Configurationality: The typology of asymmetries 9783110884883, 9783110130447

Table of contents :
Table of contents
Preface
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
The Basque verbal inventory and configurationality
Pro-drop and the resumptive pronoun strategy in Basque
Is there a VP in Basque?
The case split and pronominal arguments in Choctaw
Finnish: configurational or not?
Verbal person marking, noun phrase and word order in Georgian
θ- tracking systems - evidence from German
Phrase fracturing in Gooniyandi
On pronominal binding in Hungarian
A parameter for anaphor binding: the case of Jacaltec
Configurationality and anaphora - evidence from English and Japanese
Restructuring parameters and scrambling in Korean and Hungarian
On nonconfigurational structures
The position of Navajo in the configurationality debate
The configurationality parameter and Warlpiri
References

Citation preview

Configurationality

The Typology of Asymmetries

Studies in Generative Grammar The goal of this series is to publish those texts t h a t are representative of recent advances in t h e t h e o r y of f o r m a l g r a m m a r . Too m a n y studies do not reach t h e public they deserve because of t h e depth and detail t h a t make t h e m unsuitable for publication in article f o r m . W e hope t h a t t h e present series w i l l make these studies available to a w i d e r a u d i e n c e t h a n has h i t h e r t o been possible.

Editors: J a n Köster Henk v a n Riemsdijk Other books, still available

in this

series:

1. Wim Zonneveld

21. Jindfich Toman

A Formal Theory of Exceptions Generative Phonology

in

Rule Generalization Language Change

Morphology

7. Anneke Neijt

on Government

and

Binding

10. Robert May and Jan Koster (eds.) Levels of Syntactic

Representation

On the Content

of Empty

Categories

25. Pieter Muysken and Henk van Riemsdijk Features

and

Projections

of Verbs

Studies

in Spanish

Prosodic

and Binary

Branching

Phonology

29. Takashi Imai and Mamoru Saito (eds.) Issues in Japanese

17. Jerzy Rubach Cyclic and Lexical Phonology: structure of Polish

18. Sergio Scalise Morphology

19. Joseph E. Emonds A Unified Theory of Categories

20. Gabriella Hermon Modularity

Syntax

28. Marina Nespor and Irene Vogel

16. Richard S. Kayne Connectedness

27. Ivonne Bordelois, Heles Contreras and Karen Zagona Generative

15. Hilda Koopman

Syntactic

and

Generalized Binding. The Syntax and Logical Form of Wh-interrogatives

Syntax

14. Denis Bouchard

Generative

in

26. Joseph Aoun

13. Hagit Borer

The Syntax

and Optionality

FOCUS in the Theory of Grammar the Syntax of Hungarian

9. Noam Chomsky

Parametric

Grammar

24. Julia Horvath

Gapping Lectures

on German

23. S.J. Keyser/W. O'Neil

3. Geert Booij Dutch

Studies

Syntactic

the

Linguistics

30. Jan Koster Domains and Dynasties. Autonomy of Syntax.

The

Radical

31. Maria-Luisa Zubizarreta Levels of Representation Lexicon and the Syntax

in the

32. Lars Hellan Anaphora in Norwegian Theory of Grammar

and the

Laszlo Maracz Pieter Muysken (eds.)

Configu rationality

The Typology of Asymmetries

1989 FORIS PUBLICATIONS Dordrecht - Holland/Providence Rl - U.S.A.

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ISBN 90 6765 404 3 (Bound) ISBN 90 6765 405 1 (Paper) © 1989 Foris Publications - Dordrecht No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the copyright owner. Printed in The Netherlands by ICG Printing, Dordrecht.

Table of contents

Preface List of Abbreviations Läszlö K. Maracz and Pieter Muysken Introduction Beth Levin The Basque Verbal Inventory and Configurationality Bernard Oyharfabal Pro-drop and the Resumptive Pronoun Strategy in Basque in Basque Georges Rebuschi Is There a VP in Basque? Eloise Jelinek The Case Split and Pronominal Arguments in Choctaw Marlies van Steenbergen Finnish: Configurational or Not? Winfried Boeder Verbal Person Marking, Noun Phrase and Word Order in Georgian Hubert Haider 0-tracking Systems - Evidence from German William McGregor Phrase Fracturing in Gooniyandi Istvan Kenesei On Pronominal Binding in Hungarian Eric Hoekstra A Parameter for Anaphor Binding: the Case of Jacaltec Ann Farmer Configurationality and Anaphora - Evidence from English and Japanese Hyon-Sook Choe Restructuring Parameters and Scrambling in Korean and Hungarian Ken Hale On Nonconfigurational Structures

vii ix 1 39 63 85 117 143

159 185 207 223 237 249 267 293

vi Margaret Speas The position of Navajo in the Configurationality Debate Mary Laughren The Configurationality Parameter and Warlpiri References

301 319 355

Preface

In April 1986 a workshop was held, partly in Groningen, partly in Amsterdam, on AUX, Configurationality, and Lexical Structure. This volume grew out of that workshop, although it cannot be called a proceedings in the strict sense. Only those conference papers directly relevant to the configurationality issue are included here, and in addition, some specialists on this topic who did not attend were invited to contribute an article. As we were organizing the conference, it became clear that the focus of research on the configurationality issue had shifted from surface properties of free word order languages to the comparative study of structural asymmetries in different areas of the grammar, covering a wide variety of languages. Hence the title of this book. It is meant to be of interest to at least two types of readers: those primarily interested in the typology of different language systems, and those approaching configurationality from the perspective of grammatical theory. We hope to help bridge the fortunately narrowing gap between these ways of doing linguistics. The volume is meant to be a first step towards a principled catalogue of subject-object asymmetries in natural language. As such it covers, organized alphabetically by language, a large number of the language families on which research concerning the configurationality issue has been carried out. The major omission is Africa, where this issue has not been systematically addressed, to our knowledge. In the introduction, we outline the basic issues involved in this research, and try to indicate how the articles included fit into the research literature on these language families. On several languages we have included more than one contribution. We had hoped originally that this would have been the case more generally, but several participants were unable to submit a written version of their paper. We would like to thank, first of all, Professor Werner Abraham of the German Department, University of Groningen, who enthusiastically helped and advised us in all stages of the preparation of the workshop. He was also instrumental in helping us scrape together the funds for travel and lodging. We want to thank the Faculties of Arts of the Universities of Groningen and Amsterdam, the MIT Lexicon Project, the Groningen

Vili University Fund, the Groningen-Oldenburg Sister University Agreement, for their support. Peter Bakker helped standardizing the format of the papers and putting them in the word processor. The Computer Department of the Faculty of Letters, University of Amsterdam, was very helpful in assisting in the conversion of many kinds of diskettes. Most of the papers included here profited from the lively discussions during the workshop, and we are grateful to all participants for their comments. All those who worked on the problems related to the configurationality issue will be aware of the fact that this domain of inquiry has been shaped by the work of one single scholar, Professor Ken Hale of M I T Linguistics and Philosophy. His work has served as a frame of reference both for those taking a position in agreement with one of his series of contributions, and for those arguing against it. We would like to thank him for his encouragement and practical help in the various stages of bringing together these papers. The editors. Läszlö K. Mardcz Institute for General Linguistics University of Groningen Grote Rozenstraat 31 9712 TG Groningen The Netherlands

Pieter Muysken General Linguistics University of Amsterdam Spuistraat 210 1012 VT Amsterdam The Netherlands

ABBREVIATIONS USED

In the articles in this volume the following abbreviations appear: 1,2,3 1,2,3A 1,2,3D A 1,2,3 ABL ABS ACC ADV AGR ALL AOR ARG ASP AUX

first, second, third person ... person agentive marker ... person dative marker ... person absolutive agreement prefix ablative absolutive accusative adverbial agreement allative aorist argument aspect auxiliary

BEN

benefactive

C CAU CD CED COMIT COMP CP CS

complementizer causative coordinate clause Condition on Extraction Domains comitative complementizer complementizer phrase, Configurationality Parameter Configurational Structure, changed state

DAT DD DEM DEST DS du

dative double dative demonstrative pronoun destinative different subject dualis

X

El,2,3 EC ECP EL EM EMP ERG

ergative agreement prefix empty category Empty Category Principle elative end of sentence marker emphatic pronoun ergative

FOC FUT

focus future

GEN GF

genitive Grammatical Function

HON

honorific marker

I IMP IMPF

inflection imperative imperfective

IND INES INF INFL INST intr. IOBJ IP

indicative inessive infinitive inflection instrumental intransitive indirect object inflection phrase

KP

Case Phrase

LA LCS LF LFG LGB LOC LS

Lexical Argument Lexical Conceptual Structure Logical Form Lexical Functional Grammar Lectures in Government and Binding locative lexical structure

NC NEG NOM

noun classifier negation nominative

xi

o OBJ OBJCOMP OBL OBVCOMP OPT

object object, objective case object complementizer oblique obviative complementizer optative

P PA PAS PASS PAST PERF Pi poss. PRED PRES PREV PRS PRT PS

person Pronominal Argument Predicate Argument Structure passive past tense perfective plural possessive predicate present tense preverb present stem suffix particle phrase structure

Q

QP

question marker quotative quantifier phrase

REFL REL REP RG

reflexive relative marker repetitive Relational Grammar

S SBR sg SCO SOC SPEC SS SUB SUBJ SUBJCOMP

sentence subordinate clause singular Strong Crossover associative specifier position same subject subjunctive case subject subject complementizer

QUOT

Xll THM TM tr.

thematic marker topic marker transitive

VOC

vocative

Wh WCO

question word Weak Cross Over

Introduction Lâszlô K. Marâcz and Pieter Muysken

In this introduction, we will briefly sketch some of the background and raise some of the issues to which the papers in this volume address themselves. In section 1, we make some remarks on previous research concerning the configurationality issue and related topics. The central hypotheses of the workshop will be introduced and the relation between free word order and configurationality will be discussed. In section 2, we will present some Configurationality Parameters (CP) which have stimulated research in the domain of configurationality: Hale's (1983) CP, Jelinek's CP (1983) which is a reaction to Hale (1983), and Mohanan's (1983) dichotomy of Lexical Structure (LS) and Configurational Structure (CS), which is an illuminating elaboration of Chomsky's (1981) parameter 'Assume a Grammatical Function'. In section 3, we briefly survey the literature on the languages that have played a role in the configurationality debate and summarize the contributions of the papers in this volume. In section 4, we will present and contrast empirical data from Basque, Hungarian, Malayalam, Navajo, and Warlpiri with the principles of grammar to indicate the intriguing problems raised by non-configurational languages. The framework we focus on is Chomsky's (1981, and subsequent literature) Government and Binding Theory. However, we believe that the puzzles discussed are relevant to other frameworks as well.

1. PREVIOUS RESEARCH

Before going on, we should briefly sketch the core of the configurationality issue: in many languages there is evidence for a special grammatical relation of 'subject' and a different one of 'object', and these relations correspond to different positions in the hierarchy of the sentence: (1)

clause subject

verb phrase verb

Configurationality (Marâcz/Muysken eds.) © 1989 Foris Publications

object

2

L.K. Maracz and P. Muysken

In other languages there is little or no evidence for a hierarchy as in (1). Do these languages still differentiate subjects and objects in crucial ways? When the subject and the object have the same properties, we speak of symmetry; otherwise, of an asymmetry. This book, then, is about the typology of these symmetries and asymmetries. Previous research had focussed on the following related issues, sometimes treating them separately, sometimes in combin: 1.1 The Absence of a VP Node and Free Word Order While generative grammarians working on English had taken it for granted that in English there is a syntactic VP node, and had devised a series of constituency test to show that there is one, linguists working on some non-Indo-European languages discovered that the tests did not carry over easily to these languages and that arguments for VP were hard to come by there. An example of this is Hinds (1974), who argued that there was no reason to assume a VP for Japanese. Quite in parallel, syntacticians found it difficult to reconcile the considerable freedom of word order in some languages with the mechanism of phrase structure rules producing ordered strings of elements. An example is Staal's (1967) work on Sanskrit. Staal argued that the order of subject, verb and object was completely free in Sanskrit, and he proposed to replace the formalism of ordered trees of Chomsky (1957; 1965) by that of 'wild' or unordered trees which indicate to what constituent a given element belongs, but not the order of elements within that constituent. Staal does maintain a VP node in Sanskrit, however. The main impulse for work on configurationality came in the late seventies, when Hale discovered that aboriginal Australian languages such as Warlpiri were hard to classify in terms of the typological notion current until then. Combining the insights of Hinds and Staal, Hale (1981, but written a few years before) proposes for a language such as Warlpiri a rule as in (2): (2)

E — ... W* ...

This rule simply states that in Warlpiri expressions are formed by stringing words together. In slightly later work Hale proposes a phrase structure rule for Japanese which conforms to the X-bar formalism sketched in Chomsky (1970) and developed in Jackendoff (1977), as in (3): (3)

X' - ... X (where X' is NP, S, ... and X is N, V, ...)

This rule expresses three things: (a) in Japanese heads are final; (b) the order of pre-head constituents is free; (c) constituents are 'flat' in that

Introduction

3

there is no intermediate structure between a head and its maximal projection. In Hale (1983), Hale proposed the configurationality parameter, to which we return in the following section, and this volume contains yet a further elaboration of his work on configurationality. In reaction to Hale's rather radical proposals other researchers working in the generative tradition have proposed to account for cases of apparently free word order with mechanisms that remain much closer to the standard assumptions of generative grammar. Stowell (1981) suggests that relaxing the adjacency conditions on Case assignment has the effect of allowing for free word order. In fixed order languages, the object has to remain next to the verb because in those languages Case assignment requires adjacency. If the object were anywhere else, it would not be Case marked, and this would lead to an ungrammatical result. If there is no adjacency requirement in a language, the order of elements can be much freer, of course. Van Riemsdijk (1982) interprets Hale's analysis of Warlpiri in terms of the difference between the syntactic representations most familiar to us and phonological representations. Warlpiri clauses would have no tree structure but be organized phonologically. They would be subject to adjacency conditions in Van Riemsdijk's proposal, but the adjacency conditions of phonology rather than those of syntax. In Saito (1982) and much related work the assumption is made that in a free word order language such as Japanese the phrase structure rules create a VP and ordered constituents, but that the possibility of freely adjoining constituents to the clause they are part of has the effect of allowing for apparently free word order. Lefebvre and Muysken (1982) suggest that there are two principles that account for free word order effects: the possibility of adjunction, as in Saito's proposal, and the possibility that the relation between two discontinuous elements that together form a constituent is indicated through co-case marking. The subsequent sections and the articles will describe yet another set of approaches to the problem of characterizing non-configurational languages. 1.2 The Nature of Lexical

Structure

The rediscovery of the lexicon within generative grammar in the earlier seventies (Chomsky, 1970; Halle, 1973) has produced a discussion of the question of how much structure the lexical entry possessses and to what extent operations on lexical entries (e.g. concomitant with affixation) are possible, and what are the formal properties of these operations. Work within the framework of Lexical-Functional Grammar (e.g. Bresnan, 1982)

4

L.K. Maracz and P.

Muysken

has stimulated research on this issue, and this has consequently been picked up in Government and Binding Theory (e.g. Williams, 1981). Postulating a type of lexical structure (LS) immediately raises a number of questions for the theory of grammar. One important set of questions has to do with the formal properties that characterize the possible level of representation described as LS. These questions include: (a) D o we find hierarchical organization in LS, embedding with a depth greater than two? (b) Is this hierarchical organization defined in terms of projection from some constituent? D o we have nodes dominating maximal projections in LS or does each LS representation function as a single maximal projection? (c) If there is a projection, do we have government relations holding at LS? (d) Out of what kinds of constituents is LS constructed? Several possibilities come to mind: predicates and arguments lexical categories and their (maximal) projections I N F L , either merged with V, or separate subjects, i.e. 'external' arguments (e) Is it possible to define c-command relations at LS? Is the definition of c-command the same or different from the one holding at syntactic structure? (f) D o arguments have referential properties? This question has two dimensions: (i) Can we define binding relations on LS? (ii) Can we represent theta-marking as discharge of referential indices? (g) Is there assignment of inherent case in LS? (h) D o we have predication in LS? (i) What kind of formal operations can LS undergo? Passive/NP-movement Movement to non-argument positions a special set of operations on Argument Structure (Williams, 1981) A second set of questions relates to the position of LS within the overall grammar, and to the modes of interaction between LS and other levels of representation. Questions include: (a) What is the relation between LS and Lexical Conceptual Structure, a level at which the meaning of the word is fully represented? There are at least three options: i. The elements participating in the creation of LS form a subset of the elements defined by Lexical Conceptual Structure. T o

5

Introduction

give but one example: suppose that the verb 'send' has three arguments (sender, object sent, and goal) at the level of Lexical Conceptual Structure, it is still possible that there are only two arguments at LS. ii. There is identity between the two levels of representation. iii. There is a disparity between the elements participating in the levels of representation. (b) Is there a reasonable way of identifying LS with the level of Logical Form (cf. recent work by Pesetsky, e.g. 1985). (c) What is the interaction between LS and the Binding Theory? In a number of recent proposals it is suggested to have different components of the Binding Theory apply at different levels of representation. Related to this question is the problem where movement rules apply. The classic division between NP-movement and Wh-movement may correspond, in this view, to the distinction between levels of representation: Wh-movement at Syntactic Structure, NP-movement at LS. These issues will come up in much more detail in section 4 of this introduction. 1.3 The Properties of AUX Work done principally by Steele and her co-workers on universal properties of AUX (Steele, 1981) has stimulated the exploration of very rich auxiliary systems in a number of languages: Luiseno, Navaho, Basque, Warlpiri, Georgian. It became clear that markers indicating the subject and object, and sometimes other grammatical relations as well, were contained in AUX, so that the latter could in some sense substitute for configurational structure. This line of research has been explored in work of Jelinek, to which we return in the next section. 1.4 The formal properties of parallel

representations

The discrepancy between the syntactic behavior of verbal clusters in the Romance and Germanic languages, on the one hand, and their internal lexical constituency, on the other, has triggered a number of related proposals for parallel syntactic representations: restructuring, reanalysis, thematic cosuperscripting, etc. There have been several attempts to formalize the relations between these parallel representations, the most successful of which was in terms of the notion of virtuality (Zubizarreta and Vergnaud, 1982). I Virtuality turned out to be applicable to the issue of configurationality as well, as noted by Zubizarreta and Vergnaud, because it could be used to characterize the relation between LS and Syntactic Structure.

6

L.K. Marâcz and P. Muysken

In their analysis of Japanese, LS is richer in structure than Syntactic Structure:

A B C

A B C

here are other possible asymmetries between LS and SS that may be described in terms of parallel representations, however: II There is a disparity between the two trees (of LS and SS) dominating the terminal nodes. This is in essence the 'reanalysis' or 're-bracketing' proposal of Huybregts (forthcoming) and others: SS

LS

A B C

A B C

III There may be terminal nodes present in the one tree that are absent in the other one. This possibility is a consequence of Hale's Configurationality Parameter (1983), to which we turn immediately below: LS

A B C

SS

B

C

It should be noted that these proposals yield increasing degrees of disparity between LS and SS. In the confrontation of these originally separate research traditions a number of issues have emerged, which were focussed on at the workshop out of which this volume has grown.

2. CONFIGURATIONALITY PARAMETERS

In this section, we will discuss the three main proposals in the recent literature that try to account for a series of phenomena that together have been subsumed under the notion of non-configurationality: Hale (1983), Jelinek (1983), and Mohanan (1983).

Introduction

1

2.1 Hale (1983) In Hale's (1983) account of non-configurationality two central hypotheses are elaborated. First, the syntax of non-configurational languages is characterized by a dichotomy between Lexical Structure (LS) and Configurational Structure (CS) (or in his terminology 'Phrase Structure' (PS)). Second, this dichotomy is related to a weakening of the Projection Principle. The Projection Principle is proposed in Chomsky (1981: 39): (4) The theta-marking properties of each lexical item must be represented at each syntactic level, i.e. D-structure, S-structure and LF Hale's (1983) Configurationality Parameter (CP) states that the Projection Principle in non-configurational languages holds only of LS. Hale (1983) gives his CP maximal explanatory power. It is able to account for the following surface properties of non-configurational languages: (A) free word order; (B) syntactically discontinuous expressions; (C) null anaphora. The property of free word order follows from the nature of the positions at PS. The Projection Principle holds of LS only, hence Apositions are defined only at LS. Free word order is allowed then by free base-generation in the A-bar positions at PS. Discontinuous expressions and null anaphora are accounted for by the fact that the relation between LS and PS is hot constrained by a biuniqueness condition. Discontinuous expressions are derived by linking more than one PS nominal to a single LS argument, null anaphora by the absence of a linking between LS and PS, i.e. one-to-null. Thus, a relaxation of the Projection Principle implies that there need not be empty NP categories projected from the head. The pronominal and anaphoric interpretation of null anaphora turns into a function of the pronominal properties of LS arguments. The dichotomy between LS and PS in non-configurational languages is also connected to the way the Projection Principle holds in non-configurational languages because the mapping between LS and PS is not structure-preserving. Hence the universal subject-predicate partitioning of LS is not forced to appear at PS as a NP VP partitioning. 2.2 Jelinek (1983) Jelinek's (1983) approach to non-configurationality is in agreement with Hale's first claim, but not with the second one. According to Jelinek, non-configurational languages do not differ with respect to the Projection Principle from configurational languages. In the Walpiri type of nonconfigurational language (W-type) the segments in AUX are not simply marking the grammatical relations in PS, but are constituents containing

8

L.K. Maracz and P. Muysken

Case-marked, fully referential clitic pronouns that serve as verbal arguments. Hence the Projection Principle is satisfied at PS as well. Jelinek (1983) only gives indirect arguments for her claim that the Projection Principle is satisfied at all levels of representation, even in nonconfigurational languages. She relies on the insights of the Government and Binding framework (cf. Chomsky (1981)) that the Projection Principle is a guiding principle in the grammar, and Marantz's (1984) framework that grammatical relations must be visible at PS. Jelinek's claims are mainly based on the study of the non-configurational language Warlpiri, a language with a strong 'AUX-strategy'. Jelinek's claim has some initial plausibility, but it should be tested empirically by taking into account data from other languages with an 'AUX-strategy' as well, such as Basque, and Georgian. In this way we may hope to get a clearer picture of the status of the Projection Principle in such languages. By generalizing this research question to other types of non-configurational languages, that is, to languages which display a dichotomy between LS and PS but do not possess a separate AUX-node as Hungarian and Navaho for example, we could gain more insight into the nature of the configurationality issue. In Jelinek's (1983) account the diagnostics of non-configurational languages (A)-(C) and the dichotomy between LS and PS are not related so tightly. Free word order of nominals is allowed by the fact that nominals are adjuncts, and as such are not required to appear in a fixed order. Thus nominals are not only in A-bar positions but also have non-argumental properties. Discontinuous expressions in Jelinek's system are derived by putting no biuniqueness conditions on Case compatibility rules. Nothing prevents the coindexing of more than one PS nominal with a verbal argument in AUX. Jelinek accounts for the appearance of null anaphora by giving the segments in AUX pronominal status. Hence, the clitic pronouns in A U X are not able to license empty categories at PS. The dichotomy between LS and PS is not necessarily related to her configurationality parameter. The fact that pronouns in AUX are functioning as verbal arguments might be the reason for the absence of a VP-node at PS, but the reverse might also be the case. The clitic pronouns in A U X function as verbal arguments, because of the lack of structural positions at PS. 2.3 Comparing the Two Approaches To get a more complete view of Jelinek's (1983) treatment of AUX in Warlpiri we will list the correspondences and differences between her account of non-configurationality and the one put forward in Hale (1983). Correspondences include:

