follows from the existence of the Goal
226
argument, as I suggested before. On the other hand, the derivation from vodit’i-indet, rather than from vestii-det, is partly explainable by the non-directional nature of the comitative: the direction of a motion performed in the manner (here: „lead‟) denoted by the root is irrelevant for the association, which only has a temporal dimension, but no spatial orientation (the goal is arbitrary or irrelevant). Given the irrelevance of direction and spatial goals for the role of the comitative argument in the action, the compound verb is formed from the indeterminate Imperfective, which denotes motion at a location (here: „lead around / about‟), with no overall orientation or goal. But this is only a partial explanation at best, because it does not account for the case where the goal is non-arbitary and overtly expressed (the first one of the examples with soprovodit’p above). With a non-arbitrary or specific Goal argument, where directionality is relevant, the verb could have been derived from the determinate Imperfective, as it regularly happens with other Perfectives derived from verbs of motion, and have had the shape *soprovestip. The fact that this is not the case suggests that the irrelevance of spatial orientation for comitativity is taken into account in the selection of the derivational base also in the first (and primary) use of soprovodit’p. The structure of the synchronically unanalyzable verb accompany in its dynamic and static uses – John accompanies Bill home (again, home refers to Bill‟s home) vs. Heat accompanies sunshine – can be modeled on the Russian example. If there is no Goal argument, the theta-grid can be represented as including only the comitative Theme and the backgrounded Theme, since there is no indication as to the existence of any arbitrary goal (unlike in the second use of soprovodit’p, where this indication comes from the presence of the prefix pro- and the Perfective aspect). In the dynamic use of accompany below, John (Agent and „internal‟ Theme of
227
the motion) „goes with Bill to Bill‟s home‟ ~ „takes himself together with Bill to Bill‟s home‟.149 The difference between accompany and the verbs with comitative prefixes is that in the former the backgrounded Theme (Bill in John accompanies Bill home ~ „John takes / carries himself together with Bill to Bill‟s home‟) receives case from Th0 and the comitative Theme (John) is caseless as an internal Theme (and is a PRO), while in the latter it is the comitative Theme that receives Case, and the old / backgrounded Theme is either caseless (a pro with its reference supplied by the context) or receives case from an overt or covert preposition.
149
The translation of John goes with Mary to her home into Rumanian is Ion se duce cu Maria acasă la ea (lit.
„home to her‟), with the verb a se duce „go‟, lit. „lead oneself‟, which always has a Goal argument; another possibility is to use the verb a merge „walk / go‟ (Ion merge cu Maria acasă la ea), where the goal is an oblique (Ion merge cu Maria „John is walking / going with Mary‟ is grammatical). a se duce is a determinate Imperfective qua determinate, and a merge is a determinate Imperfective qua Imperfective, denoting the manner of motion („walking‟). This lexical distinction in Rumanian may be taken as an argument in favor of the existence of the same distinction in the Slavic determinate Imperfectives. The fact that the Agent of intransitive motion verbs is also an internal Theme might account also for the medial voice of some of these verbs in Indo-European, e.g. Gk. érkhesthai „go / come‟, poreúesthai „travel‟ (vs. active poreúein „carry, convey‟), pétesthai „fly‟. 228
(305)
AgP Ag'
Bill1
Ag0 Ø
ThP Th'
PRO1
Th0 Ø[+act]
GoP Go'
home
Go0 Ø[+partake][F]
Root go-
Bill goes home .
AgP Ag'
John1
Ag0 Ø
ComP Com'
PRO1
Com0 Ø[+act]
ThP Th'
Bill
Acc
Th0 Ø[+act]
GoP home
Go' Go0 Ø[+partake][F]
John accompanies Bill home.
229
Root accompany-
At first sight, a static use of accompany, as in Heat accompanies sunshine, involves a backgrounded Theme (sunshine) and a comitative Theme (heat). However, this cannot account for the accusative case of sunshine, since Th0 would not be [+act] and would not assign case, and this applies to any verb with such an argument structure: a static comitative is impossible, because the backgrounded Theme (or Experiencer) can neither receive case in situ nor move for Case. A sequential comitative like follow and precede cannot be static also because it involves change – including in habituals: day follows night.) The static use of accompany is explainable diachronically: accompany had at first only the dynamic meaning, which is the original one in the source of borrowing as well: Fr. accompagner is a denominative derived from OFr. compain „companion‟150 with the directional prefix ad-, which contributes a Goal argument: „accompany somebody somewhere‟ < „be somebody‟s companion on a journey to somewhere‟. The older Indo-European languages seem to lack simultaneous comitatives as simple verbs, but a sequential comitative is attested in several branches (Lat. sequī, Gk. hépesthai „follow‟ < PIE *sekw-). The data presented in this section suggest that the comitative prefixes are a late addition to the verbal system in all branches of Indo-European: they appear late in the history of Sanskrit and Greek, and are accommodated in Latin, Gothic, and OCS, in loan-formations on Greek models. The compounds with comitative prefixes belong to a cultivated or literary register in all languages where they are attested, which points to sociolinguistic factors having been at work in their creation and borrowing. Comitative applicatives, not only in Latin, Germanic, and Slavic,
150
An exocentric compound meaning „[one who] shares (Lat. com-) the bread (Fr. pain)‟, where com- has adverbial
value (it applies to the act of sharing, not to the bread). 230
but also in Greek, generally signal a register that is higher on a prestige scale than that of everyday communication.151 The analyses presented in this chapter account for the vast majority of Perfectives, where Perfectivity is connected to argument structure, and is manifested inside the VP. Not discussed yet are the Imperfectives, the semelfactives (Russ. čixnut’p „sneeze (once)‟) and the phasal Perfectives – ingressives (Russ. zapet’p „start singing‟), terminatives (Russ. otljubit’p „stop loving‟), and delimitatives (Russ. pospat’p). The next chapter treats these aspectual classes, where aspect is independent of argument structure, as well as the interaction with viewpoint aspect.
151
Cf. the observations of Toops (1992; 1992-1993) concerning the loan translations of German prefixed verbs into
Upper Sorbian. 231
5 ASPECT OUTSIDE THE VP: VIEWPOINT ASPECT AND ACTIONALITY
5.1 Overview Svenonius (2004) places the Slavic “superlexical” prefixes denoting various Aktionsarten outside the VP, above the “lexical” prefixes, whose form and function are much less uniform and predictable. This conclusion follows from the linear order of the prefixes in verbs with multiple prefixes, where the superlexical prefixes are always leftmost, and the lexical ones are closer to the root, e.g. with Russ. superlexical distributive po- and lexical vy- „out‟, the prefix order is povy-brasyvat’p „throw out one by one‟, not *vy-po-brasyvat’ (Svenonius 2004: 207). In this chapter I discuss the aspectual phenomena manifested outside the VP: viewpoint aspect and actionality. From the order of morphemes I conclude to the syntactic hierarchy of functional heads, e.g. in Lat. ioculābātur „he was joking / used to joke‟, where the subject agreement marker -tur is rightmost, followed by tense, viewpoint aspect (both merged here as one morpheme -bā-), and a suffix -ul(ā)- denoting a „diminutive‟ manner of action (Aktionsart), plus the root ioc- with the lexical meaning „play‟, the syntactic hierarchy is agreement > tense > viewpoint aspect > actionality > root. The aspectual interpretation of the sentence results from the interaction of viewpoint aspect and manners of action localized on specific heads with the aspectual properties of the VP. The individual sections of the chapter survey the structural and semantic properties of the aspectual categories in Indo-European languages and Hungarian, as well as their structural positions relative to other categories: tense, modality, and causative morphemes. While viewpoint aspect is uniformly manifested in one syntactic head, there can be several layers of actionality marked in one verbal stem: in the Russian verb povybrasyvat’p mentioned above, the
232
superlexical prefix is attached to an Imperfective vybrasyvat'i „throw out‟, derived from the Perfective vybrosit’p „throw out‟ with actionality suffix -yva-; this suffix has been specialized for the derivation of secondary Imperfectives, and its basic value is iterative, with a secondary value as an atelic processual, describing activities. Actionality is discussed in some detail, in order to provide an account of its morphological manifestations and possibilities of expression: for example, based on an examination of the semantics of verbal suffixes in Indo-European, it appears that there are only two core values that are expressed: semelfactive and atelic durative (states, processes, or iteratives), and there are no suffixes which would contribute telicity.
5.2 Reference time and situation time in aspectual contrasts Whereas aspect “specifies the internal temporal structure of the situation”, tense “locates a situation in time” (Smith 1997: 97; Comrie 1985: vii). Following Reichenbach (1966: 288), Smith operates in her analyses with three temporal references (Smith 1997: 101): -
situation time: “the time at which the situation is located”;
-
reference time: “the temporal standpoint of the sentence”;
-
utterance time.
