The structure of lexical meaning: Why semantics really matters John Beavers Language, Volume 86, Number 4, December 2010, pp. 821-864 (Article)
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THE STRUCTURE OF LEXICAL MEANING: WHY SEMANTICS REALLY MATTERS John Beavers The University of Texas at Austin
This article explores the architecture of the interface between morphosyntax and lexical semantics, in particular the semantic underpinnings of argument realization. Many theories of lexical meaning assume that argument realization is derived from underlying event structure: the relative prominence of coarguments in a clause follows from their relative semantic prominence in how the event unfolds. I show that event structure is not sufficient to capture certain generalizations about argument realization, however, focusing on arguments that alternate between direct and oblique realization. I show that for these alternations the relevant semantic contrast is in strength of truth conditions: direct realization encodes a monotonically stronger set of truth conditions associated with the alternating argument than oblique realization. This, I suggest, follows if word meanings are built from basic units that are related to one another implicationally, and the relative implicational strength of such components figures into argument realization. I use as a case study English locative and conative alternations, which, I argue, reflect stronger and weaker degrees of affectedness along an independently motivated AFFECTEDNESS HIERARCHY. I also show that similar contrasts are found with other alternations on other hierarchies. I conclude by suggesting that a theory of weakening truth conditions is not incompatible with event-structural analyses of verb meaning, and in fact the two augment one another.* Keywords: argument realization, lexical semantics, the syntax/semantics interface, affectedness, event structure
1. INTRODUCTION. In this article I explore the interface between syntax and lexical semantics, and in particular how lexical meaning is structured and what this may (or may not) tell us about syntax. I focus primarily on the semantic underpinnings of argument realization, that is, how participants in an event are encoded morphosyntactically in a clause describing that event. I take as my starting point the universal alignment hypothesis of Perlmutter and Postal (1984). (1) UNIVERSAL ALIGNMENT HYPOTHESIS: There exist principles of [universal grammar] which predict the initial [grammatical] relation borne by each nominal in a given clause from the meaning of the clause. (Perlmutter & Postal 1984:97)
In other words, 1 posits a principled interface between syntax and semantics. This is a relatively uncontroversial position, and the question is simply what the independently defined morphosyntactic and semantic primitives are and how they are related. Starting with the morphosyntax, one universal is that coarguments in a clause are distinguishable by distinct coding properties, such as grammatical function, case, and position. For example, in 2 the agent is subject, nominative, and occupies a specifier position, while the patient is object, accusative, and is a complement. (2) Kim broke the vase. (Kim = SU, Nom, specifier; the vase = DO, Acc, complement)
* This article is based on my dissertation (Beavers 2006), though of course many details are left aside here. Thanks go to two anonymous Language referees, Greg Carlson, Cleo Condoravdi, Ashwini Deo, and JeanPierre Koenig for extensive comments on earlier drafts. I would also like to thank Farrell Ackerman, David Dowty, Mark Gawron, Nick Gaylord, Kyle Grove, John Hale, Paul Kiparsky, Andrew Koontz-Garboden, Beth Levin, Malka Rappaport Hovav, Ivan Sag, Peter Sells, and Steve Wechsler for comments on earlier versions of these proposals, as well as audiences at HPSG 2005, the NORMS Workshop on Argument Structure, Simon Frasier University, Stanford University, The Ohio State University, the University of California at San Diego, the University of Kentucky at Lexington, The University of Texas at Austin, and WECOL 2004, and participants in John Hale’s 2008 Cognitive Science Seminar at Michigan State University. 821
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Crucially, the properties that distinguish coarguments in a clause form independently defined MORPHOSYNTACTIC PROMINENCE hierarchies (following Primus 1999). For example, cases are rankable in terms of morphological markedness, so that, for example, nominative is unmarked relative to accusative (Croft 2003:142ff.). Grammatical functions are perhaps rankable in terms of their relative accessibility to syntactic operations such as relativization, so that subjects are most likely across languages to be relativizable, direct objects next most likely, and so forth (Keenan & Comrie 1977:66). Syntactic positions usually fall into asymmetric c-command relationships, so that subjects c-command objects, and so on (see e.g. Pesetsky 1995:160–63). These hierarchies are summarized in 3. (3) CASE MARKEDNESS NP-ACCESSIBILITY CONFIGURATION (c-command) Nom > Acc > Dat > Obl SU > DO > IO > OBL SU > IO > DO > OBL These hierarchies in turn determine the relative prominence of the coarguments in the clause. In 2, Kim is more prominent than the vase because it has a less marked case, a more accessible grammatical function, and a higher position. Since early work on thematic roles (Fillmore 1968, inter alia), morphosyntactic prominence is assumed to derive from a basic SEMANTIC PROMINENCE that follows from the meaning of the verb. For example, Fillmore observed that agents have priority to subjecthood over patients. Subsequent work (e.g. Jackendoff 1972, Dik 1978, 1980, Givón 1984, Bresnan & Kanerva 1989, Baker 1997) codified such preferences as thematic role hierarchies coupled with subject selection rules as in 4. (4) a. Agent > Patient/Theme b. The argument with the highest thematic role is the subject. Thematic role hierarchies