Introduction

9

dichotomy between LS and PS verb assigns theta-roles to its arguments at PS there are no subject-object asymmetries the relation between LS arguments and PS nominals is stated in terms of Linking: co-index N-bar with that of arg in LS, provided the Case category of N-bar is identical with that of arg (assigning a distinct index to each arg in LS) fixed positions in AUX nominals are optional nominals are in A-bar positions at PS no empty categories in PS no pleonastic subjects Differences between the two appi Hale (1983) - Configurationality Parameter a. In configurational languages, the Projection Principle holds of the pair (LS, PS) b. In non-configurational languages the projection principle holds of LS alone

caches include: Jelinek (1983) - Configurationality Parameter a. In a configurational language object nominals are properly governed by the verb b. in W-type non-configurational languages nominals are not verbal arguments, but are optional adjuncts to the clitic pronouns that serve as verbal arguments

AUX marks grammatical relations elements in AUX are not caseand theta-marked

-

AUX contains clitics which serve as verbal arguments pronouns in AUX are caseand theta-marked

nominals are arguments

-

nominals are adjuncts

no Case compatibility rules

-

Case compability rules: nominals are coindexed with the verbal arguments in AUX

no explanation for the use of independent pronouns in Wtype languages

- explanation for the fact that independent pronouns in Wtype languages, as in 'prodrop' languages are used for emphasis If Jelinek (1983) is right in her cla n that the Projection Principle holds

10 L.K. Maracz and P. Muysken at all levels of representation universally, then Hale's (1983) CP is untenable, in spite of its attractiveness and explanatory power. Jelinek's (1983) CP seems to be descriptively adequate and makes some interesting predictions, at least for languages of the Warlpiri type, but fails to give a principled theoretical explanation for the dichotomy between LS and PS in nonconfigurational languages in general. In section 4, we will return to this discussion, and present some empirical evidence which shows that the Projection Principle holds universally at all levels of representation, showing that Jelinek's proposal makes the correct predictions on this point. 2.4 Mohanan's Dichotomy Between Lexical Structure and Structure

Configurational

In the preceding section, we compared Hale's (1983) and Jelinek's (1983) Configurationality Parameter (CP). Here we will discuss Mohanan's (1983) dichotomy between Lexical Structure and Configurational Structure (CS). Mohanan's proposal has in common with the previous ones a dichotomy between LS and CS in non-configurational languages. Mohanan derives this dichotomy by a parametrization of the Projection Principle taking a position similar to Hale (1983). From this it follows that Jelinek's criticsm of the CP in terms of the Projection Principle carries over to Mohanan's proposal as well. The crucial difference between the above proposals and Mohanan's is that Mohanan proposes a further modularization of the grammar. By doing so, he makes a number of interesting predictions concerning the properties of both configurational and non-configurational languages and the differences between them. Mohanan adopts the distinction between LS and CS as proposed in Chomsky (1981) who in turn relies on a formalization of these syntactic 'levels' in terms of virtual, respectively actual structure as elaborated in Zubizarreta and Vergnaud (1982). At LS only the dominance relations between nodes of a phrase marker are expressed, whereas at PS both the dominance and linear order are defined. A phrase marker of a sentence is characterized by a double geometrical representation both for configurational languages (cf. (5a)) and for non-configurational ones (cf. (5b)). The levels of representations, i.e. D-, S-structure and LF, consists in fact of a pair of (LS, CS): see (5) next page. Mohanan notes that these parallel representations have two important consequences. First, the Grammatical Functions (GFs) can be universally defined only at LS. From this it follows that rules involving GFs, i.e. the functiondependent phenomena, such as NP-movement (passivization, raising),

Introduction

11

reflexive binding, disjoint reference,, control, and abstract Case-assignment apply at LS universally. (5)

a.

b. -LS-

Configurational SVO-language

Non-configurational language

Second, the c-command relation of a particular pair of nodes may be different at LS from CS. This is easy to see in the case of the nonconfigurational languages. In (5b), the subject c-commands the object at LS but not the reverse, whereas at PS the subject and the object c-command each other mutually. Mohanan hypothesizes that this dichotomical ccommand relation between pair of nodes may also arise in configurational languages. According to him, this is the case with configuration-dependent or function-independent phenomena such as Wh-movement, clefting, topicalization, scrambling, pronominal noncoreference which does not affect the G F s but only the precedence and dominance relations at CS. A very interesting consequence of this split between function-dependent and configuration-dependent phenomena is that Mohanan is able to derive a solution for the so-called reconstruction paradoxes. Consider the following sentences: (6)

a. *He throws away some of the books John read b. Which of the books that John read does he throw away c. Which picture of himself did Mary say John admired most

In (6a) and (6b) we have a case of pronominal noncoreference, while in (6c) we have an instance of reflexive binding. In case of pronominal noncoreference the pronoun may not c-command the antecedent with which it is coreferential, while in case of reflexive binding the reflexive anaphor must be c-commanded by its coreferential antecedent. If we would apply

12 L.K. Maracz and P. Muysken these conditions at a derived level of representations, let say after Whmovement, the ungrammatically of (6a) and the grammaticality of (6b) would be predicted for he c-commands its antecedent John in (6a) but not in (6b). However, under this approach the grammaticality of the reading indicated in (6c) remains unexplained. The reason for this is that the reflexive anaphor is not c-commanded by its antecedent. What is needed to arrive at the correct result in (6c) is the 'reconstruction' of the Wh-phrase containing the reflexive anaphor. However, if we interpret the conditions on pronominal noncoreference and reflexive binding in the base-generated form of the sentences in (6), i.e. before the application of Wh-movement, we are able to derive the ungrammaticality of (6a) and the grammaticality of (6c), but now the grammaticality of (6b) is unexpected. For the c-command configuration of the pronoun and its antecedent in (6a) and (6b) are the same in their base-generated structure. So, whatever stucture we take as the relevant structure for the Binding Conditions (cf. Chomsky (1981)) we run into a paradox. Mohanan resolves these paradoxes by letting the rule of reflexive binding apply at LS, i.e. the level at which Wh-movement does not apply, whereas the rule of pronominal noncoreference applies at CS, i.e. the structure at which Wh-movement applies. Wh-movement reverses the ccommand relation in (6a) and (6b) but has no effect on reflexive binding in (6c). The discussion in the preceding paragraph illustrates that principles of the same module, e.g. Binding Theory, may be split over LS and PS. This can also be demonstrated with the following facts from the nonconfigurational language Malayalam (data from Mohanan (1983)): (7)

a.

b.

joon billine swantam wii^il wecca nulli John-NOM Bill-ACC selfs house-LOC at pinched 'John pinched Bill at John's/*Bill's/*someone else's house' joonaal bills swantam wiittil weccn John-INSTR Bill-NOM selfs house-LOC at nullappettu pinched-pass 'Bill was pinched by John at Bill's/*John's/*someone else's house'

The sentences in (7) demonstrate that a reflexive anaphor in Malayalam can only be bound to surface subjects both in active (cf. (7a)) and passive (cf. (7b)) sentences. According to Mohanan, because of the fact that the notion subject can only be defined at LS in non-configurational languages reflexive binding must hold at LS in Malayalam.

Introduction

13

The sentences in (8) illustrate the phenomenon of pronominal noncoreference in Malayalam: (8)

a.

kutti awante ammaye nuUi child-NOM his mother-ACC pinched 'The child pinched his mother' b. * awante ammaye kutti nulli his mother-ACC child-NOM pinched 'The child pinched his mother' c. *awan kuttfyute ammaye nulli he child's mother-ACC pinched 'He pinched the child's mother' d. kuttiyute ammaye awan nulji child's mother-ACC he pinched 'He pinched the child's mother'

In Mohanan (1983) the following rule is given in order to account for the facts in (8): (9)

A pronoun must not precede its antecedent

Rule (9) correctly predicts the contrasts in (8). Mohanan argues that rule (9) must hold at CS because precedence is not defined at LS. Notice that c-command is not relevant with respect to the rule of pronominal noncoreference in Malayalam because in the sentences (8c,d) the pronoun ccommands its antecedent both at LS and CS. From this it follows that c-command is only one of the parametric possibilities a language may choose of. Mohanan lists the following relevant properties of LS and CS: LS a. b. c. d.

e.

encodes dominance does not encode precedence encodes G F s NP-movement affects dominance relations

Wh-movement has no effect

CS encodes dominance encodes precedence does not encode GFs NP-movement affects only those relations which are relevant for the expression of LS: precedence and dominance in configurational languages, only precedence in VSO-languages, e.g. in Malayalam. Wh-movement affects dominance and precedence relations

14 L.K. Marâcz and P. Muysken

for case for government Conditions A and B

projection principle does not apply not relevant for case (?) ? A and B do not apply

Condition C does not

C applies

LF

relevant for quantifier scope input to LF input to PF

f.

projection principle applies

g. h. i.

relevant relevant Binding apply Binding apply ? input to ?

j. k. 1. m.

Summarizing, we can conclude that Mohanan reaches a higher degree of modularization of the grammar by: (1) separating function-dependent phenomena from the configurationdependent phenomena; (2) setting up two autonomous projections: (a) LS at which dominance relations are defined only and (b) CS at which dominance and precedence are defined. A merit of this proposal is that it is able to handle elegantly the typological split between configurational and non-configurational languages, reconstruction-paradoxes and other binding phenomena in both configurational and non-configurational languages. These topics have constituted constant anomalies in various stages of the generative research program. On the other hand, it is fair to say that Mohanan's paper leaves a number of questions unanswered. Some empirical and technical questions, as can be seen from the question marks in the above diagram. To this category of problems belong also questions such as: how are empty categories distributed over LS and PS?; and if the level of representations consists indeed of a pair of (LS, CS) do we find rules which refer to LS and CS simultaneously? But also more fundamental questions: should we give up the unification of movement rules which has been proposed in Chomsky (1981)?; how is LS mapped onto CS, that is, what mechanism is responsible for the typological split between configurational and non-configurational languages?; and what are the formal properties of representations as in (5)? This kind of puzzles has stimulated a lot of research in the domain of the configurationality. To some of them we will return in the last section of this introduction.

Introduction

15

3. RELATING THE CONTRIBUTIONS IN THIS VOLUME TO PREVIOUS RESEARCH

The configurationality issue, unlike e.g. word order and ergativity, has played no role in survey-oriented work on typology. The term is lacking in such works as Comrie (1981) and Mallinson and Blake (1981). A recent exception is Gomrie (1987), a theoretical discussion about the possibility of setting up holistic typologies of language. Comrie argues that there may not be an obvious relation between lack of structural hierarchy and other features commonly associated with non-configurational languages. In the absence of typological survey work, we can do no more here than briefly sketch the state of the issue with respect to the different languages and language groups represented in this volume, and try to summarize the contribution of each paper. In recent years there has been a lively debate on the configurational status of BASQUE. The following papers have been dedicated to this issue, organized by the hypothesis they argue for: (i) (ii) (iii) (iv) (v)

Azkarate et al. (1981), Ortiz de Urbina (1983): fully non-configurational; Rebuschi (1985a,b): VSO without a VP; De Rijk (1978): Configurational without a VP; Goenaga (1980), Salaburu (1985), Trask (1984), Ortiz de Urbina (1986): fully configurational; Abaitua (1985): configurational and non-configurational projections.

Levin's paper is on transitivity alternations in Basque. Transitivity alternations as passivization, causativization and unaccusativization involve such an external-internal dichotomy of the sentence. In the case of passivization, for example, there is cross-linguistic evidence that the underlying object turns up as the surface subject (cf. Perlmutter 1983). Levin notes that transitivity alternations in Basque are attested. From this she concludes that there must be a level of representation at which the subject-predicate dichotomy of the sentence is expressed. Her paper demonstrates that Basque is configurational at D-structure in any case. Basque has been traditionally considered a language exhibiting an ergative system of case marking. In such languages the case marking of the object of a transitive verb matches with the one of a subject of an intransitive verb (cf. Marantz 1984 for examples). Levin argues that this assumption cannot be maintained with respect to Basque. Transitive verbs display an ergative-absolutive case array in which the ergative is associated with the subject and the absolutive with the object, while intransitive verbs selects an absolutive argument. However, according to her all intransitive

16 L.K. Maracz and P. Muysken verbs in Basque are in fact unaccusatives in the sense of Perlmutter (1978), that is, they assign only a thematic role to their D-structure object. To support her hypothesis Levin presents the following pieces of evidence: (1) transitive verbs select the auxiliary ukan 'to have', and intransitives select the auxiliary izan 'to be'; (2) regularities in thematic role assignment in the anti-causative alternation, impersonal construction, and indefinite object deletion can be captured elegantly by assigning the absolutive argument of both transitive and intransitive verbs the status of D-strucure object in terms of the Government and Binding framework; (3) verbs belonging to the class of intransitives are semantically of the type which has been classified unaccusative by Perlmutter (1978). The arguments of unaccusatives are assigned the role of theme or patient and the predicates themselves describe state, changes of state and position; (4) Basque uses a transitive construction with egin + nominal phrase 'do + nominal' to express active intransitives (unergatives) which select only one argument in most other languages. So, Levin unambiguously demonstrates that transitivity alternations require a subject-predicate partitioning of the sentence. In the framework she adopts, Government and Binding, Case marking in Basque reflects Dstructure grammatical relations. Therefore, she classifies Basque as a language with an accusative case marking system, although morphologically it is the opposite of English. Oyhar^abal's paper is not involved with the configurationality issue in a strict sense. He does not even take a side on the question of configurationality with respect to Basque. But as we pointed out in section 2.4 of the introduction, because of the modular organization of the grammar, evidence for a certain grammatical property may come from a different principle or module of the grammar. This is precisely the case in Oyhargabal's paper. Oyhanjabal's discusses Relative Clause Formation and Accessibility in Basque. He argues that for the proper interpretation of relative clauses it is necessary to postulate non-overt pronouns in the syntax of Basque. The distribution of these pronouns is restricted by the rule of Pro-Drop and may function as non-overt resumptive pronouns in relative clause formation. If this is correct two important conclusions on the status of Basque follow. Firstly, if the AUX-node in Basque determines the content of nonovert pronouns, then the positions in AUX are not argumental as is assumed for Warlpiri and Navaho in Jelinek (1983, this volume) or for Georgian in Boeder (this volume). This means that AUX functions as agreement

Introduction

17

in Basque and that NPs in Basque have argumental status. Obviously having a rich AUX morphology does not imply whether its elements are argumental or not. Secondly, if non-overt resumptive pronouns must be present in relative clauses, then the Projection Principle holds at all levels of representation in the grammar of Basque as well. For in the Government and Binding framework which is adopted by Oyhar?abal the presence of empty categories at S-structure is guaranteed by the Projection Principle. Notice that the latter conclusion is supported independently on the basis of facts from pronominal noncoreference in Basque (cf. (16) above). Rebuschi's paper deals with the question whether there is evidence for a syntactic VP in the grammar of Basque. In his paper, two types of tests are elaborated. First of all, he discusses the classical VP-constituency tests with respect to Basque. The question is whether the verb and its object form a unit in syntactic rules as coordination, deletion, fronting, sentence-adverb insertion. Rebuschi showS that there are striking differences between Basque and English on this point. In Basque not only the object and the verb may form a unit in coordination but also the subject and the verb. Roughly, the parallel behavior of subjects and objects holds for the other tests. The tests in the second part of the paper rely heavily on the Binding principles of the Government and Binding framework. According to Rebuschi, free anaphors like elkar 'each other' and bere burua 'himself must be asymmetrically c-commanded by their antecedent which is the subject in case of a dyadic verb. On the other hand, in order to derive the proper interpretation of the possessive forms of these anaphors and of possessive anaphors as bere/haren 'his', Rebuschi argues that a symmetrical relation between the subject and the object must be assumed. To resolve this Binding paradox Rebuschi adopts the dichotomy between Lexical Structure and* Phrase Structure of Mohanan (1984). According to him, free anaphors are bound at LS, whereas possessives anaphors must be bound at PS. The first rule can only hold in case it is assumed that Lexical Structure is configurational allowing a asymmetrical relation between the subject and the object, whereas the second rule gives the correct results in case it is assumed that PS allows a symmetrical relation between thè subject and the object. Jelinek's paper is on the Case split and Pronominal Arguments in the Muskogean language, C H O C T A W . In this paper, Jelinek elaborates further on the Configurationality Parameter proposed in her (1983) paper (cf. section 2 above). The leading idea of the paper is the following. In some languages the arguments of the verb are represented by pronominal clitics in the verbal morphology. Hence, a typological split is correlated in the way the Projection Principle maps LS onto the overt syntactic representation: the pronominal argument languages permit only pronouns and

18 L.K. Maracz and P. Muysken anaphors as arguments, whereas lexical argument languages allow lexical nominals to be verbal arguments as well. A consequence of the way the Projection Principle is implemented in the grammar of the former type, is, that the overt nominals and separate pronouns are adjunctival, in current terminology in a non-A-position, and that consequently the government relation between the verb and the object; and the VP and the subject cannot be defined in structural terms in the overt syntactic representation. The syntactic properties of pronominal argument languages allow an explanation of the so-called Case split which seems to be frequent in pronominal argument languages. Although as Jelinek points out it is not a necessary property of those languages. Generally speaking, in pronominal argument languages the pronominal clitics in the verbal morphology serve as arguments and are assigned grammatical Case, i.e. nominative-accusative, whereas the adjunctival nominals appear with a lexical case such as ergative-absolutive. According to Jelinek, Choctaw is a pronominal argument language, because it has the following properties: (1) the optionality of NPs; (2) independent pronouns occur in marked constructions; (3) construction types with independent pronouns are excluded; (4) absence of an adjacency condition on government; and (5) the presence of a 'non-standard' case split and case 'splits'. Point (5) is elaborated extensively in the paper, providing some evidence for the typology of pronominal argument languages. The verb in Choctaw is inflected for as many as four grammatical relations: subject, object, indirect object, and benefactive. The grammatical relations are marked in four sets of obligatory verbal affixes: nominative, accusative, dative, and benefactive. The overt nominals and the independent pronouns display a binary opposition for the feature case that has been described as a nominative-oblique system. The diversity of the cases related with the grammatical relations suggest that case in Choctaw is not determined in terms of structural relations such as government and adjacency conditions. This and the fact that there is a case split with respect to the case features of pronominal arguments and the overt nominals suggests that Choctaw is a Pronominal Argument language. The question arises: how are grammatical relations such as subject and object determined in such types of languages? Jelinek does not give an exhaustive answer to this question but presents some tests which have the effect of singling out the subject. The subject can be determined by the following case-assignment rule: the pronominal affix with nominative Case is the subject, otherwise the prefix that appears immediately before the verb is the subject. The case marking of the nominals may also be relevant for the determination of the subject. The overt nominal assigned nominative is associated with the subject pronominal clitic. Switch reference in Choctaw provides another test. In fact, on the basis of co- and disjoint

Introduction

19

reference markers Jelinek argues that the 'case' marking on the nominals are actually articles and demonstratives which serve to establish relationship between overt nominals and the pronominal arguments precisely as is the case in co- and disjoint reference phenomena in Choctaw. Van Steenbergen's paper is on the configurational status of FINNISH. Not much work has been done on the syntax of Finnish in recent generative grammar. Before one can gain an overall perspective on the relation between the various levels of representation in Finnish grammar, it might be useful to know whether the language is configurational or not at surface structure. This is the aim of Van Steenbergen's paper. It refers also to the problem of decidibility in linguistics. Or: how does one know whether a language is configurational or not? Van Steenbergen tackles this problem by making use of sophisticated tests modular in nature. This means that tests of different modules of the grammar are elaborated while confronting a configurational approach with a non-configurational one. The tests involve anaphora (coreferential interpretation, bound variable interpretation), the lexicon (idiom chunks), and the Wh-module (superiority and long Wh-movement). Hence, this type of approach to linguistic research is related to the one outlined in section 2 above. According to Van Steenbergen, these tests all point in the same direction: Finnish is configurational in nature. GEORGIAN has not been studied intensively from a theoretical point of view. The most comprehensive study of Georgian has been done by A. Harris in her (1981) book Georgian Syntax. In this book a number of syntactic phenomena from Georgian are discussed, especially related to the question of Grammatical Functions and transitivity alternations. Another valuable paper on Georgian is Anderson's (1984) On Representations in Morphology: Case Marking, Agreement and Inversion in Georgian. This paper discusses the complex structure of AUX morphology in Georgian and its relation to syntax. The main topic of as yet unpublished work by Marantz is the relation between morphology and syntax, in the framework outlined in Marantz (1984). Marantz follows Harris' divisioning of verb classes and tense/aspect. According to Harris (1981), in Georgian we find the following four verb classes: (1) transitive verbs; (2) unaccusatives ; (3) intransitives with specific morphology in the future; and finally (4) (in)transitives with the logical and syntactic subject in dative. Further, Harris distinguishes the following three tense/aspect series: I (present, imperfect, present conjunctive, future, conditional, future conjunctive; II (aorist, optative); III (perfect, pluperfect). These verb classes and tense/aspect series may interact resulting in different case arrays. For example in class (4) verbs 'inversion' may apply in case the Series III Tense/aspect is used. It can be observed that in inversion clauses the subject

20

L.K. Maracz and P. Muysken

appears in the dative case and triggers object agreement while the object appears in the nominative case and triggers Tense/aspect agreement. Marantz accounts for such transitivity alternations and the different case patterns associated with these alternations in terms of the theory of Marantz (1984) and some specific properties of Georgian, i.e. the lack of promotion with passives and a case rule assigning nominative case. Further, he observes that inflectional morphology tense, aspect, and agreement interacts with syntax in precisely the same manner as derivational morphology in the case of causative and applied morphology. Therefore, Marantz concludes that the same principles apply to all morphemes. What is the relation between Marantz's position and the configurationality issue? (1) The fact that there are transitivity alternations in Georgian suggest that there is a dichotomy between the subject and the predicate. Marantz assumes that this subject-predicate partitioning is operative at least at his level of compositional semantics (logico-semantic structure) and syntactic structure. (2) The two levels are /elated by structure-preserving mapping principles defined in terms of government. The transitivity alternations discussed above are handled in terms of these relations. For example, the lack of promotion in case of passives in Georgian is attributed to the choice of government rather than to head-government which allows raising in English. From this it follows that Marantz relies on structural relations as government and sisterhood, representable tree-configurations in the case of Georgian as well. (3) Marantz assumes that the rich AUX morphology in Georgian is agreement and he assigns argumental status to case marked nominals. The studies of these three authors may function as useful background to the paper included in this volume. Boeder's paper discusses some additional properties of Georgian: the properties of the AUX-node. Therefore it is in the tradition of the work on AUX (cf. section 1.3 above). Boeder observes that Georgian has the properties of free word order, discontinuous expressions, pro-drop, lexical passives/causatives, lack of expletives, rich Case system, strong AUX. He notes that this lists coincides with Hale's (1981) diagnostics of configurationality. In that sense Georgian might be classified as a non-configurational language. The second part of Boeder's paper concentrates on the question how to determine the Grammatical Functions like subject and object in Georgian? Boeder elaborates some tests in order to isolate the subject and object. Only the subject argument may function as the antecedent

