Causation, Permission, and Transfer: Argument realisation in GET, TAKE, PUT, GIVE and LET verbs

508 Pages·2015·9.66 MB·English

by  Brian Nolan

Causation, Permission, and Transfer
Studies in Language Companion Series (SLCS)
issn 0165-7763
his series has been established as a companion series to the periodical
Studies in Language.
For an overview of all books published in this series, please see
http://benjamins.com/catalog/slcs
Editors
Werner Abraham Elly van Gelderen
University of Vienna / Arizona State University
University of Munich
Editorial Board
Bernard Comrie Christian Lehmann
Max Planck Institute, Leipzig University of Erfurt
and University of California, Santa Barbara
Marianne Mithun
William Crot University of California, Santa Barbara
University of New Mexico
Heiko Narrog
Östen Dahl Tohuku University
University of Stockholm
Johanna L. Wood
Gerrit J. Dimmendaal University of Aarhus
University of Cologne
Debra Ziegeler
Ekkehard König University of Paris III
Free University of Berlin
Volume 167
Causation, Permission, and Transfer. Argument realisation in GET, TAKE,
PUT, GIVE and LET verbs
Edited by Brian Nolan, Gudrun Rawoens and Elke Diedrichsen
Causation, Permission,
and Transfer
Argument realisation in GET, TAKE, PUT,
GIVE and LET verbs
Edited by
Brian Nolan
Institute of Technology, Blachardstown Dublin, Ireland
Gudrun Rawoens
Ghent University
Elke Diedrichsen
Microsot European Headquarters, Dublin, Ireland
John Benjamins Publishing Company
Amsterdam / Philadelphia
TM he paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
8
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of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984.
 ./slcs.
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  () /  (-)
      ()
      (-)
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Table of contents
Introduction 1
Brian Nolan, Elke Diedrichsen and Gudrun Rawoens
chapter 1
Encoding transfer, let/allow and permission in Modern Irish:
Interaction of causation, event chaining, argument realisation
and syntactic variation 13
Brian Nolan
chapter 2
Degrees of causativity in German lassen causative constructions 53
Elke Diedrichsen
chapter 3
Grammaticalization of ‘give’ in Slavic between drit and contact:
Causative, modal, imperative, existential, optative and volative
constructions 107
Ruprecht von Waldenfels
chapter 4
‘Give’ and semantic maps 129
Jeremy Collins
chapter 5
How Europeans GIVE: A two-layered semantic typology based
on two parallel corpora 147
Natalia Levshina
chapter 6
Ditransitive constructions in Gan Chinese: A case study
of the Yichun dialect 177
XuPing Li
vi Causation, Permission, and Transfer
chapter 7
he argument realisation of give and take verbs in Māori 195
Aoife Finn
chapter 8
GIVE and its arguments in Bohairic Coptic 227
Ewa D. Zakrzewska
chapter 9
Giving is receiving: he polysemy of the GET/GIVE verb [tie53] in Shaowu 253
Sing Sing Ngai
chapter 10
Enabling and allowing in Hebrew: A Usage-Based Construction
Grammar account 271
Elitzur Dattner
chapter 11
Low-level patterning of pronominal subjects and verb tenses in English 295
John Newman
chapter 12
he morphological, syntactic and semantic interface
of the verb GIVE in Lithuanian 327
Jone Bruno
chapter 13
Rise and fall of the take-future in written Estonian 353
Ilona Tragel, Külli Habicht and Piret Piiroja
chapter 14
Causation in the Australian dialects Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara 385
Conor Pyle
chapter 15
he fare causative derivation in Italian: A review 425
Alessio S. Frenda
chapter 16
Information-structural encoding of recipient in non-canonical
alignments of Persian: A constructional account 463
Farhad Moezipour
Index 491
Introduction
Brian Nolan, Elke Diedrichsen and Gudrun Rawoens
his book ofers a comprehensive investigative study of the argument realisa-
tion of the concepts of causative purpose, permit, let/allow and transfer in a broad
cross-linguistic typologically diverse mix of languages with GIVE, GET, TAKE, PUT,
and LET verbs. his volume stands as the irst systematic exploration of these
verbs and concepts as they occur in complex events and clauses. he theme of the
book is the cross-linguistic argument realisation and syntactic variation of one
or more of these verbs with the emphasis on causative purpose, permit, let/allow
and transfer. As such, this book brings together scholars and researchers, from
a variety of functionally inspired theoretical backgrounds, who have worked on
these verbs within one language or from a cross-linguistic perspective. he gener-
al objective is, through studying their semantics and syntax within the framework
of functional, cognitive and constructional approaches, to arrive at a better un-
derstanding of the cross linguistic behaviour of the GET, TAKE, PUT, GIVE and LET
verbs and their inter-relationships within a contemporary cognitive-functional
linguistic perspective.
In this book a wide variety of languages is represented, ranging across
Modern Irish, German, Slavic including West Slavic (Polish, Czech, Slovak and
Sorbian) and Western South Slavic (Slovenian and Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian),
Germanic, Romance and Slavic language groups, Gan Chinese Yichun dialect,
Māori, Bohairic Coptic, Shaowu Chinese, Hebrew, English, Lithuanian, Estonian,
the Australian dialects Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara, Italian, and Persian.
Topics discussed include argument structure and the diferent ways of the en-
coding of arguments under causation, permission and transfer verbs, the lexical
semantics and event structure of these verbs and the synchronic and diachronic
accounts of constructions with causative purpose, permit, let/allow and transfer.
his book includes investigations of previously understudied languages, language
families and dialects.
he purpose of the book is therefore to draw a comprehensive, representa-