For instance, in the English pluperfect form had done, the reference time is located in the past, prior to the utterance time, and the situation time precedes the reference time, whereas in the simple past did, the reference time coincides with the situation time, and both precede the utterance time (other examples in Reichenbach 1966: 289-298). The present tense is incompatible with the perfective viewpoint, because “we conceive of the present moment as instantaneous; utterances, too, are conceived as instantaneous. It follows that a Present utterance can only refer to an event that is terminated or completed, or an event in
233
progress.” (Smith 1997: 110). As such, the present tense only allows the imperfective viewpoint, which, since it excludes the initial and final endpoints of a situation, can only focus durative situations, where the endpoints do not coincide. Reichenbach introduces the reference time without explicitly defining it. A definition capturing the intuitition about reference time was proposed by Klein (1994), who regards it as “the time span to which the speaker‟s claim on this occasion [i.e. at utterance time] is confined” (Klein 1994: 4). For instance, in John went to New York last week, the reference time is the referent of last week. Klein renames the reference time „topic time‟, because it behaves like a topic in relation to the situation described by a sentence. In John went to New York last week, the topic is last week, which provides the temporal frame, and what John did is the comment, which fills that frame: what happened last week was that John went to New York. I will keep using Reichenbach‟s term, but with Klein‟s definition. Smith‟s definition of the perfective and imperfective viewpoints can be reformulated in terms of an inclusion relation between reference time and situation time: -
in the imperfective viewpoint, the reference time R is included in the situation time S (R ⊆ S), therefore neither endpoint of the situation is visible – especially not the final endpoint, so that no prediction is made about the outcome of an unfolding event;
-
in the perfective viewpoint, the situation time is included in the reference time (S ⊆ R), therefore both endpoints of the situation are visible – and since the final endpoint is visible, the outcome of the event is known.
This reformulation accommodates Comrie‟s (1976: 24) definition of the imperfective as “viewing a situation from within” (temporal standpoint inside the situation), and of the perfective as viewing the situation from the outside, as a whole (temporal standpoint outside the situation).
234
If no inclusion relation is defined between reference time and situation time, the result will be the neutral viewpoint aspect. Portner (2005: 142-144, 220) gives examples where the English past tense can have several interpretations in terms of the relation between R and S, according to whether the situation described by a sentence is an event or a state:
(306a) Something occurred to me today. – event (306b) This afternoon, the baby seemed sick. – state (306c) Something has been bothering me today. – state (306d) Once upon a time, there was a sleepy rabbit. – state
In the eventive (306a), S ⊆ R: the occurrence (S) took place during the respective day (R). In the statives (306b-d), R ⊆ S: in (306b), the observer reports on the baby‟s condition at some point (R) during the baby‟s sickness (S); in (306c), the inconvenient situation (S) started earlier in the day, and is likely to last for same time after R, which coincides with the utterance time; in (306d), the narrator takes as beginning of his narrative a moment (R) in the past during the rabbit‟s lifetime (S). The form used in both (306a) and (306b) is the simple past, and Portner states that the difference in the relation between S and R in these two sentences follows from situation aspect – in the past tense in English, S ⊆ R for events and R ⊆ S for states. However, this difference seems to follow not from situation aspect, but from viewpoint aspect. In the stative (307a), French can only use the imperfect; with a perfective, the state is presented as closed, and the baby recovered by the end of the afternoon; if the speaker is agnostic or ignorant
235
about the present state of the baby, both variants are acceptable, so he must signal it otherwise (by statement, facial mimics, etc.).152
(307a) Cet après-midi, le bébé avaitipf l’air malade. (307b) Cet après-midi, le bébé a eupf l’air malade.
(306c) contains a perfect progressive, which again translates with a French imperfective – this time in the present, and likewise (306d) with a past imperfective:153
(308) Quelque chose me troubleipf l’esprit depuis ce matin.
(309) Il étaitipf une fois un lapin qui avait sommeil tout le temps.
In English, the simple past (he walked) is not a perfective, and the progressive past (he was walking) is not an imperfective: the opposition between progressive and non-progressive tenses is not viewpoint aspect, therefore viewpoint can play a role in the difference between (306a) and (306b), but this is not visible by examining only English examples. The parallelism [perfective vs. imperfective] ~ [non-progressive vs. progressive] holds only for non-statives.
152
I leave the French examples untranslated in order not to create confusion: the use of a certain English form to
render a French one might suggest that the correspondence is general, which is not the case. 153
The meaning of the English form in (306c) would be perhaps a state (whence the progressive) lasting into the
present (whence the perfect); John has been living in Chicago for the past four years has a stative live in the same construction. 236
The conclusion is that the relations R ⊆ S for the imperfective and S ⊆ R for the perfective hold for both events and states. If R = S, the situation can be described with either aspect (again, one should not use English, but a language with „genuine‟ viewpoint aspect), depending on the viewpoint, which can be imposed in a question:
(310) Eventive: De 2
3 heures du matin, j’ai lupf // je lisaisipf.
– Qu’est-ce que tu as faitpf de 2 à 3, quand il n’y avait plus rien faire? // – Qu’est-ce que tu faisaisipf de 2
3, quand j’ai entendu tout ce bruit?
Stative: De 2
3 heures du matin, j’ai eupf // j’avaisipf mal à la tête.
– Comment tu t’es sentipf de 2 à 3, quand il faisait si froid dans la maison? // – Comment te sentaisipf-tu de 2 à 3, quand tout le monde te regardait?
The perfect and the future can also be included in this schema, as both involve a temporal sequence between reference time and situation time: -
in the perfect, the reference time follows the final endpoint of the situation time (S < R, where „X < Y‟ means „Y follows X, and X and Y are disjunct‟): had / has / will have done;
-
in prospective forms like is / was going to do and Fr. va / allait faire, the sequence is reversed, with R preceding the initial endpoint of S (R < S).
More precisely, R follows the final endpoint of the situation FS (FS < R) in the perfect, and precedes the initial endpoint of the situation IS (R < IS) in the prospective. To this list can be added two more periphrastic forms in English:
237
-
„imminent‟ (was / is about to do, Fr. était / est sur le point de faire); and
-
„successive‟ (had / has just done, Fr. venait / vient de faire),
where the reference time is situated in the expectation or the immediate aftermath of the situation: R – S or S – R respectively, where „X – Y‟ means „X is prior to and contiguous with Y‟. The relationship between viewpoint aspect and the relative position of reference time R and situation time S can be summarized as below:
(311)
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN R AND S
INCLUSION
SEQUENCE SEQUENCE AND CONTIGUITY
imperfective: R⊆S
perfective: S⊆R
prospective: R<S (prospective)
perfect: S „start doing‟. 298
Terminatives of activities, of the type otrabotat’p „finish work‟ or otslužit’p „finish service‟, are most likely not completive – since no result is achieved after the work time has elapsed –, or at least not directly:
(372) On otrabotalp segodnja za ponedel’nik. „He did today Monday‟s work.‟ (lit. „He worked today for Monday.‟)
Another candidate for this class might be otobedat’p „be done eating lunch‟ (activity: obedat’i „have lunch‟), if the meaning of terminatives with activities is in fact „finish one‟s routine and activity as expected, carry it out to its expected conclusion or predictable outcome‟, in which case the state post-event would not differ in any significant way from the state pre-event; in English, this nuance can be rendered sometimes by adding one’s / his / her / their, as in John ate his lunch / did his work / served his three months in the army, then went out / on a trip.202 The lexical meaning of *otŭ- is „out of‟, therefore a terminative denotes literally the „exit‟ from the situation described by the predicate with the main verb, whether or not the action is completed. (To indicate the completion of the action, a variety of prefixes is used to indicate the „path‟ followed by the action to its completion, as explained in chapter 4.) In Slavic, the delimitatives are generally derived with the prefix PSl *po- (Baltic pa-): posŭpatip „sleep (for a while)‟ vs. sŭpatii „sleep‟, Russ. poigrat’p „play (for a while)‟ vs. igrat’i „play‟. Unlike the semelfactive, which describes a single unit of a granular activity, a delimitatives denotes an activity of delimited – hence limited – duration, and little consequence, as opposed to an activity (construed as non-granular, i.e. continuous, with no discrete units) of
202
Thanks are due to Wayles Browne for data and discussion of these verbs. 299
undetermined duration. Both in delimitatives and in semelfactives, the event described is of little consequence, and of irrelevant or negligible duration. An event of the type described with such „diminutival‟ verbs can be represented as an inconsequential occurrence, in the sense that the state of affairs is the same before and after the event. The fundamental difference between semelfactives and delimitatives lies in the fact that the former determine the situation type (a semelfactive), whereas the latter focus the boundaries of a situation. The function of the phasal prefixes can be represented as adding the features [I] (ingressives), [F] (terminatives), and both [I] and [F] (delimitatives) to the base verb, e.g. in Russian:
(373) pet’i „sing‟ → zapet’[I]p „start singing‟ – focusing the beginning ljubit’i „love‟ → otljubit’[F]p „stop loving‟ – focusing the end spat’i „sleep‟ → pospat’[I][F]p „sleep for a while‟– focusing both the beginning and the end
The phasal prefixes have scope over the entire event: the LF of Pol. Jan zachorowałp „Jan became ill‟ in the next example, with zachorowaćp „become ill‟ (ingressive of chorowaći „be ill‟), will be za-1 [event Jan t1 chor(owa)-]:
(374) Jan zachorowałp i umarłp za tydzień. „John got ill and in one week was dead.‟
On the other hand, an event-internal inception or termination caused by an Agent is expressed in Polish by zacząćp „begin‟ and przestaćp „stop‟: Jan zacząłp / przestałp pracowaći „Jan began / stopped working‟. Ingressives are more productive in Russian, where the tests of agentivity
300
clearly show that the Agent does not have scope over the prefix. In the example below, the inceptive zarabotat’p „start working‟ fails to convey the agentivity presupposed by the imperative, which can be expressed only with načat’p – načinat’i „start‟, so that the second sentence is marginally acceptable only with an added nuance of detachment of the speaker from his own command:203
(375) A sejčas načinajtei rabotat’i. ?