Introduction

21

in reflexivization and is marked for plural in AUX. On the other hand only direct objects may undergo noun-incorporation. Subjects and objects are associated with different arguments in the argument structure of the verb depending on tense and aspect. The third part of Boeder's paper is based on the intuition that much of the syntax in Georgian is done in AUX. By assuming this, he adopts in fact Jelinek's (1983) position for Georgian that the markers in AUX have argumental status. He supports this position observing the following properties in Georgian: (a) the morphological markers are assigned nominative and accusative always, whereas lexical nominals may show up in the ergative and absolutive; (b) the markers in AUX have definite pronominal interpretation even in case they are non-overt; (c) an expletive marker shows up in AUX in the case of weather verbs emphasizing that the positions in AUX are argumental; (d) the Georgian counterpart of the English construction 'Which one of ...' is formed by relating the question word 'who' to the person markers in AUX depending of course on the choice of the person; (e) the appearance of tavi'-phrases (in Harris 1981 this phenomenon is called 'object camouflage'). Usually only two verbal arguments may be marked in AUX of Georgian. The question arises then: how is the third argument of tryadic verb marked? Boeder notes that in such cases a favz'-phrase is used. The pronominal argument is embedded in a nominal phrase headed by a dummy noun tavi which means 'head'. The appearance of /avi'-phrases is to be expected in case the markers in AUX are indeed argumental as is hypothesized by Boeder. For in case of a tryadic verb we have run out of arguments because the morphological constraint restricts the number of arguments in AUX to maximally two. The missing argument position is then provided by setting up an NP headed by tavi. Boeder, contrary to Marantz, argues that the morphological markers in AUX of Georgian may have argumental status. We feel that at the present state of research it is impossible to take a decision on this issue. It will be clear, however, that such a decision would affect the status of Georgian in the configurationality debate and would have some impact on the question of the relation between morphology and syntax. Another language for which the configurationality issue has been disputed at some length is GERMAN. German has morphological case and shows some free word order phenomena. In addition binding and ECP facts are not strictly parallel with those of English, as Haider shows in his contribution. The exact way in which these phenomena should be inter-

22

L.K. Maracz and P. Muysken

preted is not as clear, however. On the one hand there is work by den Besten (e.g. 1985), which claims that configurational structures for German are compatible with the freedom of subject-object inversion in that language, if we assume special mechanisms by which nominative can be assigned internal to VP through chaingovernment. The paper most explicitly arguing that German is configurational is Webelhuth (1985), claiming that there are sound arguments for postulating a VP in this language. Recent work by den Besten and Webelhuth (1987) on VP-fronting presupposes the existence of a syntactic VP node in German. On the other hand there is work by researchers such as Tappe (1982), who argues against a German VP-node on the basis of the syntax of verbal complexes and Sternefeld (1985), who bases himself particularly on properties of 'missing subject sentences' in German. The most vociferous proponent of non-configurational structures for German is Haider (e.g. this volume). He introduces a distinction between S-linking languages, in which the fundamental semantic relationships holding between a predicate and its arguments are mapped syntactically, and M-linking languages, in which they are indicated morphologically. A number of ways in which German contrasts syntactically with English and Dutch can only be explained by assuming that German is an Mlinking language with a VP including the subject. First of all, the English subject-object asymmetries in superiority effects do not show up in German. Second, it is possible to extract out of German subject positions. It is also possible to extract out of preposed complement clauses in German. Weak Cross Over effects differentiating between subjects and objects are missing in German Wh-constructions. Comparison between German and Dutch shows that the differences cannot simply be due to word order. Dutch, which has SOV and Verb Second like German, but no overt morphological case, the crucial factor, patterns with English on the relevant tests. Haider's account leaves many questions unanswered. As more constructions come into play, new issues of analysis arise, but this is characteristic of the domain of inquiry as a whole. GOONIYANDI is one of the Australian languages that have not yet been studied with respect to the issue of configurationality. McGregor presents very interesting new data on a phenomenon termed 'phrase fracturing': a noun phrase is broken up so that the different parts, which remain contiguous, receive equal prominence. The effect is best visible in the case of postpositional phrases: each element of the fractured noun phrase is separately marked by the postposition. Phrase fracturing should be distinguished from phrase discontinuity, a phenomenon documented for languages such as Warlpiri by Hale and others (see Laughren's contribution in this volume). McGregor shows that the process involved

Introduction

23

is not arbitrary, but the result of very specific rules of focussing and stress. The very fact that there is fracturing of postpositional phrases is an argument for the existence of the syntactic constituent postpositional phrase, and by implication, noun phrase, in Gooniyandi. What is at first sight just a string of words has at least some internal structure. A number of books and papers on HUNGARIAN have been devoted to the configurationality debate in recent years. Here follows a list of the most important ones, organized by the hypothesis they investigate: (i) Farkas (1984, 1986), Horvath (1981, 1986): fully configurational; (ii) Kiss (1981, 1985, 1987): non-configurational with hierarchies above S; (iii) Szabolcsi (1981,1985), Maracz (1986), Ackerman & Komlosy (1984): configurational substructures (NP, PP, V-bar resp.); (iv) Maracz (1986a): configurational and non-configurational projections. For an introduction to Hungarian grammar the reader should consult the following important volumes containing both descriptive and theoretically oriented papers on Hungarian: Topic, Focus, and Configurationality, edited by W. Abraham and S. de Mey (1986); and Approaches to Hungarian vol. I and II, edited by I. Kenesei (1985, 1987). The monographs by Horvath (1986) Focus in the Theory of Grammar and the Syntax of Hungarian and Kiss (1987) Configurationality in Hungarian give much background and strongly present two positions in the configurationality debate. Kenesei's paper deals with the conditions on pronominal binding in Hungarian. As a point of departure he has taken Mohanan's dichotomy between Lexical Structure and Configurational Structure (cf. section 2.4 above). Kenesei argues that the conditions on pronominal binding are in fact governed by an interplay of the hierarchical relations at LS and the scope relations at LF. The latter are fixed by checking the left-toright order of quantified expressions at PS. Generally, the leftmost quantified expression has widest scope in Hungarian. His result supports Chomsky's (1981) hypothesis that S-structure consists in fact of pair (LS,PS) and Mohanan's (1983) hypothesis that the rules of the Binding Theory may be distributed over different levels of representation. Hoekstra's paper presents an analysis of anaphor binding in JACALTEC, a Mayan language. His approach is connected to the one put forward in Mohanan (1984) (cf. section 2.4 above). According to Hoekstra, reflexive binding, i.e. Binding Principle A of Chomsky (1981) may be distributed over different levels of representation in various languages. In English, it affects the level of representation which applies before WH-movement, that is, adopting Van Riemsdijk and Williams' terminology NP-structure

24

L.K. Marácz and P. Muysken

(LS), whereas in Jacaltec reflexive binding holds at WH-structure (PS). Hoekstra presents two arguments for his claim. First, he argues that anaphoric binding in Jacaltec is sensitive to precedence in that language. Second, anaphoric binding is fed by WH-movement According to him, this shows that anaphoric binding must apply to WHstructure, because both precedence and WH-movement are pro-perties of WH-structure and not of NP-structure. Hoekstra pursues a parametric approach to the rules of grammar. From this point of view his paper is related to that of Kenesei (this volume) who argues that pronominal binding in Hungarian is sensitive to precedence at PS as well. His binding parameter is not stated independently but it is made to follow from the organization of the grammar. The configurationality issue became a major concern of theoretical linguistics when JAPANESE was drawn into the configurationality debate. The non-configurational line of research concerning Japanese has been initiated by Hale (1980). The configurational approach to Japanese has been defended in Saito and Hoji's (1983) important paper on 'Weak Crossover and Move Alpha in Japanese'. Another theoretical issue closely related to the configurationality issue raised in the latter was the account of free word order syntax (cf. section 1 above). According to Saito and Hoji (1983), Ross' (1967) scrambling rule which was invented in earlier frameworks to capture free word order is subsumed under the general rule scheme move alpha of the Government and Binding paradigm. The configurationality debate in Japanese grammar has not been closed. This is shown by a number of papers on this issue. The most important ones and the hypothesis which they defend are listed here: (i) Farmer (1980, 1984), Farmer et al. (1986) , Hale (1980): fully nonconfigurational; (ii) Gil (1987): non-configurational NP; (iii) Whitman (1984): configurational without a VP-node; (iv) Hoji (1986), Saito (1985), Saito and Hoji (1983): fully configurational; (v) Chomsky (1981), Zubizaretta and Vergnaud (1982): configurational and non-configurational projections. Farmer's paper is on Configurationality and Anaphora. Her paper is involved with the following question and its consequences: at which level of representation does the different principles of (non)-coreference hold? Similar questions have been raised in Hale (1983) and Mohanan (1983) (cf. section 2) above. In the first part of the paper Farmer presents two pieces of evidence for her claim that the level of Predicate Argument Structure (PAS), which is comparable to Hale/Mohanan-type of Lexical Structure, is relevant for the interpretation of reflexives. Firstly, she argues

Introduction

25

that the Binding Theory of Chomsky (1981) is insufficient to characterize the semantic properties of the reflexive 'each other'. It generates coindexing paradoxes. Secondly, the reflexive morpheme 'self renders two arguments of a predicate coextensive. However, in syntax these arguments are not always present because one of them may be absorbed by derivational suffixes forming a deverbal noun or adjective to which 'self is prefixed. The only level at which the binding of 'self can be regulated properly is at the level of PAS. The second part of her paper examines the consequences of the conclusion reached in the first part. If the conditions on (non)-coreference apply both at PAS and the P-marker (Hale-Mohanan-type of PS/CS) the arguments based on these conditions in favour of a syntactic VP-node in Japanese (such as for example in Saito and Hoji (1983)) do not have to be decisive. Farmer draws the following conclusions of her modular approach towards (non)-coreferentiality: the P-marker does not have to have a VP universally, as in Japanese, for example. Free word order 'scrambling' in Japanese is accounted for by freely base-generating constituents at the level of Pmarker. Strong Crossover phenomena are defined over the level of PAS; the Projection Principle would hold only between PAS and the level of Logical Form (LF). Both PAS and the P-marker are input to LF. Choe's account of non-configurational effects in KOREAN and Hungarian is inspired by the phenomenon of Restructuring in Romance. Therefore her paper falls within the tradition discussed in section 1.4 above. Choe's approach is comparativist in nature. By comparing some specific properties of Hungarian and Korean both languages are classified typologically. Unlike Hungarian (cf. Kiss 1985), Korean has VP-topics, VPdeletion, VP-clefting, syntactic passivization, and absence of subject-verb idioms. According to Choe, this suggests that Hungarian has not a syntactic VP but Korean has one. Nevertheless both languages permit some apparent binding violations under scrambling, unlike English for example. Choe attributes this typical non-configurational effect to a Restructuring Rule which is also operative in the grammar of Romance. This Restructuring Rule may trigger 'flattening' of syntactic structure. The differences between Hungarian and Korean are explained by parametrizing the level of application of the Restructuring Rule. The rule holds at S-structure in Hungarian but at PF in Korean. Choe's analysis is then similar in spirit to Maracz (1986), and Kenesei's (this volume) analysis of Hungarian and to Yang's (1982, 1984) analysis of Korean. Work on Amerindian languages has not addressed the configurationality issue to the same degree. An exception is NAVAJO, which is not surprising since some of it was inspired by Hale's work. In this volume, Navajo is discussed by Speas and, in less detail, by Hale. Speas addresses a central issue in Navajo linguistics, the referential possibilities of noun phrases

26

L.K. Maracz and P. Muysken

in relative clauses. This issue was highlighted in an important series of contributions by Platero (1974, 1978, 1982). Perkins (1982) raises the issue of non-configurationality more obliquely, noting that 'extraposition' of relative clauses in Navajo obeys some constraints on movement, but that at the same time there are some extraposed, 'discontinuous', sentences, for which no non-extraposed equivalent exists, suggesting base-generation of discontinuous structures. Hale makes the point that configurationality is a property of constructions in languages rather than of languages as such. Navajo possesses constructions which are perfectly configurational, while English has some nonconfigurational constructions. The properties traditionally associated with the so-called non-configurational languages derive from different parameters, among them the Pro-drop parameter and the resumption parameter. The latter has to do with the identity relation which must hold or not between arguments at LS and the noun phrases in the overt phonological representation of the sentence. Speas' contributrion to this volume discusses the status of Navajo in the configurationality debate. Her solution with respect to a binding puzzle in Navajo falls in the tradition of section 1.4 discussed above: the formal properties of parallel representations. According to Speas, Navajo is a configurational language with a true subject-predicate partitioning of the sentence. For three reasons she does not consider Navajo to be a nonconfigurational language. Firstly, Navajo does not possess all the diagnostics of non-configurationality (cf. Hale 1981) (although it has null anaphora and the presence of overt nominals is optional). Instead it has a rigid word order. The unmarked word order is SOV which may switch to OSV depending on the verbal prefix chosen and there is no overt Case or plural marking on overt NPs. Secondly, no one has presented arguments for the absence of a VP node in Navajo. Thirdly, anomalies with respect to pronominal non-coreference (cf. sentence (13) above), that is, the fact that a subject pronoun may be coreferential with a name in an objective relative clause, disappears once they are treated in a model of grammar which allow parallel representations in an 'Across-the-Board' fashion (cf. Williams 1978 for this operation). The paper presents an elaboration of the last point providing both new observations concerning the interpretation of relative clauses in Navajo and the formal apparatus which is necessary to analyze them. The main point of the empirical part is that the interpretation of relative sentences in Navajo involves ambiguities. A null pronoun positioned in the matrix sentence may only be coreferential with a name embedded in the relative clause in case they have the same grammatical function. Hence,

Introduction

27

a subjective null pronoun may only be coreferential with an embedded subject, but not with an embedded object, etc. Speas concludes from these observations that the symmetries with pronominal non-coreference are more restricted then originally thought and require for their explanation the presence of null pronouns in the surface representation. Hence, the configurationality parameters of Jelinek (1983); and Hale (this volume) cannot account for the full paradigm. Jelinek's configurationality parameter (cf. section 2.2 above) and Hale's Resumption Parameter (this volume) predict namely that coreferentiality should be possible unrestrictedly because the arguments are not represented as null pronouns in the case of the overt nominals are missing from the overt syntactic representation. Rather, Speas argues that the facts of Navajo suggest an ' Across-the-Board' style of analysis which does not presupposes the assumption of a VPless base and a relaxation of the Projection Principle. Her solution is inspired by May's (1985) work on the formal properties of Logical Form. According to Speas, May's formulation of dominance triggers the parallel representation of the matrix sentence and the embedded relative clause in Navajo. In the parallel representation the pronoun does not c-command the embedded name and hence a coreferential reading is allowed. The final paper in this volume deals with WARLPIRI, the language which has given rise to the configurationality debate in the first place. Laughren presents a series of new data on this language, using Hale (1983) and Jelinek (1983) as background references (cf. section 2 above). In the first part of her paper, she introduces the striking properties of Warlpiri such as free word order, discontinuous expressions, the possibility of prodrop, and the lack of expletives which have related to the Configurationality Parameter. She notes furthermore that both subject-object symmetries: the absence of VP-deletion, -gapping, and -preposing, and subject-object asymmetries: Case assignment, Binding, and Control appear in Warlpiri. She accounts for the properties of Warlpiri and the differences between English and Warlpiri in terms of the mapping between levels of representation. Laughren's interpretation of the Configurationality Parameter is in terms of the mapping from syntax to Phonetic Form. In English this mapping is generally fairly direct, while in Warlpiri the constraints governing this mapping are more relaxed. The development of the different accounts of non-configurationality phenomena in the papers in this volume shows that the issue has given rise to the formulation of theories about the organization of the grammar with implications much beyond the languages and phenomena that they were originally meant to account for. Which of these theories will ultimately be the most successful, that is a matter for further research.

28

L.K. Maracz and P. Muysken

4. THE INTERACTION OF REPRESENTATIONS, MODULES, A N D THE PROJECTION PRINCIPLE

By way of providing the , admittedly speculative, beginning of an integrated perspective, we will discuss some facts concerning pronominal noncoreference and reflexive/reciprocal binding in Navajo, Hungarian, Basque, and Warlpiri, trying to link up the discussion in several of the papers presented. Although competing analyses of these languages have been proposed in the literature (cf. section 3), we will assume that the syntax of these languages is characterized by a dichotomy between the LS- and PS-representation. The facts concerning pronominal noncoreference will demonstrate that the Projection Principle holds universally at all levels of representation and hence present empirical support for Jelinek's (1983) position. The reflexive/reciprocal binding facts show that subject-object asymmetries occur even in non-configurational languages. Overviewing the facts of pronominal non-coreference and reflexive-reciprocal binding, we must conclude that non-configurational languages have both symmetrical and asymmetrical properties. Recent research suggests in fact that we have to do with a clustering of asymmetries and symmetries in non-configurational languages. We believe that the study of the internal make-up of these cluster will be an interesting topic for further research. One of the arguments which led Hale to set up his (1983) CP was based on pronominal noncoreference in Navajo. Let us first introduce the rule on pronominal noncoreference ((10a) is from Reinhart (1983), while (10b) from Chomsky (1981): (10)

a. b.

A non-pronominal NP must be interpreted as non-coreferential with any NP that c-commands it Binding Principle C: R-expressions (e.g. names) have to be free

Hale (1983) points out that an extensive usage of null pronouns, or in his terms, 'free or frequent pronoun drop', is one of the characteristics of non-configurational languages. Navajo displays this property as can be noticed from the following examples: (11)

a.

b.

Ashkii yini4-ts4 boy saw 'You saw the boy' Yini4-ts4 saw 'You saw him/her/it/them.'

Sentence ( l i b ) can be assigned the following three PS-representations:

Introduction (12)

a. b. c.

29 [s pro [vp pro yini4-ts4 ]] [s pro pro yini4-ts4 ] [s yinilts4 ]

In case the Projection Principle holds in its strong form in the grammar of Navajo, that is, the mapping from LS onto PS is one-to-one and structurepreserving, then representation (12a) is generated. This representation has configurational properties comparable to the PS-representation of e.g. English. Representation (12b) is derived in case the Projection Principle holds in its weak form. The mapping of LS onto PS is one-to-one but not structure-preserving. Representation (12c) appears in case the Projection Principle does not hold at PS, or when the verbal prefix yi- represents the verbal arguments. In the latter case the Projection Principle holds weakly as well. In Hale (1983, 1985) and Jelinek (1985), it is argued that Navajo is a non-configurational language which lacks a PS VP-node. Hence representation (12a) is ruled out in both, as the PS-representation of sentence (lib). Representation (12b) is also ruled out by both approaches. In Hale's account the absence of the Projection Principle in non-configurational languages at PS does not motivate the occurence of empty categories at PS. In Jelinek's approach the verbal morphology contains the verbal arguments of the verb. Hence it does not function as agreement able to license empty categories. So, both approaches assign (12c) to ( l i b ) as its PS-representation, although on different grounds. The derivation of a PSrepresentation without null anaphora is supported by the following example presented in Platero (1978): (13)

Ad44d44 ashkii at'eed yiyii4-ts4(n)?? yidoots'Qs yesterday boy girl saw-REL will kiss 'The boy will kiss the girl he saw yesterday'

The sequence l ad44d44'- •• yiyiiits4(n)?? is a headless relative clause. Platero (1978) states that (13) can be understood in a way that the relative clause is modifying at'eed 'girl', the complex relative expression is in the object position of the matrix sentence, and at the same time, the matrix subject is coreferential with the embedded subject ashkii 'the boy'. Furthermore, in Navajo, the relative order between the subject NP and the object NP is encoded in the verbal morphology. Roughly speaking, the third person object prefix is yi- when the NP that immediately precedes the verb is the object, and it is bi- when the NP that immediately precedes the verb is the subject. This implies that if the matrix subject is present in (13), it must precede the object NP. The structure of this sentence will be roughly as follows:

30 (14)

L.K. Maracz and P. Muysken [s pro [NP ad44d44 ashkii at'eed yiyii4-ts4(n)§? ] yidoots'gs ]]

The subject in (14) is represented by a null pronoun coreferential with ashkii. But the structure in (14) clearly violates Binding Principle C for the R-expression ashkii 'the boy' is bound. Thus, as Platero points out, if we assume that there is a null pronoun in the matrix subject position of (14), we wrongly predict that this sentence should be ungrammatical. Platero cites this fact as evidence that when an argument NP is missing in Navajo, it is truly missing in the sense that there is no empty category in its place. If the matrix clause in (14) does not have a subject NP, then Binding Principle C is not violated. Hale (1983, 1985) goes one step further, and takes examples like those in (14) as empirical evidence for the hypothesis that non-configurational languages have a level of representation not constrained by the Projection Principle. The Projection Principle requires an empty category in the matrix subject position of (14). But as we saw above, if we assume an empty pronoun in the matrix subject position of (14), then this example should be ungrammatical in the intended reading. Hence, the grammaticality of (14) suggests that Navajo sentences are not constrained by the Projection Principle at the level where Binding Principle C applies. Jelinek (1983, 1985) and Saito (1985) agree with Platero's/Hale's conclusion that empty categories are not represented at the PS-representation in Navajo. According to them, however, this does not necessarily imply that the Projection Principle is relaxed in the grammar of Navajo. In Navajo the verbal arguments are encoded in the verbal morphology, that is, in the yi-, and bi- markers. The change in the yi/bi-pronominal prefix indicates whether the preceding nominal is an adjunct to the agent or patient pronominal argument. From this it follows that the Projection Principle is satisfied at PS as well, and that nominals function as free adjuncts to these arguments. In Jelinek (1985), the following arguments are presented to support this claim: nominals in Navajo are optional, and frequently missing. Sentences with more than one nominal adjunct are rare in discourse. Most significantly, there are constraints on nominal adjunction that would not be expected if nominals were arguments. These constraints include: a) certain verbs (weather, modals, etc.) exclude nominal adjuncts; that is, there are no pleonastic subjects, since there is no syntactic requirement that an NP subject be present in the clause. b) When independent pronouns appear, it is in marked constructions with emphatic contrast. Constructions with two independent pronouns are excluded in Navajo. c) Reflexive and reciprocal bound pronominal arguments may exclude nominal adjuncts. d) In languages with obviate forms, which make reference maximally

Introduction

e) f)

31

specific (to a particular unnamed person) nominal adjuncts to these 'fourth' person forms may be excluded. In Navajo nominals carry no Case marking as opposed to the verbal pronominal prefixes which mark grammatical Case. In Navajo nouns do not mark number usually.

