Table Of ContentYearbook of Morphology
Editors: Geert Booij
Jaap van Marie
Consulting Editors: Stephen Anderson (Baltimore)
Mark Aronoff (Stony Brook, N.Y.)
Laurie Bauer (Wellington)
Rudie Botha (Stellenbosch)
Joan Bybee (Albuquerque, New Mexico)
Wolfgang Dressier (Wien)
Jack Hoeksema (Philadelphia)
Rochelle Lieber (Durham, N.H.)
Peter Matthews (Cambridge, U.K.)
Franz Rainer (Salzburg)
Thomas Roeper (Amherst, MA)
Sergio Scalise (Bologna)
Henk Schultink (Utrecht)
Jindrich Toman (Michigan)
Wolfgang Wurzel (Berlin, DDR)
Editorial address: Editors, Yearbook of Morphology
Vakgroep Taalkunde, Vrije Universiteit
P.O. Box 7161
1007 MC Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Contributors are requested to submit manuscripts in three-fold with diskette, and
to comply with the Instruction to Authors printed on the inside back cover. The
deadline for submission of papers to Volume 3 is February 15, 1990. Authors
receive 25 offprints of articles and 10 offprints of book reviews.
Geert Booij and Jaap van Marie (ed<
Yearbook
of
Morphology
2
¥
i, W,‘; v.
1989
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Yearbook of morphology. - Dordrecht [etc.] : Foris
ISSN 0922-3495
Appears annually
Yearbook 2, 1989 / Geert Booij, Jaap van Marie (eds.)
ISBN 90-6765-444-2 bound
ISBN 90-6765-445-0 paper
SISO 805.3 UDC 801.55(058)
Subject heading: morphology (linguistics) ; yearbooks.
ISSN 0922-3495
ISBN 90 6765 444 2 bound
ISBN 90 6765 445 0 paper
© 1988 Foris Publications - Dordrecht
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Table of Contents
Articles:
Stephen R. Anderson
Lexicalism and the distribution of reflexives
Geert Booij
Complex Verbs and the Theory of Level Ordering
Danielle Corbin
Form, Structure and Meaning of Constructed Words in an Associative
and Stratified Lexical Component
Bruce Derwing and Royal Skousen
Morphology in the Mental Lexicon: a New Look at Analogy
Taro Kageyama
The Place of Morphology in the Grammar: Verb-Verb Compounds in
Japanese
Rochelle Lieber
On Percolation
Arnold Zwicky
Quicker, more quickly, *quicklier
Book Reviews
Joachim Mugdan
Review of Laurie Bauer, Introducing Linguistic Morphology
Gerard Steen
Review of Sabine de Knop, Metaphorische Komposita in
Zeitungsüberschriften
vi Contents
Wolfgang Ulrich Wurzel
Review of Andrew Carstairs, Allomorphy in Inflexion
Wiecher Zwanenburg
Review of Danielle Corbin, Morphologie dérivationelle et structuration
du lexique
Book Notices by Willem Adelaar, Geert Booij, Gerrit Dimmendaal and
Hans Luschütsky
Publications received
Yearbook of Morphology 2 (1989), 1-19
Lexicalism and the distribution of reflexives*
Stephen R. Anderson
1. INTRODUCTION
One of the most important stimuli for the recent development of theories of
morphology has been the desire to work out the implications of the ‘Lexicalist
Hypothesis’, first suggested by Chomsky (1970). Although this position has
probably had as many interpretations as interpreters, a strong form of the
hypothesis1 is that given in (1):
(1) Lexicalist Hypothesis:
The syntax neither manipulates nor has access to the internal form of
wprds.
