The goal of this dissertation is to study cross-linguistic variation through posture verbs and internally-caused verbs in Romance and Germanic languages. In particular I address how their first phase syntax is structured in causative configurations, stationary motion statements, and intransitive-locative alternations.
1 Ramchand (2008) uses the label generative-constructivist to refer to approaches such as Borer (2005) or Marantz (2013), which are elsewhere denominated neo-constructionist approaches, and reserves the label constructionist for theories of construction grammar such as Goldberg (1995).
In Ramchand’s first phase syntax (2008, 2014, 2018), event structure and argument structure are mutually linked as the verbal phrase is segmented into three main phrases corresponding to the initiation, process, and result subevents of a macro-event. Each phrase has available a specifier position to lodge the entities that serve as participants of the subevents, except for the initiation phrase, whose participant appears as the specifier of the EvtP, the head that introduces the subject of the predication (cf.
Ramchand 2014). This information is codified in the type-A meaning of roots, which instantiates structural meaning relevant to syntax and is used to create the articulated phrase structure. By contrast, type-B meaning encapsulates lexical conceptual meaning with no effect over syntax but ultimately relevant to the mind module as it spreads all over the syntactic structure, once the derivation is sent off to the conceptual-intentional interface. The particular challenges these verbs pose stem from the type-A meaning codified in their lexical entries, which I argue is subject to variation from a cross-linguistic and intra-cross-linguistic viewpoint. Specifically, the questions that arise regarding these sets of verbs are related to their argument structure and event structure.
Posture verbs can be found in both causative and non-causative configurations across Romance and Germanic languages but there exist non-trivial differences among these languages as to how these configurations are obtained. According to Levin &
Rappaport Hovav (1995), it is possible to identify four meanings for posture verbs: a causative sense, an assume position sense, a simple position sense, and a maintain position sense. These uses are exemplified in (1) through (3) for English and Spanish.
The causative sense (1) selects two arguments and describes a caused change of state brought about by an agent, or causer, on a theme. The assume position sense (2) describes an event of change of posture and necessarily involves a single animate entity to bring about the event. The simple position sense (3) describes a state of location of an entity. Finally, the maintain position sense (3a) is identical in form to the simple position sense, but it additionally implies that there is a deliberate “effort” in maintaining the state.
(1) Causative sense
a. I sat the child *(on the chair) b. I sat the child down (on the chair)
c. Yo senté al niño (en la silla) (Spanish) I sat to-the child on the chair
(2) Assume position sense
a. The child sat *(on the chair) b. The child sat down (on the chair)
c. El niño se sentó (en la silla) (Spanish) the child REF sat on the chair
(3) Simple position sense
a. John sits on the floor (for an hour) b. John is sitting
c. *El niño sienta en el suelo (Spanish) the child sits on the floor
As can be observed, posture verbs in English and Spanish display differences regarding the optionality of the prepositional complements specifying the endpoint of the path of motion (1-2) or the capability to encode stationary motion (3), as well as the need for anti-causative morphology in the assume position sense in Spanish. In the second chapter of the dissertation, two patterns are identified: posture verbs may encode a complex first phase syntax consisting of initiation, process, and result phrases or a simple one comprising a single process phrase. After the examination of the lexical inventory of posture verbs in Romance and Germanic languages, I conclude that both patterns are available in Romance and Germanic languages, except for English, whose posture verbs mainly follow the simple pattern and simply contain a process phrase. In this respect, it also becomes important to consider parameters such as causativity and path encoding, which will be shown to constitute an important source of variation (cf.
Haspelmath 1993, Alexiadou et al. 2006, 2015, Talmy 2000, Mateu 2002, Acedo Matellán 2010, 2016, Real Puigdollers 2013, among others). With Ramchand (2008) I assume a causativization approach for English, which presupposes the existence of a
null init head that is merged on top of the first phase syntax to introduce the initiational subevent. Another important source of divergence is the encoding of path information.
Spanish solely allows the encoding of path information in the verb root, which is identified here with the result phrase of the event, in line with Talmy’s (1991, 2000) verb-framed characterization of this language, which conflates motion and path information. By contrast, English can take an additional element such as an adverb or prepositional phrase to codify the path information of the event. This is consistent with Talmy’s (1991, 2000) characterization of Germanic languages as satellite-framed, which conflate motion and a co-event of manner or cause.
