aspectual properties only if they present semantic AND syntactic effects. This is ..... The fact that we can causativize laugh and even eat suggests that lexical.
How Light is a Light Verb* ROUMYANA SLABAKOVA
McGill University
0. Introduction
The main claim of this paper is that perfectivity in Slavic is encoded in the upper part of a Larsonian VP, a light verb widely accepted to be reserved for CAUSE. This is possible because CAUSE itself can be divided into subcomponents, TRANSri10N and FORCE as in (I). Languages of the world fall into two categories in this respect: those that split FORCE from TRANSlllON and encode them in two separate morphemes (Japanese, Basque). The second group (Slavic, Indonesian, Arabic, etc) represent the subcomponents of CAUSE in one single morpheme, which as a result becomes polyfunctional. (1)
CAUSE I \
FORCE
TRANSDITON
The has been a recent trend towards a predicate-based (Grimshaw 1990, Pustejovsky 1991) syntactic approach to aspectuality (Tenny 1987, Travis I 991, Borer I994 ), in wh.i ch at least some semantic information is read off phrase structure. Within such an approach, the distinct syntax associated, say, with the different aspectual classes of verbs would serve as a template for the appropriate
*r am deeply indebted to Lisa Tmvis for her guidance and inspiration. Thanks are also due to Mark Baker, Jose Bonneau, Joyce Bruhn-Garavito, Brendan GiUon, Heather Goad, 0. T. Stewart, and Lydia White for valuable discussion. Special thanks go to Jonathan Bobaljik, Ellen Thompson, and Miwako Uesaka for their insightful questions. Parts of this paper were presented at the workshop "Clausal Architecture: Tempora~ Aspectual and Verbal Projections", at the University of Bergamo. Italy, November 1995. I wish to thank the audiences in Bergamo and at WCCFL XV, UC at Irvine for their important input. Arry remaining shortcomings are, of course, my own. 487
488 / ROUMYANA SLABAKOVA aspectual interpretations and will result in durative or terminative readings. We will be justified in advocating and practicing such a syntactic approach to aspectual properties only if they present semantic AND syntactic effects. This is what the present paper will attempt to demonstrate in comparing Slavic and English aspectuality. 1. Template of Slavic aspectual morphology.
Slavic languages are well-known for the overt realization of their rich aspectual morphology. Bulgarian has a special place among them for the exceptional regularity of this morphology, but the same combinations of morphemes exist in all Slavic languages with a bigger degree of lexical idiosyncrasy. What follows gives the template of Bulgarian verbal morphology. (2)
Perfectivizing -- Root -- Secondary -- Tense/Agreement Preverbs Imperfective
Preverbs (PV) in Slavic encode 'fELICITY, or the inherent boundary of the event (see Brecht (1984) for Russian, Kucera (1983} for Czech and Russian, Wierzbicka (1968) for Polish). Simplex imperfective stems as in (3a) encode Activities or States in the familiar Vendler (1967)-Dowty (1979) classification. Accomplishments are derived by adding a preverb as in (3 b,c). (3)
a. pis-a
b. na-pis-a write--3sS/AORIST PV-write--3sS/AORIST 'he wrote' 'he wrote up'
c. pre-pis-a PV-write--3sS/AORIST 'he copied'
Preverbs can imply pure COMPLETION of the event (3 b) or have an additional meaning of MANNER or MEANS of executing the event (3 c). 2. Theoretical Framework
Following Dowty (I 979), Pustejovsky (1991) and Parsons (1990}, we assume that a single event can be analyzed as a composite of sub-events. That is, Accomplishments consist of a causal event and a caused event. We also assume the phrase structure proposed by Travis (1991, 1995). Following Larson (1988), this structure has two VPs. Travis has argued that the higher VP expresses the causal event and the lower VP denotes the caused event (see also Hale and Keyser 1993, Chomsky 1995, Harley 1995). For example, a sentence with an Accomplishment verb, say John ate a sandwich, is mapped onto the syntactic structure illustrated: (4)
hP IEP !vtP (ape< John] CAUSE causa/event
(ASP ( VlP
!..... a sandwich] .feat IIIII
caused event
The verbal root inserted in the V2 head carries the idiosyncratic semantic meaning of the verb. The aspectual information is added to the root in the process
HOW LimiT IS A LIGHT VERB I 489
