Cover not available
Part of
Verb Valency Changes: Theoretical and typological perspectives
Edited by Albert Álvarez González and Ia Navarro
[Typological Studies in Language 120] 2017
► pp. 32–49

Morphosyntactic defectiveness in complex predicate formation

| Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
This article focuses on verb valency change in complex predicate formation by noun incorporation. I reassess the claim that incorporated nouns and clitics in both Uto-Aztecan and Romance languages are morphosyntactically defective, and I show that crucially morphosyntactic defectiveness, but not semantic prototypicality is a necessary condition in many natural languages in order to identify formally those nominal expressions that are to be interpreted as property-denoting expressions and event predicate modifiers, rather than as canonical syntactic and semantic arguments.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Theoretical background
    • 2.1 Mithun’s (1984) types of NI
    • 2.2Conceptual approach to NI (Borthen 2003; Carlson 2010)
    • 2.3Towards a morphosyntactic approach to NI
  • 3.Morphosyntactic defectiveness in NI
    • 3.1NI in Uto-Aztecan (Jelinek 1998; Haugen 2007, 2008)
    • 3.2NI in Romance (Dobrovie-Sorin et al. 2006; Espinal 2010; Espinal & McNally 2007a, 2007b, 2011)
    • 3.3Clitic incorporation in Mexican Spanish (Navarro 2009; Navarro & Espinal 2012)
  • 4.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 30 September 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/tsl.120.02esp
References (49)
References
Baker, Mark. 1988. Incorporation: A Theory of Grammatical Function Changing. Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
. 1996. The Polysynthesis Parameter. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
. 2001. The Atoms of Language. New York NY: The Basic Books.Google Scholar
Beavers, John 2011. On affectedness. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 29: 335–370. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Borik, Olga & Gehrke, Berit. 2015. An introduction to the syntax and semantics of pseudo-incorporation. Syntax and Semantics 40: 1–43.Google Scholar
Borthen, Kaja. 2003. Norwegian Bare Singulars. PhD dissertation, NTNU, Trondheim.Google Scholar
Carlson, Greg. 2010. Generics and concepts. In Kinds, Things and Stuff, Francis Jeffrey Pelletier (ed.), 16–35. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 1995. The Minimalist Program. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Chung, Sandra & Ladusaw, William A. 2004. Restriction and Saturation. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Cuervo, María Cristina. 2003. Datives at Large. PhD dissertation, MIT.Google Scholar
Cyrino, Sonia & Espinal, M.Teresa. 2015. Bare nominals in Brazilian Portuguese: More on the DP/NP analysis. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 33: 471–521. DOI logo.Google Scholar
Dayal, Veneeta. 2003. A semantics for pseudo incorporation. Ms, Rutgers University. < [URL]>.
. 2011. Hindi pseudo incorporation. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 29: 123–167. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2015. Incorporation: Morphosyntactic vs. semantic considerations. Syntax and Semantics 40: 47–87.Google Scholar
Dobrovie-Sorin, Carmen, Bleam Tonia & Espinal, M.Teresa. 2006. Bare nouns, number and types of incorporation. In Non-Definiteness and Plurality [Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 95], Liliane Tasmowski & Svetlana Vogeleer (eds), 51–79. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Downing, Pamela. 1977. On the creation and use of English compound nouns. Language 53(4): 810–842. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dowty, David. 1979. Word Meaning and Montague Grammar. Dordrecht: Reidel. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Espinal, M.Teresa. 2010. Bare nominals in Catalan and Spanish. Their structure and meaning. Lingua 120(4): 984–1009. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2013. Bare nominals, bare predicates: Properties and related types. In New Perspectives on Bare Noun Phrases in Romance and Beyond [Studies in Language Companion Series 141], Johannes Kabatek & Albert Wall (eds), 63–94. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Espinal, M.Teresa & Mateu, Jaume. 2011. Bare nominals and argument structure in Catalan and Spanish. The Linguistic Review 28: 1–39. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Espinal, M.Teresa & McNally, Louise. 2007a. Bare singular nominals and incorporating verbs. In Proceedings of the III NEREUS International Workshop. Definiteness, Specificity and Animacy in Ibero–Romance Languages [Arbeitspapiere des Fachbereichs Sprachwissenschaft 122], Georg Kaiser & Manuel Leonetti (eds), 45–62. Konstanz: Universität Konstanz.Google Scholar
. 2007b. Bare singulars: Variation at the syntax-semantics interface. Paper presented at the Workshop on Bare nouns and Nominalizations. Stuttgart: Universität Stuttgart.
