The Nominal Structure in Slavic and Beyond

497 Pages·2013·1.82 MB·English

by  Lilia Schurcks

Lilia Schürcks, Anastasia Giannakidou, and Urtzi Etxeberria (Eds.)
The Nominal Structure in Slavic and Beyond
Studies in Generative
Grammar
Editors
Henk can Riemsdijk
Harry van der Hulst
Jan Koster
Volume 116
The Nominal Structure
in Slavic and Beyond
Edited by
Lilia Schürcks
Anastasia Giannakidou
Urtzi Etxeberria
ISBN 978-1-61451-388-9
e-ISBN 978-1-61451-279-0
ISSN 0167-4331
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Table of Contents
Lilia Schürcks, Anastasia Giannakidou, Urtzi Etxeberria
Nominal Arguments and the role of D: an introduction  | 1
Larisa Zlatić
Definiteness and Structure of NPs in Slavic | 17
Miloje Despić
Intensifiers, Focus, and Clitics: Is Pronoun Position Truly an Argument for D in
SC? | 39
Željko Bošković
Phases beyond Clauses | 75
Steven Franks
The Slovenian Orphan Accusative, Empty Pronouns and Noun Phrase
Structure | 129
Franc Marušič & Rok Žaucer
A Definite Article in the AP – Evidence from Colloquial Slovenian | 183
Pavel Caha
The Jungle of the Czech Local Cases: Where Semantics and Morphology
Meet  | 209
Iliyana Krapova and Guglielmo Cinque
The Case for Genitive Case in Bulgarian | 237
Ilse Zimmermann
Reciprocity Expressions | 275
Melita Stavrou
About the Vocative  | 299
Gilbert C. Rappaport
Determiner Phrases and Mixed Agreement in Slavic | 343
VI       Table of Contents
Lilia Schürcks
Syntax Presupposes, Morphology Disposes: Markedness and NP
Typology | 391
Urtzi Etxeberria & Anastasia Giannakidou
D-heads, domain restriction, and variation: From Greek and Basque to
Salish | 413
Peter Kosta and Anton Zimmerling
Slavic Clitic Systems in a Typological Perspective | 441
Lilia Schürcks, Anastasia Giannakidou, Urtzi Etxeberria
Nominal Arguments and the role of D:
an introduction
1 QPs, DPs, and definiteness
This book is a study of how nominal arguments are made up. The papers in this
collection address, in one way or another, the questions of what the basic ingre-
dients of the nominal argument are, and whether there are any crosslinguistic
generalizations to be made about potential universals within the constituent tra-
ditionally known as the ‘noun phrase’.
In type theoretic approaches – which lie at the foundation of the syntax-
semantics mapping assumed in linguistic theory today – nominal arguments
are quantificational (type et,t) , or referential (type e). Regarding quantificational
types, one of the most fruitful ideas in formal semantics has been the idea that
quantifier phrases (QPs) denote generalized quantifiers (GQs; Montague 1974,
Barwise & Cooper 1981, Zwarts 1986, Westerståhl 1985, Partee 1987, Keenan
1987, 1996, Keenan & Westerståhl 1997, among many others). Generalized Quan-
tifier Theory (GQT) offered a solid framework for the study of quantificational
structures in English, and initiated a research agenda which soon expanded
to study quantificational patterns crosslinguistically (culminating, e.g. in the
volume of Bach et al. 1995, and the more recent Matthewson 2008, Giannaki-
dou and Rathert 2009, Szabolcsi 2010, and Keenan & Paperno 2011, Gil et.
al 2013). The research of the past 20 years revealed a spectacular variation in the
patterns of quantification across languages, suggesting that some fine-tuning, or
even more radical modifications, of the classical theory are necessary.
Most discussions of crosslinguistic variation revolve around identifying what
the building blocks of quantificational phrases are, whether there is a “universal”
QP structure, and what the mapping is between the morphological pieces in the
QP and the semantic or pragmatic functions they may perform. Classical GQT
posits that there is a natural class of expressions in language, called quantifica-
tional determiners (Qs), which combine with a nominal (NP) constituent of type
et, a first order predicate, to form a quantificational argumental nominal (QP).
This QP denotes a GQ, a set of sets. In a language like English, the syntax of a QP
like every woman is as follows.
(1) a. [[every woman]] = λP. ∀x. woman (x) → P(x)
b. [[every]] = λP. λQ. ∀x. P(x) → Q(x)
2       Lilia Schürcks, Anastasia Giannakidou, Urtzi Etxeberria
c. QP
〈〈e, t〉, t〉

