Agency and Voice: The Semantics of the Semitic Templates

Semitic templates systematically encode two dimensions of verb meaning: (a) agency, the thematic role of the verb’s external argument, and (b) voice. The assumption that this form-meaning correspondence is mediated by syntax allows the parallel compositional construction of the form and the meaning of a verb from the forms and the meanings of its root and template. The root and its arguments are optionally embedded under a light verb v which introduces the agent (Hale and Keyser 1993; Kratzer 1994). But this is only the unmarked case, which, in Semitic, is encoded by the simple templates. Two dimensions of markedness are introduced by two additional types of syntactic heads: (a) agency heads, which modify agency and are morphologically realized as the intensive and causative templates, and (b) voice heads, which modify voice and are morphologically realized as the passive and middle templates. Causative and middle morphemes are thus accounted for within a unified system, which, first, explains their affinity in language in general (both are found crosslinguistically as markers of transitivity alternations), and which, moreover, sheds new light on problems in the interface of semantics and morphology. One problem is the impossibility, mostly ignored in linguistic theory, of deriving the semantics of middle verbs from that of the corresponding transitive verbs. The second is explaining the identity found crosslinguistically between middle and reflexive morphology. The third is determining the grammatical function of the causee in causative constructions.

[1]  Carmen Dobrovie-Sorin,et al.  Impersonal se Constructions in Romance and the Passivization of Unergatives , 1998, Linguistic Inquiry.

[2]  John J. McCarthy,et al.  A prosodic theory of nonconcatenative morphology , 1981 .

[3]  Jeanne Gibson,et al.  Clause union, the stratal uniqueness law and the chômeur relation , 1986 .

[4]  Shmuel Bolozky,et al.  Modern Hebrew structure , 1982 .

[5]  Joan Bresnan,et al.  Locative inversion in Chichewa: a case study of factorization in grammar , 1989 .

[6]  David R. Dowty.  Thematic proto-roles and argument selection , 1991 .

[7]  A. Zribi-Hertz,et al.  La réflexivité ergative en français moderne , 1987 .

[8]  Ivan A. Sag,et al.  Book Reviews: Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar and German in Head-driven Phrase-structure Grammar , 1996, CL.

[9]  Outi Bat-El,et al.  Stem modification and cluster transfer in Modern Hebrew , 1994 .

[10]  Maya Arad,et al.  VP-structure and the syntax-lexicon interface , 1998 .

[11]  T. Reinhart,et al.  Against the unaccusative analysis of reflexives , 1999 .

[12]  M. Aronoff.  Morphology by Itself: Stems and Inflectional Classes , 1993 .

[13]  Sara Thomas Rosen,et al.  Argument structure and complex predicates , 1990 .

[14]  M. Haspelmath,et al.  More on the typology of inchoative/causative verb alternations , 1993 .

[15]  Howard Lasnik,et al.  Reciprocity and plurality , 1991 .

[16]  Raúl Aranovich.  Split intransitivity and reflexives in Spanish , 2000 .

[17]  Alex Alsina.  The role of argument structure in grammar : evidence from romance , 1998 .

[18]  John R. Moore.  Reduced constructions in Spanish , 1996 .

[19]  Mark C. Baker,et al.  Incorporation: A Theory of Grammatical Function Changing , 1988 .

[20]  Noam Chomsky,et al.  Remarks on Nominalization , 2020, Nominalization.

[21]  E. Williams,et al.  On the definition of word , 1987 .

[22]  Jorge Hankamer,et al.  Lexical Extension and Grammatical Transformations , 1980 .

[23]  Alex Alsina,et al.  On the argument structure of causatives , 1992 .

[24]  D. Pesetsky.  Binding problems with experience verbs , 1987 .

[25]  Yafei Li,et al.  The thematic hierarchy and causativity , 1995 .

[26]  Idan Landau,et al.  Possessor raising and the structure of VP , 1999 .

[27]  Hagit Borer,et al.  Syntactic Cliticization and Lexical Cliticization: The Case of Hebrew Dative Clitics , 1986 .

[28]  G. Chierchia,et al.  A Semantics for Unaccusatives and its Syntactic Consequences , 2004 .

[29]  Y Li,et al.  XO BINDING AND VERB INCORPORATION , 1990 .

[30]  Fusa Katada.  Experience versus non-experience asymmetries in the causative system , 1997 .

[31]  Ken Hale,et al.  On Argument Structure and the Lexical Expression of Syntactic Relations , 1993 .

[32]  Alec Marantz,et al.  No escape from syntax: Don't try morphological analysis in the privacy of your own lexicon , 1997 .

[33]  David R. Dowty.  MONTAGUE GRAMMAR AND THE LEXICAL DECOMPOSITION OF CAUSATIVE VERBS , 1976 .

[34]  Edward Lipiński,et al.  Semitic Languages Outline of a Comparative Grammar , 2000 .

[35]  Randy J. LaPolla,et al.  Syntax: Structure, Meaning, and Function , 1999 .

[36]  E. Williams.  Argument Structure and Morphology , 1981 .

[37]  G. Cinque.  On si Constructions and the Theory of Arb , 1988 .

[38]  Judith Aissen.  The syntax of causative constructions , 1979 .

[39]  Giulia Centineo,et al.  The Distribution of "si" in Italian Transitive / Inchoative Pairs , 1995 .

[40]  Henry Davis.  Salish evidence on the causative-inchoative alternation , 2000 .

[41]  V. P. Nedyalkov,et al.  The Typology of Morphological and Lexical Causatives , 1973 .

[42]  James Pustejovsky,et al.  The Generative Lexicon , 1995, CL.

[43]  David R. Dowty,et al.  Word Meaning and Montague Grammar , 1979 .

[44]  Paul Wexler,et al.  The Schizoid Nature of Modern Hebrew: A Slavic Language in Search of a Semitic Past , 1990 .

[45]  George Lakoff,et al.  Irregularity In Syntax , 1970 .

[46]  Arnim von Stechow,et al.  Lexical decomposition in syntax , 1995 .

[47]  Ivan A. Sag,et al.  French Clitic Movement Without Clitics or Movement , 1997 .

[48]  Uriel Weinreich,et al.  On semantics , 1980 .

[49]  Barbara H. Partee.  SOME TRANSFORMATIONAL EXTENSIONS OF MONTAGUE GRAMMAR , 1975 .

[50]  Beth Levin,et al.  Classifying Single Argument Verbs , 2000 .

[51]  Philip H. Miller,et al.  Clitics and constituents in phrase structure grammar , 1992 .

[52]  Alec Marantz,et al.  Lexical decomposition vs. affixes as syntactic constituents , 1985 .

[53]  Richard S. Kayne,et al.  French Syntax: The Transformational Cycle , 1975 .

[54]  Robert D. van Valin,et al.  The case for “effector”: Case roles, agents, and agency revisited , 1996 .

[55]  B. Levin.  Unaccusativity: At the Syntax-Lexical Semantics Interface , 1994 .