It is clear how Jelinek excludes empty categories in the sentences (13) and (14). Verbal morphology in Navajo contains the pronominal arguments, and is thus not able to license empty categories in the PS-representation. Therefore, Binding Principle C is not violated in sentence (13) and thus the sentence is predicted to be grammatical in the intended reading. Although Jelinek's claim that the Projection Principle holds in its weak form even in non-configurational languages is appealing from a theoretical point of view, it is not the case that in Jelinek (1983, 1985) sophisticated arguments were presented to prove the untenability of Hale's CP. The facts from Navajo are compatible with both proposals. As we saw it seems we have arrived at a problem of decidability. In order to force a decision we must search for a non-configurational language with null anaphora in which Binding Principle C violations arise. If such a language can be found it will be an argument against Hale's (1983) CP for the reason outlined above. Below we will demonstrate that Hungarian and Basque provide the relevant tests. Consider the following data from Hungarian: (15)

a. *(o) ismeri Janos anyjat he-NOM knows John mother-ACC ""He knows John's mother.' b. *Janos anyjat (o) ismeri c. *(ot) ismeri Janos anyjat he-ACC knows John mother-ACC 'John's mother knows him.' d. '"Janos anyjat ismeri (ot)

With respect to (15), we will consider the possibility of a coreferential reading between the overt and non-overt pronoun and a name embedded in a branching structure (a possessive NP). As noted above such referential relations are regulated by Principle C of the Binding Theory. In connection with (15) two observations can be made. Firstly, no subject-object asymmetries show up as in the English equivalents. This provides an argument for a level of representation where the VP-node is absent in Hungarian. For reasons discussed in section 2 we will assume that this representation is PS (cf. Maracz (1985a)). Consequently, Binding Principle C applies at

32

L.K. Maracz and P. Muysken

PS in Hungarian. Secondly, the sentences in (15) are out as well in case the pronouns are dropped. Following the logic of argumentation based on the Navajo facts, we have to conclude that at the PS-representation empty categories, presumably small pro in Chomsky's (1982) typology, are present. A similar conclusion is arrived at by noting these data from Basque: (16)

a. *(berak/hark) ikusi she(EMP)/she(DEM>ERG seen zuen Mayi-ren 3sgERG-AUX-3sgABS Mary-GEN *'She had seen Mary's mother' b. *(bera/hura) ikusi she(EMP)/she(DEM)-ABS seen zuen Mayiren 3sgERG-AUX-3sgABS Mary-GEN 'Mary's mother had seen her'

ama mother-ABS

amak mother-ERG

The coreferential pronoun has the shape of an emphatic pronoun, demonstrative pronoun or may be silent, whereas the binder, a name, is embedded in a possessive NP. This conclusion offers a potential problem for Hale's (1983) CP. As noted in section 2 above the dichotomy between LS and PS and the absence of empty categories in the PS-representation follows from the way the Projection Principle operates in the syntax of non-configurational languages. Therefore in the case of languages like Navajo Hale's CP has optimal explanatory power. On the basis of Hale's CP, however, we expect then that empty categories will not appear in the PS of non-configurational pro-drop languages. Hence the pronominal noncoreference violations with null anaphors in Hungarian and Basque lead to a paradoxical state of affairs. In order to explain the dichotomy between LS and PS, Hale has to rely on the relaxation of the Projection Principle. The parametrization of the Projection Principle predicts, however, that empty categories are absent in the syntax of Hungarian and Basque. As we saw above the latter prediction is not borne out. There seems to be one way to escape this paradox without giving up Hale's CP. It would have to be demonstrated that Hungarian and Basque are fully configurational in Hale's sense, a task we will not undertake here. Let us investigate how the facts (15-16) could be analyzed in Jelinek's (1983) framework. The ungrammaticality of the sentences in (15-16) is predicted correctly in case the Projection Principle holds also at the PSrepresentation. Unlike Navajo, however, the verbal arguments are not represented in the AUX-node (Hungarian does not even have a 'strong

Introduction

33

AUX-strategy') but rather represented by the lexical arguments. From this it follows that verbal morphology in Hungarian and the AUX-node in Basque function as agreement. Hence, Jelinek's (1983) C P has to be extended with the following parameter (cf. Jelinek (1985)): (17)

The Argument Type Parameter: a. Pronominal argument languages permit only pronouns and anaphors as arguments b. Lexical argument languages do not restrict arguments: lexical arguments are allowed

The W-type languages (Warlpiri, Navajo) are defined by (17a), whereas English, Hungarian, and Basque take value (17b). The lack of subjectobject asymmetries in the examples (15-16) is derived by interpreting Binding Principle C at the non-hierarchical PS. However, as we noted in section 2 Jelinek's (1983) approach fails to give a theoretical explanation for the dichotomy between LS and PS. Therefore, this is at best a stipulation in her account in the present state of affairs. In this section, we presented an argument based on a cross-linguistic comparison of pronominal noncoreference that the Projection Principle holds at all levels of representation in the grammar of non-configurational languages. If that is correct then we have empirically supported the claim that the Projection Principle is universal. This conclusion has important theoretical consequences: a universal application of the Projection Principle would restrict the number of possible grammars tremendously. In the sentences of (15-16), we saw some cases of symmetries in the grammar of Hungarian and Basque. The question arises: can asymmetries be attested in the grammar of non-configurational languages as well? This question is answered affirmatively in Hale (1983) and Mohanan (1983), who show that the reflexive/reciprocal construction in Warlpiri and Malayalam respectively (cf. (7)) obeys subject-object asymmetries. Consider the following reflexive/reciprocal constructions from Warlpiri (from Hale (1983)), respectively Navajo (from Platero (1978)), Hungarian (from Kiss (1981b)) and Basque (from Rebuschi (1985b)). Hale (1983) reports that among the object person markers in the auxiliary there is a special form nyanu which indicates that the object argument in LS is bound by the subject, i.e., in (18a,b) respectively by the ergative and absolutive NP. (18)

a.

Kurdujarrarlu ka pala nyanu pakarni child-dual-ERG PRES 33subj R E F L strike-NONPAST 'The two children are striking themselves/each other'

34 (18)

L.K. Maracz and P. Muysken b.

Karnta ka nyanu yarnkami (jurruku) woman PRES REFL grab-NONPAST head-DAT 'The woman is grabbing herself (by the head)'

In Platero (1978) the reflexive/reciprocal marker in Navajo is analysed as a detransitivizer of a transitive verb. Therefore, as can be seen from the sentences in (19), the object noun phrase is no longer expressible and the reflexive verb receives the interpretation to which the entity denoted by the subject acts upon itself. (19)

a.

b.

Ashkii adi-ilts4 boy self-he-see 'The boy saw himself Ashiike ahi-ilts4 boys recip-they-see 'The boys saw each other'

As can be seen from (20) and (21) the lexical anaphor in Hungarian and Basque, respectively, must be bound by the subjective Case which is the nominative in Hungarian and the ergative in Basque (cf. Maracz (1986a)). (20)

(21)

a.

Mari latta Mary-NOM saw 'Mary saw herself b. *maga latta herself-NOM saw

magat herself-ACC Marit Mary-ACC

a.

elkar ikusi dugu guk each other-ABS seen it-have-we we-ERG 'We have seen each other' b. *elkirrek ikusi gaitu gu each other-ERG seen us-have-it we-ABS

We must conclude that the reflexive/reciprocal constructions in nonconfigurational languages clearly display subject-object asymmetries. Note that we find two types of reflexive/reciprocal markers. In Warlpiri and Navajo it has the shape of a clitic, in Hungarian and Basque of a lexical anaphor. It follows that Chomsky's (1981) Binding Principle A holds at LS: (22)

Binding Principle A: an anaphor (reflexives, reciprocals) is bound in its governing category

Introduction

35

In this section, we have seen that Binding Principle C facts in nonconfigurational languages have a symmetric nature and can be accounted for at the PS-representation, whereas Binding Principle A facts are asymmetrical in nature and can be accounted for adequately at LS. This means that the Binding Condition data in non-configurational languages have to be analysed in a modular fashion. The question arises then: can we find more (a)symmetries in non-configurational languages? It has been argued that the symmetries in non-configurational languages are not restricted to the Binding Theory. They run through all sorts of modules of the grammar: besides Binding Theory, Theta Theory, X-bar Theory, Wh-module etc. (cf. Kiss (1985) for symmetries in Hungarian and Haider (1985) for such a list in German). The discovery of asymmetries in non-configurational languages is not restricted to the Binding Theory either. It is similar to the cluster of symmetries in that it is diverse in nature. Asymmetries are attested in the domain of Control Theory (cf. Hale and Laughren (1982), Hale (1983), and Bresnan and Simpson (1983) for Warlpiri; Heath (1974), Levin (1983), Trask (1984) for Basque; Kalman et al. (1984), Szabolcsi (1984) for Hungarian). The fundamental property of control structures is that the external argument and only the external argument, i.e. the subject, of an embedded constructions maybe be the controllee. Another source of asymmetries in non-configurational languages are transitivity alternations like passivization, unaccusativization, causativization. In such constructions the external-internal dichotomy plays a crucial role (cf. Guerssel et al. (1985); Levin (1983), Trask (1984) for Basque; Komlosy (1985), Maracz (1986b, 1987b) for Hungarian). Weak Crossover subject-object asymmetries have been attested in some non-configurational languages (cf. Saito and Hoji (1983) Japanese; Rebuschi (1885a) for Basque; and Maracz (1985b) for Hungarian). We may expect that this list can be extended to other components and modules of the grammar such as complementation, quantification, incorporation etc. (cf. Maracz (1987b) for Hungarian). It seems then that the internal structure of the clustering of (a)symmetries in non-configurational languages and their relation will constitute the central problem of the configurationality puzzle. Notice that the focus of research has shifted from the superficial diagnostics of non-configurational languages (cf. section 1) towards the nature of these clusters. We think that at least three possible avenues of research can be taken to study the cluster of (a)symmetries in non-configurational languages: scenario I: The asymetries are taken as the unmarked cluster, that is, it is given

36

L.K. Maracz and P. Muysken

by the principles of Universal G r a m m a r (UG). The presence of this cluster in a particular grammar is taken as an indication that all languages are configurational. The puzzle for proponents of this position can be phrased as: how is the cluster of symmetries to be accounted for in the grammar of a particular language? scenario II: The properties of the symmetric cluster are the unmarked ones. The questions to answer for proponents of this position are: what is the position of the cluster of symmetries in a theory of UG?. How is the cluster of asymmetries to be accounted for in the grammar of a particular language? scenario III: The clusters of symmetries and asymmetries together are defined by the core of U G . This position implies that there is a parametric difference between languages at the level of UG. The problem for this position is: what sort of mechanism is responsible for the presence of asymmetries and symmetries in the grammar of one and the same language. We will discuss these scenarios one by one. Scenario I represents the nullhypothesis from the point of UG. Notice, however, that this position with respect to non-configurational languages will not be without problems. A way to attack the cluster of symmetries in the grammar of non-configurational languages would be by setting parameters. We discussed above the fact that some symmetries (cf. Binding Principle C violations) appear to be stable cross-linguistically. Hence, the parametrization would be on the level of U G . Further, we noticed that the cluster of symmetries is heterogeneous in nature. This implies that parametrization of one single module will not be sufficient to account for the cluster of symmetries. All in all, ihis will lead to an uncontrolled growth of the inventory of U G parameters. Clearly, an unwanted state of affairs. Another possible way of reducing the configurationality puzzle would be to generalize Saito and Hoji's (1983) proposal for Japanese to other languages. They propose to interpret free word order phenomena as a function of move alpha. In such an attempt subject-object symmetries could be derived by formulating a subtheory of adjunction and dominance, roughly along the lines of Chomsky (1986). By allowing object NP's that are adjoined to VP to c-command out of the VP that they are adjoined to, adjunction could lead to symmetrical configurations. This would be a way to account for Binding Principle C symmetries in structural terms. Two problems remain, however, within such an approach: (i) the mapping from D-Structure to S-Structure would not be structure-preserving, posing a potential problem for the Projection Principle; (ii) the question arises

Introduction

37

why adjunction would be allowed more freely in some languages than in others. Thus this restrictive theory is not without problems. Scenario II is problematic from the point of UG. The status of an unmarked cluster of symmetries in a theory of UG seems to be ad-hoc in the light of the presence of fully configurational languages. Further, there is no fundamental link with the cluster of (a)symmetries in configurational languages. Deriving the asymmetries from Case-hierarchies in the particular grammars of non-configurational languages (e.g. Kiss (1981)) is problematic because some of the asymmetries are cross-linguistically stable (cf. transitivity alternations, control structures) and have nothing to do with (abstract) Case in a strict sense (cf. noun-incorporation in non-configurational languages). Scenario III allows us to study the clusters from a modular point of view and ties in with Chomsky's (1982) reopening of the issue of the formal properties of phrase markers, suggesting that the phrase markers may have a richer structure than the Reduced Phrase Markers (RPM) of Lasnik and Kupin (1977), not representable in terms of a Phrase Structure Grammar. This theory could generate parallel or double representations of the type in (5) which are not characterized as RPM's because not all the nodes in a pair dominate or precede the other in a single phrase marker. The problem with this attempt would be that we have to give up the null-hypothesis, i.e. scenario I, for there may be terminal nodes in the one tree that are absent in the other one (cf. (5b)). This would allow an increasing degree of disparity between LS and CS. On the other hand, it is also true that proposals based on parallel representations (cf. Zubizarreta and Vergnaud (1982), Goodall (1984) and Higginbotham (1985) among others)) have provided new insights into the configurationality issue and other anomalies within the theory of RPMs (e.g. coordination, Romance causatives, and restructuring). Following these authors, we may hypothesize that a 'CP' within scenario III could be derived in the following style. We may assume that the mapping of LS onto PS may involve two basic principles. Given that LS and PS differ in that (i) the latter and not the former encodes precedence relations, and (ii) the dominance relations they represent need not be identical, one would expect the mapping to be in terms of these relations. The next step would be to assume that the rules which generate LS are borrowed to generate a PS with some changes in terms of dominance and precedence. The changes will be restricted to (i) stipulating a precedence and (ii) erasing the dominance relations in the rules, both of which are optional. Thus, the stipulation that [NP, S] precedes and [NP, VP] follows the V yields languages like English and the stipulation that [NP, S] follows the verb, and [NP, VP] follows [NP, S] yields VSO languages without a surface VP. Languages may choose not to exercise this option, which would yield nonconfigurational languages.

38

L.K. Maràcz and P. Muysken

The order VSO, for example, cannot be maintained without erasing the VP node. These possibilities are summarised in (23): (23)

a.

stipulate the order [NP,S] V [NP.VP]:

S sub

V

b.

VP -

obj

stipulate the order V [NP,S] [NP,VP]: erase VP sub

c.

obj

erase VP

sub

obj

V

The approach predicts the impossibility of languages in which, say, the subject is expressed as [NP,VP] at the configurational structure: (24) obj

VP

V

sub

Languages of this kind cannot be derived by stipulating precedence relations and erasing dominance relations. This approach will also rule out fixed word order SVO or SOV languages without a VP, as VP is erased only when the word order results in crossing branches. As the reader will notice while working through this volume there is no stable theory of configurationality. The situation appears to be even more chaotic if we take into consideration the fact that competing analyses have been proposed for one and the same language. However, we do not think that this situation represents merely an exercise in linguistic argumentation, but rather we are convinced that this lively debate will contribute significantly to our knowledge of the typology of asymmetries and of the structure of a theory of UG.

The Basque verbal inventory and configurationality* Beth Levin

Although Basque's configurationality has been a matter of debate (for example, see Azkarate et al. (1981), Rebuschi (1985, and subsequent work)), in this paper I do not take a stand as to whether Basque is configurational in its syntax. 1 I wish rather to show that an examination of the Basque verbal inventory, suggests that, at least with respect to its lexical organization, Basque shows a subject-object asymmetry, or more precisely the analog of this asymmetry in lexical representation, an external/internal argument asymmetry, in the way it organizes the arguments of verbs. This asymmetry is manifested in the existence of a class of unaccusative verbs (Perlmutter (1978), Burzio (1986)) in Basque, as well as in other related properties of the Basque verbal inventory. 2 In what follows I present evidence for recognizing a class of unaccusative verbs in Basque. Section 1 introduces the conception of lexical representation assumed in this paper, paying special attention to the lexical representation of the unaccusative/unergative distinction and the relevance of this distinction to the question of configurationality. After a brief introduction to verb classes in Basque in Section 2, the remainder of the paper is devoted to the central question: the composition of the apparently 'intransitive' verb class of Basque, the class of verbs that takes a single argument in the NOR case. I argue that this class, the NOR verb class, includes only intransitive verbs which meet the characterization of the unaccusative class. Several types of evidence will be presented in support of this proposal: syntactic evidence that the NOR argument is a direct argument in Section 3 and syntactic-semantic evidence from a consideration of the composition of the NOR verb class in Section 4.

* This paper draws on Levin (1983a, 1983b), where much of the same material is discussed from the perspective of Basque's ergativity. I would like to thank Pello Salaburu and Itziar Laka for answering my many questions about Basque verbs. I would also like to thank Itziar Laka, Tova Rapoport and Juan Uriagereka for their comments on an earlier draft of this paper. This work was supported in part by a grant to the Lexicon Project of the MIT Center for Cognitive Science from the System Development Foundation.

Configurationality (Maracz/Muysken eds.) © 1989 Foris Publications

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1. ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT LEXICAL REPRESENTATION

Discussions of configurationality originally focused on questions of word order (Hale (1982)), but more recently attention has shifted to the verb phrase as an important criterion for configurationality. A language is said to be non-configurational if it lacks evidence for a verb phrase. Attempts to establish whether or not a language is configurational often rely on evidence bearing on the existence of a verb phrase in that language at some level of linguistic representation. Usually this evidence takes the form of subject-object asymmetries: properties that hold of subjects but not objects that can be attributed to the fact that the verb and its object form a constituent, the verb phrase, which itself then combines with the subject to form a constituent. Subject-object asymmetries can be used to argue that a language shows the hierarchical structure in (1), which reflects the presence of a verb phrase, rather than the flat structure in (2). (1)

[ s NP

(2)

[ s NP NP V ]

[VP

NP V ] ]

Citing evidence from the Australian language Warlpiri, a language frequently purported to be non-configurational due to its relatively free word order, Hale (1983) argues that even languages which display relatively free word order manifest certain subject-object asymmetries. To account for these asymmetries, Hale posits, as part of the lexical entry of a verb, an abstract hierarchical representation of the verb and its arguments which incorporates a verb phrase. Hale suggests that the difference between configurational and so-called non-configurational languages involves whether or not this representation, which he calls Lexical Structure, is 'projected' onto the syntax: only in configurational languages is Lexical Structure replicated in the syntax. Subject-object asymmetries also figure prominently in an ever-increasing body of research, which began with the work of Perlmutter (1978), on the unaccusative/unergative distinction. These studies show that the intransitive verb class in many languages is not homogeneous but consists of two subclasses: the unaccusative verbs, whose subject behaves like the object of a transitive verb with respect to a range of linguistic phenomena (eg. come, return, appear, fade, wilt), and the unergative verbs, whose subject behaves like the subject of a transitive verb with respect to these same phenomena (eg. laugh, cry, speak, sleep).3 To account for the properties of these verbs, Perlmutter, working in the Relational Grammar framework, and later Burzio (1986), working in the Government-Binding (GB) framework, propose that the surface subject of an unaccusative verb is an

Lexical Structure in Basque

41

underlying (d(eep)-structure) object and the surface subject of an unergative verb is an underlying (d-structure) subject. Furthermore, accounts in the GB framework appeal to configurationally-defined, rather than primitive, notions of grammatical relations to explain why certain properties hold of subjects and not objects and vice versa. These analyses take advantage of the difference in the hierarchical relationship between a verb and its subject and between a verb and its object, relationships which are a consequence of positing a verb phrase. Specifically, noun phrases bearing the object relation to a verb are set apart from those bearing the subject relation in that they are inside, rather than outside, the verb phrase headed by that verb (see (1) above). Given the nature of the GB accounts of the unaccusative/unergative distinction, evidence that a language distinguishes between unaccusative and unergative verbs can be taken as evidence that this language must have a verb phrase at least at some level of representation. The question is what is the relevant level? A verb's membership in the unaccusative or the unergative class is a lexical property of that verb. So although the unaccusative/unergative distinction has been characterized in terms of the d-structure syntactic configurations of the relevant verbs, a characterization of the distinction in terms of the syntactically relevant lexical representation of the verb's argument-taking properties is more appropriate. Thus a language showing the unaccusative/unergative distinction must have the analog of a verb phrase within its lexical representation. Recent work on the argument-taking properties of verbs, including that on the unaccusative/unergative distinction, has revealed asymmetries in the way that a verb organizes its arguments which must be captured in a lexical representation. 4 Such asymmetries have led to the formulation of lexical representations of the argument-taking properties of verbs that are more articulated than the theta-grids first proposed by Stowell (1981), which simply consist of an undifferentiated list of arguments indentified by their theta-roles. Hale (1983) explicitly introduces a verb phrase within the lexical representation he proposes, Lexical Structure, as a way to impose the necessary hierarchical relations between a verb and its arguments (see also Hale and Keyser (1986, 1987)). In this way Hale is able to represent in the lexicon the more familiar subject/object distinction of the syntax, whose existence it may not be appropriate to assume in all languages. I have also argued that a lexical representation must have internal structure in a paper with Rappaport (Rappaport and Levin (1988)). We introduce a lexical representation, Predicate-Argument Structure, which draws on the argument structures of recent work (Williams (1981), Marantz (1984), among others). Although we do not explicitly impose a hierarchical structure on our lexical representation by positing an abstract verb phrase as in Hale's Lexical Structure, we recognize distinctions among arguments

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that can be identified with positions in his Lexical Structure. Following other recent work on lexical representation, we use the distinctions between external and internal arguments (Williams (1981)). What matters for the purposes of this paper is that the external/internal argument distinction is analogous in essential respects to the hierarchical relations defined by the verb phrase in Hale's Lexical Structure: the external argument corresponds to the argument that is outside the verb phrase in Lexical Structure (np[ in (3)), while the internal arguments correspond to the arguments inside the verb phrase at Lexical Structure (np 2 in (3)).5 (3)

[s npj [Vp np 2 v ] ]

The verb phrase of Hale's Lexical Structure may be seen as one way of providing content to the notion that lexical representation must have internal structure. Whether positing a verb phrase within this representation is the best way to accomplish this goal is an issue for further research. Internal arguments may be further subdivided into direct and indirect arguments. The direct/indirect argument distinction is best described in terms of the way the relation of argumenthood is established between the verb and the noun phrases corresponding to its arguments in the syntax. This process is referred to as theta-role assignment, but might be better described as 'argument identification'. 6 Noun phrases in the syntax bear argument relations to a verb by virtue of a process of theta-role assignment. The theta-role assigning properties of a verb—i.e., its argument-taking properties—are lexically-specified. Verbs may assign a theta-role directly to at most one argument, the direct argument. Furthermore, one argument, the external argument, may be assigned its theta-role compositionally by the verb phrase headed by the verb (see Marantz (1984)), and hence must be external to the verb phrase. 7 Any remaining argument is assigned its theta-role indirectly through a theta-role assigner other than the verb, usually a preposition; it is an indirect argument (see Marantz (1984)). We will not be concerned with indirect arguments in this paper. The unaccusative/unergative distinction can be characterized simply in terms of lexical representation. Both types of verb take a single argument. An unaccusative verb takes a direct internal argument (and no external argument) and an unergative verb takes an external argument (and no direct argument). In terms of Hale's Lexical Structure, an unaccusative verb might be represented as in (4), while an unergative verb might be represented as in (5). (4)

[s [vP np v ] ]

(unaccusative verb)

(5)

[s np [Vp v ] ]

(unergative verb)

Lexical Structure in Basque

43

These characterizations should be compared to that of a transitive verb. A transitive verbs takes both an external argument and a direct argument; it would have the Lexical Structure in (3). A language that displays unaccusative and unergative verb classes requires an external/internal argument distinction in its lexical representation—it must, in Hale's terms, have a verb phrase at Lexical Structure. 2. BASQUE VERB CLASSES INTRODUCED

Basque verbs fall into two major classes on the basis of the cases of the arguments they select; these are the NOR verbs and the NOR-NORK verbs. The NOR verbs, which require a single argument marked for the NOR case (the morphologically unmarked case), have been called intransitive, while the NOR-NORK verbs, which take two arguments, one in the NOR case and one in the NORK case (a morphologically marked case), are considered to be transitive verbs. 8 (6)

NOR Verbs: etorri 'to come', joan 'to go', egon 'to stay/be', agertu 'to appear', maitemindu 'to fall in love', hasi 'to begin', ...

