Table Of Content<DOCINFOAUTHOR""TITLE"VerbClusters:AstudyofHungarian,GermanandDutch"SUBJECT"LinguistikAktuell/LinguisticsToday,Volume69"KEYWORDS""SIZEHEIGHT"220"WIDTH"150"VOFFSET"4">
VerbClusters
LinguistikAktuell/LinguisticsToday
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SeriesEditors
WernerAbraham EllyvanGelderen
UniversityofVienna ArizonaStateUniversity
AdvisoryEditorialBoard
GuglielmoCinque IanRoberts
UniversityofVenice CambridgeUniversity
GüntherGrewendorf KenSafir
J.W.Goethe-University,Frankfurt RutgersUniversity,NewBrunswickNJ
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UniversityofLille,France McGillUniversity
HubertHaider StenVikner
UniversityofSalzburg UniversityofAarhus
ChristerPlatzack C.Jan-WouterZwart
UniversityofLund UniversityofGroningen
Volume69
VerbClusters:AstudyofHungarian,GermanandDutch
EditedbyKatalinÉ.KissandHenkvanRiemsdijk
Verb Clusters
A study of Hungarian, German and Dutch
Editedby
Katalin É. Kiss
HungarianAcademyofSciences
Henk van Riemsdijk
TilburgUniversity
JohnBenjaminsPublishingCompany
Amsterdam(cid:1)/(cid:1)Philadelphia
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VerbClusters:AstudyofHungarian,GermanandDutch/editedbyKatalinÉ.
KissandHenkvanRiemsdijk.
p. cm.(LinguistikAktuell/LinguisticsToday,issn0166–0829;v.69)
Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindexes.
1.Hungarianlanguage--Verbphrase.2.Germanlanguage--Verb
phrase.3.Dutchlanguage--Verbphrase.I.Kiss,KatalinÉ.II.Riemsdijk,Henk
C.van.III.Linguistikaktuell;Bd.69.
PH2271.V47 2004
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Table of contents
Introduction
Verbclusters:Somebasicnotions 1
KatalinÉ.KissandHenkvanRiemsdijk
I. Dataandtheories
Data
WestGermanicverbclusters:Theempiricaldomain 43
SusiWurmbrand
Hungarianverbalclusters:Resultsofaquestionnairesurvey 87
KrisztaSzendro˝iandIldikóTóth
Theories
Clusteringtheories 121
JonathanDavidBobaljik
“Roll-up”structuresandmorphologicalwords 147
MichaelBrody
Thestructureofclusters 173
EdwinWilliams
II. Forcesandfactors
Prosody
Astress-basedapproachtoclimbing 205
KrisztaSzendro˝i
Particlesandphonologicallydefectivepredicates 225
AnikóCsirmaz
Tableofcontents
Aspect
Climbingforaspect:Withnorucksack 253
GáborAlberti
TheHungarianverbalcomplex:Analternativeapproach 291
CsabaOlsvay
VO/OV
ParallelstrategiesofverbalcomplexformationinHungarian
andWest-Germanic? 335
KatalinÉ.Kiss
Dopreverbsclimb? 359
PeterAckema
Morphology
Verbalcomplexesandmorphosyntacticmerger 395
HubaBartos
InfinitivalcomplementsofmodalsinHungarianandinGerman 417
IldikóTóth
Agreementand‘clauseunion’ 445
MarceldenDikken
Namesindex 499
Subjectindex 503
Listofcontributors 511
Verb clusters
Some basic notions
KatalinÉ.KissandHenkvanRiemsdijk
. Openingremarks
Manylanguageshaveconstructionsinwhichverbscluster.Thismayoftensimply
be the result of center-embedded complementation in SOV-languages, but lan-
guages find many other ways to cluster verbs: they make use of auxiliaries, they
moveverbsintoeachother’sproximity,theyincorporateverbs,ortheyuseserial
verbconstructions.Often,theresultingverbclusterhasspecialproperties,suchas
unexpectedorderingoftheverbsinthecluster.Andfrequently,theresultingcom-
plexsentenceissomewherebetweenmulti-clausalandmono-clausal.Verbclusters,
therefore, constitute an interesting sub-field of linguistic enquiry that addresses
questionsthatrangefrommorphologicalissuesviasyntaxtosemanticproblems.
Exceptionally large verb clusters (up to five or even more verbs) are found
both in Hungarian and in the West-Germanic OV-languages. And furthermore,
theyshowanumberofremarkableandunexpectedsimilaritiesintheirstructure,
inparticularinnon-canonicalorderingsoftheverbs.Fromtheperspectiveofthe
geneticoriginoftheselanguages(Indo-Europeanvs.Non-Indo-European)thisis
quitesurprising.Butfromtheperspectiveoflanguagecontact,thesimilarityisper-
hapslesssurprising;afterall,theselanguages(morespecificallytheSouth-Eastern
representativesofthecontiguousWest-GermanicOV-languagegroup)haveexisted
inclosecontactforaconsiderableamountoftime.Inotherwords,itcouldbethe
casethat we are seeing anareal syntactic feature.What we presentinthepresent
book is essentially an exploration of the properties of these constructions in the
twogeographicaldomainsandasurveyofthetheoreticalapproachesthatcanbe
adoptedinaccountingforverbclusterphenomenaofthiskind.