On the other hand, event structure notions such as dynamicity and stativity will become important to understand how these verb roots may instantiate both causative events and stationary motion exclusively in English. Following Silvagni (2017), I surmise that dynamicity is a by-product of events rather than their defining characteristic as it results from the presence of a spatio-temporal unit, or stage, along with the existence of an initiator, whose properties endow it with the capability to bring about the event.
These notions are discussed in chapter 3, where I make the necessary modifications to the denotations of Ramchand’s event phrases, since for her dynamicity is an integral part of what defines an event and has its locus in the process phrase. Instead, I propose that the process phrase simply contains a spatio-temporal unit in its denotation and, hence, dynamicity is obtained either by means of an initiation phrase, which introduces an entity able to initiate the event, or as the result of two contiguous subevents, which are consequently interpreted as process and result. Therefore, events are not defined by the existence of dynamicity but rather by the presence of a spatio-temporal unit in their denotations. This conception of what constitutes an event will help account for the abovementioned contrasts in the expression of stationary motion with posture verbs in Romance and Germanic languages, as well as understand the event structure of internally-caused verbs in the stative-locative alternation in Spanish. Unequivocally, the different type-A meaning codified in the lexical entries of each language’s posture verb will determine their capability to encode stationary motion. Another important characteristic of posture verbs is the possibility of having a light-version of the full-fledged lexical form, which might co-exist with the latter. These uses are found in both Romance and Germanic languages that have non-dynamic process posture verbs. In chapter 3 I discuss how these uses stem from the absence of type-B meaning in the first
phase syntax of the verb and look at the copularization process whereby ‘light’ versions are obtained.
(4) a. Jan zit op de bank (Dutch) Jan sit.PRES.3.SG on def sofa
‘Jan is sitting on the sofa’
b. Jan zit in Frankrijk Jan sit.PRES.3.SG in France ‘Jan is in France’
(Hengeveld 1992:238, (3-4))
In light of the properties ascertained for posture verbs cross-linguistically, I cast doubt on Talmy’s (2000) co-event characterization of these verbs in Germanic languages when they denote stationary motion, which is argued to be unfitting as these verbs do not instantiate two synchronous subevents, but rather a single non-dynamic process event, which may be further characterized by a rhematic prepositional phrase stablishing a predicational relation between the entity located and its location. The impossibility of a co-event analysis is confirmed by the inability of English posture verbs with the adjective full, and its equivalent forms in other Germanic languages, to denote a resultative predication in the location as subject order (5), or Location-Subject order.
Furthermore, Spanish non-dynamic process posture verbs are shown to allow the same predicational structure (6) with the equivalent adjective to full, which confirms that the availability of this alternation is not limited to satellite-framed languages and helps discard a co-event analysis for these verbs.
(5) a. de slingers hangen in de zaal (Dutch)
the garlands hang in the room b. de zaal hang vol met slingers the room hangs full with garlands
(Mulder 1992:168, (3))
(6) El paseo […] yace repleto de casitas de estilo vasco2 (Spanish) the promenade lies full of little-houses of style basque
Posture verbs in the Location-Subject word order are argued to share similarities with internally-caused verbs (7), a class of intransitive verbs characterized by their atelic and non-agentive properties, which partake in the so-called stative-locative alternation and also have a Location-Subject order. After thoroughly examining the properties of Spanish internally-caused verbs in chapter 4, I discard that they behave as stative in the alternation and put forward that the properties displayed in the Location-Subject order follow from, first, their default first phase syntax as a consequence of their atelic dynamic unergative nature, and, second, the properties of the prepositional phrase introducing the locatum argument, which is argued to possess causative semantics.
(7) a. Las abejas abundan en el jardín (Spanish) the bees swarm in the garden
b. El jardín abunda de abejas the garden swarms of bees
The rest of the present chapter is structured as follows. Section 2 introduces Ramchand’s first phase syntax, which is used as the theoretical framework of the dissertation, comparing it to other constructivist frameworks. In section 3, I draw attention to cross-linguistic facts that will prove to be relevant to the discussion in the chapters that follow. I introduce Talmy’s (1991, 2000) distinction between verb-framed and satellite-framed languages and revise how this typology has been implemented in argument structure. The section concludes with a discussion of Ramchand’s (2008) brief account of cross-linguistic variation in resultative constructions, which I revise and expand taking into account recent proposals dealing with resultative constructions cross-linguistically. Section 4 deepens into the distinction between type-A and type-B meaning and considers the place of Talmy’s co-event in Ramchand’s first phase syntax.
The last section concludes with a brief summary of the subsequent chapters of the dissertation.
2 Example retrieved from https://www.elcorreo.com/.