define a type of semantic prominence, where certain roles are more prominent than others, making certain arguments more semantically prominent than others. Thematic roles have since largely been abandoned (see Dowty 1989, Wechsler 1995, Levin & Rappaport Hovav 2005, inter alia), and now it is generally assumed that verb meaning is best analyzed in terms of an underlying grammatical level of representation usually referred to as an ‘event structure’ or ‘event decomposition’ (Jackendoff 1976, 1983, 1990, 1996, Dowty 1979, Rappaport & Levin 1988, Gropen et al. 1989, Pinker 1989, Gropen et al. 1991, Levin & Rappaport Hovav 1995, 2005, Wunderlich 1997, Van Valin & LaPolla 1997, Rappaport Hovav & Levin 1998, Davis & Koenig 2000, Davis 2001, Wunderlich & Lakämper 2001, Van Valin 2002, Koenig & Davis 2006, inter alia). Theories differ in their details, but the idea is that event structures are hierarchically arranged to reflect the basic subevental and causal structure of the event described by the verb. For example, following the representations of Wunderlich (1997), we can analyze 2 semantically as in 5a, where a larger cause event consists of an acting event and a change-of-state event. This decomposition ranks the coarguments relative to one another (in terms of depth of embeddedness), so that the actor is more prominent than the patient. This in turn maps isomorphically into syntactic structure, where the agent c-commands the patient (and has a more accessible grammatical function, etc.), as in 5b. (5) a. ⇐⇒ b. vP ACT x
& (cause) BECOME
DPx
y
BROKEN
Kim
v
v′
V break
VP
DPy
the vase
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In fact, this isomorphism has led many to assume that the decomposition IS the syntax, for example, v in 5b represents cause and V represents a change of state (Hale & Keyser 1993, 1997, 1998, 2002, Pesetsky 1995, von Stechow 1995, 1996, 2003, Baker 1997, Travis 2000, Harley 2003, Folli & Ramchand 2005, Ramchand 2008, inter alia). Regardless, as long as decompositions such as 5a are independently motivated by something other than the argument realization facts they are meant to explain, argument realization reduces to a simple PROMINENCE-PRESERVATION principle (Levin & Rappaport Hovav 2005:140–45): relative semantic prominence determines relative morphosyntactic prominence. Prominence preservation also plays a role in argument alternations. This article focuses on DIRECT/OBLIQUE ALTERNATIONS, in which one or more arguments alternate between direct and oblique argument realization.1 Consider the dative alternation in 6, where the recipient may be realized as either an indirect object or a goal PP. Following Gropen et al. 1989, Pinker 1989, and Harley 2003, this can be analyzed as distinct but related event structures: 6a represents caused motion via a primitive GO TO predicate that ranks the theme higher than the goal, and 6b represents caused possession via a primitive HAVE predicate ranking the goal (qua recipient) higher than the theme. (6) a. John sent/mailed/threw a book to Mary. [x CAUSE [y GO TO z]] b. John sent/mailed/threw Mary a book. [x CAUSE [z HAVE y]] This approach makes two predictions. First, the contrast between HAVE and GO TO captures the fact that the indirect object must be a potential possessor, while the PP need only be a location (cf. John sent a book to London is felicitous, but #John sent London a book is felicitous only if London is an agency such as Scotland Yard; Green 1974:103–4). Second, the semantic reranking of the two coarguments plus prominence preservation predicts that there should be syntactic reranking, as is demonstrated by the well-known fact that the more prominent argument always asymmetrically c-commands the other (see Barss & Lasnik 1986, Larson 1988, Pesetsky 1995:125–26, Harley 2003). As long as the two different decompositions are independently motivated, argument realization follows for free from prominence preservation. Despite the elegance of decompositions, however, a question not often asked is whether there IS independent motivation for distinct event structures in direct/oblique alternations. To put it another way, what do HAVE and GO TO mean such that they alternate, and if they take the ‘same’ two arguments, why does each rank a different argument more prominently? I argue that when we ask this question we quickly find that the standard motivations for event decompositions begin to break down. Other than getting the linking facts right, nothing about the semantics embodied in 6 predicts the alternation. However, on the basis of a careful reexamination of the truth-conditional differences found in direct/oblique alternations, I argue for an altogether different notion of semantic prominence that holds in these alternations, one not reducible to event structures. Adopting a lexical entailment-based approach to meaning (Ladusaw & Dowty 1988, Dowty 1989, 1991, Primus 1999, Ackerman & Moore 2001, Beavers 2005, 2006, Grimm 2005, 2011), I make the following three claims: 1 I consider an argument to be any participant necessarily entailed to be part of the event by the predicate. A direct argument is a subject, direct object, or indirect object (as much as grammatical functions can be determined in a language) and/or has structural nominative, accusative, or dative case. I consider an argument oblique if it has an oblique grammatical function and/or is marked by a nonstructural case/adposition (including semantic dative).
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• Morphosyntactic prominence in direct/oblique alternations is the relative prominence of different realizations of the SAME ARGUMENT ACROSS CLAUSES (not COARGUMENTS WITHIN A CLAUSE). • Among the realization options available for a given argument, it is realized more prominently if it has a stronger set of truth conditions associated with it of a certain sort. • Semantic prominence is thus defined at least partly as the relative strength of truth conditions.