of syntactic derivation. Note that the two subcategorized arguments of the verb, the logical subject John and the logical object a sandwich are projected in Spec of the higher VP and the lower VP, respectively. This is so because John is a participant of the causal event and a sandwich is a participant of the caused event. I differ from Travis in assuming that AspP is a projection for encoding the Aktionsarten information of verbs. In Dowty's (1979) aspectual calculus Accomplishment and Achievement verbs, denoting change of state, have the BECOME operator in their logical forms. I assume that BECOME has syntactic status and projects AspP (see Slabakova and Uesaka (1995) for further implications). Finally, I shall adopt an organization of the grammar as in Halle and Marantz's (1993) Distributed Morphology framework sketched in (5). This work suggests that morphology comes after syntax, syntax presents a good rough draft for the subsequent processes of morphology and that vocabulary items are inserted late in the derivation. As the Bulgarian morpheme order is predicted adequately by the syntax, we need not say that anything else is happening in the morphological component. DS
(5)
I
--------ss
LF
MS
i
PF 3. What are preverbs used for?
Before arguing for a specific position for preverbs, we will look at what they do in Slavic languages. In this section we will demonstrate that (i) they fall into two patterns of syntactic behaviour depending on their orientation to the Agent/Causer or to the Theme, (ii) that they can add an Agent/Causer as truly causative morphemes do, and (iii) that they determine aspectual verb classes. 3.1. Evidence from LCS: Hale and Keyser (1993).
Hale and Keyser (1993} have argued that the manner component of English denominal and deadj ectival verbs. encoded in the upper VP in a Lexical Relational Structure representation, can be internally oriented to the inner verb as in (6), or externally oriented to an Agent/Causer (7). The syntactic reflex ofthls orientation is that in (6) the verb appears readily in the inchoative form while in (7) it does not. (6) a The pigs splashed mud on the wall. (examples from H&K 1993, p. 89) b. Mud splashed on the wall (7) a We smeared mud on the walL b. "'Mud smeared on the wall
490 I ROUMYANA SLABAKOVA
This additional component should be imagined as a MODIFIER TAG associated with the upper, causative verb or with the lower lexical verb. In (6) this modifier tag is internally oriented because it describes the final state (splashed, dripped, poured, squirted) in which the Theme substance is left after the change of state is over. Thus the manner component is justified internally to the argument structure of the root (expressed by co-indexation with the Theme). In contrast, transitive verbs as in (7) involve a manner component that relates to the manner or means in which the Agent acts on the substance (smear. daub, ntb). At D-structure, this externally-oriented manner component has to be licenced (co-indexed) with an external argument1• This explains the ungrammaticality of(7b). The intransitive variant is formed by moving the object (the internal subject in their terminology) into [Spec, IP]. But if we do move the object to [Spec, IP], no external argument will be projected. Thus the externally oriented manner modifier would not get licenced and Full Interpretation would be violated. Extending Hale and Keyser's ( 1993) proposal, I would like to suggest that in Slavic languages the manner component is not only a tag associated with parts of the double VP structure but that it has lexical status itself. The manner component is always part of the causative upper verb, and it is encoded in the lexical meaning of the perfectivizing preverbs. Earlier we mentioned that preverbs can be divided into two types: those expressing completion of the event and those which have additional lexical meaning of their own. The former can be compared to Hale and Keyser's internally oriented tag because they simply highlight the fact that an endpoint of the event has been reached (Sa). The same type would also include preverbs that modify the Theme or the final state like the ones exemplified in (8b). Internally oriented preverbs frequently denote that the Theme involved is in large quantities or is completely affected. Other preverbs have a more salient orientation towards the Agent: they usually suggest that the event was caused in a very intense or vigorous manner, see (8c). I have schematized the various lexical meaning of preverbs in figure 1. (8)
a. na-pi.fa 'write up' (completion) pro-c'eta 'read in full' b. o-bera 'pick everything available', (completion +Themeiz-ecta 'read everything available', oriented material) c. iz-pobija 'beat everyone around' (completion + Agentraz-xvalja 'praise intensely' oriented material)
1
Please note that contrary to my assumptions in this paper, Hale and Keyser (1993) consider the agent to be truly outside of the !-syntax representation of VP, appearing only ins-syntax. See Travis (1995) on the overlap of !-syntax and s-syntax.