Although this position is a rather restrictive one, and excludes many of the
analyses proposed in the syntactic literature during the 1970’s, it seems general
ly to be possible to maintain it in the face of most that is known about the
syntax and morphology of natural languages. One notable prima facie problem
for (1), however, which many authors have cited as an argument for more
permissive views of the interaction of morphology and syntax, is a particular
kind of distribution of reflexive pronouns in causative constructions that is
found in several languages. In the languages in question, reflexive pronouns
appear in sentences whose main verb is causative with a distribution which
suggests that the causative verb must be formed in the syntax - a violation, at
least apparently, of the claim that the syntax does not manipulate the internal
forms of words.
The present paper discusses one such case, that of Georgian, which appears
to be typical of the kind of interaction which poses problems for the Lexicalist
Hypothesis. In Section 2, the facts of this language which are problematic are
presented and the nature of the problem is laid out. In Section 3, an alternative
analysis is presented which locates (at least part of) the principles determining
the distribution of reflexives in the lexicon, which would remove the problem
Author's address: Cognitive Science Center, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore MD 21218,
U.S.A.
2 SJi. Anderson
for (1). At first sight, however, this analysis has a number of features which
are not particularly attractive. Section 4 then considers the facts of Georgian in
more detail, and shows that there are in fact independent reasons to believe that
the important features of the lexical analysis of reflexivization are well moti
vated for this language, despite initial appearances. Section 5 thus concludes
that the analysis apparently required to maintain (1) is correct, and engages in
some more general speculation about the implication of this analysis for other
issues in syntax.
2. REFLEXIVES AND CAUSATIVES IN GEORGIAN
The problem posed by Georgian comes from the fact that, as established by
Harris (1981), reflexive pronouns in that language must be bound by the subject
of their clause.2 Reflexive pronouns have the form ‘possessive + tavi’ (e.g. third
person tavisi tavi, literally ‘self s head’), as illustrated in (2) below.3
(2) a. vano ircmunebs tavis tavs
Vano convinces self’s self
‘Vano is convincing himself
b. vano elaparakeba tavis tavs
Vano talks to self’s self
‘Vano is talking to himself
c. vano pikrobs tavis tav-ze
Vano thinks self s self-on
‘Vano is thinking about himself
d. vanos uqvars tavisi tavi
Vano loves self’s self
‘Vano loves himself
Note in particular that the antecedent of a reflexive may not be either the
subject of a containing clause as in (3a) below, or a non-subject within the
same clause, as in (3b):
(3) a. vano pikrobs rom nino sacmels amzadebs tavis-tvis
Vano thinks that Nino food prepares self-for
Vano; thinks that Ninoj is preparing food for herself^
b. nino acvenebs patara givis tavis tavs sarke-si
Nino shows little Givi self s self mirror-in
Nino* is showing little Givii herself^ in the mirror.
Such conditions on the distribution of reflexives are not particularly unusual,
since many other languages require anaphors (including reflexives) to be bound
Lexicalism and the distribution of reflexives 3
by the subject of the minimal containing clause. In Georgian, however, there is
exactly one set of circumstances in which this condition is not satisfied trans
parently.4 In sentences containing a causative verb, such as alaparakebs ‘makes
speak’, causative of laparakobs ‘speaks’, or miataninebs ‘makes take’, causative
of miitans ‘will take’*, either the subject of the causative verb (the agent of
causation) or its indirect object (the agent of the caused action) can be the
antecedent of a reflexive. This is illustrated in (4) below, where the lines
connecting NP’s indicate the possible antecedents for the reflexive:
(4) a. ekimma vanos alaparaka tavistav-ze
doctor made talk Vano self sself-on
The doctor¡ got Vanoj to talk about himself-.
i----------:— :------------------:— ~— i.
b. genom miatamna rezos cignebi Urns-tan
Geno made take Rezo books self-chez
Geno; got Rezoj to take the books to his^ place.
i-------;-------;----------— i.
c. vanom alaparaka tavisi tavi sxva-ze
Vano made talk self's self other-on
VanOj made himself; talk about someone else.