These claims express a different conception of the contribution of lexical semantics to argument realization than one that is exhausted by event structure. Specifically, they state that very fine-grained distinctions in the truth conditions associated with particular arguments also figure into facts about argument realization. To both demonstrate that there is a general truth-conditional correlation of this sort across a wide range of direct/oblique alternations and to also give a detailed analysis of the relevant contrasts is a task beyond the scope of a single paper. Therefore, I instead take on two more modest goals. The first is a proof of concept, showing that we do indeed need a notion of semantic prominence that is at least partly independent of event structure. To do this, I focus primarily on direct object/oblique alternations, since it is sufficient to find evidence that strength of truth conditions is relevant for at least some phenomenon. Second, in focusing on a detailed analysis of a particular class of data, I also outline what a plausible theory of lexical meaning and argument realization could look like that encompasses strength of truth conditions as a key factor. A key factor in decompositional approaches is that they posit a relatively small number of basic event types representing broad notions such as causation and change of state, and these primitives are composed into structured meaning representations such as 5a that determine the relative prominence of arguments in a clause. I suggest that basic primitives of lexical meaning may also be related to one another implicationally in terms of stronger or weaker truth conditions about what happens to the participants in the event. This defines a type of semantic prominence for event participants that also figures into their prominence in the clause. In other words, not just how lexical meanings are composed and represented, but also their actual truth-conditional content gives structure to lexical meaning. I first examine several case studies in object/oblique alternations and show that standard motivations for decompositional approaches to argument realization fail to make the relevant predictions in a non-ad hoc way. I then propose that strength of truth conditions is relevant for predicting these argument realization facts, and provide a detailed semantic analysis of them in terms of an independently motivated implicational hierarchy of degrees of affectedness. Adopting the framework of word meaning as sets of lexical entailments, I analyze the syntax of the alternations in terms of a morphosyntactic alignment principle that makes crucial reference to the strength of truth conditions. I integrate my approach into previous lexical entailment-based theories, and also sketch an extension to non-affectedness-based object/oblique and dative alternations. I then compare this approach to decompositional approaches, and show that, despite the first claim above, the interaction of the prominence of a single argument in alternation with independent morphosyntactic prominence hierarchies predicts the relative coargument prominence as a by-product. I also argue that some degree of event structure augments the approach I outline in a way that increases the explanatory power of both approaches. In particular, event decomposition of at least the form [φ CAUSE ψ] may well be motivated, explaining standard causer/patient asymmetries that my analysis will not, while the prominence of arguments within the subevents represented by φ and ψ —which I show event structures do not explain—is determined by strength of truth conditions.
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2. DECOMPOSITIONS: MOTIVATIONS AND LIMITATIONS. I begin by looking more closely at the standard motivations for event-decompositional approaches to verb meaning, and show that despite the obvious importance of event structure, it falls short when it comes to direct/oblique alternations. In general, decompositions capture the following properties of verb meaning:
• BASIC EVENT TYPES: Verb meanings are built from a small, universal set of basic event types. • EVENT STRUCTURE: Basic event types compose into complex event templates via a limited, well-defined calculus (Jackendoff 1976, Dowty 1979, Rappaport Hovav & Levin 1998). • GRAMMATICALLY RELEVANT VS. IRRELEVANT MEANING: Only the event template is grammatically relevant; idiosyncratic, lexical root-specific meaning is not (Grimshaw 2005). • CORRELATIONS BETWEEN PARTICIPANTS: N-ary primitive event types determine necessary semantic correlations between coarguments (Rappaport Hovav & Levin 1998). • LEXICAL ASPECT: Certain event structures correspond to certain aspectual classes (e.g. accomplishment vs. activities; Foley & Van Valin 1984), and the structure of the decomposition plays a role in how aspectual meanings are built up (aspectual composition; Ramchand 2008).
Consider the analysis of 7a in 7b (from Rappaport Hovav & Levin 1998:119, ex. 32). (7) a. Phil swept the floor clean. b. [[x ACT<sweep> y] CAUSE [BECOME y
]] The decomposition in 7b says that 7a describes a complex event in which an acting event precedes and causes a becoming event, a claim about subevental structure.2 It also indicates that the event is an accomplishment, a standard interpretation of CAUSE/ BECOME structures (Rappaport Hovav & Levin 1998:108). It furthermore captures the fact that the predicate is transitive, which follows from the arity of the primitives ACT and BECOME, and the relative morphosyntactic prominence of Phil over the floor follows from their relative prominence in the event structure as discussed in §1. Still further, the only grammatically relevant information is the [[x ACTα y] CAUSE [BECOME y β]] event template. The lexical roots sweep and clean fill in the real-world action and result, but this information is irrelevant to the syntax, predicting that other predicates describing events with similar templates (e.g. tear x off ) will behave the same grammatically, despite more fine-grained semantic differences. As mentioned in §1, direct/oblique alternations supposedly reflect distinct but related decompositions. But which decompositions, and why? I consider several case studies in object/oblique alternations, starting with the well-known spray/load locative alternation (Hall 1965, Fillmore 1968, 1977, Anderson 1971, 1977, Schwartz-Norman 1976, Givón 1984, Jeffries & Willis 1984, Rappaport & Levin 1988, Pinker 1989, Jackendoff 1990, 1996, Dowty 1991, Gropen et al. 1991, Levin 1993, Goldberg 1995, Baker 1997, Croft 1998, Davis & Koenig 2000, Davis 2001, Beavers 2005, 2006, Koenig & Davis 2006, inter alia). I begin with this alternation not only because it has an interesting set The term ‘event’ in decompositional approaches does not refer to a neo-Davidsonian event argument. Rather, decompositions are called ‘event structures’ and represent constraints on real-world situations, referred to as ‘events’, orthogonal to whether events are reified. These representations could just as well be rewritten to include event arguments. 2