HOW LIGIIT IS A LIGHT VERB /491
Lexical meaning of preverbs ([+complete] all the time)
Ildiosyn~ng IModifying Theme IModifying Agent
Completion only
71teme-oriented lnchoative possible
Agent-oriented lnchoative blocked
Figure I: Lexical Meanings ofpreverbs The following sentences demonstrate that Hale and Keyser's (1993) test works for Bulgarian: (9) has an externally oriented preverb and the inchoative is bad, the preverb in (10) is internally oriented and the inchoative is well-forrned2• (9)
a. lh'iteljat
raz-,n'llli
deteto.
teacher-DET PV-praise-3sS/AORIST kid-DET The teacher vigorously praised the child.' b. *Deteto se
raz-xvali.
kid-DET INCH PV-praise3sS/AORIST The kid praised vigorously' (I 0)
a. Bistro s-topi leda na petkata. Bistra PV-melt3sS/AORIST ice-DET on stove-DET 'Bistra melted the ice on the stove.' b. Leda se s-topi na petkata. ive-DET INCH PV-melt-3sS/AORIST on stove-DET The ice melted on the stove.'
2
A logical question to ask regarding the examples in (9)-(10) is whether they will have inchoative variants without the proverbs, that is, when they are imperfective. It is very interesting to note that the inchoative marker se appears with both perfective and imperfective verbs, but the interpretations are radically different-· perfective with se (if it is grammatical) is inchoa.tive, imperfective with se is middle. (i) Tova dele se xvali /esno. this child sc praise easily 'This child is easy to praise.' The relations between Bulgarian se and aspect have been discussed in Slabakova ( 1994), where it is argued that two different structural positions of se lead to inchoative or middle interpretations. Middles in Bulgarian are stative, their structure has only one VP (following Noonan 1992) and se is in AspP (see Slabakova 1994 for evidence and discussion)
492 I ROUMYANA SLABAKOVA
We can imagine the lexicalized manner component as situated in the upper verb (more evidence for that claim will follow). I will propose that it will have to be licenced by (or its meaning justified) through coindexation with either the DP subject in the [Spec, VIP] or with the AspP (i.e. either with the specifier or with the complement ofVlP3). (9a')
(lOa') VIP VIP ~ ~ DP Vl' DPi Vl' ~~ ~~ the teacher Vl AspP Bistra VI AspPi raz-i ~ S-i ~ Asp V2P Asp V2P ~ ~ DP V2' DP V2' ~I ~I the ice V2 the kid V2 prruse melt AGENT-ORIEN1ED
Tr·lliME/EVENT-ORIENTED
Note that the Theme/Event related preverb are also assumed to be in VI and to obtain their apparent Theme orientation through co-indexation with AspP 4. What is more, this need for licencing through co-indexation is much more salient in Bulgarian, where there is lexical meaning of the preverb related to either the subject or the object, in contrast with English, where the manner component is covert and its orientation has to be inferred from the verb meaning. The above examples suggest that we are justified in extending Hale and Keyser's (1993) analysis of the manner component ofEnglish splash/smear types of verbs to Bulgarian and Slavic preverbs. At least for one type ofpreverb, those whose meaning describes the involvement of the agent in the event, the upper causative verb is a logical place. We will assume that if we position one type of preverb there, we should position them all there for the sake of simplicity, until evidence to the contrary is presented. Furthermore, we will see that all preverbs behave similarly with respect to all syntactic facts discussed in section 6, which
3
Please note that this indexation assumes the homomorphism between event and Incremental Theme (Dowty (1991), Krifka (1989,1992)). Whenever the object is completely affected, the event will be complete. 4
Jonathan Bobaljik (p.c.) suggests that if all preverbs are in Vl, all inchoatives should be blocked, since both the inchoative and the preverbs are in the same syntactic position. This is certainly the case in English. Still, I consider the co-indexation of the manner tag as its crucial property, that is why the main results of Hale & Keyser's analysis are valid for a structure different than theirs.