The most ‘natural’ analysis of this fact which comes to mind (and that of
Harris (1981), in essence) is to posit an underlying two-clause structure for
causatives, in which the NP which serves as subject of the related non-causative
is subject of an embedded complement to an abstract verb of causation. This
complex structure then undergoes a rule collapsing the two clauses into one.
The rule in question is known as ‘Clause Union’ in some theories, as ‘Verb (or
Predicate) Raising’ in others, as ‘Incorporation’ in still others: the distinctions
among these possibilities are not significant in the present context, for the
essential claim of all of them is that a surface clause with a single causative
verb is derived syntactically from an underlying structure containing a clause
with a non-causative verb embedded in a matrix sentence whose verb expresses
causation alone.
In such a derivation, the underlying structure of sentence (4b) is given
(roughly, and assuming an underlying SOV order) by a Phrase Marker such as
that in (5):
4 SJi. Anderson
geno rezo tavis -tan cignebi miitans CAUSE
Geno Rezo self chez books takes
As indicated by the arrow, NP2 can serve as the antecedent of a reflexive in
the position of NP4 in this structure, since NP2 is the subject of the minimal
clause containing NP4.
After the operation of the rule which collapses the structure in (5) into a
single clause, the result is something like the structure in (6), still assuming for
the sake of simplicity that the basic word-order of Georgian clauses is SOV:
(6) S
Geno (eg.) Rezo (dat.) self chez books (nom.) made-take
The arrow in this structure indicates the possibility that may serve as the
antecedent of a reflexive in the position of NP4, since NPj is the subject of the
minimal clause (in the derived structure) that contains NP4.
The two possibilities for the antecedent of the reflexive pronoun in (4b),
then, correspond to instances of well-formed antecedent-anaphor relationships in
the two structures (5) and (6). In order to derive the ambiguity of reference of
this reflexive, we need only assume that the binder of a reflexive can be
determined either before or after the application of ‘Causative Clause Union’
Lexicalism and the distribution of reflexives 5
maps (5) onto (6). In the absence of a derivation relating these two structures,
it is not clear how both possibilities can be reconciled with the generalization
above about what NP’s can serve as the antecedent of a reflexive: these facts
serve as important evidence in favour of such a derivation.
In the context of the Lexicalist Hypothesis as stated in (1), however, the
derivation just discussed is not possible. This is because a rule forming causa
tive verbs (such as the rule of ‘Causative Clause Union’ invoked above) would
be a rule of the syntax which would have to have access to (and manipulate)
the internal form of causative verbs like alaparakebs ‘makes speak’ (cf.
laparatobs ‘speaks’), miataninebs ‘makes take’ (cf. miitans ‘will take’), and so
on, contrary to the claim in (1).
To see this, we must consider briefly the morphology of verbs in Georgian,
and particularly of causatives. A Georgian verb consists of several structural
positions, including the following:5
• A stem position, occupied by a root (possibly followed by one or more
derivational suffixes);
• A pre-radical vowel position, coming immediately before the stem and
occupied by exactly one of the elements /0,a,e,i,u/;
i
• An aspectual preverb, coming at the very left edge of the verb and filled
by one of a small closed set of prefixes or by nothing;6
• An agreement prefix, coming after the aspectual preverb (if one present)
and before the pre-radical vowel (if present);
• A present-future stem formant, chosen on a lexically idiosyncratic basis
from a small closed set and appearing after the stem in certain tenses; and
• A set of final suffixes marking certain categories of tense, aspect, and
agreement
What is of interest to us in this scheme is the formal way by which causative
verbs are built. While there are numerous lexical idiosyncracies, the prevailing
pattern is the following:
• The causative stem for one set of verbs (including e.g. a-laparak-ebs
‘makes speak’ from laparak-obs ‘speaks’) is the same as the stem of the
basic verb, whil for others (including e.g. mi-a-tanin-ebs ‘makes take’ from
mi-i-tan-s ‘will take’), causative stem consists of the base stem together
(usually) with its present-future stem formant, followed usually by the
suffix /-in/ (in some verb classes, /-evin/;