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of syntactic and semantic properties, but also because it is crosslinguistically attested (on Hungarian see Villó 1980, Ackerman 1992, de Groot 1998; Italian: Farrell 1994; Spanish: Mateu 2000; French: Tremblay 1991; German: Brinkmann 1997; Dutch: de Groot 1998; Danish: Herslund 1995; Japanese: Kageyama 1980; ChiBemba: Givón 1969; Sesotho: Machobane 1996; inter alia). Thus something universal across languages gives rise to this alternation. Verbs that undergo this alternation include load, spray, spatter, splash, smear, drizzle, and shower, that is, a subset of verbs with the core semantics in 8 (see Levin 1993:49–55, 111–32). (8) Core semantics of locative verbs: Some CAUSER moves some THEME into some mutual configuration with some static LOCATION. For these verbs, either the theme or the location can be realized as the direct object; the remaining argument must be realized as an oblique, as illustrated in 9 for load. (9) a. John loaded the hay onto the wagon. b. John loaded the wagon with the hay. However, there is also a semantic contrast: whichever argument is the object has an interpretation of completeness, the ‘holistic effect’ of Anderson (1971, 1977). For example, as shown in 10a for load, when the theme is the object there is an expectation that all of it is moved (it is incompatible with a context in which this does not obtain). When the theme is an oblique, it is compatible with contexts in which completeness may or may not obtain, as shown in 10b,c. It must, however, be at least partly moved, as in 10d, a point I return to in detail below. Similar facts hold for the location, which must be completely filled as an object, and at least partly filled as an oblique, as in 11. (10) a. #Kim loaded the hay onto the wagon, but still needed a truck for the rest. b. #Kim loaded the wagon with the hay, but still needed a truck for the rest. c. #Kim loaded the wagon with the hay, leaving none behind. d. #Kim loaded the wagon with the hay, but none of the hay moved. (11) a. #Kim loaded the wagon with the hay, and still had extra room for the grain. b. #Kim loaded the hay onto the wagon, and still had extra room for the grain. c. #Kim loaded the hay onto the wagon, filling it up completely. d. #Kim loaded the hay onto the wagon, but none of the wagon had hay on it. Before proceeding, I offer three caveats about this data (following Jeffries & Willis 1984, Dowty 1991, Herslund 1995, Laffut 1998, Beavers 2006, Beavers & Francez 2011). First, bare plural/mass noun objects generate atelicity of the predicate, mitigating the holistic effect. (12) a. John loaded hay onto the wagon, but had some hay left over. (bare mass) b. John loaded wagons with the hay, but couldn’t fill all of the wagons. (bare plural)
This effect is independent of the locative alternation, however, since ANY English predicate is atelic with a bare plural/mass object (Garey 1957, Verkuyl 1972, 1993, Dowty 1991). I thus set this aside as orthogonal, and control for it using only definite, specific DPs (see Beavers 2009a, 2011b for a way of integrating bare plural/mass DPs into the approach I outline below). Second, as Jeffries and Willis (1984) note, some nouns (e.g. liquid nouns; Levin 1993:118–19) disprefer holistic readings (cf. ?John sprayed the paint on the wall, but had some left over) unless explicitly quantified (cf. #John sprayed the gallon of paint on the wall, but had some left over). Furthermore, some nouns generate atelicity categorically, including nouns such as fire that describe inherently undifferentiatable enti-
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ties that lack canonical quantities (cf. #a gallon of fire; John sprayed the fire with water, but could only reach part of it). This is a fact about specific nouns, however, not events, and thus I avoid these nouns in my examples. I am only interested in holistic readings that follow at least partly from the verb. Crucially, there are verbs, for example, perception and surface-contact verbs, that never give rise to holistic readings even with overtly quantized objects. (13) John saw/touched the gallon of paint, but could only see/reach the bottom of it. Thus, while definite, specific DPs of a certain type are necessary for holistic readings, they are not sufficient; we also need appropriate verbs. The effect of the verb is my focus here. Third, the relevant notion of completeness is often determined by context. Full for a wagon is different from full for a car (e.g. one would not load hay into the driver’s seat of a car). However, there is always a relevant state that constitutes ‘complete’ in context, and it is the existence of this reading I am interested in here. With these factors controlled for, the question is how event decomposition explains the alternation. I discuss several possibilities, including subevental structure, aspect, types of caused events, and even pragmatics.
Subevent structure: It could be that the relative prominence of each argument reflects a difference in subevent structure. Consider the analysis of Rappaport and Levin (1988) (see also Pinker 1989:228–39, Gropen et al. 1991), who analyze locative alternations as a contrast between caused change of location vs. caused change of state by means of a caused change of location (Rappaport & Levin 1988:26, ex. 24).3 (14) a. John loaded the hay onto the wagon. (change of location, cf. put) [x cause [ y to come to be at z]/LOAD] b. John loaded the wagon with the hay. (change of state, cf. fill ) [[x cause [z to come to be in STATE]] BY MEANS OF [x cause [ y to come to be at z]/LOAD]] The rule linking the appropriate participant to object position is that in 15. (15) When the [predicate decomposition] of a verb includes one of the substructures in [16], link the variable represented by x in either substructure to the [direct object position]. (16) a. … [x come to be at LOCATION] … (see Rappaport & Levin 1988:25–26, exx. 21, 22) b. … [x come to be in STATE] … In other words, themes and locations both have a claim to objecthood, and different uses of load determine different objects. There is, however, a key implicit assumption here. In 14b BOTH y and z satisfy 15. So why is z the object? This is due to the BY MEANS OF relation, which makes y less prominent than z by being more embedded and/or less precedent. Thus the contrast also depends on the relative precedence/embeddedness as determined by the structure of the representation. But relative precedence/embeddedness is SUPPOSED to reflect causal or temporal structure (see e.g. Wunderlich 1997:36): [φ CAUSE [BECOME y ψ]] represents a caus3 In the literature there is little consistency on names for basic event types; ‘come to be in’ encodes state change, which is usually labeled BECOME. ‘Come to be at’ describes change of location and is often labeled GO TO. I use the latter terms when referring to these types of events, but follow labels used in references when quoting from them.
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ing event that temporally precedes and causes a becoming event. In 14b the change of location precedes and causes the change of state, so the decomposition SHOULD be 17. (17) [[x cause [ y to come to be at z]/LOAD]] CAUSE [x cause [z to come to be in STATE]] Yet this would get the argument realization wrong. Thus it is necessary to posit a BY MEANS OF relation that represents causation but reorders the predicates in the decomposition (see also Dowty 1979:95–96). But then the relative prominence of the arguments in the decomposition is motivated by the syntactic facts it was meant to explain, rather than any independent properties of its meaning. Therefore, an independently motivated theory of event structure does not account for the alternation (see Koenig & Davis 2006 for an extended discussion of this problem).