(7)

NOR-NORK Verbs: ikusi 'to see'.y'o 'to hit', egin 'to do/make', ekarri 'to bring', jan 'to eat', ipini 'to put', erosi 'to buy', idatzi 'to write', ...

As the lists above show, the members of the NOR and NOR-NORK verb classes have counterparts among the transitive and intransitive classes, respectively, in other languages. The system of case marking in Basque is typically described as ergative. In an ergative system of case marking, the object (or patient/theme) of a transitive verb and the single argument of an intransitive verb share the same case, the absolutive case, while the subject (or agent) of a transitive verb shows a different case, the ergative case. Furthermore, the absolutive case is typically the morphologically unmarked case and the ergative case is the morphologically marked case. This system contrasts with an accusative system of case marking where the subject of a transitive verb and the single argument of an intransitive verb share the same morphologically unmarked case, the nominative case, while the object of a transitive verb receives a distinct, morphologically marked, case, the accusative case. Consider sentence (8) with the verb etorri 'to come'. 9 (8)

Ni etorri naiz I-NOR come IsNOR-IZAN 'I came'

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B. Levin

The single argument of the verb in (8) is in the NOR case, the morphologically unmarked case in Basque. Compare sentence (8) to sentence (9) with the NOR-NORK verb ikusi 'to see'. (9)

Mirenek

ni

ikusi nau

M i r e n - N O R K I - N O R see

1SNOR-UKAN-3SNORK

'Miren saw me' In sentence (9), the NOR argument corresponds to the object of the English counterpart of the sentence, while an argument in a distinct, morphologically marked, case, referred to as the NORK case, corresponds to the subject of the English counterpart. Sentence (10) contrasts with (9) in having the first person singular pronoun in the NORK case form, nik. (10)

Nik liburua ikusi dut I-NORK book-NOR see 3sNOR-UKAN-lsNORK 'I saw the book'

In sentence (10), the pronoun corresponds to the subject of the English counterpart. Due to the pattern illustrated in (8)-(10), Basque is considered to have an ergative system of case marking. Accordingly, the NOR case is traditionally termed the 'absolutive' case and the NORK case the 'ergative' case. The Basque system of agreement is also described as ergative. All verbs in Basque can occur in a participial form together with an auxiliary which takes person and number marking, 10 as illustrated in (8)-(10). There is a set of prefixal agreement markers that are construed with the NOR arguments of both NOR and NOR-NORK verbs and a second distinct set of suffixes that are construed with the NORK arguments of NORNORK verbs." Consider (8)-(10) again. In (8), the verb shows the prefix n- indicating agreement with a first person singular NOR argument. In (9), the auxiliary again shows the prefix «-, in agreement with a first person singular NOR argument. The agreement marker for a first person singular NORK argument is the suffix -t, as in (10). In what follows, I focus on case marking since the agreement system reflects the same pattern. Basque auxiliary selection is tied to a verb's case array. Basque has two auxiliaries, IZAN 'to be' and UKAN 'to have'. A NOR verb selects the auxiliary IZAN 'to be', which always shows agreement with a NOR argument, as in (8). A NOR-NORK verb selects the auxiliary UKAN 'to have', which agrees with both the NOR and NORK arguments to the verb, as in (9) and (10). NOR verbs cannot take the auxiliary UKAN, although NOR-NORK verbs can take the auxiliary IZAN in the impersonal

Lexical Structure in Basque

45

construction (see Levin (1983a,b). Therefore, the ability of a verb to take the auxiliary UKAN indicates that the verb is not a NOR verb. This property will be used as a diagnostic throughout the paper. Despite the apparent surface system of ergative case marking and agreement, Basque does not appear to differ radically from an accusative language such as English in its syntax. In Levin (1983a) I present evidence that Basque is an accusative language in the sense of the Ergativity Hypothesis of Marantz (1984), based on an examination of a variety of phenomena, including transitivity alternations, control, and anaphor distribution. Therefore, I assume that the NOR-NORK verbs are transitive verbs, having the NORK argument as an external argument and the NOR argument as a direct internal argument in lexical representation. (11)

[s npNORK [ vp npNOR v ] ]

This assumption will provide the reference point for assessing the status of the single argument of a NOR verb in the lexical representation. The next two sections present evidence that the single argument of a NOR verb is a direct internal argument. This characterization of the NOR argument implies that the NOR verbs are unaccusative verbs. That is, all NOR verbs meet Burzio's (1986) definition of unaccusative verbs: verbs that do not have an external argument (or in Burzio's terms, verbs that do not assign a theta-role to their subject).

3. THE NATURE OF THE NOR VERB CLASS

This section considers syntactic evidence that the NOR verbs are unaccusative verbs. The evidence concerns properties shared by the NOR arguments of both NOR verbs and NOR-NORK verbs, properties that do not hold of NORK arguments and which, furthermore, are properties typically associated with direct arguments in other languages. One property involves the distribution of the ZERIK (partitive) case, while a second concerns regularities in theta-role assignment in two transitivity alternations, the anti-causative and indefinite object alternations. 3.1 The Distribution of the ZERIK Case To begin, I examine evidence based on the distribution of the ZERIK (partitive) case: only NOR noun phrases may be 'replaced' by noun phrases in the ZERIK case. I propose that the ZERIK case is analogous to the genitive of negation in Russian, a case which Pesetsky (1982) argues is necessarily limited to direct arguments. Therefore, the coincidence in

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B. Levin

distribution of the ZERIK and NOR cases provides evidence that NOR arguments are direct, and hence internal, arguments. Nominals in the ZERIK case are found primarily in negative sentences, 12 which are characterized by the presence of the negative particle ez preceding the auxiliary. 13 The use of ZERIK is illustrated by the pair of sentences (12)-(13); both involve the NOR-NORK verb ikusi 'to see'. (12)

Ez du gizonak ikusi ikaslea NEG 3sNOR-UKAN-3sNORK man-NORK see student-NOR 'The man didn't see a/the student'

(13)

Ez du gizonak ikusi NEG 3sNOR-UKAN-3sNORK man-NORK see ikaslerik student-ZERIK 'The man didn't see any students/a (single) student'

Sentence (13) is the counterpart of (12) with the NOR noun phrase 'replaced' by a ZERIK noun phrase, in the sense that the ZERIK noun phrase in (13) is interpreted as bearing the same theta-role as the NOR noun phrase bears in the otherwise identical (12). But (13) no longer expresses only simple sentential negation as (12) does; instead, a quantifier-variable interpretation is associated with the ZERIK noun phrase. Basque grammars note that the distribution of the ZERIK case coincides with that of the NOR case (de Rijk (1972), Goenaga (1980), Lafitte (1979), Salaburu (1981)). Thus a sentence with a NOR-NORK verb in which the ZERIK noun phrase is interpreted as bearing the same theta-role as a NORK noun phrase is impossible. 14 That is there is no variant of (12) such as (14) where the ZERIK noun phrase is interepreted as bearing the same theta-role as the NORK noun phrase in (12). (14)

*Ez du gizonik ikusi liburua NEG 3sNOR-UKAN-3sNORK man-ZERIK see book-NOR 'Not a man saw the book'

What is relevant to the characterization of the NOR verb class is that the NOR noun phrase of a NOR verb may also be 'replaced' by a ZERIK noun phrase. Compare (15) and (16), both with the NOR verb etorri 'to come'. (15)

Ez da gizona etorri NEG 3sNOR-IZAN man-NOR come 'A/the man didn't come'

Lexical Structure in Basque (16)

Al

Ez da gizonik etorri NEG 3sNOR-IZAN man-ZERIK come 'No men came'

The NOR noun phrase in (15) and the ZERIK noun phrase in (16) both bear the same theta-role. Again there is a shift from simple sentential negation in (15) to a quantifier-variable interpretation associated with the ZERIK noun phrase in (16), similar to that observed between (12) and (13). An additional example of a ZERIK noun phrase with a NOR verb is given below. (17)

Ez da txoririk pasatzen NEG 3s-IZAN bird-ZERIK pass-PRES 'Not a bird goes by'

The parallel distribution of the ZERIK and NOR cases could be accounted for by considering the NOR argument of a NOR verb, like the NOR argument of a NOR-NORK verb, to be a direct argument and then arguing that the ZERIK case may be found with direct arguments. This proposal receives support from independent evidence concerning the genitive of negation in Russian. The ZERIK case appears to play a function analogous to that of the genitive of negation in Russian; this use of the genitive case also serves to associate a quantifier-variable interpretation with a noun phrase in a negative sentence. Both Pesetsky (1982) and Neidle (to appear) have observed that the genitive of negation in Russian is associated with 'objects', including arguments of unaccusative verbs, but not with 'subjects'. Furthermore, Pesetsky gives an account within the GB framework of the distribution and interpretation of the genitive of negation which requires this case to be limited to noun phrases in the verb phrase, including direct arguments. His account involves Quantifier Raising; specifically, only if the genitive noun phrase is in the verb phrase can Quantifier Raising take place without an Empty Category Principle violation arising. The similarity in function of the ZERIK case in Basque and the genitive of negation in Russian suggest that Pesetsky's account of the genitive of negation could be extended to the ZERIK case. If so, the restrictions that hold of the genitive of negation in Russian should hold of the ZERIK case; that is, the ZERIK case would be expected only with direct arguments. More recently Ortiz de Urbina (1985) has offered an alternative account of the distribution of the ZERIK case. While his account does not assume that Quantifier Raising is involved in the interpretation of the ZERIK case, it still does require that the ZERIK case be associated with direct arguments: the asymmetries in the distribution of the ZERIK case are

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attributed to constraints on the domain within which the ZERIK case can be interpreted. Either account would argue for identifying all NOR arguments as direct arguments in Basque. In particular, the NOR argument of a NOR verb would be a direct argument. NOR verbs take a single argument, and if this argument is a direct argument, these verbs would then qualify as unaccusative verbs. The existence of an unaccusative verb class means that Basque requires a lexical representation that makes the external/ internal argument distinction. 3.2. Verbs taking two case arrays Further evidence for considering at least some NOR verbs to be unaccusative verbs comes from an examination of the Basque counterparts of various transitivity alternations cited in work on English and other languages. Two of the most commonly discussed alternations, whose Basque conterparts will be examined in this section, are the anti-causative and indefinite object alternations, exemplified in (18) and (19), respectively, with English examples. (18)

a. b.

Janet broke the plate The plate broke

(19)

a. b.

Paul ate the apple Paul ate

The anti-causative alternation, 15 is characterized in English by the fact that the subject of the intransitive use of the verb (the anti-causative variant) bears the same semantic relation to the verb as the object of the transitive use (the causative variant). 16 It denotes the entity that undergoes the change of state, bearing the theta-role commonly referred to as theme or patient. The intransitive use describes a change of state without reference to how it was brought about; the transitive use describes the action of bringing this state about. In the second alternation, the indefinite object alternation, the subject of the intransitive and transitive uses both bear the same thetarole, the agent role. The transitive use also includes a second noun phrase, the object of the verb in (19a), which bears the patient or theme role. In the intransitive use a second argument is understood but left unexpressed; the theta-role of this understood argument corresponds to that of the object of the transitive use of the verb. This understood object is interpreted as being a prototypical object; for example, (19b) implies that food or a meal was eaten. The anti-causative and indefinite object alternations involve alternate

Lexical Structure in Basque

49

expressions of the arguments of a verb that involve changes in the verb's transitivity. Each alternation is characterized by a systematic relationship between the meaning of the verb in the two uses. Furthermore, each alternations is exhibited by a wide range of verbs which are said to participate in the appropriate alternation. The anti-causative alternation is characteristic of verbs of change of state and change of location, while the indefinite object alternation is found with many activity verbs. Neither of these alternations is peculiar to English. Each is found in other languages including French, Russian, Italian, and Basque, although the means used to express them may differ from language to language. Let us see what the Basque counterparts of the transitivity alternations reveal about the NOR verb class. Although some verbs in Basque take a single case array, the verbs which participate in the Basque counterparts of the alternations may take either of two case arrays. 3.2.1. The Anti-Causative Alternation Consider first the realization of the anti-causative alternation. Verbs participating in the anti-causative alternation in Basque select both the NOR-NORK and NOR case arrays. The NOR-NORK array is used to express the causative variant, as in (20), while the NOR array is used to express the anti-causative variant, as in (21).17 (20)

Mirenek atea ireki du Miren-NORK door-NOR open 3sNOR-UKAN-3sNORK 'Miren opened the door'

(21)

Atea ireki da door-NOR open 3sNOR-IZAN 'The door opened'

The NOR argument bears the same theta-role in both sentences (20) and (21), the patient/theme role. This shared theta-role assignment can be accounted for by assuming that the NOR argument is assigned its thetarole in the same way in each variant. Since the NOR argument of a NORNORK verb must independently be its direct argument, if we assume that the NOR argument of the NOR use of a verb that participates in the anti-causative alternation must be a direct argument, we can maintain that the verbs participating in this alternation uniformly associate the thetarole patient/theme with the direct argument in both variants. This assumption is consistent with the Uniformity of Theta-role Assignment Hypothesis (UTAH) of Baker (1988): a verb always assigns the same thetarole in the same way. When applied to the anti-causative alternation, the UTAH means that since the NOR argument is the patient/theme argument

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B. Levin

in both variants it could not, for instance, be the external argument in the anti-causative variant but the direct argument in the causative variant. The differences between the two variants can be attributed to whether or not the verb takes an external argument as well as a direct argument. In the causative variant, which is associated with the NOR-NORK array, the verb clearly takes two arguments, a direct and an external argument. But in the anti-causative variant, which is associated with the NOR array, the verb only takes one argument and, according to the UTAH, it must be the direct internal argument. Therefore, in the anti-causative alternation the NOR array is associated with an unaccusative use of the verb. 3.2.2. The Indefinite Object Alternation In contrast to the anti-causative alternation, the shared argument in the two variants of the indefinite object alternation is the agent argument (see (19)). Since the agent role is typically associated with the external argument of transitive verbs, we must postulate that a verb participating in the indefinite object alternation must take an external argument in both variants. Only in this way can the argument common to the two variants be assigned a theta-role in the same way in accordance with the UTAH. In fact, in English and other languages, the verb in the indefinite object variant has been shown to have properties of an unergative verb. A prediction about the realization of the indefinite object alternation in Basque follows. If the NOR array is associated with unaccusative verbs, which by definition lack an external argument, the indefinite object alternation in Basque, unlike the anti-causative alternation, should not involve an alternation between a NOR-NORK array and a NOR array. Specifically, the NOR array should not be associated with the indefinite object variant. As predicted, it is not. (22)

Jonek sagarra jan du Jon-NORK apple-NOR eat 3sNOR-UKAN-3sNORK 'Jon ate an apple'

(23)

Jonek jan du Jon-NORK eat 3sNOR-UKAN-3sNORK 'Jon ate/Jon ate it'

The sentences in (22) and (23) illustrate that a verb participating in this alternation takes both the NOR-NORK and NORK arrays. The NORK array is associated with the indefinite object construction. The NORK argument bears the same theta-role in both variants, the agent role. When the verb takes the NOR-NORK array, the NOR argument bears the patient/ theme role. No overt NOR argument is present when the verb takes the

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51

NORK array, but as in English, a patient/theme argument is understood. 18 As discussed above, the argument shared by both variants in the indefinite object alternation is the external argument. This means that the NORK argument is the external argument not only when an indefinite object verb takes the NOR-NORK array, but also when it takes the NORK array (i.e. on its indirect object use).The NORK use of the verb, since it is associated with a single external argument, must be unergative. Thus Basque uses the NORK array for the indefinite object variant of the indefinite object alternation, which involves an unergative verb, rather than the NOR array found in the anti-causative variant of the anti-causative alternation, which involves an unaccusative verb. The fact that the NOR array is not used for the indefinite object construction supports the proposal that the NOR array is associated with unaccusative verbs. The form of the indefinite object alternation in Basque is particularly striking when compared to other languages which superficially appear to resemble Basque but differ from it in their treatment of the indefinite object alternation. Like Basque, the Eskimo languages have an ergative case marking system. Eskimo languages have two conjugations, a transitive and an intransitive conjugation, a property that might appear comparable to the existence of two auxiliaries in Basque. Eskimo also shows the indefinite object alternation, and the verbs participating in this alternation are described as activity verbs. The indefinite object alternation in Eskimo involves the use of a single verb that occurs in the transitive conjugation when the 'object' is expressed and in the intransitive conjugation (without additional derivational morphology) when an indefinite object is understood, as illustrated in the following pair from Yup'ik Eskimo. (24)

a.

b.

Angutem amaraa mikelnguq man-ERG backpack-INDIC-3s/3s child-ABS 'The man backpacks the child' (Reed et al. 1977, p.232) Angun amartuq man-ABS backpack-INDIC-3s 'The man backpacks' (Reed et al. 1977, p.232)

Although in Eskimo, a transitive verb with both arguments expressed takes the agent argument in the ergative case and the patient/theme argument in the absolutive case, but in the indefinite object construction, the agent argument is in the absolutive case. In contrast to Eskimo, the indefinite object alternation in Basque involves neither a change in auxiliary, nor a change in the case of the agent argument. The agent argument remains in the NORK case in the indefinite object variant. The expression of the indefinite object alternation in Basque provides confirmation of the proposal that the NOR verb class is an unaccusative

52 B. Levin verb class rather than an intransitive verb class in the broadest sense of a class encompassing both unaccusative and unergative verbs. The expression of this alternation is consistent with the hypothesis that the NOR verb class is an unaccusative class. Given this hypothesis, this alternation could not, and, as we have seen does not, involve a verb taking both the NOR and NOR-NORK arrays.

4. THE COMPOSITION OF THE NOR VERB CLASS

An examination of the composition of the NOR verb class supports the claim that the NOR verbs are unaccusative verbs. The members of this class are drawn from the semantic classes typically represented among the unaccusative verbs in other languages. Even more striking is the fact that counterparts of verbs that belong to the unergative verb class in other languages are not found among the NOR verbs of Basque. Perlmutter (1978) notes that certain distinct semantic characteristics are associated with each of the two subclasses of intransitive verbs he identifies, the unaccusative and the unergative verbs. 19 Unaccusative verbs generally include verbs of inherently directed motion, change of state, coming into existence, and occurrence, as well as aspectual verbs. Their arguments denote an entity that changes state or location or comes to exist; that is, these arguments bear what have been called variously the patient or theme role. In contrast, unergative verbs are typically verbs describing activities, and, consequently, their arguments more often than not refer to the performer of the activity, bearing what has been called the agent role. A survey of some representative NOR verbs shows that these verbs fit Perlmutters's characterization of unaccusative verbs. (25)

Verbs of Inherently Directed Motion: joan 'to go', etorri 'to come', ibili 'to walk', itzuli 'to return', atera 'to exit', irten 'to exit', ... Verbs of Change of Physical State: ireki 'to open', apurtu 'to break', berotu 'to heat', erre 'to burn', hil 'to die', hertsi 'to close',... Verbs of Change of Psychological State: harritu 'to be surprised', izutu 'to be frightened', nahasi 'to be confused', haserretu 'to be angry', ... Verbs of Coming into Existence and Occurrence: gertatu 'to happen', egon 'to stay/be', agertu 'to appear', sortu 'to arise',... Aspectual Verbs: amaitu 'to end', hasi 'to begin', bukatu 'to end',

These verbs have been divided into semantically coherent subclasses to

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Lexical Structure in Basque

show that the NOR verbs include members of each of the semantically defined subclasses of the unaccusative class. The observations about the theta-roles of the arguments of unaccusative and unergative verbs, when combined with related observations about transitive verbs suggest that the agent role is associated with the external argument and the patient/theme role with the direct argument. With reference to Basque, this association means that the NOR and NORK arguments are usually the patient/theme and agent arguments, respectively. If the claim that the NOR verbs are unaccusative verbs is correct, then a prediction follows. Verbs that do not qualify as unaccusative verbs on semantic grounds should not number among the NOR verbs. This prediction is not easy to verify rigorously without an exhaustive examination of all members of the NOR verb class. But additional confirmation that the NOR verbs do indeed meet the expected semantic characterization can be derived indirectly through (i) an examination of the Basque counterparts of verbs that are typically unergative verbs in other languages by virtue of their semantic characterization (Sections 4.1 and 4.3) and (ii) an examination of the semantic characterization of some syntactically welldefined verb classes that are outside the NOR class (Sections 4.2 and 4.4).20 4.1. Transitivity Alternations

Revisited

Consider once more the use of the NOR and NORK arrays in the transitivity alternations of Section 3.2. An examination of the verbs undergoing these transitivity alternations shows that the verbs undergoing each alternation meet the expected semantic characterizations. Not only do theta-role assignment considerations argue that the verb in the anti-causative variant is unaccusative, but the semantic classes which the verbs undergoing this alternation are drawn from are among those associated with the unaccusative class. The anti-causative alternation in Basque is found with the same type of verbs as in other languages: verbs of change of physical and psychological state, including those listed in (25). These verbs figure prominently among the unaccusative class cross-linguistically. Similarly, the suggestion that the indefinite object construction involved an unergative use of a verb receives support from the semantic characterization of the verbs participating in this alternation. These verbs, like those undergoing this alternation in other languages, are various types of activity verbs. 21 (26)

Verbs of Ingesting: jan 'to eat', edan 'to drink', afaldu 'to have dinner', bazkaldu 'to have lunch', gosaldu 'to have breakfast', merendatu 'to have a snack',...

54

B. Levin Verbs of Mental Processes: ikasi 'to learn/study', irakurri 'to read',... Verbs of Occupation: irakatsi 'to teach', josi 'to sew', landatu 'to plant', jokastu 'to play\plantxatu 'to iron',...

