Syntactic Typology of Clause Structure
For the examples, please rerfer to the hand out.
Introduction to syntactic typology: Clause structure
1. Basic transitive construction:
- Verb
- Noun phrase 1: prototypical agent (A) – (roughly
“the subject”)
- Noun phrase 2: prototypical patient (P) – (roughly
“the object”)
1.1. Definition
Prototypical transitive
actions (highest possible degree of semantic transitivity)
- Verb: involve a change of state or position undergone
by the patient
- Agent: triggers the action involving the change.
- Conscious and voluntary action
- It aims at changing the state of the patient or
controlling its position
- Patient: undergoes the change of state
1.2. Extension of the basic transitive construction to the coding of situations that cannot be characterized as prototypical actions
Ø Example:
the verb “to see”, expresses no action but uses the same construction as
“repair”
·
There is cross-linguistic variation in this
‘transitivity prominence’
·
In ergative languages, subject is marked
as:
- ERGATIVE
if the verb denotes a change of state (to break)
- DATIVE if it does not (to see, to forget)
·
Languages can also mark
- only transitivity,
where there is change of state
- only intransitive
constructions, if there is no change of state
1.3. A terminological point
·
Use ‘agent’ and ‘patient’ for the semantic
roles only.
·
Use A and P for NP1 and NP2 that, whatever
their semantic roles, are encoded in the same way as the agent and the patient
in the basic transitive construction (roughly, subject and object)
1.4. Basic transitive construction and intransitive constructions of transitive verbs
- Basic transitive construction: The mechanic has repaired the
car
- Alternative
construction: The
car has been repaired by the mechanic
·
How can we determine which construction is
the basic transitive one?
- Basic
transitive construction:
o Verb form
is morphologically less complex
o It has
less restrictions
o It is
more frequent in spontaneous discourse
- Alternative
construction:
o Agent and
patient marking have less
characteristics typical for core nominal terms à evidence
for detransitivization
1.5. Transitive coding typology
·
In some languages, if there is no
morphological mark distinguishing subject (A) from object (P), their position
may be essential for their identification à rigid
word order
·
Two types of morphological mechanisms may
contribute to their distinction:
- Indicating
(‘flagging’) the subject and / or the object. 2 procedures:
o Marking
case
o Adjoining
adpositions
§ Indexation
of subject and / or object (agreement): use
of morphemes coindexed to them in a different position; often, within VP or in
its immediate periphery
·
The contrast subject – object is maximized
when one is indicated by case and not agreement, whereas the other is indicated
by agreement and not case. The most common cases in world’s languages:
o Objects are
more commonly indicated by case marking
- “Differential
marking of object” is often conditioned by definiteness and / or animacy.
o Subjects
are more commonly indicatd by agreement
§ Differential
agreement can also be conditioned
·
Transitive coding is not necessarily
uniform: two or more formal types of coding may alternate according to various
types of conditioning:
o Transitive
coding may vary depending on verb’s TAM value
- Present:
subject agreement & object case marking
- Past: subject
case marking & object agreement
·
In most languages, it is possible to
describe the coding of A and P separately, but sometimes the coding of subject
and the coding of object may interfere (co-argument sensitivity).
- Ex:
Hungarian only shows subject & object agreement if the object is determined
·
In some languages, the expression of TAM
distinctions may differ in intransitive and transitive constructions:
- Completive
aspect marked in transitive clauses
- Zero-marked
in intransitive clauses
1.6. Optionality
vs. obligatoriness of subject and object
-
Example: Both Bambara and Japanese lack agreement
, but in transitive constructions
o
In Bambara, impossible to leave subject
and object unexpressed
o
In Japanese, subject and object are
commonly omitted
2. Intransitive
constructions
-
passive
-
antipassive
·
Subjects or objects often receive the same
marking as adjuncts
·
In some languages, intransitive
(monovalent) verbs can have transitive constructions
-
they can work as light verb compounds:
-
in Basque, ‘sleep’ and ‘speak’ are
expressed literally as ‘do sleep’ (lo egin) and ‘do word’ (hitz egin)
-
The verb expresses subject agreement
-
The verb expresses object agreement with the
nominal part of VP
·
Intransitive (monovalent) verbs may also take
transitive marking even to register the CCT
2.2.