HOW LIGHT IS A LIGHT VERB /493
supports a unified approach to their position. 3.2. Bulgarian preverbs are causative, too.
Some further support for placing the preverbs in VI comes from the ability of some of them to be causative. A not too widely acknowledged characteristic of Slavic preverbs is that they can add an external Agent/Causer just like causative morphemes in many other Languages. The Bulgarian preverb raz., in addition to [+complete], has the meaning of 'the agent engages in the eventuality intensely or is involved a great deal'. Further, it provides an additional agent to the argument structure. (II)
(I2)
Kloun8f raz-smjal raz-plaka dett!lo. (Bulgarian) clown-DET PV-laugh/cry -3sS/AORIST baby-DET 'The clown laughed/ cried the baby.' Kotnpanijara na dnrgi deca vinagi raz-jakla decata. company-DET of other children always PV-eat3pSIPRES children-DET 'The company of other children always gives children appetite.'
The fact that we can causativize laugh and even eat suggests that lexical preverbs in Slavic can be treated as CAUSE morphemes. 3.3. Preverbs determine \"erb c:lass: distributional facts from Russian and Bulgarian.
So far we have seen some of the functions of preverbs in Slavic, namely, they provide the meaning of completion and also manner of the event, and they can causativize other verbs. Their distribution across aspectual classes of verbs can also give us a clue as to what they encode. In order to match preverbs and aspectual operators, we have to ask the question what aspectuaJ classes have the CAUSE operator when decomposed. According to the well-established theory of Dowty ( I979) the answer is -only accomplishments. The CAUSE operator is not associated with agentivity (activi.ties and achievements can be agentive, too). Rather, it is associated with a causal activity of at least some duration that brings about the change of state. Looking at overt morphemes in Bulgarian. and Slavic in general, we notice that all verbs with preverbs are accomplishments and all accomplishments contain preverbs, with one group of exceptions to be discussed below. But what about achievements? They are never made up of a preverb plus verbs. The situation in Russian, where the aspectual morphology is less uniform
5
AB a matter of fact, there is a group of about 50 verbs, cited in the Academic Grammar of the Bulgarian language, whose unproductive basic form is perfective. An investigation of this list reveals that most of these are achievements: euja 'hear', pratja 'send', blagovo{ja 'deign', kala se 'climb up', /i§a 'deprive', etc. Preverbs on them are no longer analizable as detachable prefixes, although historically they may be so.
494 / ROUMYANA SLABAKOVA and less productive, is also clear cut. Brecht (1984) claims that, as a rule, verbs normally expressing telic situations are perfective and have imperfective partners containing the productive imperfectivizing suffix -va-, while verbs normally referring to atelic situations are simplex imperfectives and are paired with perfectives formed by the addition of preverbs. These are the examples he cites: umet' 1 'know how' myt' 1 'wash' ACTIVITIES: dumat' 1 'think' xotet' 1 'want' ACCOMPLISHMENTS: vy-po/nit'P 'fulfill' do-kazat' P 'prove' ACHlEVEMENTS: s/utit'sjaP 'happen' priexat' P 'arrive'
(13) STATES:
The distribution ofpreverbs in Slavic points to the fact that achievements are basically without preverbs, and the only aspectual class which consistently contains preverbs are accomplishments. But accomplishments are also the only aspectual class to have CAUSE in their sub-event structure. I propose that this is not a coincidence. The distribution of morphemes suggests the following phrase structure trees for the eventive aspectual classes in Slavic. Note that the external theta role will depend on the type ofVl head that assigns it. Thus we will be able to elegantly capture Grimshaw's (1990) insight that theta role assignment has a thematic as well as an aspectual dimension6, though my analysis differs from hers in the details. (14) ACCOMPLISHMENT
ACTIVITY
VIP ~ Vl' ~ VI AspP [cause]~ ~
VIP ~ Vl' ~ Vl AspP [-cause]~
Asp'
CAUSE+BECOME ~ Asp V2P BE ~ V2' ~ V2 ..froot
6
ACHIEVEMENT
Asp'
~ Asp V2P BE ~ V2' ~ V2 ..froot
VIP ~ VI' ~ Vl AspP [-cause] ~ Asp'
~ Asp V2P BECOME~
Thanks go to Miwako Uesaka for pointing this out to me.
