Morphology-Driven Syntax: A theory of V to I raising and pro-drop

307 Pages·1999·0.955 MB·English

by  Bernhard Wolfgang Rohrbacher

MORPHOLOGY-DRIVEN SYNTAX
LINGUISTIK AKTUELL
This series provides a platform for studies in the syntax,
semantics, and pragmatics of the Germanic languages
and their historical developments.
The focus of the series is represented by its German title
Linguistik Aktuell (Linguistics Today).
Texts in the series are in English.
Series Editor
Werner Abraham
Germanistisch Instituut
Rijksuniversiteit Groningen
Oude Kijk in ’t Jatstraat 26
9712 EK Groningen
The Netherlands
E-mail: [email protected]
Advisory Editorial Board
Guglielmo Cinque (University of Venice)
Günther Grewendorf (J.W. Goethe-University, Frankfurt)
Liliane Haegeman (University of Geneva)
Hubert Haider (University of Salzburg)
Christer Platzack (University of Lund)
Ian Roberts (University of Stuttgart)
Ken Sa¼r (Rutgers University, New Brunswick NJ)
Höskuldur Thráinsson (University of Iceland, Reykjavik)
Lisa deMena Travis (McGill University)
Sten Vikner (University of Stuttgart)
C. Jan-Wouter Zwart (University of Groningen)
Volume 15
Bernhard Wolfgang Rohrbacher
Morphology-Driven Syntax. A theory of V to I raising and pro-drop.
MORPHOLOGY-DRIVEN
SYNTAX
A THEORY OF V TO I RAISING AND PRO-DROP
BERNHARD WOLFGANG ROHRBACHER
Northwestern University
JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY
AMSTERDAM / PHILADELPHIA
TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
8 American National Standard for Information Sciences — Permanence of Paper
for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Rohrbacher, Bernhard Wolfgang.
Morphology-driven syntax : a theory of V to I raising and pro-drop / Bernhard Wolfgang
Rohrbacher.
p. cm. -- (Linguistik aktuell / Linguistics today, ISSN 0166-0829; v. 15)
A revised and expanded version of the author’s 1994 University of Massachusetss at Amherst
Ph.D. dissertation. The Germanic VO languages and the full paradigm : A theory of V to I raising.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Grammar, Comparative and general. 2. Generative grammar. I. Title. II. Series: Linguistik
aktuell ; Bd. 15.
P151.R73 1999
415--dc21 99-19817
isbn 90 272 2736 5 (eur) / 1 55619 234 7 (us) (Hb; alk. paper) CIP
© 1999 – John Benjamins B.V.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other
means, without written permission from the publisher.
John Benjamins Publishing Co. · P.O.Box 75577 · 1070 an amsterdam · The Netherlands
John Benjamins North America · P.O.Box 27519 · Philadelphia pa 19118-0519 · usa
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii
Chapter 1
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Chapter 2
VerbMovementintheGermanicLanguages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2.2 Verb Second in the Germanic Languages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2.3 Verb Movement to Comp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
2.4 Verb Movement to Infl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
2.4.1 V to I Raising in the Germanic OV Languages . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
2.4.2 V to I Raising in the Germanic VO Languages . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
2.4.2.1 English . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
2.4.2.2 Mainland Scandinavian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
2.4.2.3 Faroese . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
2.4.2.4 Icelandic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
2.4.2.5 Yiddish . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
2.5 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
Chapter 3
AgreementMorphologyintheSyntaxandtheLexicon . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
3.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
3.2 Previous Accounts for V to I Raising . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
3.2.1 Negation (Ouhalla 1990, 1991; Benmamoun 1991) . . . . . . . . . 94
3.2.2 Case (Trosterud 1989) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
3.2.3 Number Agreement (Roberts 1993; Falk 1993) . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
3.3 Person Agreement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
vi TABLEOFCONTENTS
3.4 The Representation of Inflectional AYxes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
3.5 Residual V to I Raising in Faroese . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
Chapter 4
DiachronicGermanicSyntaxandtheFullParadigm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
4.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
4.2 On the Loss of V to I Raising in Some Germanic VO Languages . . . 156
4.2.1 English . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
4.2.2 Mainland Scandinavian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
4.3 Auxiliaries in the History of English and Mainland Scandinavian . . . . 178
4.3.1 The Modern Contrast: English Aux^Neg versus Mainland
Scandinavian Neg^Aux . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178
4.3.2 Historical Reanalysis in English and the Lack thereof in
Mainland Scandinavian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184
Chapter 5
