A radical neo-contructionist view of argument structure: Marantz

Marantz (2013)

Marantz (2013) follows the current trend of joining together the Minimalist Program’s assumption that syntax is the only generative engine of structure and Distributed Morphology’s assumption that Vocabulary Items are inserted late in the derivation.³

3 Distributed Morphology (Halle & Marantz 1993, 1994) is a framework based on the Chomskyan inverted Y model of grammar. It adopts the Minimalist Program’s assumption that syntax is the only generative component of grammar (Chomsky 1995). From this premise it follows that all word formation is syntactic. Thus, the existence of a (pure) lexicon, i.e. the place where items used by the computational system are created and stored, is dispensable. In fact, Distributed Morphology propounds that the

“lexicon” is distributed into three different components, or lists (i).

(i) a. List 1: It contains roots and abstract morphemes

b. List 2: It contains Vocabulary items, i.e. the rules for pronouncing terminal nodes c. List 3: It contains the semantic information for interpreting terminal nodes

The lists are accessed at different stages in the derivation. First, a subset of the roots and abstract morphemes contained in List 1 are selected. These items undergo the syntactic operations of merge, copy, and agree, as required, to deliver a linguistic expression that will later be handled by the “Spell-Out” operation, which sends the relevant outputs to the levels of Logical Form and Phonetic Form. Some morphological adjustments can take place on the PF branch prompted by language-specific requirements to meet well-formedness conditions through the operations of Impoverishment, Fusion, Fission, insertion of dissociated features or morphemes, post-syntactic movement, etc. (see Halle & Marantz 1993, 1994,

Under this view, argument structure is not projected from the lexicon but generated in the syntax via merge, and later interpreted semantically in the LF and phonologically in the PF. Thus, the syntactic structure creates meaning in which roots are merged as event modifiers. For example, a verb such as open is not associated with a meaning of change of state, but rather this meaning arises from the syntactic structure in which the root is inserted (2013:155). The verbal phrase is generated via a v head, which introduces an event variable, a state or an event, and transforms the structure into a verbal phrase. The newly constituted vP may take as a complement a DP or a small-clause (8). If the v head takes a DP, the verbal phrase will be interpreted as a change of state, which is undergone by the DP object. By contrast, if the v head takes a DP embedded in a small-clause, the DP is also surmised to undergo a change of state of the nature specified in the complement of the small-clause, which might be a PP or some other predicational element such as a root.

(8) a. [vP v [DP]]

b. [vP v [ [DP] [PP] ] ]

Oltra-Massuet et al. (2017) highlight the use of the prefix re- to separate unergative structures from transitive structures with a DP or small-clause complement (8). The structure in (9a-b) contains no complement as shown by the unacceptability of attaching the prefix re- to the verb, and confirms the unergative status of the structure in which the verb root is merged as a modifier. By contrast, the presence of a DP object such as the one in (9c) allows the presence of the prefix as confirmed by the acceptability of the

Halle 1997, Embick & Noyer 2001, 2007). These operations are subject to strict locality conditions (Halle

& Marantz 1993, 1994). Once morphological operations have been applied, Vocabulary items in List 2 are accessed to compete for insertion into terminal nodes so that the latter are supplied with phonological features. Vocabulary insertion takes place according to the Subset Principle (ii), which states that the most highly specified item is chosen.

(ii) Subset Principle

“The phonological exponent of a Vocabulary item is inserted into a morpheme in the terminal string if the item matches all or a subset of the grammatical features specified in the terminal morpheme. Insertion does not take place if the Vocabulary item contains features not present in the morpheme. Where several Vocabulary items meet the conditions for insertion, the item matching the greatest number of features specified in the terminal morpheme must be chosen.”

(Halle 1997:128) Finally, on the LF branch of the derivation, List 3 is accessed to provide abstract morphemes and roots with semantic interpretation.

sequence. On the other hand, the structures in (10) show that a verb such as put (10a) requires the presence of a small-clause in order to generate an acceptable sequence, which is further confirmed by the unacceptability of the sequence if the prefix re- is attached to the verb root (10b). The example in (10c) suggests that a verb such as shelve does not require a small-clause, but rather its single argument is merged as complement of v (cf. Hale & Keyser 2002, Mateu 2002, Acedo Matellán 2010, 2016, among others, for a different view of the argument structure of these verbs).

(9) a. John danced b. *John re-danced

c. John re-danced a dance first performed by his distant ancestors

(10) a. John put the display *(on the table) b. *John re-put the display on the table c. John re-shelved the books

(Oltra-Massuet et al. 2017:6, (19-20))

Returning to the role played by the root, these elements are integrated in the argument structure as adjuncts of v, a position from which they are able to contribute any relevant semantic information or to impose any restrictions that might apply. Specifically, Marantz (2013: 157) contends that roots may modify either the manner of an activity event or the state of a change of state event. Based on the previous structures, Marantz puts forward the following merge positions for roots: as modifiers of v (11a) or as modifiers of the DP (11b). Note that, following Kratzer (1996), Pylkkänen (2008), among others, Marantz assumes that the external argument of the predicate is introduced by a head independent from v, that is, VoiceP.

(11) a. hammer the nail

voice

√hammer v

DP

b. open the door

(Marantz 2013:158, (4))

While Marantz acknowledges that to some extent roots determine the phrase structure in which they are merged, whether it is unergative, unaccusative, or transitive, he concludes that their role is solely as post-syntactic modifiers of the structural semantics, which is generated by syntax, in the Logical Form or some other interface between syntax and semantics. Thus, verbs are not unergative, unaccusative, or transitive per se, but rather roots may be associated to these syntactic configurations (12).

(12) “The meanings of roots involve world knowledge to a large extent, and the flexibility of roots to be used in different syntactic structures is governed somewhat by our experience and our imaginations.”

(Marantz 2013:159)

Similarly, Marantz does not address the argument structure of stative predicates and takes for granted that a structure similar to the ones proposed above for other types of eventualities might also apply. As will be discussed in section 2.3, Ramchand’s (2008) first phase syntax proposes a different approach to this matter as her framework establishes a syntactic correlate between events types and phrase structure, and makes provisions for different event types. Essentially, these frameworks will be shown to differ in the amount of “semantics” that the syntactic structure can convey. While the Ramchandian framework establishes a clear correlate between argument structure and event structure by assuming that the verbal phrase may consist of up to three heads instantiating different subevents, Marantz’s approach supports a view of argument structure where semantic interpretation is unaffected by the syntactic derivation, as the structure is interpreted post-syntactically in the conceptual interface. An intermediate stance is taken in the framework developed by Mateu (2002), Acedo Matellán (2010, 2016), Mateu & Acedo Matellán (2012), and Acedo Matellán & Mateu (2014), which is discussed in the next section.

voice v

√open DP

2.2. A relational approach to argument structure: Mateu (2002),