A sejčas zarabotajtеp.
„And now, you start working.‟
Also, expressions of will and intention tend not to be collocated with these three classes of prefixed verbs – except cases when extensions of the use of phasal verbs intervene –, which shows that agentivity cannot have scope over them. This fact constitutes an indication about the structural position of the phasal morphemes, which I will discuss in the next section.
5.5 The syntax of actionality The recognizable semantic contribution of the Latin diminutive suffix suggests that the respective Latin verbs were derived by a syntactic mechanism parallel to the one deriving the aspectual forms in Yiddish, with a functional head taking as its complement the VP headed by the verb root, which in Yiddish functions here as a free morpheme (Diesing 1998: 138). In Latin, 203
The Imperfective (načinat’i), rather than the Perfective (načat’p), is selected because there is a plural subject, and
the action is distributed: the injunction is addressed to a group of people, who might not all start working simultaneously. The Perfective načat’p used in the same context would convey a sense of urgency, where everybody has to start working at the same time. 301
which expresses viewpoint aspect as well, 3.sg. pres. ioculātur „jokes‟ will have been derived as below, where actionality is expressed by the suffix -ul- in a head Akt0, imperfective viewpoint aspect is indicated by the suffix -ā- of the first conjugation plus Ø in Asp0, and the 3.sg. personal ending -tur is a marker of subject agreement in T0:204
(376)
TP --- temporal location (tense) T' T0
AspP --- viewpoint aspect (outer aspect) Asp' Asp0 Ø
AktP --- actionality (potentially modifying inner aspect) Akt' Akt0 -ul-ā-
VP--- situation aspect (inner aspect) … Root ioc-
In Yiddish, the Akt0 head carrying a semantic feature definable as [small] or [-durative] referring to the restricted event, was interpreted as an aspectual head, because Asp 0 is otherwise empty (Yiddish has neutral viewpoint aspect – a single past tense). The feature [-durative] of the head Akt0 reanalyzed as Asp0 in Yiddish indicates a non-durative event (an event of irrelevant duration), not an instantaneous event, because the opposition [±durative] is privative, rather than equipollent, as [durative] vs. [instantaneous] would be. In Latin, the suffixes -(ic)ul- and -il(l)- in
204
The formant -ā- following -ul- specifies the conjugational class, and has no semantic contribution. Viewpoint
aspectual morphemes in this class are Ø for the imperfective and -u- for the perfective in the active voice. 302
Akt0 were most probably likewise [small] in origin, interpretable as [-intense] to denote the typical lack of intensity of the action conveyed by the verbs derived with these suffixes. Regarding the mapping of the morphology on the syntactic structure in the other IndoEuropean languages with functionally parallel suffixes, the first guess would be that the actionality morphemes – e.g. the semelfactive suffix in OCS drĭznǫtip and the iterative one in drĭzatip – are generated in the Akt0 head introduced above. Latin, Lithuanian, and Slavic, can or could also express viewpoint aspect: Lithuanian and several Slavic languages (Old Church Slavonic included) distinguish an aorist and an imperfect in the past tense, 205 and the Latin perfective past functions as an aorist and as a perfect. For instance, the morphology of the 3.sg. ipf. of Latin ioculārī, Lith. barškėti, baršktelėti, and nudiegti, and OCS drĭznǫtip (derived semelfactive), drĭzatii (derived iterative), and posŭpatip (derived semelfactive) is derived in syntax as follows (as I mentioned above, the durative suffixes also contribute atelicity; I specify roots as telic or atelic meaning the arguments of the respective verb: a root is telic if and only if the verb has directional arguments):206
205
So did Hungarian until the 19th century; at that time, the past tense forms from the semelfactive and iterative
verbs mentioned earlier could express both actionality and viewpoint aspect. 206
In all of these forms, the morphological material in T0 consists of the past tense allomorphs for imperfective
viewpoint aspect (in Old Church Slavonic: -ěax- or -aax- depending on the conjugational class) plus the corresponding allomorph for the 3.sg. personal ending (Lat. -tur, Lith. -o, OCS -e). In Old Church Slavonic, the suffix -nǫ- appears as -n- in the finite forms, the stem-final -a- of drĭza- and -sŭpa- is deleted in front of the imperfect suffix, and the -x- of the imperfect suffix is palatalized to -š- in front of the personal ending -e. The oppositions [±perfective] and [±past] are privative, because Old Church Slavonic has a perfective-imperfective (aorist vs. imperfect), and the tense opposition was originally that between a past and a non-past. The imperfect suffixes Lat. -bā-, Lith. -dav-, and OCS -ěax-/-aax-, are the allomorphs of abstract tense markers for [+past] when 303
T0
Asp0
Akt0
Base
ioculābātur
-bā-tur
[-perfective]
-ul-ā- [-durative]
ioc- (root) [-telic]
[-telic]
[+past]
barškėdavo
-dav-o [+past]
[-perfective]
-Ø-ė- [+durative]
baršk- (root) [-telic]
(377)
[-telic] baršktelėdavo
[-telic] -dav-o [+past]
[-perfective]
-tel-ė- [-durative]
baršk- (root) [-telic]
-dav-o [+past]
[-perfective]
nu- [-durative]
dieg- (root) [-telic]
-ěax-e [+past]
[-perfective]
-n- [-durative]
drĭz- (root) [-telic]
-aax-e [+past]
[-perfective]
-a- [+durative]
drĭz- (root) [-telic]
[-telic] nudiegdavo [-telic] drĭzněašep [-telic] drĭzaašei [-telic] posŭpaašep
[-telic] -aax-e [+past]
[-perfective]
po- [-durative]
[-telic]
sŭp-a- (root+suffix) [-telic]
Whereas in the first two instances the morpheme in Akt 0 is added to the bare root drĭz-, in the last one the prefix is added to a base consisting of the root sŭp- plus the same suffix -aemployed in drĭzatii, deriving the durative sŭpatii „sleep‟. These affixes can therefore be regarded as markers of actionality with a „diminutival‟ effect, indicating that the event is atelic (inconsequential action) and non-durative (irrelevant duration). The affixes will occupy the Akt 0 head, contributing non-durativity to an atelic predicate – assuming that telicity is encoded in the VP. As such, the function of these morphemes is to specify the situation type (semelfactive) by way of choosing a manner of action (single act) over another (iterative) in cases where the root allows both an (iterative) activity and a semelfactive interpretation, with no difference in argument structure. When there is no this feature combines with [-perfective]. In Latin and Lithuanian, the conjugational class marker (-ā- and -ėrespectively) determine the final shape of the suffix. 304
specification of actionality, the predicate in the main clause of John coughed, then started to speak is ambiguous between an iterative and a semelfactive reading, although the primary reading is semelfactive, and the iterative one normally requires the addition of an adverbial: John coughed several times, then… Applying the feature [-durative] to a granular activity like „coughing‟, „knocking‟, etc. triggers a „single-act‟ interpretation, whereas the same feature applied to a non-granular activity like „sleep‟ or „play‟ implies that the action is of short duration, of little consequence, or casual. Akt0 is an operator on events, which modifies the situation type of the event argument of the root. In choosing to use poigrat’p „play (for a while)‟ rather than igrat’i „play‟, a Russian speaker specifies the playing activity as restricted in effect, and implicitly also in duration. The delimitative po-Perfectives in Slavic, which can be derived from Imperfectives denoting any activity, and are quite productive – in some languages (Russian) more than in others (Serbo-Croatian) – require at least two such functional heads: -
a higher head for the prefix po- of the derived Perfective; and
-
a lower head for the suffix of the base Imperfective.