Q NP
〈〈e, t〉, 〈〈e, t〉,t〉〉 〈e, t〉
every woman : λx. woman (x)
In the structure in (1), the Q every combines with the NP argument woman and
creates an argument that denotes a generalized quantifier. The NP argument pro-
vides the domain of the Q, and the Q expresses a relation between this domain
and the set denoted by the VP.¹
Another item that combines with a domain set of type et to give a nominal
argument is the definite determiner – the article the and its equivalents, e.g. a
demonstrative pronoun. Hellan (1986), Abney (1987) and Bowers (1987) pro-
posed a functional category Determiner (D) as the head of the noun phrase,
making the noun phrase a ‘doubly-headed’ construction (cf. example (2)), i.e. D
takes NP as its complement. The definite article is usually designated as D (Abney
1987; see Alexiadou, Haegeman, & Stavrou 2008 for an extensive recent over-
view), and the demonstrative is generated in English under the same head (thus
*this the book) – echoing the semantic view of definiteness as including both the
and this (e.g. Roberts 2002, 2003, 2010). The DP has a structure parallel to (1),
only that in this case the Q is D, and the constituent is called DP (though some
authors call the Q position uniformly D position; cf. Matthewson 1998, Gillon
2009). As indicated below, the DP produces typically a referential expression, a
(maximal or unique) individual indicated here with iota:
(2) DP, e: ι (λx. woman (x))

D NP
〈〈e, t〉,t〉 〈e, t〉
{the/this} woman : λx. woman (x)
1 Qs like every, most, etc. are known as ‘strong’ (Milsark 1977), as opposed to some, three, many
which are called “weak” etc (see e.g. discussions in the paper in Reuland and ter Meulen
1991). Strong quantifiers and definite descriptions (to be discussed next) have been claimed to
not occur easily in the so-called existential constructions, but McNally (1992, 2009), and more
recently Francez (2007, 2009) have questioned this generalization, so we will not make much
of it here.
Nominal Arguments and the role of D: an introduction        3
Demonstratives come with additional presuppositions of maximal salience or
proximity to the addressee or the speaker, cf. Alexiadou, Haegeman, & Stavrou
2008; cf. also Roberts 2010). The DP produces the most basic argument e –which
can be lifted up to the GQ type when necessary (in type shifiting theories such
as Partee 1987). Both D and Q are functions that need a domain, and the NP pro-
vides that domain. The definite D, in languages that have it, is the most basic
syntactic closure devise: it creates an argument of the simplest type (e). So, in
languages that have the definite article, the device is necessary for argument-
hood, and these languages do not allow bare nominals to function as arguments
(*Boy ate a sandwich).
The notion of definiteness, then, appears to be closely related to the use of
a definite determiner (be it a definite determiner or a demonstrative) in the syn-
tactic position D combined with a nominal expression to produce a basic, refer-
ential argument. However, having a definite article is not a universal property of
languages. Many languages in the Slavic family, the main focus of this book, are
articleless. We see this in the example in (3) from Serbo-Croatian. Only Bulgarian
and the closely related Macedonian have articles.
(3) a. Kamen je razbio prozor. (Serbo-Croatian)
stone is broken window
‘The stone broke the window’
b. Kamŭkŭt razbi prozoreca. (Bulgarian)
stone-the broke window-the
‘The stone broke the window’
In the articleless languages, the definite or indefinite interpretation of bare
nominal expressions depends on the context in which they are used and on the
word order of the constituents as well as on the position in which they appear
in a sentence, i.e. nominals are more easily interpreted as definites in preverbal
position while nominals in postverbal position get usually an indefinite interpre-
tation.
If this is the case, and if – despite the absence of D – nominals of Slavic lan-
guages are able to function as arguments and obtain a referential, definite inter-
pretation, the following question becomes pressing: if D is the element respon-
sible for definiteness and argumenthood crosslinguistically, but Slavic languages
possess no definite determiner, then how come these bare Slavic nominals end up
being definite and referential? Some authors answer this question by suggesting
that the DP hypothesis applies universally and argue that in Slavic languages, in
order for the nominal expression to obtain a definite interpretation it is necessary