tive and detailed picture of the vast polysemy, multi-functionality and dynamics
doi 10.1075/slcs.167.001int
© 2015 John Benjamins Publishing Company
2 Brian Nolan, Elke Diedrichsen and Gudrun Rawoens
of causation, permission and transfer verbs across the languages under study in
order to arrive at a better understanding of the cross linguistic behaviour of these
verbs.
Since Comrie’s (1976) discussion (in Shibatani 1976) on the grammatical sta-
tus of the causee nominal, there has been considerable interest in the typological
literature of causative constructions. Indeed, Masayoshi Shibatani (2002: 1) notes
that:
…, no grammatical description can be complete without a discussion of caus-
ative constructions, because every human language seems to possess a means
of expressing the notion of causation, and this ubiquity, in turn, indicates the
fundamental nature of this cognitive category. Such a basic category in human
conceptualization is an ideal ield of investigation for cross-linguistic comparison
leading to the study of language universals and cross-linguistic variation.
Causation has been characterised in a number of ways in linguistic accounts. One
such account is from Talmy (2000: 407f.) who characterises the impact of force
dynamics over event chains in semantic terms such that force dynamics is shown
to play a structuring role across a range of language levels and has direct implica-
tions for argument realisation. Force dynamics is seen in this perspective as hav-
ing a systematic motivation that structures conceptual material across a linguistic
range, in particular across an event frame. Causation is understood as a relation
between two events and therefore we need a level of abstract representation be-
tween the event structure consisting of two sub-events connected by a causal rela-
tion and the type of causative construction. he causal event chain is demarcated
by the initial volitional agentive act and by the inal goal that the agent intends as
a result of this act. he time interval between the causing event and the caused
event is perhaps one of the most important features distinguishing direct and
indirect causation. he notions of direct and indirect causation have also been
addressed in Dixon (2010: 67) where directness of causation is identiied as one of
the relevant semantic parameters of interest.
Notwithstanding that a great deal about the nature and grammar of causation
is still a mystery, research on causation within the functionalist and typological
perspectives Van Valin (2005: 42; n5), and Song (1996: Ch. 1), has converged on the
idea that complex events are structured into an inner and an outer event where the
outer event is associated with causation and agency and the inner event is associ-
ated with telicity and change of state. Many scholars realise that treating causation
and, in particular, indirect causation as involving an identical ‘CAUSE’ predicate
is a signiicant oversimpliication of the richness of causation and its resonances in
event chaining and syntax within the languages of the world. As we will see, direct
and indirect causality may be represented by ‘CAUSE’, as in [doʹ (x) CAUSE predʹ
Introduction 3
(y)], while permissive causality can, for example, easily be represented by ‘PERMIT’,
‘LET’, or ‘ALLOW’, as appropriate, in any logical meta-representation.
Our goal in this book is to investigate, in a range of functionally motivat-
ed approaches, the use of functional, cognitive and constructional approaches to
understanding the cross-linguistic behaviour of the verbs GET, GIVE, PUT, TAKE
and LET and the contribution to these given by the concepts permit, let/allow and
transfer and their argument realisation in various syntactic constructions. he
selection of GET verbs as a research topic was motivated in several ways and ex-
plained by their high frequency, their formal and semantic complexity, their high
variability in cross linguistic comparisons and their susceptibility to semantic
extension and to grammaticalization. here is already a substantial body of re-
search on GIVE verbs (Lenz & Rawoens 2012; Diedrichsen 2012; Nolan 2012a, b,
2013; Gronemeyer 1999), the verbal converses of GET verbs (Newman 1996 and
Newman 1997). We address the following main topics and research issues with
respect to understanding the cross-linguistic behaviour of the verbs GET, GIVE,
PUT, TAKE and LET and the concepts permit, let/allow and transfer:
– Mapping at the syntax-semantics interface across these (mostly) 3place verbs
– he argument structure of GET, GIVE, PUT, TAKE and LET verbs
– he lexical semantics and event structure of GET, GIVE, PUT and TAKE and LET
verbs
– Argument realisation of GET, GIVE, PUT, TAKE and LET verbs in morphosyntax
– he encoding of the signiicant thematic roles in these 3place syntactic
constructions
– Symmetries and asymmetries in the encoding of arguments in constructions
using GET, GIVE, PUT, TAKE and LET verbs
– Grammaticalisation with GET, GIVE, PUT, TAKE and LET
– GET, GIVE, PUT and TAKE in a constructional perspective
– Information structure in constructions with GET, GIVE, PUT, TAKE and LET
he aim of the book is to draw a comprehensive, representative and detailed
picture of the vast polysemy, multifunctionality and dynamics of GET, GIVE, PUT
and TAKE verbs across languages. As these are highly dynamic verbs, we need to
understand the behaviours and also syntactic construction patterns in consider-
ably more detail. hrough a number of case studies with data examples across
a wide variety of languages, the papers in this book explore the speciication of
the mapping at the syntax-semantic interface across these concepts and how this
can account for the degree of syntactic variation found within their realisation as
verbs. In the book, we treat the role of lexical semantics and event structure of the
causation, permission and transfer verbs and how these mediate the realisation