The syntax of roots and the roots of syntax

350 Pages·2015·1.75 MB·English

by  Alexiadou

OUPCORRECTEDPROOF–FINAL,7/11/2014,SPi
The Syntax of Roots and the Roots of Syntax
OUPCORRECTEDPROOF–FINAL,7/11/2014,SPi
OXFORD STUDIES IN THEORETICAL LINGUISTICS
generaleditors
DavidAdgerandHagitBorer,QueenMary,UniversityofLondon
advisoryeditors
StephenAnderson,YaleUniversity;DanielBüring,UniversityofCalifornia,LosAngeles;NomiErteschik-Shir,
Ben-GurionUniversity;DonkaFarkas,UniversityofCalifornia,SantaCruz;AngelikaKratzer,Universityof
Massachusetts,Amherst;AndrewNevins,UniversityCollegeLondon;ChristopherPotts,StanfordUni-
versity;BarrySchein,UniversityofSouthernCalifornia;PeterSvenonius,UniversityofTromsø;MoiraYip,
UniversityCollegeLondon
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OUPCORRECTEDPROOF–FINAL,7/11/2014,SPi
The Syntax of Roots and
the Roots of Syntax
Edited by
ARTEMIS ALEXIADOU, HAGIT BORER,
AND FLORIAN SCHÄFER
1
OUPCORRECTEDPROOF–FINAL,7/11/2014,SPi
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Contents
General preface vii
Notes oncontributors viii
List of abbreviations xi
1. Introduction 1
Artemis Alexiadou, Hagit Borer,andFlorianSchäfer
2. From syntaxto roots:A syntactic approachto root interpretation 14
Víctor Acedo-Matellán andJaumeMateu
3. The roots of nominality,the nominality of roots 33
Paolo Acquaviva
4. Roots in transitivity alternations: Afto-/auto-reflexives 57
Artemis Alexiadou
5. Domains within words and their meanings:A case study 81
Elena Anagnostopoulou andYota Samioti
6. The categoryof roots 112
Hagit Borer
7. On a low and ahighdiminutive: Evidence from Italian and Hebrew 149
Marijke De Belder, Noam Faust, andNicolaLampitelli
8. Theinteraction of adjectival passiveand Voice 164
EditDoron
9. Roots andphases 192
Ángel J. Gallego
10. The ontology of roots and verbs 208
LisaLevinson
11. Derivational affixes as roots:Phasal Spell-out meets English Stress Shift 230
Jean Lowenstamm
12. Building scalar changes 259
Malka Rappaport Hovav
OUPCORRECTEDPROOF–FINAL,7/11/2014,SPi
vi Contents
13. Whenroots license andwhen they respectsemantico-syntactic
structure in verbs 282
Antje Roßdeutscher
References 310
Index 329
OUPCORRECTEDPROOF–FINAL,7/11/2014,SPi
General preface
Thetheoreticalfocusofthisseriesisontheinterfacesbetweensubcomponentsofthe
humangrammaticalsystemandthecloselyrelatedareaoftheinterfacesbetweenthe
different sub-disciplines of linguistics. The notion of ‘interface’ has become central
in grammatical theory (for instance, in Chomsky’s Minimalist Program) and in
linguisticpractice:workontheinterfacesbetweensyntaxandsemantics,syntaxand
morphology, phonology and phonetics, etc. has led to a deeper understanding of
particularlinguisticphenomenaandofthearchitectureofthelinguisticcomponent
of the mind/brain.
Theseriescoversinterfacesbetweencorecomponentsofgrammar,includingsyntax/
morphology, syntax/semantics, syntax/phonology, syntax/pragmatics, morphology/
phonology, phonology/phonetics, phonetics/speech processing, semantics/pragmatics,
and intonation/discourse structure, as well as issues in the way that the systems of
grammar involving these interface areas are acquired and deployed in use (including
languageacquisition,languagedysfunction,andlanguageprocessing).Itdemonstrates,
we hope, that proper understandings of particular linguistic phenomena, languages,
languagegroups,orinter-languagevariationsallrequirereferencetointerfaces.