OCS posŭpatip „sleep for a while‟ will contain a lower head Akt10 filled by the suffix -aindicating durativity, and a higher head Akt 20 filled by the prefix po-, changing the sign of the durativity feature to [-durative] and yielding a delimitative. In posŭpatip, the feature [-durative] of the prefix po- overrides the feature [+durative] of the suffix -a- according to the mechanism proposed by Smith (1997: 55) in syntax: for instance, the feature [-count] carried by a plural object (houses) overrides the [+telic] feature inherent in a verb (build), so that the predicate (building houses) is atelic. Likewise, once it is assumed that morphological derivation takes
305
place in syntax, the feature [-durative] of the prefix po- overrides the feature [+durative] of the suffix -a-, so that the resulting verb is [-durative]. The durative suffix -a- in both sŭpatii and posŭpatip fills the functional head Akt10 carrying the feature [+durative], which in posŭpatip is situated below the actionality head Akt 20 with the feature [-durative]. Akt10 contributes to the specification of a „base-level‟ situation type, which can be further modified by Akt20.207 Taking into account this new actionality head, the structure of posŭpatip will be:
(378) posŭpaašep
T0
Asp0
Akt20
-aax-e [+past]
[-perfective]
po- [-durative] -a- [-telic]
[-telic]
Akt10
Root sŭp- [-telic]
[+durative]
In sŭpatii (and posŭpatip), it would be more correct to say that the suffix -a- „marks‟, rather than „contributes‟, the feature [+durative], because the verbal notion denoted by the root sŭp- „sleep‟ is already inherently durative – and likewise in drĭzatii, since this verb is based on the adjective drĭzŭ „brave‟, which denotes a stative concept. On the other hand, the same suffix in umiratii „contributes‟ durativity, because the verbal notion „die‟ expressed in the base Perfective umrětip is non-durative – and the same holds for the derivation of Imperfectives from Perfectives with this suffix: the Perfectives which derive secondary Imperfectives are always telic (in the vast majority of cases, and in all Slavic languages, they denote completion of an action) and non-
207
There is nothing that can limit in principle the number of actionality heads, so that a [-durative] Akt0 like the one
in posŭpatip could theoretically be embedded into a higher AktP with the feature [+durative], yielding a new durative, but no such derivation is attested in Slavic – presumably because the scope of use would be too restricted to justify the creation of a new lexical item. 306
durative.208 In general, it can be safely assumed that, in the languages which derive verbs of „restricted action‟, Akt10 conveys the feature [+durative], whether it contributes it to a base that does not have it, or marks its existence in a base where it is inherent. The interaction between Akt20 and Akt10 consists of the former restricting the duration of the durative atelic situation (activity or state) specified by the latter, the process yielding a semelfactive. The same restriction applied to a durative telic situation (accomplishment) would yield an achievement: „go‟ and „come‟ would become „reach‟ and „arrive‟ respectively. As far as I can determine, no Indo-European language uses suffixes to derive achievements from accomplishments. 209 In conclusion, the semantics of both actionality heads can be said to be consistent in the Indo-European languages that have them: Akt10 conveys durativity or nondurativity, and an Akt20 was created in Slavic in order to derive delimitative Perfectives. A nondurative specification of Akt10 yields: -
a semelfactive – if the verbal concept expressed by the root is „granular‟: Lith. baršktelėti, Russ. zvjaknut’p „tinkle (once)‟; or
-
a „diminutive‟ – if the verbal concept expressed by the root is not necessarily granular: Lat. ioculārī „joke‟.
208
In sentences with these Perfectives, durativity can be expressed only by an adverbial, e.g. Pol. Pociąg z
Warszawy spóźniłp się kilka razy „The train from Warsaw was late on a few occasions‟, where the adverbial kilka razy „a few times‟ contributes an iterative reading, or Przeczytałemp książkę za miesiąc „I read the book in one month‟, where za miesiąc „in one month‟ contributes a durative processual (non-iterative) reading. Without the durative contribution of the adverbial, the default reading is non-durative (achievement): Pociąg z Warszawy spóźniłp się „The train from Warsaw arrived late‟, Przeczytałemp książkę „I finished reading the book‟. 209
Achievements are derived from accomplishments only by prefixation to bases which inherently denote
accomplishments – primarily from verbs of motion, e.g. Pol. przyjśćp „arrive‟ from iśći „go‟. 307
Correspondingly, if Akt10 is specified as [+durative], it yields: -
an iterative, with „granular‟ concepts: Lith. barškėti, Russ. zvjakat’i „tinkle (repeatedly), rattle‟; or
-
a durative or neutral, with „non-granular‟ concepts: Lat. iocārī „play‟, OCS sŭpatii „sleep‟.
The distinction between two functional heads Akt 10 and Akt20 allows the analysis of the base of OCS sŭpatii in (53) as Root+Akt10:210
(379) ioculābātur
T0
Asp0
-bā-tur [+past]
[-pfv]
Akt20
Akt10
Root
-ul-ā- [-durative]
ioc-
[-telic] barškėdavo
[-telic][-gran] -dav-o [+past]
[-pfv]
[-telic] baršktelėdavo
-dav-o [+past]
[-pfv]
-Ø-ė- [+durative]
baršk-
[-telic]
[-telic][+gran]
-tel-ė- [-durative]
baršk-
[-telic] nudiegdavo
[-telic][+gran] -dav-o [+past]
[-pfv]
nu- [-durative]
[-telic] drĭzněašep
[-telic][+gran] -ěax-e [+past]
[-pfv]
-n- [-durative]
[-telic] drĭzaašei
drĭz[-telic][-gran]
-aax-e [+past]
[-pfv]
[-telic] posŭpaašep
dieg-
-aax-e [+past]
[-pfv]
po- [-durative]
[-telic]
-a- [+durative]
drĭz-
[-telic]
[-telic][-gran]
-a- [+durative]
sŭp-
[-telic]
[-telic][-gran]
There is no reason to assume the existence of Akt20 outside of Slavic. The Lithuanian prefixes nu- and su- mark the semelfactive interpretation of „granular‟ roots just like the Slavic suffix -nǫ, 210
I also mark the [±granular] feature on the roots. Since iterativity is always atelic, it follows that only atelic
concepts can be granular (inherently iterative) or non-granular (continuous: processual activities or states), meaning that there is a feature hierarchy [-telic] > [±granular]. 308
and are not added to suffixed verbs. There is a scale of productivity of the morphemes in (379), with zero productivity of the roots (belonging to the lexicon), various degrees of productivity of the affixes in Akt10 in the individual branches, comparatively higher productivity of Slavic po- in Akt20, and full productivity of the affixes encoding tense and viewpoint aspect in T 0 and Asp0. po-Perfectives are derived in Slavic from more complex bases, too. Janda (2007: 621) gives an example of such a derivation in Russian: ščipat’i „pinch, pluck (continuously or repeatedly‟ (vs. ščipnut’p „pinch, pluck (once)‟) → vyščipat’p „pluck out‟ → vyščipyvat’i „pluck out (continuously or repeatedly)‟ → povyščipyvat’p „pluck out (for a while)‟. Here, the prefix poattaches to a base containing the new Imperfectivizing suffix -yva- attached to the prefixed Perfective base vyščipa-p with deletion of the older Imperfectivizing suffix -a-. The semantic contribution of the prefix vy- is not only Perfectivizing, but also lexical: it changes the meaning from „pluck‟ (ščipat’i) to „pluck out‟ (vyščipat’p) by adding a recognizably directional specification. Unlike in the contrasted pair ščipat’i – ščipnut’p, where it served to distinguish the iterative from the semelfactive, the old suffix -a- plays no role in the derivation ščipat’i → vyščipat’p „pluck out‟, and the new base vyščipa-p is opaque to any semantic contribution of this suffix. The derivation ščipat’i → vyščipat’p proceeds from a base ščipa-i, rather than from the root ščip- plus prefix:211
211
Isačenko (1962: 367) claims that “The derivation of secondary Imperfectives proceeds not from the stem, but