V2' ~ V2 ..froot
HOW LIGJIT IS A LIGHT VERB /495
4. Polysemy of the causative morpheme in languages of the world We now tum to some cross-linguistic studies of causative morpheme polysemy in languages of the world in order to demonstrate that it is not unusual for languages to merge causative and perfective meanings in one morpheme. Nedjalkov and Sil'nitsky (1969) have found a range of possible polysemies of causative morphemes. Hopper and Thompson's (1980) theory of semantic transitivity argues that Transitivity Increase morphemes co-vary, but they can also be polyfunctional. Based on the insights of these two studies, I have attempted to present in a very brief form the other meanings that causative and perfective morphemes can have in the respective languages. The overlap of causative and perfective meanings can be seen in the following table. Meanings
Malay/ Chichewa Athabaskan Mandarin Hungarian Bulgarian f, etc Chinese megPVs Indonesian ilsba -kan -i '
l.Causative to/ •Intense action to/ •Agent involved 2.Perfective •Complete action to/ •Total affectness of ~ Patient 3. Punctual •One-time event
to/
t:l'
to/
~ ~ ~
Table 1: Polysemy of causative and perfective morphemes 1 = Agent-oriented; 2 =Theme-oriented; 3 = event-oriented meanings The logical question to ask is why languages combine these meanings in one morpheme. The next section will attempt to suggest an answer to that question. 5. An excursion into semantics
In this section I will propose an answer to the question why Slavic preverbs are viewed predominantly as perfective and not causative. If semantic primitives are discovered in a causative state of affairs, different languages m~y choose to highlight some of them instead of others. I will suggest that SlaVlc
496/ ROUMYANA SLABAKOVA
preverbs are just such a case: one primitive (transition) is highlighted, but the others are still there, which leads to polyfunctionality of these morphemes. In a typological study of make verbs in different languages Moreno (1993) argues that CAUSE should not be considered a semantic primitive. Instead, he proposes that the CAUSAL SITUATION is made up of the following semantic components (or primitives): (15)
a. b.
optional component: PURPOSE obligatory components: (i) TRANSITION (ii) FORCE
The Force primitive has been argued for by Talmy (1985), the Purpose primitive has been proposed by Song (1990). The third primitive proposed by Moreno is very similar to Dowty's (1979) BECOME in embodying the notion of "transition". Moreno (1993) also argues that the semantic primitives making up the causative situation can be seen in languages where they are allotted to different morphemes. A language that splits Purpose from Transition and Force is Thai, but see the original paper for examples. Among languages that split Force from Transition and Purpose are Basque and Japanese'. In Japanese psych verb constructions, as exemplified in (19), there are two morphemes that change the aspectual class of the predicate. They have been analyzed by Uesaka (1994) as overt realizations of Dowty's (1979) BECOME and CAUSE aspectual operators. Keeping in mind Moreno's (1993) proposal, we may view them as embodiments of TRANSITION and FORCE, respectively. (Japanese, Uesaka 1994) (16) ·a. John-ga inu-ga kowa-i. (state) John-NOM dog-NOM afraid of-PRESENT 'John is afraid of a dog.' b. John-ga inu-o kowa-gar-u. (achievement) John-NOM dog-ACC afraid of-BECOME-PRESENT 'John becomes afraid of a dog.' c. lnu-ga John-o kowa-gar-ase-m. (accomplishment) dog-NOM John-ACC afraid of-BECOME-CAUSE-PRESENT 'A dog frightens John.' At the end of this excursion into semantics and essentially following Moreno's intuition, I would like to suggest that in Slavic preverbs (as in Arabic,
7
Moreno (1993) does not supply a Japanese example apart from mentioning the verb saseru, so I have undertaken to do that for better support of his ideas. Please note that the Japanese data are provided simply as an illustration of an idea. No extensive analysis of the morphemes involved in all of their other possible functions will be attempted.