Theseriesisopentoworkbylinguistsofalltheoreticalpersuasionsandschoolsof
thought.Amainrequirementisthatauthorsshouldwritesoastobeunderstoodby
colleaguesin relatedsubfields of linguistics and byscholars in cognate disciplines.
The term ‘root’ is relatively familiar from morphology and from phonology, but
withinthepast15years,anincreasingbodyofworkhasemergedwhichsuggeststhat
there are empirical and conceptual advantages to assuming that the most basic
syntactic building block is neither a ‘word’ nor a Lexeme, but rather, a root, i.e. a
unit that is, in particular, devoid of a syntactic category. From the perspective of
suchapproaches,syntacticcategoriesemergesasaresultofthesyntacticconfigura-
tion, and are not, as more traditional approaches would have it, a property which
terminals bring with them into the syntax.
While there is an agreement, in such theoretical quarters, on what roots are not,
variousscholarshavepursuedratherdifferentsolutionstothequestionsofwhatroots
are. Are they units of phonological representations, andif so,howdelimited? Are
they units of meaning, and if so, how delimited? Do they have syntactic properties
(e.g. argument selection)? And finally, in the absence of category for roots, how do
syntacticconstituentscometohaveacategoriallabel? Thisbookprovidesaninvalu-
ableserviceinbringingtogetherdiverseanswerstothesequestions,serving,simulta-
neously, as an introduction to the root-based approach, and as a tool to ‘rootists’
seekingtounderstandthediverseramificationsofthetheoreticalapproachasawhole.
David Adger
Hagit Borer
OUPCORRECTEDPROOF–FINAL,7/11/2014,SPi
Notes on contributors
Vı´ctorAcedo-Matella´nisapostdoctoralresearcheratUniversidadedoMinho,Portugal.
HereceivedhisPh.D.inlinguisticsin2010,atUniversitatdeBarcelona.Hisresearchinterests
includeissuesinthesyntax-lexiconinterfaceandthesyntax-morphologyinterface,andhehas
workedontheargumentandeventstructureofprefixandparticlepredicates.Amongothers,
he has published in Probus and in a volume within the series Syntax and Semantics by
Emerald.
PaoloAcquavivaisSeniorLecturerinItalianatUniversityCollegeDublin.Heisagraduate
oftheUniversityofPisaandoftheScuolaNormaleSuperioreofPisa,whereheobtainedhis
Ph.D.in1993.Hisresearchcentresonmorphologyanditsinterfacewithlexicalsemantics,in
particularonhowlinguisticcategoriesshapetheconceptualizationofnouns.LexicalPlurals,
an extensive study into the varieties of non-canonical plurality, was published in 2008 by
OxfordUniversityPress.
Artemis Alexiadou is Professor of Theoretical and English Linguistics at the Universität
Stuttgart. She receivedherPh.D.inlinguistics in1994fromtheUniversityofPotsdam.Her
research interests lie in theoretical and comparative syntax, morphology, and most impor-
tantly in the interface between syntax, morphology, the lexicon, and interpretation. She has
publishedinjournals,editedvolumes,andconferenceproceedings.
ElenaAnagnostopoulouobtainedherPh.D.inlinguisticsfromtheUniversityofSalzburg
in 1994. After a post-doc at MIT (1997–1998), where she returned in 2007 as a Visiting
Associate Professor, she took a position at the University of Crete in 1998, where she is
currently Professor of Theoretical Linguistics. Her research interests lie in theoretical and
comparativesyntax,withspecialfocusontheinterfacesbetweensyntax,morphology,andthe
lexicon, argument alternations, Case, Agreement, clitics and anaphora. She is the author of
The Syntax of Ditransitives: Evidence from Clitics (Mouton de Gruyter 2003), has co-edited
four volumes in theoretical linguistics, and has published in journals, edited volumes, and
conferenceproceedings.
Marijke De Belder is currently an FWO postdoc researcher at the KU Leuven campus
Brussel after having been a postdoc lecturer at Utrecht University, where she received her
Ph.D.inlinguistics.Herresearchinterestsaremorphosyntaxandthesyntax-lexiconinterface.