from the verb‟s r oot .” This would mean that the direct derivation vyščipat’p → vyščipyvat’i (and also innumerable other cases: zapisat’p → zapisyvat’i „record‟, etc.) is actually an illusion, and one would have first to analyze the stem vyščipa-p to retrieve the root ščip- and then, „keeping in mind‟ the presence of the prefix, proceed to attach the new suffix -yva-. Such a derivation seems far less likely than simply deleting a suffix vowel before a vowel-initial suffix. 309
(380) [vy-[[ščip-]-a-]i]p – not *[[vy-[ščip-]]p-a-]i eventually: [po-[[vy-[[ščip-]-a-]i]p-yva-]i]p
The durative contribution of -a- < *-eh2- belongs to a chronological layer older than the telic prefix (the prefixes were originally free adverbials), and the new Slavic suffix -yva- is of more recent origin than the verbal prefixation in Slavic. Prefixes have a Perfectivizing effect in other Indo-European branches too, but no secondary Imperfectives are derived. Languages with Slavic-type aspect can derive Perfectives with a specialized meaning, which are not aspectually paired with the base Imperfective. In Slavic, the specialized Perfectives derive their own Imperfectives, therefore the suffixes in Akt 10 which derive these secondary Imperfectives are productive. The specialized Perfectives remain biaspectual in non-Slavic languages, where the morphemes in Akt10 are not productive, but are rather relics of earlier stages when they had started being productive but failed to reach full productivity and be incorporated into the system as markers of Imperfectivity (this is the case of the durative and iterative suffixes in branches other than Slavic, and of their unproductive Slavic counterparts). For instance, both Russ. bit’i and Gm. schlagen „hit, beat‟ derive a specialized Perfective with intensive meaning Russ. ubit’p, Gm. erschlagen „kill‟, but only Russian derives a secondary Imperfective ubivat’i, and a sentence with erschlagen is interpreted as Perfective unless modifiers trigger an Imperfective reading:
(381) Hans hat Kurt erschlagen. (Perfective) „Hans murdered / slew Kurt.‟
310
(382) Hans hat den ganzen Tag Läuse erschlagen. (Imperfective) „Hans slew lice all day long.‟
When a language with Slavic-type aspect possesses the morphological means to derive iteratives, it can derive them from prefixed Perfectives, e.g. Hun. tisztítani „clean‟ (Imperfective) → kitisztítani „clean up‟ (Perfective) → kitisztítgatni „keep cleaning (up)‟ (Imperfective). However, this derivation is not systematic: kitisztítani can be used Imperfectively if the context allows it, and kitisztítgatni can be used to describe a repetitive and protracted cleaning with no obvious implication that each of the cleaning sub-events is carried out to completion. In any case, the semantics of kitisztítgatni reflects the scope of the morphemes: the structure is [[ki-[tisztít-]]gat-] „clean up object1, then object2, etc.‟, rather than *[ki-[[tisztít-]gat-]], which cannot have the intended meaning of carrying out the complete cleaning of one or several objects by cleaning a part of object1, then a part of object2, then maybe again a part of object1, etc., … cleaning here and there until all objects are clean, and they can be said to have been „cleaned up‟ as a whole. I would suggest that the derivation ščipat’i → vyščipat’p is „opaque‟ to the structure of the base ščipa-i, just like the derivation pisat’i → napisat’p „write‟ is certainly „opaque‟ to the structure of the base pisa-i (root pis- visible in nouns: zapis’ „record, entry‟). As such, the function of the old suffix -a- is recognizable only when it is derivationally contrasted with other morphemes, as in ščipat’i vs. ščipnut’p.212 Otherwise, the suffix -a- must be regarded as part of an unanalyzable base ščipa-i, including in the derived Perfectives of type vyščipat’p. In cases like vyščipat’p, pisat’i, and napisat’p, where the semantic contribution of the suffix -a- is not
212
The infinitive stem is ščip-a-, the older present stem is ščip-j-e- (3.sg. ščiplet), and the present stem ščip-aj-e- is
innovated; and likewise for vyščipat’p: 3.sg.pres.(future) vyščiplet, sometimes vyščipaet. 311
apparent, I assume that this suffix is reanalyzed as part of the root. The structure of the infinitive of the verbs discussed above would be as in (383), where telicity is contributed only by the prefix (ščipat’i and pisat’i are atelic, while vyščipat’p and napisat’p are telic):213
(383) ščipat'i
T0 (Nom0?)
Asp0
-t’ [±past]
[±pfv]
Akt20
[-telic] ščipnut'
p
-t’ [±past]
[±pfv]
[-telic] vyščipat'p
-t’ [±past]
Akt10
Base (VP)
-a- [+durative]
ščip- (root)
[-telic]
[-telic][+granular]
-n-
ščip- (root)
[-durative]
[-telic][+granular]
[±pfv]
vy-ščip-a- (prefix+
[+telic]
+root+suffix) [+telic]
vyščipyvat'i
-t’ [±past]
[±pfv]
-yva- [+durative]
vy-ščip-a- (prefix+
[-telic]
+root+suffix) [+telic]
po-
-yva- [+durative]
vy-ščip-a- (prefix+
[-durative]
[-telic]
+root+suffix) [+telic]
[-telic] povyščipyvat'
p
-t’ [±past]
[±pfv]
[-telic] pisat'i
-t’ [±past]
[±pfv]
pis-a- (root+suffix)
[-telic]
[-telic][-granular] p
napisat'
-t’ [±past]
[±pfv]
na-pis-a- (prefix+
[+telic]
213
+root+suffix) [+telic]
Russian has neutral viewpoint aspect, because the Perfective-Imperfective opposition cannot be a manifestation
of viewpoint aspect, despite Smith‟s (1997: 227-262) considerations. Several Slavic languages (Old Church Slavonic, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Serbian, Sorbian) have both viewpoint aspect (aorist vs. imperfect) and Perfective-Imperfective aspect – and likewise Latin and Lithuanian, if the Perfectivizing effect of some prefixes is regarded as an incipient Perfective-Imperfective opposition, superposed on the perfective-imperfective viewpoint aspect manifested in the aorist/perfect-imperfect contrast. 312
The Imperfectivizing suffix -yva-214 being not only [+durative], but also [-telic], it cancels the telicity of the base Perfective according to the mechanism in Smith (1977: 55), yielding an atelic expression when added to a [+telic] constituent:
(384) [vyščipa-][+telic] + -yva-[+durative][-telic] = [[vyščipa-][+telic]-yva-][+durative][-telic]
The suffix PSl *-(y)va- is sometimes added to an Imperfective that is already [+durative], the result being a frequentative, as in Cz. řícip „say‟ → říkati „say‟ → říkávati „say, tell repeatedly‟. The 3.sg. present of these verbs will have the structure:215
T0
Asp0
řeknep [+telic]
-n-e-Ø [-past]
[±pfv]
říkái [-telic]
-Ø [-past]
[±pfv]
-á- [+durative][-telic]
řík - (root) [+telic]
říkávái [-telic]
-Ø [-past]
[±pfv]
-vá- [+durative][-telic]
řík-á- (root+suffix)
(385)
Akt0
Base (VP) řík- (root) [+telic]
[+durative][-telic]
The actionality heads play a role in the derivation of the indeterminate verbs of motion. If the member of the Slavic pairs (and also of the Baltic ones) are considered as derivationally related – disregarding the possible denominal origin of the indeterminates –, a comparison between Greek and Slavic will be as in (386), including the Perfectives derived from indeterminate Imperfectives. As I mentioned in the previous chapter, the indeterminate Imperfectives are 214
Also its variants: -va- after root vowel; -eva- in a few cases, cf. Isačenko (1962: 368-369).
215
The suffix -n- in the present stem of řícip is best regarded as a semantically empty morpheme. It is absent in the
Old Church Slavonic cognate (3.sg. pres. rečei/p), and sporadic elsewhere in Slavic (SCr rečep / reknep). 313
associated with the determinate Imperfectives qua determinate (e.g. Russ. xodit’i-indet „walk‟ – idtii-det „walk‟), and they derive: -
Perfectives denoting single round-trips (sxodit’p „stop by‟) from their iterative (i.e. granular) interpretation; and
-
Perfectives denoting restricted undirected motion (poxodit’p „walk for a while‟) from their non-iterative (non-granular) interpretation.
The forms represented below are the 3.sg. pres. of Gk. phérein „carry‟ and phoreĩn „carry around, wear‟, their Proto-Indo-European etymons, OCS nestii-det and nositii-indet, and Russ. xodit’i-indet „walk (around)‟, sxodit’p „stop by‟, and poxodit’p „walk for a while‟. The ablaut, both IndoEuropean (qualitative e/o) and Slavic (quantitative), is located in Asp 10 in all cases.