Alignment relationships between transitive
and intransitive constructions
·
In most languages, intransitive
constructions mark their subject (‘single core term’) in the same way they are
marked in transitive constructions (accusative or ergative).
·
In most languages, intransitive and
transitive constructions show the same case / agreement marking, but some
languages have two classes of intransitive verbs:
o Intransitive
verbs with same marking as transitive ones
o Intransitive
verbs with different marking from transitive ones
·
This similarity of marking between
transitive and intransitive constructions can be conditioned grammatically, in
particular, by TAM value
·
Marking case in the subject of intranstive
constructions does not necessarily correlates with ergativity.
3. Trivalent verbs
3.1.
Extended transitive coding and double transitive
coding
·
Trivalent verbs such as ‘give’,
‘show’, ‘send’, or ‘sell’ select for 3 arguments
·
They code the most agent-like
participant as subject
·
Languages vary in the coding of
the other two participants: recipient and theme
a) One is marked as object and the other as oblique (extended
transitive coding):
- Indirective: object is theme (give something to someone)
- Secundative: object is recipient (provide someone with something)
b) No apparent hierarchy in
recipient and theme coding (double-transitive constructions)
c) Syntactic hierarchy
in double-transitive constructions is a complex question, since there may be
asymmetries in the syntactic behaviour of the recipient and the theme:
- Passivization: in some languages, only recipient or theme
passivization is possible
4.
Non-core participants and circumstantials
(obliques)
·
Cross-linguistically, participants
not selected by the verbal semantic structure are labelled ‘obliques’
o They are marked by adpositions or by a morphological case different
from the one used in the quotation form.
o The can be unmarked
- Example: place names in locative function do not take locative morphological
marks
o They can be marked by a construction with a second verb which expands
the argument structure of the first verb.
- Example: ‘Buy it for me.’ Expressed as BUY 3SG GIVE
1SG
- where the marker for recipient (for) is expressed as the GIVE verb
5.
Verbal valency
5.1. The notion of valency alternation
- Example: active-passive alternation, with or without verb
modification
·
Agreement morphemes can be
coreferent with a given semantic role even if they realize different functions,
like subject or oblique
5.2. Morphologically marked valency alternation.
· Morphologically marked valency alternation can often (but not always) be analyzed as derivation from a base form to a morphologically more complex derived form.
·
The most widespread types of morphologically
oriented valency alternations
- Passivization:
demotion of the subject
- Antipassivization:
motion of the object ("promoting" the accusative object to a
nominative subject)
- Reflexivization
- Reciprocalization
- Decausativization
ou anticausativization
- Causativization:
introduction of a causer in the syntactic role of subject
-
Applicativization: introduction
of a participant as object
5.3. Lability
Labile verbs are verbs lending themselves to valency alternations
involving no morphological marking. ‘Causal-noncausal’ lability:
-
As in The child broke the glass / The
glass broke. It is
particularly widespread
-
Many other types can be found
in the languages of the world
6. Clause structure and information structure
· In some languages, linear order of NPs in the construction is bound rigidly to their semantic role, as in French John called Mary / Mary called John.
·
In some other languages, the
linear order of NPs is flexible (permutations are possible) without formal
readjustment or changes in NPs semantic roles
o This variation express differences in information structure
· In most languages, linear order is neither totally rigid nor totally flexible. For example, constituent order in Spanish is much less flexible than in Russian, Hungarian, or Basque, but more flexible than in French.
·
In many of the languages with some
flexibility in constituent order, the variation in constituent order crucially
involves a ‘focus position’. Depending on the language, focus position may be:
o
Clause-initial (Wolof)
o
Clause-final (Russian)
o
Immediately before the verb
(Basque, Hungarian)
o
Immediately after the verb
(Makhuwa)
o
In some languages the use of
the focus position requires special morphological marking (Wolof, Makhuwa)
·
Also, in languages with more rigid
constituent order, focalization can be expressed by means of ‘cleft’
constructions in which the term in focus is introduced as the argument of an
equative predicator
- It’s Mary who called John / It’s John who called Mary
·
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