Holistic effect/aspect: It seems obvious that the holistic effect should be relevant. The holistic effect is a well-known correlate to telicity and thus plays a role in the aspectual structure of the clause, which is often assumed to follow at least partly from event structure. Perhaps the alternation is a way of making different arguments eligible for entering into the computation of telicity by making them more or less prominent in event structure. For theories that assume syntactic decompositions, this is an especially natural approach: if telicity is encoded via some feature to check on some higher head (Kratzer 2004), argument shifts alter which argument can check this feature. There is clearly something to this analysis, and I ultimately adopt a version of it. But there is reason to be suspicious of aspect as a GENERAL explanation for semantic reranking. In particular, spray/load verbs are not the only ones that participate in the locative alternation. As noted by Fillmore (1977) (see also Fillmore 1970, Guerssel et al. 1985, Gawron 1986, Laughren 1988, Dowty 1991, Beavers 2006, Koenig et al. 2008), verbs of slicing, cutting, and scratching are also triadic and involve the core semantics in 8, wherein a causer takes some sharp-edged theme and puts it into some (possibly temporary) mutual configuration with some relatively stationary location. But the outcome is different for cut/slice verbs than for spray/load verbs. While spray/load verbs encode filling or covering of the location with the theme that can arise from change of location, cut/slice verbs encode damage that can arise from contact (or some state that is the result of what may otherwise constitute damage, for example, in the cut off sense). Either the theme or the location could become damaged, yielding different argument realization patterns that form a locative alternation. To be more concrete, consider a situation in which John takes a sharp-edged diamond and moves it forcefully into contact with a piece of glass. There is a (potentially temporary) change of location of the diamond, but there may also be a change of state of either the diamond (the theme) or the glass (the location). If the diamond becomes damaged, but not the glass, we would say 18a, with the diamond as the object and the glass as a locative oblique. This variant is not compatible with a context in which the diamond was stationary relative to the glass. However, with the same choice of who moves, if instead the glass becomes damaged but not the diamond, the natural description is 18b, with the glass as the object and the diamond marked by with. (18) a. John cut/sliced/chipped/scratched the diamond on the glass. (diamond affected)
b. John cut/sliced/chipped/scratched the glass with the diamond.
(glass affected)
Semantically, what this shares in common with spray/load alternations is that (i) there is motion involved and (ii) the ‘more’ affected argument (holistically for spray/load or
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any effect for cut/slice) is the object. Morphosyntactically, 18 resembles a spray/load alternation in that the marking on the theme when oblique is with and the marking on the location is locative—a goal-marker such as onto for spray/load and a static location marker such as on for cut/slice. Where the two verb classes differ is that for spray/load alternations the change of state has to do with a persistent change of location of the theme with respect to the goal, while for cut/slice it has to do with some type of damage (and the change of location may be temporary).4 This is summarized in Table 1. moves THEME into mutual configuration with static LOCATION, where: spray/load/etc. cut/slice/etc. THEME object entirely remains at LOCATION damaged by contact with LOCATION (partially) remains at LOCATION THEME oblique entirely filled/covered by THEME damaged by contact with THEME LOCATION object (partially) filled/covered by THEME LOCATION oblique CAUSER
TABLE 1. The spray/load verb class vs. the cut/slice verb class.
Given these shared properties, we can say that both alternations are locative alternations, but encoding different outcomes. But since the outcome for cut/slice has no holistic effect, locative alternations—and object/oblique alternations more broadly—are not IN GENERAL governed by aspect (see also Dowty 1991:589 for a similar point based on similar data). A referee points out, however, that there is an alternative conception of the cut/slice data. As I outlined it, a theme and a location are fixed, and the question is which of these two is the thing affected. Alternatively, we could hold constant which entity is affected and which is not—the patient and the nonpatient—and ask which of them is the theme. If the patient is the theme we get 19a, and if the nonpatient is the theme we get 19b. (19) a. John cut/sliced the diamond on the glass. b. John cut/sliced the diamond with the glass. In this case there is no alternation, just two ways the diamond could be the patient of a cutting/slicing event. Indeed, even spray/load alternations are subject to this objection (cf. John loaded the wagon with the hay/the wagon onto the hay). I do not dispute this possible perspective on the alternation, in which case there is nothing to explain (though the conative data I discuss next makes the same point about aspect). If we take the perspective I have outlined, however, there is an alternation, and the question still remains of what explains it. Type of subevents: Perhaps the alternation reflects the TYPE of caused event. For example, 14a,b differ in the presence of a BECOME event, so maybe the presence/ absence of change of state conditions the alternation. But there is reason to reject this analysis. Looking beyond locative alternations we see even more contrasts encoded in object/oblique alternations. Consider the conative alternation with cutting, consumption, and hitting verbs (Guerssel et al. 1985, Levin 1993, van der Leek 1996, Broccias 2003, Beavers 2006; on Walrpiri: Laughren 1988; German: Frense & Bennett 1996; Danish: Durst-Andersen & Herslund 1996; Galician: Rosales Sequeiros 2005). With cutting verbs the object is affected in some way (where the effect is again damage or something that results from that), but the oblique is not necessarily affected.
This in turn explains why spray/load verbs take locative obliques with goal-markers like onto, and cut/slice verbs take on, since for the former a change of location is entailed and for the latter the change of location is potentially only temporary. 4
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(20) a. Marie cut/sliced/scratched/slashed the rope. (the rope is cut) b. Marie cut/sliced/scratched/slashed at the rope. (the rope may or may not be cut) This supports the idea that the contrast has to do with change of state. For consumption verbs, however, the contrast is instead whether all or perhaps just some of the theme was consumed. (21) a. Marie ate her cake/drank her wine. (all of cake/wine consumed) b. Marie ate at her cake/drank at her wine. (at least some cake/wine consumed) Creation verbs show a similar alternation with on (e.g. write/build (on)). Here we have change of state in both variants, arguing against an analysis based on its presence or absence. Finally, hitting verbs never entail a change. Instead the object is impacted, but the oblique may not have been. (22) a. Marie hit/slapped/smacked/whacked Defarge. (Defarge hit, not necessarily affected)
b. Marie hit/slapped/smacked/whacked at Defarge.