T0
Asp0
*bhéreti
*-e-ti
[-pfv]
[+telic]
[-past]
phérei
-ei [-past]
(386)
Akt20
Akt10
*bher- (root) [+telic]
[-pfv]
pher- (root)
[+telic]
[+telic]
*b oréieti
*-e-ti
[-telic]
[-past]
phoreĩ
-ei [-past]
h
[-pfv]
[-pfv]
[-telic] nesetŭ
i-det
-e-tŭ [-past]
ablaut e/o & *-éi-
*bher- (root)
[+durative][-telic]
[+telic]
ablaut e/o & -é-
pher- (root)
[+durative][-telic]
[+telic]
[-pfv]
nes- (root)
[+telic] nositŭi-indet
[+telic] -tŭ [-past]
[-pfv]
[-telic] xoditi-indet
-t [-past]
[±pfv]
[-telic] p
sxodit
Base (VP)
-t [-past]
[±pfv]
s- [-durative]
[-telic]
314
ablaut e/o & -i-
nes- (root)
[+durative][-telic]
[+telic]
ablaut e/o & -i-
*xed- (root)
[+durative][-telic]
[+telic]
ablaut e/o & -i-
*xed- (root)
[+durative][-telic]
[+telic]
(single-act) poxoditp
[+granular] -t [-past]
[±pfv]
po- [-durative]
ablaut e/o & -i-
*xed- (root)
[-telic]
[+durative][-telic]
[+telic]
(delimitative)
[-granular]
Given the [+granular] vs. [-granular] specifications of the base Imperfective xodit’i-indet, the feature [-durative] on the prefixes s- and po- in Asp20 is sufficient to yield the semelfactive (single-act) and delimitative meanings of the Perfectives: non-durativity picks out a single instance of a repeated event and a limited portion of a continuous atelic durative. The positioning of po- in the head Asp20, absent outside of Balto-Slavic, accords with Dickey‟s (2007) observation that this prefix was originally completive, used to derive Perfectives paired with Imperfectives, and extended in Russian its delimitative value gradually from the 11 th to the 19th century. Elsewhere in Balto-Slavic (especially in Baltic and South Slavic), it retains its primary function of deriving completive Perfectives, and so does its Baltic cognate pa-. The position of s- in Asp20 likewise reflects the limited distribution of this prefix with a semelfactive function in motion verbs: this function is in fact confined to Russian. In conclusion, the head Akt10 is of Indo-European date, and hosts morphemes whose [-durative] or [+durative][-telic] features serve to modify the situation type manifested in the VP; Akt 20 was created in BaltoSlavic (or in either Slavic or Baltic and subsequently extended to the other sub-branch), and is consistently non-durative. As far as I can determine, the phasal prefixes (ingressive, terminative, and delimitative) are only encountered in Balto-Slavic, where, in contrast to the variety of completive prefixes, the phasal functions are assigned most frequently to a closed set of prefixes;
315
in Slavic, these are *za-, *otŭ-, and *po-,216 and this late formal and functional addition to the Indo-European system is the result of the creation of Akt 2P in (Balto-)Slavic, with the prefixes *za-, *otŭ-, and *po- in their respective functions occupying the head Akt 20 and focusing endpoints of the event. The phasal prefixes appeared and spread later than the completive ones (Bermel 1997) in Slavic, and since the completives only refer to the end of a telic event, BaltoSlavic created the phasals in order to be able to focus both the beginning and the end of any type of situation. Other languages do have completive prefixes, but they are often optional; since not every verb is overtly marked as Perfective or Imperfective, there is less motivation to complete the system by creating mechanisms to focus endpoints of the situation other than the end of telic events. The high position (Akt20) of the delimitative, ingressive, and terminative prefixes is most conclusively entailed by the fact that these verbs usually do not derive secondary Imperfectives (Janda 2007), the structural reason for this fact being that the phasal prefixes are higher (in Akt20) than the head where the Imperfective morphology is located (in Akt 10). On the other hand, some inceptive and delimitative Perfectives do derive secondary Imperfectives. If the focused beginning of a base event0 is individuated as event1, its durativity can be expressed by an Imperfective (with the Imperfective morphology in a head Akt 30 above Akt20): Russ. spat’i „sleep‟ (event0) > zaspat’p „fall asleep‟ (focused beginning of event0 > event1) > zasypat’i „fall asleep‟. For 3.sg. pres. zasypaeti „(s)he is falling asleep‟:
216
These prefixes are used in other functions as well – namely, to denote completion of the action or to change the
lexical meaning of the base Imperfective, e.g. SCr. pògledatip „take a look‟ vs. durative gledatii „look‟ (and iterative poglédatip „glance from time to time‟). Here I only consider the cases where they focus endpoints. 316
T0
Asp0
Akt30
Akt20
Akt10
Root
zasypaetp
-et
[±pfv]
Ø//y + -a- [-telic]
za-
-a- [-telic]
*cъп-
[-telic]
[-past]
[+durative]
[-durative]
[+durative]
[-telic]
(387)
„Falling asleep‟ is easily conceivable as an individual event (one can notice it going on), but in most other cases the secondary Imperfective are used mostly with plural or collective subjects, where the event consists of repeated sub-events, as in „the birds start singing‟: Russ. pet’i „sing‟ > zapet’p „start singing‟ > zapevat’i „start singing‟ (with plural subject). The order of suffixes in Hungarian, which can derive causative from iteratives but not iteratives from causatives, suggests a position of Caus0 above Akt10 and below a suffix indicating potentiality inherent in the subject, which I will assume to be in a head Mod 10 where such potentials, as well as desideratives (in Sanskrit) are located: tol- „push, shove‟ → tologat- „keep pushing / shuffle‟ (iterative: Akt10) → tologattat- „cause to keep pushing‟ (causative: Caus0) → tologattathat- „be able to cause to keep pushing‟ (potential: Mod 10). Mod10 contains morphemes referring to states internal to the subject: potentiality and volition – a kind of „subject-internal modality‟. Distinct from Mod10 is Mod20, which contains modal morphology; in Hungarian and Sanskrit, 217 Mod20 contains the suffixes for the subjunctive and optative (and also the imperative), e.g. Hun. optative tologattathatna „he might / could be able to cause to keep pushing‟ (not really used, but interpretable). Like the Causer, the subject of verbs with „subjectinternal modality‟ is external to the event. This structural hierarchy is as below, with the inflectional heads T0, Mod20, Asp0 (modern Hungarian has neutral viewpoint aspect; the imperfect fell out of use in the 19th century), and higher than the derivational heads Mod 10,
217
Sanskrit desiderative: 3.sg.act. cikīrṣati „wants to do‟ (reduplication, root ablaut, s-suffix; root kr- „do‟). 317
Caus0, and Akt10, in this order, if the head hierarchy visible in Greek 218 Mod20 > Asp0 can be extrapolated to Hungarian:219
(388) tologattathatna
T0
Mod20
Asp0
Mod10
Caus0
Akt10
Root
Ø[-past]
-ná-
Ø[±pfv]
-hat-
-tat-
-(o)-gat-
tol-
The second conditional (irrealis) 3.sg. tologattathatott volna „he might / could have been able to cause to keep pushing‟ has Mod20 separated from the lexical verb, and attached to the light verb vol- „be‟ (assuming here for the sake of the argument that the meaning of the irrealis is compositionally derived somehow from realis + past):
(389) tologattathatott volna
Mod20
LV
T0
Asp0
Mod10
Caus0
Akt10
Root
-na
vol-
Ø[-past]
Ø[±pfv]
-hat-
-tat-
-(o)-gat-
tol-
So far I have been assuming that Akt 1P embeds the entire VP, including AgP. However, if Akt10 were above Ag0, the Agent would not have scope over modes of action involving intensity (attenuatives and the intensives), which intuitively relate to agency. These modes of action are
218
E.g. 3.sg. optative aorist poieúsaimi „I might be able to make‟: poieúRoot-saorist-aioptative-mi1.sg, with aorist in Asp0 as
viewpoint aspect closer to the root, hence lower in the structure, than the optative in Mod 1 as „subject-external‟ modality. 219
Some English double modals might contain the two kinds of modality: in he must can hit, when can refers to the
subject‟s physical ability, it will be in Mod10, and must, denoting objective (subject-external) modality, will be in Mod20. Diachronically, the morpheme in Mod10 was reanalyzed as objective modality in Mod20: he can / could / might write a letter [he is / was able [to write a letter]] (no AgP in the embedded clause) > [POSSIBLE [he to do]] (with AgP in the embedded clause, and he as an Agent in SpecAgP). 318
most likely expressed in Akt10, because iterative affixes can often have an intensive value (Dressler 1968), and the attenuatives usually imply short duration as well. Since AgP corresponds to Kratzer‟s (1996) voice head, Ag0 should host passive morphology, which deletes the Agent theta-role of the base (active) verb. Indo-European does not provide clues as to the hierarchical order of AktP and AgP; Sanskrit employs a suffix -ya- in the derivation of passives, which are formed directly on the root,220 and root reduplication in the derivation of intensives, so the order of morphemes in a passive intensive gives no indication about the hierarchy of AgP and AktP. For example: root tud- „strike‟ > passive tudya- „be stricken‟, intensive med. totudya„strike hard‟; the latter form has middle voice, but is marked with a suffix identical to the passive one; whether or not the two -ya- suffixes are one and the same, both Ag0 > Akt10 and Akt10 > Ag0 are conceivable. On the other hand, an indication of the order Akt 10 > Ag0 (Akt10 above Ag0) might come from the order of suffixes in Slavic: in the derivation Russ. otmetit’p → otmečat’i „note, remark‟, the Imperfectivizing suffix -a- (in Akt10) is added to the existing suffix -i- of the Perfective,221 which typically marks verbs with Agent arguments. If this -i- is situated in Ag0, this position between the root and the actionality suffix in Akt 10 would suggest the order Akt10 > Ag0.222 I consider this to be a possibility, even if remote; however, the argument for the reverse order
220
Only the causative and desiderative morphemes can intervene, in passives of causatives and desideratives: root
nī- „lead‟ > causative nāya- „make to lead‟ > passive causative nāyya- „be made to lead‟; root kr- „do‟ > desiderative cikīrṣa- „want to do‟ > cikīrṣya- „is wanted to do‟. 221
-i- + -a- > -ja-: ot-met-i- + -a- > ot-met-ja- > ot-meča-.