How LIOIIT IS A LIOJIT VBRB I 497
Mandarin, Indonesian and other causative morphemes) the three primitives are not separated, that is why they are potyfunctional. Unlike Arabic, though, Slavic highlights the Transition component That is why preverbs are traditionally considered to be perfective, and not causative.
6. What can be explained if preverbs are in Vl? So far we have examined some syntactic facts in the form of the blocked inchoative test to suggest that Slavic manner tags lexicalized as preverbs exhibit the same dual orientation as described by Hale and Keyser (1993) for English. We have also seen some distributional evidence and some semantic reasons why Slavic preverbs might be located in the upper V head of a split VP structure. Next I will tum to more syntactic evidence for the claim. I will examine in tum three scope facts: (i) preverbs taking scope over DPs of specified cardinality in Bulgarian, (ii) the effect of preverbs on articleless Russian and Czech DPs, and (iii) adverb interpretations. The idea is to show in every case that preverbs would not have the described effects if they were not in an asymmetric c-commanding position over DP objects. It is important to note that I assume a version of strict c-command, that is, informally put, a node X c-commands all nodes dominated by the first branching node dominating the node X Thus the head will not be able to c-command its speci:fierB in all three cases we will discuss. 6.1. VP-internal relati'fe scope
Turning once again to phrase structure, one might want to equate preverbs in Slavic with English particles signalling a bounded event, e.g. tp in eat up. Brinton (I 988) claims that such particles are telicity markers in English. However, particles and preverbs have different scope effects over the cardinality of the object DP. When perfective (eventive) verbs combine with bare plural or mass DPs in Bulgarian, the event is interpreted as bounded. (17b) demonstrates that this effect is not dependent on tense. ( 17)
a Toj na-pis..d' pisma *3 casal,/ za 3 c'!asa. (Bulgarian) he PV-write-3sS/AORIST letters *for 3 hours/ ,/'in 3 hours 'He wrote up letters in 3 hours.' b. Stom na-pis-est!' pisma • 3 tasal,/za 3 easa toj otivase da when PV-write-3sSIIMP.ERF letters "'for 3 hours/ ,/"in 3 hours he went gi pusne. to them post 'Whenever he wrote up letters in 3 hours, he went out to post them.'
8
Some researchers (e.g. Williams 1984) assume a version ofm-command to detennine the scope of heads which, informally put, says that a node X m-commands every node that is dominated by the first maximal projection XP dominating the node X. Note that I assume strict c-command, NOT m-command in this paper.
498 I RoUMYANA SLABAKOVA
In English, perfective eventive verbs combined with bare plural or mass
DPs result in a durative interpretation. (18)
He wrote up letters for 3 hours/*in 3 hours.
If we assume that perfectivizing elements encode boundedness, and bare plurals encode unboundedness, and if we want to work out the semantics compositionally on the phrase structure, then the data in ( 17) suggest that the Bulgarian perfectivizing preverbs have scope over the DP objects, while in the English sentence in (18) the objects have scope over the particle. Those facts, combined with the distributional and semantic considerations discussed above, suggest that the Slavic preverbs are in Vl, and English particles are in the head of AspP in the aspect-oriented phrase structure tree of Travis (1991 ). (19)
TP ~ T EP ~ E VIP ~ tAgent Vl' ~ preverb----Vl AspP
