Stative Inquiries: Causes, Results, Experiences, and Locations

274 Pages·2020·8.264 MB·English

by  Alfredo García-Pardo

Linguistik Aktuell Linguistics Today 264
Stative Inquiries
Causes, results,
experiences, and locations
Alfredo García-Pardo
John Benjamins Publishing Company
Stative Inquiries
Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today (LA)
issn 0166-0829
Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today (LA) provides a platform for original monograph
studies into synchronic and diachronic linguistics. Studies in LA confront empirical
and theoretical problems as these are currently discussed in syntax, semantics,
morphology, phonology, and systematic pragmatics with the aim to establish robust
empirical generalizations within a universalistic perspective.
For an overview of all books published in this series, please see
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Founding Editor
Werner Abraham
Groningen University / Universität Wien
General Editors
Werner Abraham Elly van Gelderen
Groningen University / Universität Wien Arizona State University
Advisory Editorial Board
Josef Bayer Terje Lohndal Lisa deMena Travis
University of Konstanz Norwegian University of Science McGill University
and Technology
Cedric Boeckx Sten Vikner
ICREA/UB Christer Platzack University of Aarhus
University of Lund
Guglielmo Cinque C. Jan-Wouter Zwart
University of Venice Ian Roberts University of Groningen
Cambridge University
Liliane Haegeman
Ghent University
Volume 264
Stative Inquiries. Causes, results, experiences, and locations
by Alfredo García-Pardo
Stative Inquiries
Causes, results, experiences, and locations
Alfredo García-Pardo
Purchase College
John Benjamins Publishing Company
Amsterdam / Philadelphia
TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
8
the American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence
of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984.
doi 10.1075/la.264
Cataloging-in-Publication Data available from Library of Congress:
lccn 2020040070 (print) / 2020040071 (e-book)
isbn 978 90 272 0792 0 (Hb)
isbn 978 90 272 6051 2 (e-book)
© 2020 – John Benjamins B.V.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any
other means, without written permission from the publisher.
John Benjamins Publishing Company · https://benjamins.com
Table of contents
Acknowledgments vii
Preface ix
List of tables xi
Abbreviations xiii
Chapter 1
Introduction 1
Chapter 2
Aktionsart and argument structure: A state of the art 9
Chapter 3
Stative causatives 59
Chapter 4
Stative participles 99
Chapter 5
Stative psychological and locative verbs 173
Chapter 6
Conclusions 235
Bibliography 241
Index 257

Acknowledgments
This book has been many years in the making and has benefited from the help
of too many people to list here. I offer my apologies in advance to those who I
inevitably leave out. The Department of Linguistics at the University of South-
ern California provided a stimulating environment in which to develop and refine
the ideas advanced in this work. I particularly thank María Luisa Zubizarreta and
Roumyana Pancheva for their interest in my work, their constructive criticism and
constant support. The audiences of the Chicago Linguistics Society (2014), the
Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (2015) and the Linguistic Society
of America (2018), among others, provided much helpful feedback in prelimi-
nary parts of this work. In retrospect, I know this book would not exist without
Gema Chocano, who sparked my interest in generative grammar, and María Jesús
Fernández Leborans, who introduced me to lexical aspect.
I am grateful to the editors Werner Abraham, Elly van Gelderen and Kees Vaes
for their interest in my work and their help throughout the publication process.
My gratitude also goes to my generous informants and to an anonymous reviewer
for insightful feedback. The support and love of my parents, Alfredo and Carmen,
has been crucial to make this book happen: I dedicate it to them.

Preface
Within the literature on event types, there is a well-established distinction between
dynamic eventualities, which involve some sort of change, and stative eventuali-
ties, which do not. Recent neo-constructionist theories seek to derive event types
and the interpretation of event participants – thematic roles – from the syntax of
the verb phrase – argument structure. These models uniformly assign a privileged
status to dynamic events either in focus or in the theoretical tools they assume,
relegating states to a secondary status within the theory and as worthy objects
of empirical research.
However, states are not as different from events as it may seem: upon closer
inspection, aspectual and thematic notions generally assumed to be ex- clusive to
dynamic events, like agentivity, causativity and resultativity, can apply to states as
well. More strikingly, a rich variety of thematic roles can be found within stative
predicates (Experiencer/ Stimulus, Figure/ Ground, Initiator/ Resultee…), which
raises the non-trivial question of how this diversity can be derived from an im-
poverished structure.
This monograph addresses stative predicates within a general theory of event
types from a neo-constructionist prism. I analyze a set of Spanish verbs, the gober-
nar ‘govern’-type and argue that they are derived by a bi-phrasal structure that is
unambiguously interpreted as a stative causative eventuality, i.e. two states related
causally. In so doing, I enrich the typology of event types taxonomically and theo-
retically, the latter by integrating stative causatives within a comprehensive syntac-
tic model of event structure.
I also explore adjectival passives as a case study of derived statives. I show
how these constructions are truly stative – and not perfective or resultative, as
is often argued. The underlying participle is fed by different kinds of stative struc-
tures – unaccusative or causative. The former is lexicalized by typical telic verbs –
i.e. verbs of change with an endpoint, e.g. break – whereas the latter is lexicalized
by stative causative verbs – the gobernar-type. This explains many properties of
adjectival passives crosslinguistically, and reinforces the idea that states also come
in different types crosscategorially.
Finally, I uncover a series of crosslinguistic grammatical parallelisms between
stative object-experiencer psychological verbs (e.g. worry, amaze…) and locative