222
Unlike the prefixes which adjoin other functional heads in the VP, -i- cannot have an aspectual value, because an
Agent‟s participation in the event only involves its agentivity, and the extent to which the Agent itself participates is irrelevant (there are no „incremental Agents‟; cf. Tenny 1994). 319
based on the semantics of the intensives and attenuatives as intuitively involving agency is not very strong either: Sanskrit does derive intensives from intransitives and other non-agentives, e.g. bobho- (< bh - „be, become‟), vevid- (< vid- „know‟), med. soṣupya- (< svap- „sleep‟). The denotations of the actionality affixes proposed in the next section do not imply any particular affinity of individual modes of action for any particular arguments, because they only involve the event identified by the sentence. There is one apparent exception to the structural hierarchy tense >… > VP: in Greek and ancient Indo-Iranian, the morpheme order is prefix – temporal augment (tense marker), which is not what is to be expected if prefixes are merged lower than tense. The exception is only apparent, because synchronically the augment is not a prefix, but a morphological operation on the root (like the reduplication, and perhaps the infixation). In Greek for example, it can be represented as an extension of the root in a manner generally depending on the shape of the root: e- in consonant-initial roots, or lengthening of the root-initial vowel. In the putative common ancestor of Greek, Armenian, and Indo-Iranian, e- was probably a prefix, but the particles which would later become verbal prefixes were most likely free adverbials. It is only (long) after e- had coalesced with the root (and the reduplication, in the pluperfect) that prefixes started being reanalyzed as preverbs.
5.6 The semantics of the actionality morphemes The denotations of the morphemes in Akt10 reflect their role as operators on events, restricting the range of situation types that the event argument may have. Diesing (2000) describes a crosslinguistically atypical operator in Yiddish, which yields a „truncated event‟, and can apply to any situation type:
320
(390) [[Asp]] = λpstλes[p(e) & e's[e e' & p(e')] & Small(p)(e)]
The condition e's[e e' & p(e')] restricts the range of events e which can be identified in an aspectually marked sentence by requiring that these events may not be contained in larger events identified by the same proposition p. With a „granular‟ root like Rus. čix- „sneeze‟, this condition is contributed by the semelfactive suffix in čixnut’p „sneeze (once)‟: a single act of sneezing is the smallest event which can be described by the root čix- in a sneezing fit. The denotation of an arbitrary semelfactive affix Akt[semelfactive] will be:
(391) [[Akt[semelfactive]]] = λfstλes[f(e) & e's[e e' & f(e')]]
The denotation of an attenuative suffix like Lat. -ul- in ioculārī „joke‟ (vs. iocāre „play‟) will contain the third conjunct in (390):
(392) [[Akt[attenuative]]] = λfstλes[f(e) & Small(f)(e)]
The Lithuanian suffixes which allow both a semelfactive and an attenuative reading, discussed in section 5.4.3, will combine (391) and (392):
(393) [[Akt[semelfactive/attenuative]]] = λfstλes[f(e) & [e's[e e' & f(e')] Small(f)(e)]]
Affixes denoting durativity likewise select the types of events which can be identified in sentences with the respective verbs: (394) is the denotation of the stative marker -ē- in Lat.
321
albēre „be white‟, (395) is the denotation of the processual marker -sc- in Lat. albēscere „become white‟ or -ül- in Hun. épülni „get built‟ (there is no need here to add [-telic],223 because the roots themselves are „atelic‟, i.e. the verbs do not have directional arguments), and (396) is the denotation of an iterative, like Rus. -a- in končat’i (derived from the primary Perfective končit’p) and -yva- in the secondary Imperfective perepisyvat’i (derived from the prefixed Perfective perepisat’p) „copy‟.
(394) [[Akt[stative]]] = λfstλes[f(e) & Static(f)(e)]
(395) [[Akt[processual]]] = λfstλes[f(e) & Dynamic(f)(e) & Durative(f)(e)]
(396) [[Akt[iterative]]] = λfstλes[f(e) & e1 s…en s[ei[ei e & f(ei)]]], i {1,…n}
In (396), the second conjunct does not specify whether or not the subevents e i are discrete, leaving open the possibility for e to be construed as non-granular, i.e. as processual, by merger of the subevents e1,…en, which yields the processual reading of the derived Imperfectives: Russ. perepisyvat’i can mean not only „rewrite / copy several times‟ (iterative), but also „be rewriting / copying‟ (processual). The effect of the second conjunct in (396) is to delete transitions at the level of e, because the number of subevents n is not specified, and can be indefinitely high, but always bigger than 1; this explains the Imperfectivizing effect of the iteratives. 223
The fact that the correlation between being and becoming in Lat. albēre vs. albēscere is cognitively and
linguistically relevant is suggested by the semantic development of the PIE root *bhuhx-, which can mean either „be‟ or „become‟, or both, in the attested languages: „be‟ in Germanic and Balto-Slavic, „become‟ in Latin and Greek, and both in Sanskrit. The suffixes -ē- and -sc- serve to disambiguate the meanings of type „be / become x‟. 322
The denotation of a frequentative suffix, like -va- in Cz. říkávati „say / speak often‟ ← říkati „say / speak‟ ← řícip „say‟, with -a-[iterative] in a head Akt110 and -va-[frequentative] in a head Akt210 (by duplicating Akt10), must specify that the sub-events themselves are iterative (the operation can apply recursively, and derive říkávávati „keep saying / speaking often‟):
(397) [[Akt[frequentative]]] = λfstλes[f(e) & e1 s…en s[ei[ei e & f(ei) & & e1i s…emi s[eji[ej ei & f(ej)]]]]], i {1,…n}, j {1,…m}
Various combinations of actionality are theoretically possible, and some are also in use, e.g. Hun. processual készül „get ready‟ (vs. készít „make ready‟) → iterative (> durative‟) készülget „keep getting ready, be busy preparing oneself, take a long time to prepare oneself‟:224
(398) [[-ül-[processual]]] = λfstλes[f(e) & Dynamic(f)(e) & Durative(f)(e)] [[készül-]] = λes[get-ready(e) & Dynamic(f)(e) & Durative(f)(e)]225 [[-get-[iterative]]] = λfstλes[f(e) & e1 s…en s[ei[ei e & f(ei)]]] [[készülget-]] = [[-get-[iterative]]]([[készül-]]) = = λes[get-ready(e) & Dynamic(f)(e) & Durative(f)(e) & e1 s…en s[ei[ei e & f(ei)]]]
224
As I have been doing so far, I do not represent thematic information in the denotation of verbal roots: they only
denote the verbal concept e.g. „sell‟ vs. „give‟. Roots and stems (roots expanded by affixes) are interpretable independently of the associated arguments. 225
The formulation is not redundant: get-ready may suggest by itself the features [+dynamic][+durative], but this is
a deficiency of the metalanguage; what is meant by get-ready is in fact a concept of readiness that is unspecified as to stativity („be ready‟) or processuality („get ready‟). 323
Phasal affixes make reference to points of the event. (401) requires that the sentence identify a situation whose beginning I is identified in the same way as the situation identified in the sentence with an ingressive („starting reading‟ as part of the „reading‟), (402) requires that the sentence identify a situation whose end F is identified in the same way as the situation identified in the sentence with a terminative („stop loving‟ as the final moments of love), and (403) requires that the situation identified in the sentence with a delimitative should have a beginning and an end identifiable in the same way as the situation itself (the beginning and end of a short nap are can themselves be described as „sleep‟).
(399) I = λfstλes[e's[e' e & f(e') & e"s[e" < e' → f(e")]]] – type (st)ss
(400) F = λfstλes[e's[e' e & f(e') & e"s[e' < e" → f(e")]]] – type (st)ss
(401) [[Akt[ingressive]]] = λfstλes[f(e) & e's[e' = I(f)(e)]]
(402) [[Akt[terminative]]] = λfstλes[f(e) & e's[e' = F(f)(e)]]
(403) [[Akt[delimitative]]] = λfstλes[f(e) & e's[e' = I(f)(e)] & e''s[e'' = F(f)(e)]]
As all three classes of phasals denote transitions (the functions I and / or F), all these verbs are Perfective. If the limits of the situation are individuated as events, they will receive a different linguistic description, i.e. will be identified by sentences different from the ones which identify the situation itself: if the „falling-asleep‟ denoted by Russ. zaspat’p / zasnut’p is construed as
324
qualitatively different from the sleep itself, the condition f(e') in the second conjunct of (399) becomes inapplicable and is deleted (404), yielding the denotation of a verb whose ingressive character is accessory – after the individuation of the event of „falling-asleep‟:
(404) I' = λfstλes[e's[e' e & e"s[e" < e' → f(e")]]] – type (st)ss
(405) [[za-[ingressive]]] = λfstλes[f(e) & e's[e' = I'(f)(e)]] = = λfstλes[f(e) & e's[e' e & e"s[e" < e' → f(e")]]]
The second conjunct in (405) describes a transition between situations, therefore the verb is Perfective, and can derive an Imperfective zasypat’i, with the Imperfectivizing morphology (lengthening of the root vowel plus suffix -a-) having the denotation of an iterative liable to be construed as a processual by merger of subevents (396). The transition in (405) gets deleted by the application of the iterative operator, as I explained above. The denotations of the phasal operators in (401)-(403) account for the opacity of the respective verbs to argument structure – most conspicuously, for their non-agentivity, cf. (375) –, since they make no reference to thetaroles (the variable f is a proposition).