(Defarge not necessarily even hit)
Here again the difference is not the presence/absence of change of state. Thus object alternations are not in general about change of state, and it is hard to imagine what type of caused event unifies all of the transitive variants of all of the alternations above. (This data also shows again that aspect is not the only condition on object/oblique alternations, since two of these conatives have no holistic effect.) Rather, different verbs show different contrasts, even in the ‘same’ alternation. Thus, type of caused event does not determine the alternation.
Pragmatics: Decompositions are not commonly motivated on pragmatic grounds, but Rappaport Hovav and Levin (2008) suggest that some alternations reflect solely information-structural contrasts, making the more topical argument come earlier (see Krifka 2004:24, 26–28 for a related proposal). Rappaport Hovav and Levin give as evidence dative alternations with giving verbs (give, hand, pass (the salt)), which do not show any truth-conditional contrast. (23) a. John gave/handed/passed the salt to Kim. b. John gave/handed/passed Kim the salt. (dative alternation with verbs of giving) Likewise, there are certain object/oblique alternations that also seem to mean the same thing truth-conditionally in both variants, where it seems that the choice is more governed by information structure (and perhaps other factors; 26a,b seem to have slightly different flavors of meaning regarding the behavior of the subject, something I set aside; see also n. 6). (24) a. John hit the fence with the stick. (locative alternation with verbs of hitting) b. John hit the stick against the fence. (25) a. John cleared the table of the dishes. b. John cleared the dishes off the table. (locative alternation with verbs of removal) (26) a. Sandy gnawed/chewed her steak. b. Sandy gnawed/chewed at her steak. (conative alternation with verbs of chewing) Indeed, most of the object/oblique alternations discussed by Levin (1993) are of this sort. We might wonder if all alternations have this underpinning; that is, languages provide different ‘spins’on the event to make different participants more prominent (or for other reasons such as prosody or grammatical weight; see e.g. Erteschik-Shir 1979, Arnold et al. 2000, Wasow 2002, Bresnan & Nikitina 2010 on dative alternations). But while information structure is clearly relevant for some of these alternations, and is certainly a relevant
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factor in general for the CHOICE of a variant in context, it is not obvious that this is what fundamentally governs the alternations I have discussed. First, given the truth-conditional contrasts we have seen in many of the above alternations, making one argument more topical would require saying something different about it truth-conditionally. Second, as shown with the conative, sometimes alternations affect just one argument and involve no reranking, so that there is no relevant prominence shift between coarguments that could correspond to relative topicality (though there are also non-truth-conditional conatives as in 26). Thus alternations are not governed by pragmatics, just as they are not in general governed by subevent structure, aspect, or subevent type. While each factor may explain a subset of the data, none unifies all of these data together. So what DOES underlie all of these alternations?
3. STRENGTH OF TRUTH CONDITIONS. I argue that there is one thing that unifies all of these alternations, but it has little to do with event decompositions. In each of the alternations in §2 the object realization of any argument always has the same or monotonically stronger truth conditions associated with it than its corresponding oblique realization, codified as in 27. (27) MORPHOSYNTACTIC ALIGNMENT PRINCIPLE (MAP) (version 1): In direct/oblique alternations the direct realization of an alternating participant has as strong or monotonically stronger truth conditions associated with it than its corresponding oblique realization. By ‘monotonically stronger’ I mean ‘has all the same plus more’. To say simply ‘stronger’ could potentially mean ‘has different but more’, which is not intended. Furthermore, by ‘truth conditions’ I mean what Dowty (1989:75) refers to as ‘lexical entailments’, that is, properties the verb implies to be true of its arguments (e.g. through material implication, perhaps by meaning postulate) that figure into generalizations such as argument realization.5 The validity of the MAP can already be seen in the data in §2. The base case is that there is no difference in meaning, as in 24–26. In other cases, object realization indicates strictly stronger truth conditions than oblique realization. For the conatives in 20–22 this is very clear: the object variant in each case entails the oblique variant, but not conversely, because some property holds of the object (holistic effect, effect, impact) absent for the corresponding oblique.6 For locative alternations this is harder to see, since there is no strict entailment relation between the variants. For each argument that loses some property in its oblique realization, the other argument gains a property 5 The fact that these entailments are assigned in the lexicon means that by the time a verb enters the syntax, operations that cancel or change the entailments (e.g. negation, modal operators, quantifiers) generally have no effect on argument realization, which is predetermined. Thus, in John did not eat the sandwich, technically no properties need hold of either argument, but the argument realization facts are fixed prior to negation just the same as they are for John ate the sandwich. For this reason I control for any factors that obscure the relevant lexical entailments by avoiding negation, modality, and quantification unless relevant to a particular problem. 6 Despite the entailment relations, the contrast is about the alternating participant, not the clause. For 20–22 my intuitions are that the (a) variants entail the (b) variants, meaning there is no semantic difference save the weakened truth conditions. In some cases, however, the oblique variant requires a higher degree of agency of the subject. (i) a. #The car hit the wall. b. #The car hit at the wall. (acceptable if car is self-volitional) I have no explanation for this, save that there are more constraints on each alternation than just those discussed here. What is crucial is that the wall is impacted in (ia) but not necessarily in (ib).