Activity verbs, on their intransitive use in other languages, show properties of unergative verbs. 4.2. The N EGIN

Construction

Basque uses a construction which I refer to as the N EGIN construction to express the counterparts of many verbal notions that are expressed as intransitive verbs in other languages. Thus a study of the verbal notions expressed through this construction should provide further insight into the Basque verbal inventory. In the N EGIN construction, the NOR-NORK verb egin 'to make/do' combines with a NOR nominal to express a predicate, which in turn takes a NORK argument as 'subject', as in (27). (27)

Nik lan egin dut I-NORK work-UNDET/NOR make 3sNOR-UKAN-lsNORK 'I worked'

In (27) the NORK argument denotes the performer of the action expressed by the predicate lan egin. A wide range of nominals in Basque combine in this way with the verb egin, among them: (28)

Examples of the N EGIN construction N EGIN amets egin barre egin dantza egin dehadar egin eztul egin hitz egin igeri egin

N dream laugh dance shout cough word swim

Verb to dream to laugh to dance to shout to cough to speak to swim

N EGIN irrintzi egin keinu egin lan egin lo egin negar egin zurrunga egin ziztu egin

N neigh wink work sleep tear snore whistle

Verb to neigh to wink to work to sleep to cry to snore to whistle

As these examples show, Basque uses the N EGIN construction to express verbal notions which are frequently lexicalized as unergative intransitive verbs in other languages: work, sleep, speak, laugh, cry. The representative sample in (28) has been chosen to show that the N EGIN construction is used to express members of the various semantically cohesive subclasses of the unergative class, including verbs of communication, animal sounds,

Lexical Structure in Basque

55

manner of motion, and gestures. The fact that these verbal notions are not expressed by NOR verbs is consistent with the hypothesis that the NOR verbs are unaccusative verbs. Noun phrases in Basque have both a determined and undetermined form. Details aside, noun phrases usually occur in the determined form. But the N EGIN construction is set apart by the use of the undetermined form of the NOR nominal. For instance, in (27), the noun 'work' is in the undetermined form lan rather than the determined form lana. The use of the undetermined form of the nominal in the N EGIN construction is consistent with the non-referential use of the nominal in the construction. This nominal does not refer to an object in the world. It serves to pick out the action denoted by a particular instance of the N EGIN combination. The existence of the N EGIN construction itself supports the identification of an external/internal argument distinction in Basque. In this construction, the NOR nominal found with the NOR-NORK verb egin determines the meaning of the construction. There is no comparable construction in Basque involving a specific NOR-NORK verb and a range of NORK nomináis, where the NORK nominal (the external argument) determines the meaning of the construction. This asymmetry is reminiscent of certain external/ internal argument asymmetries that Marantz (1984) attributes to the compositional properties of verbs and their arguments. Marantz sees the existence of a verb phrase as a reflection of the way a verb organizes its arguments. A verb assigns a theta-role directly to its direct argument, combining with it to form a verb phrase. The verb phrase in turn assigns a theta-role to the external argument of the verb. According to Marantz, a prediction that follows from this proposal is that changes in the choice of 'object' for a constant choice of transitive verb and 'subject' should affect the meaning of a sentence more than a change in the choice of 'subject' for a constant transitive verb and 'object'. As a consequence, one might expect to find constructions involving a verb and a range of 'object' nomináis where it is the 'object' that determines the meaning of the verb-nominal combination. This is precisely what happens in the N EGIN construction in Basque. 22 A comparable construction involving a NOR-NORK verb and a range of NORK nomináis would not be expected. 4.3. Verbs of Communication Verbs of communication are a semantically identifiable class of verbs that are rarely included in the unaccusative class of any language. Languages vary as to whether such verbs are realized as transitives or intransitives, but if not transitive, they are among the unergative intransitive verbs. Thus such verbs in Basque would be expected not to be NOR verbs given the proposed generalization about NOR class membership.

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Some verbal notions involving communication are expressed through the use of the N EGIN construction including those in (29): (29)

hitz egin 'to speak', oihu egin 'to shout', dehadar egin 'to shout', zin egin 'to swear', galde egin 'to ask'

Others are expressed by morphologically simple verbs, among them those in (30): (30)

esan 'to say', galdetu 'to ask', erantzun 'to answer', aipatu 'to mention', erausi 'to murmur/chatter'

But these morphologically simple verbs are not NOR verbs. Sentence (31) illustrates the use of a morphologically simple verb of communication, the verb erantzun 'to answer', and shows that these verbs select the auxiliary UKAN 'to have': (31)

Mirenek niri erantzun Miren-NORK I-NORI answer dit 3sNOR-UKAN-lsNORI-3sNORK 'Miren answered me'

Furthermore, these verbs take a NORK argument (denoting the speaker). The choice of auxiliary and the presence of a NORK argument signal that the morphologically simple verbs of communication are not NOR verbs, since NOR verbs only select the auxiliary IZAN 'to be' and do not take NORK arguments. Thus the class of verbs of communication does not include NOR verbs as would be expected given the proposal that the NOR verbs are unaccusative verbs. 4.4 The NORK Verb Class If the NOR array is associated with verbs that meet the semantic characterization of the unaccusative class, then the NORK array might be expected to be associated with verbs that meet the semantic characterization of the unergative class. We have already seen that the NORK array is associated with the indefinite object use of certain verbs. But what about verbs requiring only the NORK array? Few verbs in Basque require only this array. For instance, Lafitte's grammar (1979) gives only a small list of such verbs in the Navarro-Labourdin dialect. Among the verbs taking the NORK array are: 23

Lexical Structure in Basque (32)

57

dirdiratu 'to shine', disdiratu 'to sparkle', iraun 'to last', kurritu 'to run', iraki 'to boil', ...

This array is distinct from the NOR array, not only with respect to case marking but also with respect to choice of auxiliary. Verbs found in the NORK array require the auxiliary UKAN 'to have', the auxiliary which is found with NOR-NORK verbs. Although this auxiliary shows agreement with both NOR and NORK arguments of these verbs, when it cooccurs with a verb taking the NORK array, it must be in one of the forms used with a third person singular NOR argument of a NOR-NORK verb. For example, the UKAN form du construed with the third person singular NORK argument in (33) is the form found with the NOR-NORK verb ikusi 'to see' in (12), where it is construed with both a third person singular NORK argument and a third person singular NOR argument. 24 (33)

Gizonak kurritu du man-NORK run 3sNOR-UKAN-3sNORK 'The man ran'

The NORK verbs denote activities, rather than changes of state, even though some of these, verbs are not prototypical activity verbs because their single argument is not animate. The counterparts of some of these problematic verbs have been considered unaccusative verbs in other languages, in part due to their meaning. But cross-linguistic evidence suggests that these verbs do not qualify as members of the unaccusative class. Rather they are unergative verbs (see Levin (to appear) for discussion). Recently several researchers (Centineo (1986), Zaenen (1988), Van Valin (1987), and Tenny (1987), among others) have argued for an aspectual basis to the unaccusative/unergative distinction. Although differing in details, these proposals suggest that the notion of telicity is relevant to the characterization of the distinction. A verb is telic if it denotes an action or state that has an endpoint (recognize the speaker), and it is atelic otherwise {push a cart). Unaccusative verbs are telic and unergative verbs are atelic. Compare the ship arrived with she worked. The verbs in (32) are atelic, so on this view of the semantic underpinnings of the unaccusative/unergative distinction, these verbs would not be expected to be unaccusative verbs and hence should not be NOR verbs. G. Rebuschi (p.c.) informs me that the NORK class is growing, incorporating many verbs borrowed from Spanish. Examples include: (34)

azeleratu 'to accelerate', esistitu 'to exist', frenatu 'to brake', patinatu 'to skate', merendatu 'to snack',...

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The fact that these particular verbs are borrowed into the NORK verb class, despite its small size, rather than the much larger NOR verb class might seem surprising if the NOR verb class were simply an intransitive class. But given the assumption that the NOR verb class is an unaccusative class, these verbs, as activity verbs, should not be borrowed into the NORK verb class. Some verbs are borrowed into the NOR verb class; among them esaminatu 'to undergo an exam' (cf. Spanish examinarse) and mugitu 'to move'. 25 Again, the fact that these are NOR verbs is predictable, given the semantic characterization of the NOR verbs.

5. CONCLUSION

Although the NOR verbs in Basque have been called 'intransitive', the evidence presented in this paper suggests that the NOR verbs are unaccusative verbs, one of the two subclasses of verbs that make up the class typically termed 'intransitive' in other languages. This analysis accounts for the distribution of ZERIK case and for regularities in theta-role assignment in the anti-causative and indefinite object constructions, as well as for the membership of verbs in the NOR verb class. The existence of an unaccusative verb class in Basque means that at least in lexical representation, Basque maintains the external/internal argument distinction that allows a class of unaccusative verbs to be distinguished from a class of unergative verbs. 26 This distinction requires a structured lexical representation, for instance one that includes an abstract verb phrase such as Hale's Lexical Structure. What is most striking about Basque is not that it manifests the unaccusative/unergative distinction but that the class of so-called intransitive verbs, the NOR verbs, turns out to be an exclusively unaccusative class. Many verbal notions often expressed by intransitive verbs in other languages are not lexicalized by NOR verbs in Basque. Yet membership in the NOR verb class appears to be far from random; it is determined by semantic properties of verbs. NOR verbs are drawn from the semantic classes represented cross-linguistically among the unaccusative verbs. The NOR verb class lacks activity verbs (such as work, laugh, speak), which make up a substantial part of the intransitive class of other languages. Instead a large number of verbal notions such as these, although expressed as unergative verbs in other languages, are often expressed by complex verb-noun combinations using the N EGIN construction. The characteristics of the Basque verbal inventory explored in this paper should be of continued interest to the typological study of lexical organization.

Lexical Structure

in Basque

59

NOTES 1. Word order is relatively free in Basque simple sentences, despite a fixed preverbal focus position. Not surprisingly, much of the debate over Basque's configurationality has focused on questions of word order. But this aspect of Basque syntax is not relevant to this paper, which addresses the issue of configurationality from another perspective. 2. Not all languages show evidence that they make an unaccusative/unergative distinction, among them Warlpiri (Levin 1983a). 3. For clarity, I adopt Perlmutter's (1978) terms 'unaccusative' and 'unergative' rather than the corresponding terms used by Burzio (1986), 'ergative' and ' ( P u r e ) intransitive'. The term 'intransitive' is used here to refer to verbs with a single argument that is the surface subject, a class encompassing both the unaccusative and unergative class. 4. In this paper, I refer to 'lexical syntactic representation' simply as lexical representation. Lexical syntactic representation is one of the two levels of lexical representation distinguished in the work of the Lexicon Project (Hale and Keyser (1986, 1987), Rappaport and Levin (1988)). The second level, lexical semantic representation, is not relevant to this paper. See Rappaport and Levin (1988) for more extensive discussion of the various conceptions of lexical representation. 5. Following Hale's convention, I have used lower case letters to distinguish Lexical Structure from syntactic structure. 6. This process is essentially the 'theta-identification' of Levin and Rappaport (1986), but given the discussion in Rappaport and Levin (1988) the label 'argument identification' is more apppropriate. 7. Loosely speaking, we can say that such a verb assigns a theta-role to its subject. This characterization gives rise to the feature [T], which indicates whether of not a verb assigns a theta-role to its subject. This feature plays an important part in Burzio's characterization of the unaccusative/unergative distinction: unaccusative verbs are by definition [-T]. 8. Only three of Basque's wide range of nominal cases are relevant here: the NOR, NORK, and ZERIK cases. I refer to cases by their Basque names to avoid preconceptions concerning their functions. Specifically, I ignore the NORI (dative) case, although verbs do select arguments marked for this case, treating the NOR-NORI and NOR-NORI-NORK verbs as subclasses of the NOR and NOR-NORK verbs, respectively. 9. The citation form for Basque verbs is the perfect participle form. In the examples, verbs are in the perfect participle form, auxiliaries in the present form, proper nouns in the indefinite form, and other noun phrases in the definite form, unless otherwise specified in the gloss. In the glosses, NOR, NORK, and ZERIK are nominal cases, while IZAN and UKAN are the two auxiliaries. Examples are from Euskara Batua (Unified Basque). 10. The few Basque verbs that can be inflected directly show the same pattern of agreement as the auxiliaries. Basque also shows agreement with the NORI (dative) case, but this will not be discussed here. Since the auxiliaries have a separate position for NORI agreement, it is independent of the agreement with NOR and NORK arguments. 11. The NOR-NORK verbs show a deviation from the ergative system in the past when they take a third person NOR argument. Under these conditions, the agreement markers construed with the NORK argument resemble those typically used with a NOR argument. See Heath (1977) for discussion. 12. See de Rijk (1972) for an extensive discussion of the contexts where the ZERIK case appears, and Salaburu (1981) for a brief survey. 13. In negative sentences, the presence of the negative particle ez triggers a change in the placement of the auxiliary, which is irrelevant to the concerns of this paper. 14. More generally, noun phrases marked for any case other than the NOR case cannot be 'replaced' by a ZERIK noun phrase. The NOR verb fidatu 'to trust' selects a noun phrase

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in the ZEREZ (instrumental) case, as in (i), but (i) does not have a counterpart such as (ii), where the ZEREZ noun phrase is 'replaced' by a ZERIK noun phrase bearing the same theta-role. (i)

Ni ez naiz gizonaz fidatu I-NOR NEG IsNOR-IZAN man-ZEREZ trust 'I didn't trust the man'

(ii)

*Ni ez naiz gizonik fidatu I-NOR NEG IsNOR-IZAN man-ZERIK trust 'I didn't trust a/any man'

15. This alternation, which goes by a number of names, has been discussed extensively in both the lexical semantics and generative grammar literature. See Keyser and Roeper (1984), Marantz (1984), Hale and Keyser (1986, 1987), among others, for discussion. 16. When discussing these alternations, I talk about 'uses' of the verb, glossing over an important issue, which is however orthogonal to the concerns of this paper. The question is whether these alternations involve one verb with a single lexical representation, but with two realizations of its arguments, or two verbs with distinct lexical representations, but whose lexical representations are systematically related at the level of Lexical Conceptual Structure (Hale and Keyser (1986, 1987), Rappaport and Levin (1988)), underlying the lexical representation. 17. Sentence (21) is ambiguous between the inchoative interpretation given in the gloss and an impersonal interpretation, 'The door was opened'. I distinguish between the two interpretations because an agent is implied on the impersonal interpretation but not on the inchoative interpretation. Furthermore, not all verbs allow the inchoative interpretation. I will not discuss the impersonal interpretation here, but see Levin (1983a, 1983b). 18. A special rule of interpretation comes into play in the indefinite object construction in Basque. As might be expected given its rich agreement system, Basque is a pro-drop language. When the auxiliary is in the form used with third person singular NOR argument but no overt NOR noun phrase is present, the NOR argument typically receives a referential interpretation. (i)

Jonek hartu du Jon-ERG take 3sNOR-UKAN-3sNORK 'Jon took it/*Jon took'

But verbs participating in the indefinite object alternation do not force the referential interpretation usually associated with a ncn-overt NOR argument, as shown by the ambiguity of (17): it can be interpreted with either a referential or an indefinite object. Verbs which do not participate in this alternation allow only a referential interpretation of this NOR argument as in (i). In contrast, the indefinite object interpretation in English is available only in the absence of an overt object. Even a pronominal object such as 'it' in 'John ate it' receives a referential interpretation. 19. Attempts to provide a precise semantic characterization of either class have met with difficulties, as discussed at length in Rosen (1984). But it cannot be denied that there are semantically identifiable subclasses in either class which suggest that semantics plays a part in determining the membership of verbs in the unaccusative and unergative classes. In recent work, Centineo (1986), Zaenen (1988), Van Valin (1987), and Tenny (1987), among others, propose that aspectual notions allow a better characterization of the semantic basis of the unaccusative/unergative distinction than the more frequently used characterization in terms of the theta-role labels associated with the single arguments of these verbs.

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20. I know of only one counter-example to the semantic generalization concerning NOR verb class membership: the verb mintzatu often translated as 'to talk, converse'. The gloss 'to talk, converse' is not quite accurate; the verb might better be glossed as 'to express'. 21. The Basque verbs of ingesting afaldu 'to dine', bazkaldu 'to lunch', gosaldu 'to breakfast', and merendatu 'to snack' are transitive verbs, unlike their English counterparts. The NOR argument denotes the food eaten and the NORK argument, the eater. 22. Marantz points out that the structure of English idioms lends support to this claim. Specifically, there should be an asymmetry in the structure of idioms: idioms involving a transitive verb and its 'object', but not idioms involving a transitive verb and its 'subject', should exist. Marantz cites evidence that English idioms conform to this prediction. A survey of Basque idioms also suggests that their structure points to a subject-object asymmetry comparable to that in English. See Levin (1983a) for details. Itziar Laka has pointed out to me that there is a potential counter-example to the claim that there are no transitive verb plus subject idioms: the fixed phrase loak hartu 'sleepNORK take', whose use is illustrated in (i). (i)

Loak hartu nau Sleep-NORK take lsNOR-UKAN-3sNORK 'I fell asleep'

Note that this phrase involves the NOR-NORK verb hartu 'to take' together with the determined NORK form of the nominal lo 'sleep'. Interestingly there is a related phrase lokartu, written as one word, composed of lok, the undetermined NORK form of the nominal lo, and the verb hartu. (ii)

Lokartu naiz sleep-UNDET/NORK=take 1 s-NOR-IZAN 'I fell asleep'

Two properties set this phrase apart. First, the use of the undetermined form of the nominal lo 'sleep' rather than the determined form. This property is reminiscent of the use of the undetermined NOR nominal in the N EGIN construction. Second, the phrase lokartu is found with the auxiliary associated with NOR verbs, IZAN. Together these properties suggest that the NORK noun phrase in lokartu is no longer acting as a subject, but rather might in some sense be 'incorporated' into the verb hartu. 23. The verb 'to boil' might appear to be a verb of change of state, so its appearance among the NORK verbs might seem surprising. Note that in English boil, like other change of state verbs, participates in the anti-causative alternation. The Basque counterpart does not participate in this alternation. The verb iraki 'to boil' can only be used in the sense of 'water boils' and not in the sense of 'someone boils water'. That is, this verb is not found in the NOR-NORK case array, as might be expected if it were a verb of change of state that participated in the anti-causative alternation. Thus its failure to undergo this alternation is consistent with its membership in the NORK class. 24. An open question is whether the NORK verbs are actually NOR-NORK verbs, an analysis suggested by the auxiliary agreement facts. It is possible that there is no explicit third person NOR marker in the auxiliary UKAN when it is construed with a third person NOR argument. What is sometimes considered to be the third person marker (the d in the present form of the auxiliary, as in du, for example) might better be analyzed as a tense/aspect marker. 25. This verb participates in the anti-causative alternation, so it also takes the NOR-NORK array.

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26. The claim that the N O R class is an unaccusative class rather than an intransitive class in the broad sense has implications for many aspects of Basque syntax. A discussion of these consequences is outside the scope of this paper, but see Levin (1983a, 1983b) for a reassessment of case marking, verb agreement, and auxiliary distribution in Basque in light of this claim. Department of Linguistics Northwestern University Evanston, IL 60208 USA

Pro-drop and the resumptive pronoun strategy in Basque Bernard Oyhar9abal

In this paper, I will try to give a description of Basque relative clauses, by (i) studying the relation between the Pro-drop Parameter and accessibility of relativization; (ii) arguing for the presence of an empty operator which is base generated either in the relativized position or in C O M P , the empty category which corresponds to the relativized position being a variable at L F in both cases; (iii) examining some specific points related to my analysis, which relies heavily on Chomsky (1982).

1. GENERAL STATEMENTS

There is in the Basque language a general and cross-dialectal way of constructing relatives, although it is not the only way which can be used. It can be roughly characterized by the following two points. Basque relativization is performed (i) by suffixing the formative -(e)n to the conjugated verb form of the relative sentence; this suffix, and thus the conjugated f o r m to which it is adjoined, must appear at the end of the relative clause; (ii) by not using any relative p r o n o u n , overt resumptive or retained word. Sentence (1) illustrates this: (1)

karrikan ikusi duzu n gizona -k street-the-INES seen you-have-him- n man-the-ERG hemen lan egiten du here work doing he-has-it 'The man that you saw in the street works here'

As can be seen in (1), the relative sentence precedes the head noun gizon 'man'. N o morpheme coreferent with the head noun appears within the relative. Notice, however, that there is a personal affix within the conjugated auxiliary. This is because of the pluri-personal verb agreement system. In the case of (1), this affix is 0. Configurationality (Maracz/Muysken eds.) © 1989 Foris Publications

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If the position of the relative clause in (1) (i.e. immediately before the head noun) is the most extensive and natural today, another one can be found by putting the relative sentence to the right of the head noun but before the specifier. This position, corresponding to that of an adjective, is restricted to the eastern dialects in modern Basque. So (2) is a marked variant of (1): (2)

gizon karrikan ikusi duzu -n-a -k man street-the-INES seen you-have-him -n-the -ERG hemen lan egiten du here work doing he-has-it 'The man that you saw in the street works here'

The conjugated verb form of the relative clause must carry the suffix (e)n. Although de Rijk (1972) proposed relating this suffix to the inessive suffix -«, I consider that the traditional point of view which assimilates it to the genitive suffix -en cannot be put aside. I will not, however, examine this matter here. This suffix does not only occur in relative clauses, but also in other embedded constructions: (a) it must be u^ed in embedded questions, as in (3): (3)

zer egin duzu -n galdatu daut what done you-have-it-n asked he-has-it-to-me 'He asked me what you did'

(The direct question would be: zer egin duzu?, without -ri) (b) It may be said to occur in embedded declarative sentences as well, if we accept that the suffix -(e)la found in such clauses can be analyzed in terms of -(e)n+la, where -la would be the suffix corresponding to the adlative suffix -ra. (4)

eginen duzu -(n) -la erran daut done-FUT you-have-it- n -la said you-have-it-to-me 'He told me that you would do it'

(c) When the suffix -(e)n is adjoined to a synthetically conjugated verb or to the specific auxiliaries *edin (intransitive) and *ezan (transitive), the clause takes on a purposive value, as for example in (5): (5) nahi dut

dagizu you-do-it

-n -n

Small Pro in Basque (5)

wish I-have-it egin do 'I want you to do it'

65 dezazu -n you-AUX-it-«

Having taken these data into account, it might seem possible to say that -(e)n corresponds to the complementizer. Nevertheless it must be emphasized that this suffix is always in the final position in relative clauses, that it has no pronominal value, and that it is not an independent morpheme. I shall mention some further problems on this point at a later stage.

2. THE PRO-DROP

PARAMETER A N D ACCESSIBILITY TO RELATIVIZATION BY

A GAP WITHOUT THE USE OF THE RELATIVE PRONOUN

The problem of accessibility has to be examined taking into account the fact that Basque has a rich inflectional system and uses case markers for both argument NPs and nonargument (adverbial) NPs. Case markers do not have any lexical autonomy: they can only be phonologically present if they are suffixed to some lexical NP or full pronoun or a quantifier. So, given that Basque relativizes by gapping the relativized position without using a relative pronoun (or, normally, any overt resumptive), there is no overt or direct encoding of the role of the pivotal noun therein. This description, however, has to be qualified in so far as Basque is a Pro-drop language in which Pro-drop affects in the same way ergative, absolutive and dative NPs (not to mention genitive NPs now). See the following sentence in which the auxiliary carries the personal flexional elements corresponding to each of the pro's. (6)

pro pro pro ekarriko dauzkizut ERG DAT ABS bring-FUT I-have-them-to you 'I will bring them to you'

Thus, in the relativizing of the pro's, the auxiliary keeps an affix corresponding to the relativized NP. R. de Rijk (1972) studied the question of accessibility in Basque very carefully. He pointed out that for some speakers there was a close relation between the verb agreement system and accessibility of NPs to relativization. R. de Rijk called the 'restricted dialect' that in which relativization can only occur on so-called grammatical NPs (i.e. those which trigger verbal agreement and correspond to a possible pro). I do not think that this 'restricted dialect' really exists in such a form, or that there are speakers for whom the relativization of nonargument NPs is actually impossible when there is no case marker parallelism. It would be more appropriate,

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B.