5.7 Conclusions and further issues The conclusions about the structural localization of aspectual constrasts reached in the preceding sections can be summarizes as follows: -
viewpoint aspect is confined to AspP
-
Slavic-type aspect is distributed on functional heads below AspP
325
-
Perfectives outside Slavic are derived inside the VP
-
situation aspect is determined below AspP, consisting of Slavic-type aspect (on the functional heads) + contribution of adjuncts (e.g.: a sentence with a completive Perfective plus adverbs of frequency can express an iterative activity)
A further set of conclusions can be formulated regarding the locus of derivation of the aspectual forms, classifying the aspectual classes according to the productivity of the morphological marker and the locus of derivation (lexicon vs. syntax): a) productive (or almost) nowadays, to the extent that they can be derived ad hoc, with the derivation taking place in syntax – in Slavic and Hungarian: -
the secondary Imperfectives in Slavic: Russ. perepisat’p – perepisyvat’i „copy‟;
-
the iteratives with the suffix -gat/get- when attaching freely: szépítgetni (magát) „arrange / dress up (oneself)‟ (szép „nice‟ + causative -ít- + iterative -get-); but not otherwise: beszélgetni „talk, discuss‟ vs. beszélni „speak‟, üldögélni „sit around/ about, lounge‟ vs. ülni „sit‟;
-
the phasal Perfectives: Russ. pet’i „sing‟ > zapet’p „start singing‟ (inceptive), popet’p „sing for a while‟ (delimitative);
-
possibly the Slavic semelfactives with the suffix PSl *-nǫ-: Russ. čixnut’p „sneeze (once)‟ vs. čixat’i „sneeze (repeatedly)‟;
b) productive at some time and place in a segment of the speech community in the past or present, but failing to spread to the entire speech community and become fully productive; the respective formations would have been derived in syntax at the time and place where they appear(ed), but otherwise stocked in the lexicon nowadays:
326
-
all suffixed verbs in Indo-European and Hungarian except the Slavic and Hungarian ones mentioned above;
-
one or two classes of prefixed Perfectives in Slavic, Yiddish (and possibly Baltic): the cumulative Russ. napeč'p „bake a (certain, but usually large) quantity of‟ vs. peč’i „bake‟, Yiddish onbakn „bake an accumulation of‟;
c) non-productive, with affixes filling in syntactic structures with material from the lexicon, and having essentially the status of idioms: -
all the other prefixed verbs. In this chapter and the previous one I have investigated aspectual phenomena manifested
outside and inside the VP respectively. Not discussed here, and not classified into either of these two categories, are the perfect (in its various shapes and functions) and the aspectual forms in English. I have left them out because their inclusion would have extended the scope of this work beyond the boundaries of its present feasibility. I will only mention here the approach I envisage for their treatment: the proposal is to connect the habitual, the progressive, the perfect, as well as the resultative constructions, to argument structure, but in a manner different from the one observable in Slavic-type aspect. What these forms have in common is the fact that they involve states in various ways: the habitual – a state described by a habit; the perfect – a resultative state; and the English progressive stands in complementary distribution with states (stative verbs do not have progressive forms). I suggest that this connection with stativity results from certain properties of Location and Quality arguments. This hypothesis is based mainly on the analysis of Basque data, where morphology, syntax, and semantics point towards a link between the progressive, habitual, perfect, and prospective (as I defined it earlier in this chapter). If the function of the Location arguments is expanded in a cross-category generalization to include
327
temporal relations, various empirical facts and theoretical considerations converge towards the conclusion that the progressive and the habitual are manifested as temporal Locations in the LocP, the perfect as a temporal Source or point of reference in a static retrospective situation, and the prospective (the Basque „future‟) and the resultative as temporal Goals. Sometimes, this status is reflected in the morphology – for example, both the English and the Basque progressives are marked as locatives (John is writing < „John is at writing‟; Basque employs a verbal noun in the locative), and the Basque prospective has a verbal noun with an ending meaning „pertaining to, for the purpose of, tending to‟. This does not exclude the possibility of expressing the respective semantics in other morphemes – for instance, the relation S < R between situation time and reference time in the perfect will belong to the denotations of the lowest locational argument in English and Basque, but of the perfect morphology (root reduplication and suffix) in Greek, which is most likely located in AspP, in complementary distribution with the morphemes expressing viewpoint aspect proper (aorist and imperfect). Likewise, a habitual interpretation can result either from a temporal Location (habit regarded as a state described by a habit) or from an additional element in the durativity / iterativity denoted by an AktP. In any case, structural factors are as important as the semantics for the function of the aspectual forms.
328
6 SUMMARY
The analyses in the preceding chapters substantiate the often made observation that aspect is a multilayered phenomenon. At least five dimensions of this phenomenon can be distinguished: 1) situation aspect, classifying situations according to three criteria: dynamism (states vs. events), durativity, and telicity; 2) viewpoint aspect, determining the relationship between reference time and situation time; 3) Slavic-type aspect, having to do with the presence vs. absence of relevant transitions between situations; 4) actionality (Aktionsart), which refers, in addition to the situation types, to other (temporal) properties of situations: intensive, accelerative, attenuative, etc.; and 5) state-related aspect (briefly mentioned at the end of chapter 5), which involves states either directly (habitual, perfect as resultative) or indirectly (progressive: non-habitual / contingent activity). These dimensions are related in specific ways: -
(4) & (1): (4) is related to (1) in that it includes some situation types, but its major function is that of an operator on events, deriving ingressives, iteratives, etc.;
-
(4) & (3): (3) and (4) are the ingredients of aspect in Slavic; (3) derives lexical Perfectives, and (4) derives secondary Imperfectives, as well as semelfactive and superlexical Perfectives. Non-Slavic languages usually have only (3), and derive neither secondary Imperfectives nor (except Baltic) semelfactives or superlexical Perfectives; in addition, actionality is a component of Slavic-type aspect in that the perfectivizing role of prefixes can involve an accelerative manner of action (Aktionsart in the traditional sense); and
329
-
(5) & (2): both describe relations between reference time and situation time, but viewpoint aspect proper involves relations of inclusion, whereas state-related aspect involves sequence.
Syntactic structure plays a crucial role in aspectual interpretation: -
Slavic-type aspect (as well as state-related aspect, at least partly) is manifested inside the VP by properties of the argument heads or of the arguments themselves: it results mainly from inherent or modified properties of syntactic arguments – namely, completely affected Themes, or the presence of Goals / Recipients / Sources / Perdants in the verb‟s theta-grid;
-
viewpoint aspect and actionality (and also state-related aspect, in some languages) are manifested outside the VP in specific functional heads, and there can be multiple actionality heads – deriving, for instance, frequentatives from iteratives, iteratives from ingressives derived in turn from statives, etc.; and
-
situation aspect is not a localized syntactic phenomenon: the situation type described by a sentence is the resultant of several factors, e.g. the presence of duration adverbials which can convert a basic achievement interpretation (punctual) into an accomplishment (durative).
In particular, argument structure is a major factor in Slavic-type aspect: -
the presence of a directional argument (Goal, Source, Recipient, Perdant) renders a verb inherently Perfective; Imperfective motion verbs behave like Perfectives when they have a Goal argument; and
-
the presence of a prefix denoting the complete involvement of an incremental Theme has a Perfectivizing effect.
The role of argument structure in aspectual interpretation becomes most clearly visible in connection with the syntactic representation of precisely defined theta-roles:
330
-
the data from the languages discussed here support a structural hierarchy Causer > Agent > Affectee > Theme > Location > Quality;
-
genuine deviations from this hierarchy are explainable diachronically by the preservation of structure under change of theta-roles, e.g. [Agent – Theme] in Lat. continēre „hold together‟ → [Location – Experiencer] in contain; and
-
apparent deviations are due to the semantic proximity of specific theta-roles, e.g. in give Bill (Experiencer) a book vs. give a book to Bill (Goal).
The view of argument structure proposed here accounts also for certain applicative constructions which do not involve aspect, like the locational and comitative applicatives. The elements of this theory, which is based on a reconsideration of the theta-roles and their representation in syntax on the one hand, and on the structural location of aspectual phenomena on the other hand, support each other and create a coherent picture.
331
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