BeyondVerbMovementintheGermanicVOLanguages . . . . . . . . . . . 205
5.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
5.2 V to I Raising in Romance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206
5.2.1 Italian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206
5.2.2 French . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
5.2.3 European and Brazilian Portuguese . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221
5.2.4 Object Clitics in Romance: Evidence for Verb Movement? . . . . 234
5.3 Pro-Drop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242
5.4 NP Object Shift and Transitive Expletive Constructions . . . . . . . . . . 261
Chapter 6
Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277
SubjectIndex . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291
Acknowledgments
Thisbookisarevisedandextendedversionofmy1994UniversityofMassachu-
setts at Amherst Ph.D. dissertation “The Germanic VO Languages and the Full
Paradigm: A Theory of V to I Raising”. I no longer assume that “weak”
agreementprojectsanempty-headedprojection;rather,Inowassumethatitdoes
not project at all (cf. Section 3.4). The new assumption is in the spirit of “Bare
Phrase Structure” (Chomsky 1995) and allows me to adopt the theory of
transitive expletive constructions and full-NP object shift developed in Bobaljik
(1995) (cf. Section 5.4). Other extensions of the original manuscript include a
moredetaileddiscussionofwordorderinGermaninlightofrecentproposalsby
Haider (1993) and Kayne (1994) (cf. Section 2.4.1) and a diVerent approach to
pro-drop in Yiddish based on new findings by Prince (1994) (cf. Section 5.3).
Iwouldliketoreproduceinfulltheacknowledgmentsfromthedissertation
on which this book is based:
Manypeople,linguistsandothers,contributedtothisdissertation.Theydidso
in various ways, although I alone am responsible for the shortcomings in my
work.
First and foremost, gratitude is due to the members of my committee,
namely (in alphabetical order) Hagit Borer, James Cathey, Angelika Kratzer
andPeggySpeas.Boththeircriticismandtheirencouragementkeptmegoing.
Comments from (among others) Elena Benedicto, Jóhannes Gísli Jónsson,
Halldór Ármann Sigurdsson, Sten Vikner, Akira Watanabe and audiences at
FLSM ’92, WECOL ’92, CONSOLE ’92, Tübingen University and LSA ’93
improvedmywork.
Günther Grewendorfwas my first linguisticsteacher atthe Goethe Univer-
sitätatFrankfurt.ItisbecauseofhimthatIbecamealinguist.Thenandnow,
GereonMüllerandWolfgangSternefeldwereandaremyteachers,colleagues
andfriends.
TheuniqueatmosphereattheUMassAmherstLinguisticsDepartmentwas
essentialformystudies.Itiscreatedbyfaculty,students,secretarialstaVand
viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
visitors.Insteadof(ratherarbitrarily)mentioningsomebutnotothersbyname,
Iwouldliketothankthemall.
Mostofall,IthankMechthildNagel.
This dissertation is dedicated to my parents, Heinrich Rohrbacher and Eva
RohrbachernéeStüler.
Since these lines were written, many other people have influenced my thoughts
on the issues discussed then in my dissertation and now in this book. Below is
an attempt to thank some of them.
Richard Kayne, Christer Platzack and two anonymous reviewers for John
Benjamins thoroughly read the entire manuscript and gave me invaluable
comments. Other particularly helpful comments came from Michel DeGraV,
Tony Kroch and Beatrice Santorini. Parts of this book were presented to and
benefitedfromaudiencesattheUniversityofPennsylvania,the13thWestCoast
ConferenceonFormalLinguistics,theWorkshopontheL1–andL2–Acquisition
of Clause Internal Rules at the University of Berne, Georgetown University,
Princeton University, the University of Reykjavik, Brown University, the
UniversityofEssex,the21stAnnualBostonUniversityConferenceonLanguage
Development, Northwestern University, the City University of New York,
Vanderbilt University, the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and the Syntax
Workshop at Ybbs a.d. Donau. Finally, I would like to thank Werner Abraham
and Kees Vaes at John Benjamins for help with the publication of this book.
Nobodyexplicitlyor implicitly mentionedabove shouldbeheldaccountablefor
any part of this book.
hapter
C 1
Introduction
One rather striking diVerence between e.g. Icelandic on the one hand and e.g.
Swedish(andtheremainingScandinavianlanguages)ontheotherhandisthatin
certain embedded clauses, the verb must precede negation in Icelandic (cf. (1a)
basedonHolmbergandPlatzack1991,ex.(7c))butthereverseorderisrequired
in Swedish (cf. (1b) based on Holmberg and Platzack 1991, ex. (7d)).
(1) a. Jón harmar að María keypti ekki bókina.
J. regrets that M. bought not book-the
‘John regrets that Mary didn’t read the book.’ (Icelandic)
b. Jag beklager att Eva inte köpte boken.
I regret that E. not bought book-the
‘I regret that Eve didn’t buy the book.’ (Swedish)
According to the syntactic framework adopted in here, i.e. Principles and
ParametersTheory(cf. Chomsky1981,1986a,1989,1992,1995),thesequential
contrastin(1)reflectsastructuraldiVerencebetweenIcelandicandSwedish:the
finite verb moves to the inflectional head Infl (‘V to I raising’) in Icelandic
(cf. (2a),thestructureof(1a))butstaysinsitu(‘Vinsitu’)inSwedish(cf. (2b),
the structure of (1b)).1