Oyharfabal

in my view, to say that there is a general and cross dialectal constraint which gives priority to argument NPs on the scale of accessibility. Such a priority, however, would not suppose any rule preventing other NPs from being relativized. Before examining this point, let me define accessibility in Basque in the following broad terms: (i) ergative and absolutive NPs, which correspond to transitive subject and intransitive subject, or object functions respectively, can always be relativized without restriction, and without one or the other having priority over the other; (ii) dative NPs may also be relativized without any restriction, but one might say that generally absolutive and ergative NPs come first on the scale of accessibility to relativization; these three cases are those which trigger verb agreement and which can correspond to a pro; (iii) locative, instrumental and genitive NPs can be relativized in adequate contexts; accessibility to relativization of these NPs out of context varies according to the speaker; (iv) sociative, destinative and motivative cases, which correspond to morphologically complex cases, are hard to relativize, except in very specific contexts. These cases are those in which the case marker is complex, having at least two elements, one corresponding to the genitive, and another to some postposition; -kin (sociative case marker), tzat (destinative case marker), -gatik (motivative case marker), -gan or baita (locative case marker of animates); and (v) all the difficulties I have listed disappear when the suffix of the head noun in the main and the relative clauses are the same, i.e. when there is case marker parallelism. Examples (7) to (16) illustrate these statements. (7)

[ikusi du -en] gizonarentzat ekarri dut seen he-has-him -en man-the-DEST brought I-have-it 'I brought it for the man [he saw him].' Interpretation: 'who saw him/her/it' or 'who(m) he/she saw'

In (7) the relativized NP can be either the ergative NP (subject) or the absolutive NP (object). Both interpretations can be given, and out of context, one cannot say which is the more natural. (8)

aipatu dio -n gizonarentzat ekarri dut mentioned 3d-has-3d-to 3d-« man-the-DEST brought I-have-it 'I brought it for the man [he mentioned him/it to him]' Interpretation: 'who mentioned it to him.' or 'that he mentioned to him.' or 'to whom he mentioned it'

In (8) three interpretations can be given, since the relativized NP can be the ergative NP, the absolutive NP, or the dative NP. Nevertheless,

Small Pro in Basque

67

frequently the accessibility of the dative NP seems a little more difficult. Let us now consider the case of nonargument NPs, with noncomplex case markers in (9) to (12), and with complex case markers in (13) to (16). (9)

a.

b.

c.

[orain bizi naiz-en] herritik joan nahi now living I-am-en village-the-ELAT gone wish nuke I-have-it 'I would like from the village [I am living now]' [haur horiek ateratzen dir(a)-en] child those going-out they-are-en eskola hau hetsi behar dute school that closed need they-have-it 'They must close that school [the children are going out]' [mintzaldia egin duzu -n] idazlea speech-the-ABS made you-have-it -«] writer-the-ABS ez nuen ezagutzen not I-had-it knowing 'I did not know the writer [you delivered a speech]'

Interpretations: 'in which (where) I am living.' (9a); 'out of which the children are going out.'(9b); 'about whom you delivered a speech.' (9c) All these sentences are grammatical and quite acceptable. However, the accessibility of the NPs to relativization is more restricted than in the case of those mentioned above (see (7)-(8)) which had 'grammatical' cases. Some speakers do not accept these sentences if they are not given in an adequate context. The adequacy of the context can be inherent as is more or less the case in examples (9a,b) given above, or can be the result of the speech context. The naturalness of those relatives is also connected with the possibility of using another, more readily interpretable, strategy. For instance, (10a) and (10b) being practically equivalent, the acceptability of (10a) out of context is restricted by the fact that it is paraphrasable by (10b): (10)

a.

[Patxi mintzatu zaida -n] gizona Patxi-ABS spoken he-is-to me -n man-the-ABS ezagutzen duzu 'You know the man [Patxi spoke to me]'

Interpretation: 'about whom Patxi spoke to me'

68 (10)

B.

Oyharfabal b.

[Patxi-k aipatu dauta -n] gizona Patxi-ERG mentioned he-has-him-to me -n ezagutzen duzu knowing you-have-it 'You know the man [Patxi mentioned (him) to me]'

Interpretation: 'whom Patxi mentioned to me' In (10b) the verb aipatu 'to mention' is used. In this case the relativized NP corresponds to an absolutive object within the relative clause. Thus the auxiliary has an affix which corresponds to it. In (10a) the intransitive verb mintzatu 'to speak' does not offer such a possibility; nothing tells us which suffix or which postposition the relativized NP corresponds to. So although (10a) is as grammatical as (9c), its acceptability out of context is questionable for some speakers. (11)

[beha gaude-n] lagunak erranen dauku wait we-are-n friend-the-ERG tell-FUT he-has-it-to us 'The friend [we are waiting for] will tell us'

In (11) the relativized NP is a genitive. This case is subcategorized by the verbal locution beha egon 'to wait (for)'. Notice that relativization can also occur with one genitive NP inside another: (12)

[izena ahantzi duda -n]gizon batek name-the-ABS forgotten I-have-it-n man one-ERG erran daut told he-has-it-to me 'A man [I have forgotten the name] told me'

In the examples (9) through (12) the declension case of the relativized NP is simple. Now consider (13), where the case marker is complex, a postposition being added to the genitive. (13)

a. ?aitak [liburua eman dautzuda -n] father-the-ERG book given I-have-it-to you -n haurra ezagutzen du child-the-ABS knowing he-has-him 'The father knows the child [I gave you the book]'

Interpretation: 'for whom I gave you the book'

Small Pro in Basque (13)

69

b. ?[berri horiek jakin dituda -n] jendeak new these learnt I-have-them -n people-the-ABS ez dituzu ezagutzen NEG you-have-them knowing 'You do not know the people [I learnt this news]'

Interpretation: 'from whom I learnt the news' c. ?[bere burua hiltzer du -en] emaztekia REFL-ABS nearly-killed he-has-him-e« woman-the-ABS gogoan du oraino mind-the-INES he-has-her still 'He still thinks about the woman [he nearly committed suicide]' Interpretation: 'because of whom (for whom) he nearly committed suicide' Sentences like (13) are very difficult to accept. The first one, for instance, is quite incomprehensible out of context, and will be dismissed by any bascophone hearing it without other explanation. Nevertheless, I do not think that these relatives like those of sentences (13) cannot be employed, although the speaker will usually prefer another strategy. Consider the following sentences: (14)

a.

[enekin bizi d(a)-en] laguna me-SOC living he-is-en companion-the 'The companion [he is living with me]'

Interpretation: 'who is living with me' b. ??[bizi naiz-en] laguna living I-am-en companion-the 'The companion [I am living]' Interpretation: 'with whom I am living' c.

haur batzuk ez dute [bizi dir(a) -en] child some-ERG NEG they-have-it living they-are-ew burrasoen izena parents-the-GEN name-the-ABS 'Some children don't have the name of the parents [they are living]'

Interpretation: 'with whom they are living'

70 (14)

B. Oyhargabal d.

zer erran dautzu [goizean mintzatu what told he-has-it-to you morning talked zar(a) -en] lagunak? you-are-e« companion-the-ERG 'What did the companion [you talked this morning] tell you?'

Literal interpretation: 'with whom you talked this morning' (14b) is very hard to accept. If you were to ask a Basque speaker to translate 'the companion with whom I am living', he would always propose (14a), thus saying 'the companion who is living with me'. But (14b) is not ungrammatical as can be seen in (14c,d) where the relativized NP has the same case marker, namely the sociative case. With the verb mintzatu 'to talk' (14c) the speech context has not so much importance as with the verb bizi izan 'to live' (14d), probably because mintzatu subcategorizes a sociative NP. All the above difficulties disappear when the head noun takes on the same case marker in the main clause as within the relative one. For example the relative clauses (13a) and (14b), which are difficult to accept, fit in very well in (15) and (16): (15)

ononahauek [liburua eman dautzuda -n] sweet these-ABS book-the-ABS given I-have-it -to you -n haurrarentzat dira child-the-DEST they-are 'These sweets are for the child [I gave you the book]'

Interpretation: 'for whom I gave you the book' (16)

[bizi naiz-en] lagunarekin joan naiz living I-am-en companion-the-SOC gone I-am 'I went with the companion [I am living]'

Interpretation: 'with the companion I am living with' Thus there is an interpretative rule which leads the speaker to attribute the same case to the head noun and to the relativized noun. In other terms, difficulties in relativization vanish when there is case marker parallelism. The data provided should be sufficient for me to propose some hypotheses now about the structure of Basque relative clauses.

Small Pro in Basque

71

3. THE STRUCTURE OF BASQUE RELATIVE CLAUSES

I will first consider finite relative clauses, and then turn to cases where the verb in the relative clause is participial. 3.1. Finite relative clauses When relativization occurs in a finite clause, two analyses can be put forward. Firstly, since there is no WH-phrase in Basque relative clauses, we can say that there is no movement and no operator at all. In this case the pro functions as a resumptive pronoun. Notice however that in ordinary relative constructions the resumptive pronoun has to remain phonologically empty. Sentence (17) with an overt resumptive pronoun is ungrammatical: (17)

*hura ikusi duda -n gizona him seen I-have-him-n man-the 'The man [COMP I saw him]'

(the use of bera, the emphatic form of the pronoun, instead of hura would not change the result) In this analysis the connection between the head noun and the resumptive pro is the result of the Rule of Predication which applies at LF, taking the relative as an open sentence predicated of the head (Chomsky 1982). At S-structure the representation of a relative sentence like (17) is (18): (18)

proERG proABS ikusi duda -n gizona (you) (him) seen I-have-him-n man-the

I will return to this analysis later. But it should be noted that this possibility is restricted to the position corresponding to a pro, since, following Chomsky (1982:61), 'an EC resumptive pronoun in a pro-drop language is restricted to positions permitted by the pro-drop parameter, which applies at Sstructure'. Secondly, we may also suppose that there is a variable A-bound by an operator. In this case obviously we must posit that there is an empty operator which A-binds the variable. The operator can be analyzed either as being base-generated in argumental position, or as being the result of an 0-movement. In both cases, at LF, the relativized position is filled by a variable, because an operator is required to bind a variable at this level. The presence of an empty operator may be questioned. However several

72

B. Oyhargabal

arguments for this hypothesis do exist. The main one is that we find a parallel behaviour between relative clauses and interrogative ones having a WH-phrase. In Basque interrogative clauses, the WH-phrase occurs in an A-position which corresponds to a focus position. See (19), which provides no solution with respect to the problem of the position from which the WH-word is moved. Indeed the position of the constituents at D-structure in Basque is not clear at all. (I will not go into that matter, but see for example the contradictory analyses of Rebuschi (1985a, b, this volume) and Salaburu (1986)). That there is a (specific) focus position however, must, in my view, be accepted. (19)

t [FOC nork] idatzi du liburu hau? who-ERG written he-has-it book this-ABS 'Who wrote this book?'

Thus the preverb position being the focus position, it is filled by the WHphrase in questions. In some complex constructions the WH-phrase can be moved from Foc to Foc (Ortiz de Urbina 1983). (20)

pro [FOC nork] uste duzu [ s .[ s t [FOC t'] (you) who-ERG belief you-have-it egin du] -ela]?1 done he-has-it-e/a 'Who do you think did it?'

In relative clauses we can find such structures too: (21)

a.

[SM [S1 pro [ s . 2 [ s 2 ei pro jo nau] -ela] (you) (me) hit he-has-me-e/a uste duzu] -«] gizona, belief you-have-it-« man-the 'The man COMP [you think [COMP [ei hit me]]]]' 'The man who you think hit me'

Such embeddings can be iterated: b-

[[[[[[ e ' j ° n a u ] -ela] uste duzu]-la] hit he-has-me -ela belief -la erran dautazu] -n] gizonai said you-have-it-to me-/i 'The mani [COMP [ you said to me [COMP [you thought [COMP [ei hit me]]]]]]'

Small Pro in Basque

73

'The man who you told me you thought hit me' The parallelism between (20) and (21) is an indication of the presence of an operator in relative clauses. Nevertheless two differences must be emphasized: - the operator must be empty; - the A-position which is filled by the operator is not the focus position. The first point cannot be questioned since there is no WH-word in the relative clauses we are examining. But the second point comes into contradiction with the statements by de Rijk (1972) and Goenaga (1980), who consider that the relativized sentence is in the focus position in the embedded sentence. I must disagree with this analysis, because Basque allows both WH-words and focused elements inside its relative clauses. See for instance (22): (22)

a.

b.

[[tj e, [Foc norki] kantatzen ditu] -en] who-ERG singing he-has-them-e« abestiakj gustatzen zaizkizu? songs-the-ABS like they-are-to-you 'The songs that who sings please you?' [[(e.z zuk baina) ti ej [F0C niki] egin duda] -n] NEGyou-ERG but I-ERG done I-have-it-n lanaj work-the 'The work [COMP [(not you but) I did e]]' 'The work which / did (not you)'

As the sentences (22) show, the focus position can be filled within the relative clause. Thus it cannot be said that this position corresponds to the relativized position, since, in unmarked cases, only one item may occupy the focus position (but see the discussion in 4.2). So the nonargumental position filled by the operator must be COMP, not FOC. Notice however that the statement about COMP we formulated above (that the -(e)n suffix in final clause position corresponds to the COMP position should perhaps be revised. We cannot examine this matter here, but it is not certain that this position is the only one which can be attributed to COMP. Indeed, in several constructions, independent words (ezen 'that', nola 'how, since, as', eia 'whether', zeren 'because') corresponding to COMP occupy a front position within the sentence (the suffixes such as -(e)n or -(e)la remaining adjoined to the conjugated verb). So, although Basque can roughly be characterized as using right-headed structures, it is questionable that this is the case for S'. Nevertheless, in this paper, I will consider without further justification that the structural

74 B.

Oyharfabal

position of COMP is as indicated in (23): (23)

S'— S COMP

So the position in which the operator appears is that of COMP in (23). I was assuming above that the main argument for the presence of an operator proceeds from the complex structures in which we found some COMP-to-COMP movement. In (24)-(26) I give successively examples of FOC-to-FOC movement of WH-words in questions, and examples of COMP-to-COMP movement of the empty operator in relatives clauses. In both cases the operator is extracted from a sentence having a specific (subjunctive) auxiliary (24), or from an untensed sentence (25)-(26). In the questions (24a), (25a), (26a), only the nonargumental positions appear, but I will offer a more complete description for the relative clauses. However, since the D-structure of Basque sentences has not yet been well established, the positions which are given in these representations are questionable; they follow the neutral SOV order. (That the subject NP of the nonfinite sentences in (25)-(26) is actually a PRO (rather than a pro) is questionable too.) (24)

a.

b.

(25)

a.

t>.

(26)

a.

[foc zeri] nahi duzu [[foc ti] what will you-have-it dezada] -n? I-AUX-it-n 'What do you want me to do?' [s'ltsi pro [s.2[s2 pro e, (you-ERG) (I-ERG) duzu] -n Oi] lana you-have-it-« work-the 'The work you want me to do'

egin do

egin dezada] -n ti] nahi do I-AUX-it-n will

[foc zeri] erran diozu [[foc t,] erosteko]]? what told you-have-it-to him to-buy 'What did you tell him to buy?' [s'i [si pro pro [s-2 [S2 PRO e, erosteko] (you-ERG) (him-DAT) to-buy ti] erran diozu] -n Oi] liburua told you-have-it-to-him-n book-the 'The book you told him to buy' [foc zen] hasi da [[foc ti] egiten]]? what begun he-is doing 'What did he begin doing?'

Small Pro in Basque (26)

b.

75

[SM [S1 pro [ s . 2 [s2 PRO e, egite]-n ti] (he-ABS) doing hasi d(a)]-en Oi] lana begun he-is-en work-the 'The work which he began doing'

Under the hypothesis of an empty operator in COMP at S-structure, it is not easy to decide whether the empty operator in COMP is base generated or moved to COMP. Indeed it is very difficult to distinguish an empty resumptive pronoun from a variable left by movement. If we summarize our hypotheses, we have three possible representations for S-structures: (27)

a. b. c.

[ s [s Patxik pro ikusi du ] -en gizona P.-ERG ABS seen he-has-him-erc man-the [s [s Patxik pro, ikusi du]-en 0] gizona [s [s Patxik ti ikusi du]-en Oi] gizona 'The man who(m) Patxi saw'

(27a) illustrates the first analysis proposed above: there is no operator and no movement. (27b,c) illustrate the second analysis: there is an empty operator in COMP, which is either base generated and not indexed at S-structure as in (27b), or moved to COMP leaving a trace, as in (27c). 3.2. Non-finite relative clauses In order to decide which is the appropriate analysis, we have to examine the second type of relative clause, in which the relativized NP is not coreferenced in the verb (or auxiliary). Consider (28): (28)

a.

b.

[[e bizi naiz]-en] herria urrun da living I-am-ew village-the-ABS far it-is 'The village [COMP [I am living e]] is far (away)' [[e mintzatu zar(a)] -en gizona ezagutzen spoken you-are -en man-the-ABS knowing dut I-have-him 'I know the man [COMP [you spoke e]]'

According to our first hypothesis, for a construction like (28), it can be said that at S-structure there is some base generated empty pronominal acting as a resumptive pronoun. But the EC of (28) is not a pro in the usual sense, and the verb does not agree with it. So this analysis is barred

76

B. Oyhargabal

by the requirement that the empty resumptive pronoun be permitted by the Pro-drop Parameter, and the hypothesis has to be ruled out. Furthermore, such an analysis, as was pointed out before, would give no explanation for complex constructions which involve movement. So we must conclude that Basque relative clauses do have an empty operator, which binds a variable at LF. Moreover, this variable may be a resumptive pro (namely when the relativized position corresponds to a position which triggers agreement). Returning to our first point (about accessibility), it would seem that the scale of accessibility to relativization is organized on this basis: when the relativized position corresponds to a resumptive pro, there is no restriction. In the other cases, when the resumptive strategy is not used, accessibility is more difficult. Notice that the use of overt resumptives is possible for some speakers (especially in complex relatives), and that in these cases the overt resumptive is easier to use with a nonconjugated relativized NP. (29)

a. ??[[[[ hurai ikusi duzu] -la ti] erran him seen you-have-him-/a told dautazu -n Oi] gizona you-have-it-to me-« man-the 'The man fwhoi [you told me [ti [you saw himi]]]]' b. [[[[ hartan, bizi nahi duzu] -la ti] erran it-INES living wish you-have-it-/a told dautazu] -n O,] etxea you-have-it-to me-n house-the 'The house [in whichi [you told me [ti [you want me to live in it;]]]]'

The overt resumptive in (29b), namely hartan, is more acceptable here than in (29a), where the relativized NP corresponds to an absolutive pro (object). The correlation between the Pro-drop Parameter and accessibility is closer in the case of relativized genitive adnominal NPs: only the genitive NPs which can be pro can be relativized. This was the case in (12), as can be seen in (30): (30)

pro pro ezagutzen dut baina pro izena ERG ABS knowing I-have-him but GEN name-the ahantzi dut forgotten I-have-it 'I know him but I have forgotten his name'

Small Pro in Basque

77

Consider now the following example where the genitive pro is headed by a noun-like postposition (gibel 'behind', aitzin 'front', gain 'top', etc...). (31)

a.

pro gibelean jarriko naiz GEN behind-the-INES sit-FUT I-am 'I'll sit behind (him)' b. *pro ordez lan egiten dut GEN place-INST work do-FUT I-have-it

In (31) there are two postpositions. The first one in (31a) permits a genitive pro (without the pro (31a) would mean 'I'll sit at the back.'), but the second in (b) does not. So only the first genitive NP can be relativized (see 32a)) not the second (see (32b)), which requires, in order to be relativized, an obligatory overt resumptive. Consider in this respect (32c) below, which remains doubtful for some speakers: (32)

a.

[ei gibelean jarri naiz-en Oi] gizona behind-the-INES sat I-am-en man-the 'The man whomi [I sat behind t j ' b. *[ei ordez lan egiten duda -n Oi] gizona place-INST work doing I-have-it -n 'The man whomi I worked in place ti' c. [hareni ordez lan egin dudan Oi] gizona his place-INST 'The man [whomi I worked in place of himi]'

4. SOME SPECIFIC POINTS RELATED TO OR RESULTING FROM OUR ANALYSIS

4.1. The empty operator hypothesis Under our hypothesis of an empty operator, we have two possibilities, illustrated by (27b) and (27c). I will not examine now which one is better, but will rather study some constructions which look like counterexamples to my analysis. The problem emerges from the possibility of having relative clauses headed by a reflexive. Consider (33): (33)

pro, zergatik kalte egiten diozu [e; ej why harm doing you-have-it-to 3d ERG ABS hain maite duzu] -n 0] zure buruari,? (where 1=j) so much love you-have-3d-w 'Why do you do harm to yourself whom you love so much?'

78

B. Oyhargabal

In (33) the head, zure burua lit. 'your head' is a reflexive expression (3s in agreement). So the question is: Which is the relativized NP in the relative clause? If it were the ergative NP, the reflexive within the relative would be phonologically realized, it being very unlikely that a reflexive could be replaced by a pro. Compare the sentences of (34): (34)

a. *prOi bere buruari zernahi pairarazi ondoan, ERG REFL- DAT a lot suffer-CAUS after azkenean proj proj hil zuen (with i= j) end-the-INES ERG ABS killed he-had-3d b. proi bere haurrari, zernahi pairarazi ondoan, ERG his child-the-DATa lot suffer-CAUS after azkenean pro\ pro, hil zuen end-the-INES ERG ABS killed he-had-3d 'After having made his child suffer a lot, in the end he killed him'

(34a), with a reflexive pro-iorm, is not well formed. Furthermore, note that (33) remains ungrammatical if ej is not an empty reflexive: (35)

*prox zergatik kalte egiten diozu [[pro> ERG why harm doing he-has-it-to 3d ERG zure burua hain maite duzu] -n Oi] zure buruarij REFL-ABSso much love you-have-it-n REFL-DAT (i=j) 'Why do you do harm to yourself [COMP you love yourself so much]'

So it seems that in (33) it is not the ergative NP which is relativized but ej (the reflexive). Such a result is not satisfactory at all. Indeed if the operator were base generated in the relativized position it would have an antecedent, whereas operators are assumed to have no antecedent. If the operator is base generated in COMP (and even if it is moved to COMP) then there is a violation of Principle C of the binding theory which stipulates that [anaphoric, - pronominal] NPs and thus variables have to be free. So (33) should be ungrammatical with e\ corresponding to the relativized position. How, therefore, can its grammaticality be explained according to our hypothesis? Consider the following examples: (36)

a.

zergatik[[ pro ts hainbeste preziatzen dugu] why ERG ABS so much estimating we-have-3d -n Oj] zure burua gutiesten duzu ? -n REFL-ABS despising you-have-3

Small Pro in Basque (36)

79

a.

'Why do you despise yourself [COMP we appreciate E(3d) so much]?' b. *zergatik [[ pro ej hainbeste preziatzen why ERG ABS so much estimating zaitugu -n Oj] zure burua gutiesten duzu ?2 we have-you-n REFL-ABS despising you-have-3d 'Why do you despise yourself [COMP we appreciate e(2d) so much]?'