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in becoming an object. Nonetheless, the same generalization holds, provided we focus only on what is known about each argument independently. For spray/load alternations the object in each case shows the holistic effect, but not the corresponding oblique in the other variant, all else being equal. Cut/slice alternations are similar, save that the ‘extra’ information is that the object is damaged. Thus, object/oblique alternations reflect strength of truth conditions RELATIVE TO THE ALTERNATING ARGUMENT. At this point, it is simple to define semantic prominence as monotonically stronger vs. weaker truth conditions, and associate morphosyntactic prominence (object vs. oblique) with it. As is clear from §2, however, the semantic contrasts are quite different for different verb classes, even in the ‘same’ alternation (hence the generality of the MAP as stated in 27). Of course, we could just accept that object/oblique alternations are diverse phenomena that happen to share one general underpinning, namely the MAP, that is not reducible to a property of event structures. Yet the appeal of decompositional approaches is that they define semantic prominence via a small set of basic, cross-cutting event types that form independently motivated complex event structures. This results in a relatively constrained yet broadly applicable set of prominence relations. Can we likewise identify some cross-cutting semantic primitives for the data in §2 that independently form some semantic structure, accounting for strength of truth conditions in a similarly broad yet constrained fashion? I argue that we can, and in particular I show that regardless of whatever else each of the alternations in §2 encodes, they all indicate a decrease in the degree of AFFECTEDNESS of the alternating participant. Degrees of affectedness are in turn organized along the AFFECTEDNESS HIERARCHY of Beavers 2011b, where each degree is just a weakening of the one before it in terms of how specific the predicate is about what change occurred. This analysis gives us the building blocks for a constrained theory of semantic prominence at the level of generality of decompositional approaches. Affectedness is a general, intuitive semantic notion that cuts across many predicate types (cp. BECOME in decompositional approaches), and the affectedness hierarchy provides a constrained, limited set of possible contrasts in strength of truth conditions. This in turn correlates with a direct/oblique alternation, that is, a morphosyntactic prominence contrast, so that we have a general prominence-preservation analysis based on strength of truth conditions. I review this model in §3.1, and apply it to object/oblique alternations in §3.2. Before continuing, however, I offer one clarification: although the alternations in §2 (and presumably others) are amenable to an analysis based on degree of affectedness, I do not expect that ALL alternations are. Other object/oblique alternations, and alternations based on other grammatical functions, may involve primitives other than affectedness (see §§5–6). This analysis rather serves as a case study in how a general, constrained theory of semantic prominence based on strength of truth conditions might look, capitalizing on the fact that basic components of verb meaning may be related to one another implicationally. 3.1. DEGREES OF AFFECTEDNESS. The model of affectedness given in Beavers 2011b is developed in the change-of-state model of Beavers 2008, 2009a, 2011c, an implementation of the scalar approach to change of state of Hay et al. 1999, and Kennedy & Levin 2008. On this approach a predicate of change φ is a relation between (at least) an event e of change, a theme x that undergoes the change, and a scale s that defines the change undergone by x. A scale is an ordered set of degrees of having a certain property (e.g. cleanliness, redness, volume, proximity to a goal, etc.), and a change of state is a transition of x from one degree of having that property to another. This transition in turn figures into aspectual properties of the predicate, including durativity and telicity. The key insight of this model is that all types of change—especially change of state, change
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of location, and creation/consumption—can be analyzed under a single formal model, where different sorts of changes differ only in what property the scale represents.7 For example, motion is defined as a transition along a physical scale (path) representing the series of locations through which the theme transitions incrementally until reaching its destination. Thus, 28a describes a walking event along some path on which John’s final location is the cafe.8 Change of state is a transition along a property scale as in 28b, which describes a wiping event of the table on the cleanliness scale, where the final state of the table is (completely) CLEAN. Finally, creation/consumption is defined as a transition along a scale of the amount created/consumed as in 28c, which describes an eating event of the apple, where the final ‘amount consumed’ value of the apple is ‘all of it’ (represented by a function size′ mapping entities to quantities). (28) a. John walked to the cafe. ∃e∃s[walking′(j, e) ∧ result′(j, s, cafe, e)] b. John wiped the table clean. ∃e∃s[wiping′(j, t, e) ∧ result′(t, s, clean, e)] c. John ate the apple. ∃e∃s[eating′(j, a, e) ∧ result′(a, s, size′(a), e)] In each case there is an entailment of a final result state of the theme, and that result state is constrained to be a point on the relevant scale among an ordered set of points. What scale is relevant is an empirical question; it represents whatever type of change the predicate encodes. On the basis of this model, Beavers 2011b identifies and defines four degrees of change or affectedness, stated in terms of how specific a predicate is about the result state. The first is QUANTIZED CHANGE (building on Hay et al. 1999), wherein the theme reaches a definite, specific result state named by the predicate. The term ‘quantized’ here is related to the notion of quantized reference of Krifka 1998 and Filip 2000, inter alia, to indicate a predicate that specifies a specific quantity for its referent that no proper subpart of its referent has, in this case a specific amount of the scale. Consider 29, which describes an event of the jeans becoming thirty-two inches long. This is encoded as a specific, predicate-supplied result state of 32in. on length scale s in e. 7 In Kennedy & McNally 2005:351–55, inter alia, a scale is a triple consisting of a dimension name (e.g. cleanliness, redness, etc.), a set of degrees on that dimension, and an ordering relation between them. Beavers 2011b, however, reimplements this in the mereological event semantic framework of Krifka (1998:222–30), where the scale is reinterpreted as a mereologically complex, directed ‘path’ object whose atomic subparts represent degrees of having some property. The scale and event are related via a homomorphic relation that makes aspectual predictions about the event’s progress. The implementational details are irrelevant here; all that is important is that we can say that a change happens to a certain degree, a property of all scalar approaches, and perhaps some nonscalar approaches as well. 8 Constants are boldfaced, and definite descriptions are denoted by lowercase first letters. Kennedy and McNally (2005:351–55) represent degrees as numbers from 0 to 1 of having a property; for example, being clean is having degree 1 of cleanliness. Following Beavers 2011b, I represent degrees mnemonically, so that having degree 1 of cleanliness is to have value CLEAN on the cleanliness scale, and having degree 1 of being at the end of a path to the cafe is to have (be at) value CAFE on the path scale, and so forth. Nothing hinges on this. Since I am only interested in results, I ignore source states. Thus, result′ indicates a transition to a final state from some contextually supplied source state bC, where GOAL indicates the state of x on the scale at the final point in the event and SOURCE its state at the initial point.