. 2011. Bare nominals and incorporating verbs in Spanish and Catalan. Journal of Linguistics 47: 87–128. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Farkas, Donka & de Swart, Henriëtte. 2003. The Semantics of Incorporation: From Argument Structure to Discourse Transparency. Stanford CA: CSLI.Google Scholar
Hale, Kenneth L. & Keyser, Samuel Jay. 1993. On argument structure and the lexical expression of syntactic relations. In The View from Building 20. Essays in Linguistics in Honor of Sylvain Bromberger, Kenneth L. Hale & Samuel Jay Keyser (eds), 53–109. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Haspelmath, Martin. 1993. More on the typology of inchoative/causative verb alternations. In Causatives and Transitivity [Studies in Language Companion Series 21], Bernard Comrie & María Polinsky (eds), 87–120. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Haugen, Jason D. 2007. Denominal verbs and noun incorporation. Uto-Aztecan evidence for a unified syntactic account. Texas Linguistics Society 9: 145–165.Google Scholar
2008. Morphology at the Interfaces. Reduplication and Noun Incorporation in Uto-Aztecan [Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 117]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jelinek, Eloise. 1998. Voice and transitivity as functional projections in Yaqui. In The Projection of Arguments. Lexical and Compositional Factors, Miriam Butt & Wilhem Geuder (eds), 195–224. Stanford CA: CSLI.Google Scholar
Kozinsky, Isaac S., Vladimir P. Nedjalkov & Polinskaja, Maria S. 1988. Antipassive in Chukchee: Oblique object, object incorporation, zero object. In Passive and Voice [Typological Studies in Language 16], Masayoshi Shibatani (ed.), 651–706. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Levin, Beth. 2011. Verb classes within and across languages. Paper presented at the Valency Classes Conference. Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Leipzig.
Levin, Beth & Rappaport-Hovav, Malka. 1995. Unaccusativity: At the Syntax-Lexical Semantics Interface. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Mateu, Jaume. 2012. Conflation and incorporation processes in resultative constructions. In Telicity, Change, and State. A Cross-Categorial View of Event Structure, Violeta Demonte & Louise McNally (eds), 252–278. Oxford: OUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
McNally, Louise & Van Geenhoven, Veerle. 1997. Redefining the weak/strong distinction. Paper presented at the 1997 Colloque de Syntaxe et Sémantique àParis.
Mithun, Marianne. 1984. The evolution of noun incorporation. Language 60(4): 847–894. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Munn, Alan & Schmitt, Cristina. 2005. Number and indefinites. Lingua 115: 821–855. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Navarro, Ía. 2009. Predicados complejos con le en Español Mexicano. PhD dissertation, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Bellaterra.Google Scholar
Navarro, Ía & Espinal, M.Teresa. 2012. Le-predicates and event modification in Mexican Spanish. Lingua 122: 409–431. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Parsons, Terence. 1990. Events in the Semantics of English. A Study of Subatomic Semantics. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Pylkkänen, Liina. 2002. Introducing Arguments. PhD Dissertation, MIT.Google Scholar
Rappaport Hovav, Malka & Levin, Beth. 1998. Building verb meanings. In The Projection of Arguments. Lexical and Compositional Factors, Miriam Butt & Wilhem Geuder (eds), 97–134. Stanford CA: CSLI.Google Scholar
Rosen, Sara Thomas. 1989. Two types of noun incorporation: A lexical analysis. Language 65: 294–317. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sadock, Jerrold. 1980. Noun incorporation in Greenlandic: A case of syntactic word formation. Language 56: 300–319. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 1986. Some notes on noun incorporation. Language 62: 19–31. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schmitt, Cristina. 1996. Aspect and the Syntax of Noun Phrases. PhD dissertation, University of Maryland.Google Scholar
Schmitt, Cristina & Munn, Alan. 1999. Against the nominal mapping parameter: Bare nouns in Brazilian Portuguese. In Proceedings of NELS, Pius Ngwa Tamanji, Masako Hirotani & Nancy Hall (eds), 339–353. Amherst MA: GLSA.Google Scholar
Spencer, Andrew. 1995. Incorporation in Chukchi. Language 71(3): 439–489. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Van Geenhoven, Veerle. 1998. Semantic Incorporation and Indefinite Descriptions: Semantic and Syntactic Aspects of Noun Incorporation in West Greenlandic. Stanford CA: CSLI.Google Scholar
Zimmer, Karl. 1972. Appropriateness conditions for nominal compounds. Working Papers on Language Universals 8: 3–20.Google Scholar
Cited by (2)

Cited by two other publications

Mateu, Jaume
2017. Two types of locative alternation. In Verb Valency Changes [Typological Studies in Language, 120], ► pp. 52 ff. DOI logo
Navarro, Ia
2017. The semantics of Nahuatl tla- constructions. In Verb Valency Changes [Typological Studies in Language, 120], ► pp. 108 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 25 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.