Thepresentbookbynomeanspurportstocoverthemanyanglesthatshould
becoveredinafull-scaleinvestigationofalanguagecontactsituation.Wesimply
havetoolittleinformationaboutandinsightinthehistoricaldevelopmentofthese
KatalinÉ.KissandHenkvanRiemsdijk
particularphenomenainthelanguagesinquestionandtheincidenceandpatterns
ofmultilingualisminthecontactareaasfarasverbclustersareconcerned.What
thisbookdoesofferisadetailedsyntactic studyoftherelevantverbclusterphe-
nomena.Itprovidesanextensiveempiricalsurveyofthepatternsfound,including
ampledialectinformation.Italsodiscussesavarietyoftheoriesthathavebeende-
vised toaccount for the existence and structure of verb clusters.And it contains
articlesthatexaminespecific factorsoraspectsthatplayaparticularlyimportant
role in the syntactic analysis of verb clusters: prosody, aspect, basic word order
and morphology. In this sense, the book provides the syntactic underpinnings
foramoreextensive,multidisciplinaryinvestigationofthiswidelyoverlookedbut
extremelyrichandpotentiallyfertileareaofsyntacticinvestigation.
. Somepropertiesofverbclusters:TheviewfromGermanic
. Isthereacluster?
In Dutch, there are two main strategies for complementation: extraposition and
verbraising.Thelattertermistheoneusedmostlyinthegenerativesyntaxtradi-
tion,butitissomewhattheoryladen,soithasbeenreplacedby‘verbcluster’(VC)
here,which should be takenin asomewhat neutral interpretation because it too
ispotentiallymisleading:eitheritreferstoastringofmoreorlessadjacentverbs,
or it refers to a string of verbs that form a constituent together at some level of
analysis.Similarly,byextraposition(EX)wemeanclausalunitsintheclause-final
position,thatis,totherightofthematrixverbcluster.Inotherwords,bytheuse
of this term we do not mean to takea side in the questionof how extraposition
structuresaretobederived.TheissueoftheconstituencyoftheVCisatthecore
ofthepresentsection.
ThetwovariantsareexemplifiedbelowforGermanandDutch:
(1) a. ...dass er verspricht [eine Geschichte zu erzählen] (EX)
that he promises a story to tell
(cid:1)
a. ...dathijbelooft [eenverhaaltevertellen]
b. ...dasser[eineGeschichtezuerzählen]verspricht (VC)
b(cid:1). ...dathij[eenverhaalbeloofttevertellen]
In(1a),thecomplementclause,hereinfinitival withacontrolledsubject,isinte-
grallyplacedattheendoftheclause.Weneednotbeconcernedwithextraposition
clausesexcepttotheextentthattheyareusedasastandardofcomparisonagainst
whichVC-examplesarechecked.Ascaneasilybeseenin(1b),thetwoverbshere
areadjacent,andthequestionindeedariseswhethersuchsequencesofverbs,which
Verbclusters
cansometimesattainalengthofuptosixormoreverbs,haveanyspecialproperties
orstatusinsyntax,morphology,orsemantics.
ItwasEvers(1975)whofirstarguedthatindeedVCswereconstituentswhich,
inhisproposal,arisefromadjoiningtheembeddedverbtothematrixverb.This
ideawasinspiredquitedirectlybythefactthatintheDutchexample(1b’)theorder
oftheverbsisinverted,raisingimmediatequestionsastotheconstituentstructure.
Thestructurewouldthenbesomethinglike(2):
(2) a. ...dasser[eineGeschichte[]][zuerzählen verspricht]
i i
b. ...dathij[eenverhaal[]][beloofttevertellen]
i i
PartofEvers’evidenceforthisconstituentstructurecamefromgapping,butmuch
of it is unclear and furthermore too little is known about the properties of gap-
ping to base any firm conclusions on such considerations. See Evers (1975) for
discussion.
. Adjacency
Asecondlineofargumentationwhichisrelevant,thoughnot,perhaps,conclusive,
istheadjacencywhichisfoundamongtheverbs,atleastinDutch.Thesituationin
Germanismorecomplex,amattertowhichwereturnbrieflyinSection2.5below.
Thefollowing discussionisbased(almostverbatim)onthepresentationofthese
factsinvanRiemsdijk(1998).
Thereare twologicallypossiblesourcesforinterveningelements,extraposed
elementsintheembeddedclause,orelementsinterveningbetweenthematrixverb
andthecomplementclause.Thisisschematicallyshownin(3).
(3) *...[ ...[ ...[e] W ]W [V V]]unlessW ,W =Ø
MATRIX COMPLEMENT i 1 2 j i 1 2
ConsiderfirstthecaseofW .SupposewehaveanembeddedclausewithaPPthat
1
canbeextraposedundernormalcircumstances,whichobtain,forexample,when
the(bracketed)complementclauseisitselfextraposed.Thisisillustratedin(4).
(4) a. dat hij probeert [de emmer met een lepel leeg te
that he tries the bucket with a spoon empty to
scheppen]
scoop
‘thathetriestoscoopthebucketemptywithaspoon’
b. *dathijprobeert[deemmerleegmeteenlepeltescheppen]
c. dathijprobeert[deemmerleegtescheppenmeteenlepel]
