Chapter published in:
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.
Published online: 30 September 2017
https://doi.org/10.1075/tsl.120.02esp
References

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. CrossrefGoogle 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. Crossref.Google Scholar
Dayal, Veneeta
2003 A semantics for pseudo incorporation. Ms, Rutgers University. http://​www​.semanticsarchive​.net​/Archive​/WI2ZjZkM​/pseudo​-incorporation​.pdf.
2011 Hindi pseudo incorporation. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 29: 123–167. CrossrefGoogle 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. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Downing, Pamela
1977 On the creation and use of English compound nouns. Language 53(4): 810–842. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Dowty, David
1979 Word Meaning and Montague Grammar. Dordrecht: Reidel. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Espinal, M.Teresa
2010 Bare nominals in Catalan and Spanish. Their structure and meaning. Lingua 120(4): 984–1009. CrossrefGoogle 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. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Espinal, M.Teresa & Mateu, Jaume
2011 Bare nominals and argument structure in Catalan and Spanish. The Linguistic Review 28: 1–39. CrossrefGoogle 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. CrossrefGoogle 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. CrossrefGoogle 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. CrossrefGoogle 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. CrossrefGoogle 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. CrossrefGoogle 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. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Munn, Alan & Schmitt, Cristina
2005 Number and indefinites. Lingua 115: 821–855. CrossrefGoogle 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. CrossrefGoogle 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. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Sadock, Jerrold
1980 Noun incorporation in Greenlandic: A case of syntactic word formation. Language 56: 300–319. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
1986 Some notes on noun incorporation. Language 62: 19–31. CrossrefGoogle 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. CrossrefGoogle 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

Cited by 2 other publications

Mateu, Jaume
2017.  In Verb Valency Changes [Typological Studies in Language, 120], ► pp. 52 ff. Crossref logo
Navarro, Ia
2017.  In Verb Valency Changes [Typological Studies in Language, 120], ► pp. 108 ff. Crossref logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 09 june 2021. 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.