Microvariation in verbal rather
This paper uses survey results to analyze patterns of judgments across different versions of the non-standard
verbal use of the word rather, which can take participial morphology, as in rathered. Across
numerous possible instantiations of the construction, there appear to be in fact a quite limited number of grammars, which are
generated by an implicational hierarchy of functional heads, along with the availability of a silent verb have. The
overall picture supports several broader conclusions. First, bare-infinitive–selecting verbs are nearly “closed class” because
they have special syntactic properties that go beyond semantic or even syntactic selection: they must value the temporal verbal
features of the embedded verb, or else provide a structural context for such valuation. Second, silent verbs can be licensed by
head-moving to a modal head in the extended projection. This movement is freely available, but silence demands recoverability,
which limits its application only to certain verbs, and certain uses/meanings of those verbs. Third, in addition to previously
known configurations for building parasitic participle constructions, movement of a lower verb to a higher verb can extend the
phase of the lower verb and lead to its silence. Fourth, the distribution of rather suggests that volitional
meaning is not a primitive, but is constructed from smaller primitives. Finally, microvariation reveals a tight connection among
logically distinct functional heads, suggesting that they are not acquired independently of each other, but interact in
significant ways.
Keywords: verbal rather, modals, microvariation, dialect syntax, m-merger, verbhood, silent verbs, volition, reverse agree, parasitic participles, morphology, syntax
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Overview
- 2.1Licensing of silent verbs
- 2.2Nearly closed class kind of verb in the first place
- 2.3Parasitic participles
- 2.4Restricted distribution
- 2.5Microvariation
- 3.The structure of verbal rather
- 3.1
Wood (2013)
- 3.2The present study
- 4.Microvariation and the parameter space
- 4.1Modvolition[+Inf] → Modvolition[+Asp]
- 4.2Modvolition[+Asp] → Modvolition[+have]
- 4.3If you have one have, you have all the haves
- 4.4Accounting for one-way correlations in judgments
- 5.Further microvariation
- 5.1A note on sooner
- 5.2Adjunction to Modvolition
- 5.3What kind of “have”?
- 6.Conclusion
- Notes
-
References