Morespecifically,shehasstudiedthesyntaxofroots,nominalinflection,vocabularyinsertion,
derivationalword-formation,andcompounding.ShepublishedonDutchnominalinflection
intheJournalofComparativeGermanicLinguisticsandinLingua.
HagitBorerisProfessorandChairofLinguisticsatQueenMary,UniversityofLondon.She
receivedherPh.D.inlinguisticsatMIT,andhasheldprofessorialpositionsattheUniversity
of Massachusetts at Amherst and at the University of Southern California. Her research
interests include syntax, morphosyntax, the syntax-semantics interface, and the acquisition
ofsyntaxbychildren.
OUPCORRECTEDPROOF–FINAL,7/11/2014,SPi
Notesoncontributors ix
EditDoronisProfessorofLinguisticsattheHebrewUniversityofJerusalem.Shereceiveda
Ph.D.inlinguisticsfromtheUniversityofTexasatAustinin1983.Hermainresearchareais
theinterfaceofsemantics,morphology,andsyntax,particularlyinsuchlanguagesasHebrew,
Arabic, Aramaic, English, and French. She has published various articles on the following
topics:theSemiticverbalsystem,nominalpredicates,adjectivalpassives,thesubject-predicate
relation, resumptive pronouns, bare and mass nouns, ergativity, ellipsis, apposition, free
indirect discourse, the semantics of aspect and habituality, the semantics of voice, and
referencetokinds.
NoamFaustreceivedhisPh.D.fromParisVIIUniversityin2011.Heiscurrentlyworkingat
the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is interested in phonological, morphological, and
morpho-syntacticstructures,andhowthesecanbedetectedthroughsoundpatterns.Hehas
publishedonthesetopicsintheSemiticlanguagesofHebrew,Neo-Aramaic,andTigre.Heis
nowconductingfieldworkonbothTigreandNuer.
ÁngelJ.Gallego isaProfessorAgregat attheDepartamentdeFilologiaEspanyolaofthe
UniversitatAutònomadeBarcelona,wherehedefendedhisdoctoraldissertationin2007.He
isamemberoftheCentredeLingüísticaTeòrica,atheoreticallinguisticresearchgroup.His
main interests and publications concern the areas of syntax, comparative grammar, and
parametric variation (especially within Romance languages). He has published in journals
like Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, Probus, Theoretical Linguistics, or Linguistic
Analysis,andheistheauthorofthemonograph PhaseTheory(JohnBenjamins,2010),and
hasalsoactedasaneditorinPhases.DevelopingtheFramework(MoutondeGruyter,2012)
andElmovimientodeconstituyentes(withJoséM.Brucart,Visor,2012).
NicolaLampitelliisalectureratUniversityofTours(France).HereceivedhisPh.D.in2011
fromUniversityParis7.Hisresearchinterestsincludethephonologicalformofmorphemes,
the structures of words, and the phonology-syntax interface. He has published mainly on
RomanceandAfroasiaticlanguages.
LisaLevinsonisanassociateprofessoratOaklandUniversityandreceivedherPh.D.from
NYUin2007.Sheworksonmorphosemantics,tryingtobetterunderstandwhattheatomic
units of compositional semantics are, and the extent to which those atomic units can be
mapped to atomic morphosyntactic constituents. She has recently published articles in the
journalsNaturalLanguageandLinguisticTheoryandSyntax.
JeanLowenstammisProfessorofLinguisticsatUniversitéParisDiderotinParis,France.He
received his Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, in 1979. His research
interests include phonology, morphology, syntax, and interface issues. He has published on
thosetopicswithspecialattentiontoSemitic,Germanic,andRomancelanguages.Heisoneof
thefoureditorsofBrill’sAnnualofAfroasiaticLanguagesandLinguistics.
Jaume Mateu is an associate professor of Catalan and current Director of the Center for
TheoreticalLinguisticsatUniversitatAutònomadeBarcelona(UAB).HereceivedhisPh.D.
in linguistics at UAB (2002). His research interests include the lexicon-syntax interface and
argumentstructure.Someofhisrecentpublicationsare “Argumentstructure”,inA.Carnie
et al. (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Syntax (2014); “Conflation and incorporation