In (36a,b) the reflexive is the head of the relative clause as in (33), but the relativized NP is no longer anaphoric. It is interesting to see that in such a case e, in the relative clause does not have the personal reference which it is given in the semantic interpretation by means of the identification of the operator with the head. Indeed (36b), where e, agrees with the verb having its interpretative value, is not well formed. On the other hand, (36a), where e\ does not agree with the verb in this way, is well formed. These facts show us that until the Rule of Predication which identifies the operator and the head of the relative clause applies, ei is not given its interpretative value, thus that in (33) it is not the reflexive, but an A-free NP. Thus there is no violation of Principle C (nor A) of the Binding Theory which applies before the Rule of Predication. The same analysis is available for the sentence (37a) below, which must be analyzed, as in (37b), before application of the Rule of Predication: (37)

a.

b.

pro ez du laket [[e e hain maite ERG NEG he-has-it pleasure ERG ABS so much liking du] -en] bere buruari kalte egitea he-has-3d-en REFL-DAT harm doing-the-ABS 'He doesn't like to do harm to himself whom he likes so much' proi ez du laket [[pro, e, hain maite du]-en Oj] bere buruarij kalte egitea

So we conclude that neither (33) nor (37a) are real counterexamples to our analysis. 4.2. Other constraints I think that most of the other constraints 3 on Basque relative clauses can be explained by following the above hypothesis, and taking into account more general principles, such as the ECP, the Bijection Principle and a filter which would stipulate that only one empty operator can occur in COMP. (Note that to the contrary the -(e)n and -(e)la suffixes, which may

80

B. Oyhargabal

be complementizers but are not independent words, are not submitted to such a filter). This filter follows from the possibility in eastern dialects of having more than one WH-word in FOC; see (38): (38)

a.

b.

ti tj [FOC norki zerj] erranen du ? who what say-FUT he-has-it 'Who will be saying what?' [FOC norki zerj] uste duzu [ti tj [FOC ti tj] who what belief you-have-it erranen du -ela] ? say-FUT he-has-it-e/a 'Who do you think will be saying what?'

Such a possibility must be excluded for empty operators in COMP, in order to allow Subjacency to apply in Basque. So (39a) must be ruled out: (39)

*[[[[Ci ej idatzi ditu] -en 0i 0j] liburuakj written he-has-them-en books-the irakurri dituda] -n 0J gizonai read I-have-them-« man-the 'The man; [whoi [I read the booksj [ti whichj [ti wrote tj]]]]'

With two operators allowed in COMP (as in Foc) (39) would not be ruled out by the Subjacency Condition. But under the requirement that there be only one operator in COMP, the Subjacency Condition bars sentences like (39). Notice, likewise, that the same condition prohibits movement of a WHword out of the relative clause. Compare the sentences in (40): (40)

a.

[[[[ti ej [FOC norki] egin du] -en 0j] liburuaj who done he-has-it -en book-the irakurri duda] -la [uste duzu ? read I-have-it-/a thought you have it 'You think that I read the book that who wrote e?' b. [[[ti ej [FOC norki] egin du] -en 0j] liburuaj]k uste duzu [ek irakurri dudala] ? '[[The bookj [that who wrote ej]]k do you think [I read ek]?' c. * [ F O C norki] uste duzu [[t\ ej [ C ti] egin du]-en 0J liburuaj irakurri dudala ? lit. 'Whoi do you think I read the bookj [that e; wrote ej]?' F O

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In (40) the WH-word in the Focus position within the relative is allowed insofar as there is no movement out of the relative. If there is Foc-toFoc movement the whole NP must be moved as in (40b). So (40b) as well as (40a) is well formed, but not (40c), which violates the Subjacency Condition (S and NP being bounding nodes). Then, even though the WHisland Constraint does not apply in Basque for relativization, the Subjacency Condition does, for both WH-movement and 0-movement.

5. CONCLUSION

Regarding the question of accessibility which I briefly described in the first part of this paper, I think that the main features of the system can be accounted for by the analysis I have provided. So, leaving out the adnominal NPs, the NPs which are freely accessible to relativization are those which are connected to a resumptive pro, namely an ergative, absolutive or dative NP. For the other cases, difficulties appear, since the resumptive strategy is not available, except if an overt pronoun is used. This possibility, nevertheless, is only used in complex constructions and, as a rule, speakers avoid it. As for the adnominal relativized NPs, the Pro-drop parameter interferes in an even sharper way since relativization is impossible outside the resumptive strategy. This leads to a wide array of sentences in adequate speech contexts only. Chomsky (1982) formulated a general theory of relative clause interpretation. He proposed that they were to be regarded as open sentences predicated of the head. Such a principle is required in the case of Basque relative clauses, which, as we have seen, makes room for interpretative phenomena. The tendency to attribute the same case as that of the head to the relativized position probably follows from this principle too. So the Rule of Predication, which applies to the LF representation, has to be associated to some interpretative strategy. This strategy would appear to organize the conditions in which the relativized position is given its corresponding function within the relative clause. These conditions are determined at the very least by the following elements: (i) the existence of a resumptive pro, (ii) case marker parallelism, (iii) the subcategorization of the relativized position. Furthermore, we have seen that Basque relative clauses must be considered as having a empty operator, with the possibility of 0-movement under the Subjacency Condition. It is not clear whether this is base generated in COMP or moved from a argumental position. Apparent counterexamples to this analysis, namely with seemingly reflexive relativized NPs, can be explained away without any violation of Principle A of the Binding Theory.

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NOTES 1. Foc-to-Foc movement implies obligatory extraposition of the nonfocused elements of the embedded sentence. I am not questioning the structural position of Foe, but I think that (i) it is different from the COMP position, and (ii) it is within S. So an N P within a relative clause can be questioned (see (22a)), even though it cannot be relativized (see 39)). In the same way the WH-Island Constraint does not apply for relativization as can be seen in the following example: a

-

[[[fei tj [foc noizj

etorriko dir(a)] -en t,] galdegin when c o m e - F U T they-are-en asked dautazu] -n Oi] gizonak you-have-it-to me -n men-the 'The men [who: [you asked me [t, whenj [t', are coming]]]]'

2. Basque allows a personal pronoun to be relativized, though in such a case the head has to be a demonstrative. So (36b) is not ruled out by this fact: a.

[hainbeste so much emanen give-FUT 'I'll give it

preziatzen zaitugu -n] horri appreciating we-have-you-n 2sg D E M - D A T dautzugu we-have-it-to you to you, whom, we appreciate so much'

3. There are some problematic constructions with that what I will call a parasitic resumptive pro. It results from a nonregular encoding of the relativized N P into the verbal morphology. The following examples illustrate this point: a.

b.

[[zozoak dir(a) -ela] erraten duzu -n] haurrak stupid they-are-e/a saying you-have-it -n children-the 'The children who you are saying are stupid' zozoak direla erraten dituzu -n haurrak saying you-have-them

In the regular construction (a) the matrix verb of the relative pro has no affix corresponding to the relativized NP, which belongs to the embedded declarative sentence. In the irregular construction (b) the matrix verb appears with a plural absolutive affix (-if-), which implies a resumptive pro inside the main sentence of the relative. Such a construction cannot be used outside relatives and (c) is ungrammatical: c.

*zozoak direla erraten dituzu saying you-have-them 'You are saying them, theyi are stupid.'

This construction sometimes brings about strange verb forms. See for example (d) and (e): d.

p r o w s e, ondotik nabila-n O, haurrak (I) G E N after-ELAT I-walk-n children-the 'The children! whom] I am in search of ei'

Small Pro in Basque e.

83

probes e, ondotik nabiltza -n haurrak I-walk-them Same translation

In the regular construction (d) the intransitive monadic verb ibili 'to walk' has only one personal affix corresponding to the absolutive NP (1st person: n-). The relativized NP (e,) is genitive, a situation in which a pro form cannot be straightforwardly encoded inside the conjugated verb form. But in (e) such an encoding occurs, the verb having two affixes: the regular one n- (lsg absolutive) as in (d) and an other one -tza, which usually expresses plural absolutive NPs. Therefore in (e) the verb cross-references two different absolutive pros: the regular one, which expresses the subject NP, and the other ( a resumptive pro) which results from a parasitic grammaticalization of the relativized NP. These constructions belong to colloquial Basque and are rather marginal. However they are interesting in that they indicate that case assignment can be affected by relativization. In what way? I will leave the question open. Département de Recherche Linguistique Laboratoire de Linguistique Formelle CNRS Université de Paris 7 2 Place Jussieu 75251 Paris CEDEX05 France

Is there a VP in Basque?* Georges Rebuschi

1. INTRODUCTION

That Basque is not syntactically ergative, but rather accusative, has been demonstrated over and over again in the past fifteen years, since the pioneering work of Heath (1974), Anderson (1976) and Rotaetxe (1978).1 It is, however, quite a distinct question to ask whether this accusativity is to be interpreted as the reflex of a configurational organization of the sentential Phrase Structure, or as a logically independent phenomenon. 2 Defining a nonconfigurational language as one which exhibits various properties which cannot be accounted for if every type and/or level of representation contains a VP as a maximal projection of V, and as a subject external to it, I will endeavour to show that, contrary to the opinion expressed in various recent papers and dissertations (Eguzkitza (1986), Ortiz de Urbina (1986), Salaburu (1986)), Basque does indeed possess such characteristics. In order to do so, after introducing some basic aspects of Basque grammar, I will show that none of the traditional constituency tests works with respect to the existence of a VP. Next, I will put forth positive evidence that verbs m-command subject NPs, and that subject and object NPs must even c-command each other if some facts concerning the binding of possessive anaphors are to be explained. Finally, after investigating the difficult problems involved in WCO and Scope phenomena, which seem to indicate that all dialects of Basque do not display the same degree of (non-)configurationality, I briefly discuss the distribution of Case-marking and the application of Binding Principles A and B over Lexical Structure and Phrase Structure proper.

2. AN OVERVIEW O F BASQUE G R A M M A R

Basque has four main literary dialects: two 'eastern' or 'northern' ones * I would like to thank the following people for their remarks on a first version of this paper: J. Gueron, J. Heath, L.K. Maracz, P. Muysken, J. Ortiz de Urbina, and B. Oyhar?abal. Special thanks are due to L.K.M. and B.O., for allowing me to use their unpublished material in section 6.

Configurationality (Maracz/Muysken eds.) © 1989 For is Publications

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(Lower Navarrese and Labourdin), spoken in France, and two 'western' or 'southern' ones (Guipuzcoan and Biscayan), spoken in Spain. Unless otherwise specified, the facts presented here are to be interpreted as common to all four. 2.1. Nominal and Verbal Morphology It is generally assumed that the morphology is ergative: intransitive subjects and direct objects have a zero suffix (the absolutive case), whilst transitive subjects have a specific ending -k (called the ergative case). Moreover, in the present tense at least, absolutive NPs are crossreferenced in the verb (if the conjugation is 'synthetic') or the auxiliary (if it is 'periphrastic') by means of a prefix indicating person (another affix denoting plural number), and ergative NPs, by means of a suffix (zero in the case of 3sg): (1)

a.

b.

c.

d.

e.

Peiok1 n? ikusi nau /na J -u-07 Peio-A: 1-0 seen AUX 'Peio has seen me' nik' Peioj ikusi dut /d j -u-t'/ 1-k Peio-0 seen AUX 'I have seen Peio' ni' naiz /na'-iz/ 1-0 AUX 'It's me' Peio' dator /da-tor/ Peio-0 he-comes 'Peio is coming.' Peio1 etortzen da /da'-0/ Peio-0 coming AUX 'Peio comes'

This description has been challenged by Levin (1983) who noted that all 'intransitive' verbs in Basque are in fact unaccusative; -0 would thus be a deep-structure accusative marker, and -k, a deep-structure nominative one. Note however that most (western Indoeuropean) unergative verbs correspond to an object + verb sequence, real unergatives being only a handful. Moreover, Basque is a Pro-drop language in which all the NPs crossreferenced in the inflected verb form may be phonetically unrealized: (2)

a.

nik' Peiori j dirua k eman diot /d k -i-o j -t'/ I-k Peio-/ money-0 given AUX 'I have given the money to Peio'

Is there a VP in Basque? (2)

b.

87

eman diot money-0 given 'I have given it to him'

As a consequence, the double interpretation of (3) below may be considered a crucial piece of evidence for her analysis, since there is no intransitivizing process if the object is unspecified (contrary to what happens in Warlpiri, Dyirbal, or Eskimo), but this fact could also be used as a counter-argument, if one assumes that absolutive pro in Basque is not necessarily definite: (3)

Peiok jan/jaten du Peio-fc eaten/eating AUX (i) 'Peio has eaten it/eats it' (ii) 'Peio has eaten/eats'

If the second approach is right, the small number of real unergative verbs could be regarded as exceptions, and the traditional analysis could be maintained. In this paper, for reasons of conveniency, I will stick to it. In any case, it must be emphasized that the morphology does not encode the (surface?) subject-object asymmetries which will be illustrated in section 2.3. 2.2. Word Order Taking V in (4) below to represent either V+I or a verb followed by an auxiliary, the following six combinations are fully grammatical: (4)

a.

b. c. d. e. f.

SOV: Peiok Miren ikusi du Peio-A: Miren-0 seen AUX 'Peio has seen Miren' OSV: SVO: OVS: VSO: VOS:

(The six of them are illustrated in 5.2.) Many authors have defended the view that (4a) is the basic or unmarked order (Lafitte (1962), De Rijk (1969), etc.). But it is not clear whether the 'unmarkedness' directly concerns the syntactic functions proper, or whether it concerns the pragmatic functions 'given' and 'new', whose unmarked linear realization could be expressed by (5), the unmarked

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association between pragmatic and syntactic functions being as in (6): (5)

Given New V+I

(6)

a. b.

Given New

Subject Object

Note in particular that (4e,f) are absolutely neutral from the pragmatic viewpoint (the verb being then interpreted as the most significant piece of information), whereas the position left-adjacent to the verb will always be occupied by a WH-word or focused phrase if the sentence contains any: (7)

a. *nork Peio ikusi du? who-A: Peio seen AUX? b. Peio nork ikusi du? 'Who has seen Peio?' c. nork ikusi du Peio? idem

(8)

a. *nor Peiok ikusi du? who-0 Peio-A: b. Peiok nor ikusi du? 'Who has Peio seen?' c. nor ikusi du Peiok? idem

(9)

a. *Peiok Miren ikusi du Peio-A: Miren-0 [ungrammatical with the reading of (b) or (c) below] b. 'Miren 'Peiok' ikusi du 'Peio has seen Miren.' c. 'Peiok' ikusi du Miren idem

Such examples clearly point towards an analysis of surface word order as in (5) rather than (4a). What is more, the northern dialects allow an inversion of the verb and the AUX to underline focalization: (10)

a.

'Peiok du ikusi Miren 'PEIO has seen Miren.'

Is there a VP in Basque? b.

89

'Miren du ikusi Peiok 'Peio has seen MIREN'

On the other hand, the southern dialects allow verb focussing by having it placed immediately to the left of the 'pro-verb' egin 'do, make', which will carry the aspectual affix. Compare: (11)

a. b.

Peiok Miren joten du Peio-/: Miren-0 beating AUX 'Peio beats Miren' Peiok Miren jo egiten du beat(en) doing 'Peio beats Miren'

The understood contrast in (b) is between 'beat' and some other notion(s) which is/are excluded, and depend on the context. Note that the focused verb remains in the perfective, its unmarked and citation form. As a consequence, in focussing and interrogative structures, the northern dialects can (but need not!) be characterized as having an Operator position left-adjacent to (V+)INFL, whilst this position is strictly defined as leftadjacent to V(+INFL) in the southern ones. Again, (5) seems to be a much better (although pre-theoretic) description than (4a). Obviously, such facts are compatible with the Barriers framework (Chomsky 1986b), in which the S is INFL m a \ and S mai is COMP™*, as in (12), where the specifier of C[OMP] is interpreted as the landing site for WH-words and focused phrases, and where C itself is the landing site for V+I (or (V+)I, depending on the dialect): (12)

Cmax

A

Spec

C'

C

INFLmax

Ortiz de Urbina (1986) was the first to apply this approach to Basque. For the time being, let us simply remark that even if it is correct, such an analysis does not tell us anything on the internal structure of INFLma* or S itself, and that it does not seem to account easily for well-attested cases in which the order of (4b), OSV, does not represent focalization.

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2.3 Subject and Object Asymmetries Let us now turn to the accusativity of Basque syntax. It is best illustrated by control and binding phenomena (but see the discussion in sections 4.1. and 7.2.). If the absolutive NP were the syntactic subject of its clause, one would expect it to be the controlled element when this clause is both nonfinite and the complement of a verb of perception; but the prediction is wrong, as the following paradigm shows: (13)

a. b.

(14)

Peio joan da Peio-0 gone AUX 'Peio has gone' Peiok sagarrak 3 jan ditu Peio-fc apples-0 eaten AUX 'Peio has eaten the apples.'

a.

nik Peio ikusi dut [e joaten] I-A: Peio-0 seen AUX going 'I have seen Peio go(ing)' b. nik Peio ikusi dut [ e sagarrak jaten] apples-0 eating 'I have seen Peio eat(ing) the apples' c. *nik sagarrak ikusi ditut [Peiok e jaten] I-k apples-0 seen AUX Peio-A: eating *'I have seen the apples eating/being eaten by Peio'

Therefore, the controlled element corresponds to the (equivalent of our) subject, not to the absolutive NP in (13a,b). Consider now the reciprocal expression elkar 'each other'. On the one hand, it cannot be in the ergative case, and, on the other, it can be in the absolutive case, but only when it is a direct object, not the subject of an intransitive verb (cf. Salaburu (1986), among others). (15)

a.

elkar ikusi dugu each other-0 seen AUX 'We have seen each other' a'. *elkarrek ikusi gaitu each other-fc seen AUX ""Each other has seen us'

(guk) we-k (gu) we-0

Is there a VP in Basque? (15)

91

b.

(gu) elkarrekin joan gara we-0 each other-with gone A U X 'We have gone together [lit.: with each other]' b ',*elkar joan da gurekin each other-0 gone A U X we-with ""Each other has gone with us'

In other words, the same distribution obtains here as in (13) and (14): elkar cannot instantiate the very function which corresponds to obligatory control. Now there are a priori at least four different types of explanation for this, among which three can be worded in terms of hierarchy, as in: (16)

An obligatorily controlled element must, and an anaphor may not, instantiate the highest rank on the following scale(s): a. [semantic] Agent . . . > . . . Patient... [or:] b. [relational] Subject... > ... Direct Object ...[or:] c. [morphological] (i) Ergative . . . > . . . Absolutive (ii) Nominative . . . > . . . Accusative

whereas the fourth one will be structural: (17)

An anaphor must be asymmetrically c-commanded by its binder; 4 PRO must be ungoverned, and the only possible ungoverned Aposition is that of an NP external to the VP in a tenseless sentence.

But to decide straight away that (17) is the explanation is to beg the answer really: if we do not want the reasoning to be circular, the structural asymmetry which underlies (17) must be independently demonstrated.

3. CONSTITUENCY TESTS

The data provided in 2.1. (neither the case system and the multi-personal conjugation, nor the generalized Pro-drop property, encode the asymmetry between subjects and objects illustrated in 2.3.) and in 2.2. (word order being best defined in logico-pragmatic terms) point towards a sentential PS fairly different from the English one. To check this, I will now concentrate on the classical tests for VP, leaving the more theory-internal one aside until section 6. 3.1.

Coordination

Let us consider (18):

92 (18)

G. Rebuschi Peiok sagarrak jaten ditu eta ura edaten du Peio-A: apples-0 eating AUX and water-0 drinking AUX 'Peio eats the apples and drinks the water'

Contrary to English, for which the fact that it is not a Pro-drop language argues in favour of a VP in the very translation of this sentence, nothing definite can be said about (18) in Basque, because it cannot be shown that there is no empty pronominal pro between (for instance) eta 'and' and ura 'the water'; in other words, the presence of such an empty category would lead us to regard (18) as a case of S coordination, in which case nothing can be deduced with respect to the hypothetical constituent ura + edaten. Note moreover that (19), with an object pro, is perfectly wellformed too: (19)

aitamek jatekoa erosten dute eta haurrak pro jaten du parents-/: food-0 buying AUX and child-A: eating AUX 'The parents buy the food and the child eats (it)'

The simpler grammar would certainly be the one which dealt with (18) and (19) in the same way, namely, by coordinating Ss and allowing for subject a n d / o r object pro-drop, a phenomenon which is independently justified (see (2a,b)). But there is more to it than the foregoing examples tell us. First of all, even if there were a VP in Basque, (18) would not be a case of VP coordination, but one of INFL' coordination, since the auxiliary appears twice - a fact which would force us to adopt the Barriers analysis of constituent structure rather than the LGB one (where the VP and the AUX were two independent constituents under S)). This is confirmed by the possibility, typical of the northern dialects, to drop the second auxiliary, as in (20): (20)

a. b.

Peiok sagarrak jaten ditu eta ura edaten e (cf. (18)) aitamek jatekoa erosten dute eta haurrak pro jaten e (cf. (19))

Here, the auxiliaries ditu and dute, which are external to the hypothetical coordinated VPs, separate them. Is then the structure of (18) as in (21)? (21)

[IP=S

Peiok [j. [ r [Vp sagarrak jaten] [i ditu]] eta Peio-fc apples eating AUX and []• [Vp ura edaten][i du]]]] water-0 drinking

Note that it is not clear how the two Is (or auxiliaries) could govern the

Is there a VP in Basque?

93

subject Peiok at the same time, or which one does if only one of them does. Again, a coordination of two Ss or INFL max categories and the presence of a pro in the second clause would make things much easier. The latter approach is further corroborated by this fact: in the southern dialects, it is the AUX of the first clause which is usually dropped, the verb therein appearing in its unmarked or dictionary form: the perfective participle. Now consider the agreement facts in (22a,b):5 (22)

a. b.

Peiok sagarrak jan eta ura edaten du/*ditu Peio-A: apples-0 eat(en) and water-0 drinking he-it/he-them aitamek jatekoa erosi eta haurrak jaten parents-/: food buy/bought and child-A eating du /*dute he-it he-them

In (a), the AUX crossreferences its closest object only, an unexpected fact if the sentence is taken to illustrate VP coordination under a common INFL' node, as in: (23)

[[•• Peiok [p [ VP [Vp sagarrak jan] eta [ VP ura edaten]] [j du]]]

But if we suppose (22a) once more illustrates I' or INFL' coordination, we must posit: (24)

[ r Peiok

[ r [Vp sagarrak jan] [i e]] eta [ r [Vp ura edaten]] [i du]]]]

Here, again, both e and du (or the nominal AGR[eement] material in them) are candidate for the government of the subject. Not only would we lose the symmetry between (18) and (19), (20a) and (20b), or (22a) and (22b): such a representation would also forbid us to account straightforwardly for the fact that the same AUX-drop process occurs when two clauses with two distinct subjects are coordinated, as in (25a), typical of the northern dialects, or (25b), its southern variant: (25)

a.

b.

[Peiok sagarrak jaten ditu] eta [Mirenek Peio-A: apples-0 eating AUX and Miren-A ura edaten e] water-0 drinking 'Peio eats the apples and Miren drink[j] the water' [Peiok sagarrak jan e] eta [Mirenek ura edaten du] eat(en) she-it idem

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If the lack of asymmetry between (apparent) O+V, and (apparent) S+V, coordination is not a direct argument against the existence of a VP in Basque, it at least shows that coordination data constitute no evidence in favour of its existence. More telling perhaps are structures like (26b), in which, contrary to the examples studied so far, the AUX is marked for both subjects and both objects (cf. Gastanaga 1977):6 (26)

a.

b.

nik babak jan ditut eta Peiok ogia l-k beans-0 eaten AUX and Peio-A: bread-0 jan du eaten AUX 'I haven eaten the beans and Peio has eaten the bread' nik babak eta Peiok ogia jan ditugu l-k beans-0 and Peio-A: bread-0 eaten we-them

Since probably no one would wish to say that the subject and the object NPs form one constituent by themselves, we must conclude that the two NPs in each substructure are associated to an empty category, as in:7 (27)

[YP [XP [XP nik babak e] eta [XP Peiok ogia