(i) ∀φ∀x∀e∀s[[φ(x, e) ∧ result′(x, s, g, e)] ↔ [φ(x, e) ∧ SOURCE(s, bC, e) ∧ GOAL(s, g, e)]] In the representations I give, the first conjunct stands in for the sort of action performed by the causer that leads to the result, indicated by an n-ary predicate labeled with the name of the verb in the progressive (to convey that this is just a type of action). Nothing is to be read into this; it is meant as a placeholder for a theory of causation and actions.
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(29) The tailor lengthened the jeans to 32ins. ∃e∃s[lengthening′(t, j, e) ∧ result′(j, s, 32in, e)] Conversely, a NONQUANTIZED CHANGE is a nonspecific change as in 30, where the jeans have simply become longer; that is, a result state g is implied to exist on s, but not specified exactly. (30) The tailor lengthened the jeans. ∃e∃s[lengthening′(t, j, e) ∧ ∃g[result′(j, s, g, e)]] Beavers 2011b defines the contrast between a proposition φ entailing quantized vs. nonquantized change for theme x in event e along scale s as in 31, where quantized change is a transition to a specific, predicate-supplied result gφ, and nonquantized change is a transition to any result g on the scale. (31) a. x undergoes a quantized change iff φ → [result′(x, s, gφ, e)] b. x undergoes a nonquantized change iff φ → ∃g[result′(x, s, g, e)] As is shown in detail in Beavers 2011b, these definitions predict that quantized change predicates are telic while nonquantized change predicates are not, where informally a predicate that names the exact result state names the exact endpoint of the event (provided other conditions also obtain such as a definite, specific theme DP and perfective aspect). This prediction is borne out in 32, using the standard for/in modifier tests of Dowty (1979:56–58). (32) a. The tailor lengthened the jeans to 32ins. in/?for an hour. b. The tailor lengthened the jeans for/??in an hour. However, these two types of change share one thing in common: in both cases some change must have occurred, so that to deny this yields a contradiction as in 33. (33) a. #The tailor lengthened the jeans to 32ins., but nothing is different about them. b. #The tailor lengthened the jeans, but nothing is different about them. This is easy to capture once we take into account a crucial property of 31: nonquantized change is an existential generalization over quantized change; that is, all quantized changes entail nonquantized change since a definite change implies that some change occurred. Thus quantized change is a strictly stronger notion than nonquantized change. The entailment diagnostic in 33 can thus be defined in terms of nonquantized change, which subsumes all quantized changes. (34) φ, but nothing is different about x is infelicitous if φ entails nonquantized change over x. Beavers 2011b also identifies two other degrees of affectedness. The first subsumes impact and surface-contact verbs such as hit, slap, punch, wipe, and kick. These verbs do not necessarily give rise to telic predicates, as in 35a, a property they share with nonquantized change predicates.9 But unlike nonquantized change predicates, they do not entail a change, as in 35b. (35) a. John hit/slapped the car (repeatedly) for/?in five minutes. b. John hit/slapped the car, but nothing changed about the car. Rappaport Hovav and Levin (2001:784–90) show that these predicates do share certain properties in common with (quantized and nonquantized) change predicates, however, including passing the What happened to X is Y affectedness diagnostic of Cruse 9 These predicates are telic on a punctual reading since instantaneity has an inherent culmination point. But on a nonpunctual (e.g. iterative) reading these predicates are atelic.
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(1973:13) (see also Jackendoff 1990:125–30, and Gaylord 2007:32–52 for an application to Italian). (36) a. What happened to the jeans is the tailor lengthened them to 32ins. b. What happened to the jeans is the tailor lengthened them. c. What happened to the car was John hit/slapped/wiped it. On the basis of this, Rappaport Hovav and Levin suggest that what unifies the objects of lengthen (to 32ins.) and hit/slap is that they are all ‘force recipients’, that is, event participants that bear the brunt of an action and may change as a result. This is a category, they argue, that is also relevant for licensing resultatives, which they claim may only be predicated of force recipients. This subsumes (quantized and nonquantized) change participants as in 37a,b respectively and objects of impact and surface-contact predicates as in 37c, but excludes, for example, objects of statives as in 37d (note that see does have an additional nonstative use that may indicate change, as in see his child to college). (37) a. *John broke the vase into pieces. b. *John cooled the soup to 100 degrees. c. *John knocked/wiped the crumbs off the table. d. *Medusa saw Mary into stone. Beavers 2011b proposes that being a force recipient is a third degree of affectedness called ‘potential for change’; that is, the verb lexically specifies that there are specific possible outcomes (which means these verbs may also restrict the type of possible result XPs as per Simpson 1983:151). This is a harder category to define formally, and Beavers suggests several options. I adopt the definition of potential change as change of x in e along s in some possible world in φ, where the predicate-supplied scale names the possible types of changes. (38) a. x has potential for change iff φ → ◊∃g[result′(x, g, s, e)] b. John kicked the wall. ∃e∃s[kicking′(j, w, e) ∧ ◊∃g[result′(w, s, g, e)]] Of course, we want to know what the modal base is, that is, which worlds are relevant. I do not propose a definitive answer, but we could follow Cross’s (1986) analysis of can (I am grateful to Cleo Condoravdi for suggesting this). Cross proposes that for I can sing to be true there must be some class of accessible worlds in which appropriate conditions for testing whether I can sing obtain, and in these worlds I sing is true. Building on this, I tentatively suggest that the modality in 38a is that there exists a class of accessible worlds where appropriate test conditions for the encoded change obtain—defined relative to the predicate and context—and in these worlds a change must obtain. For example, if motion of x is a potential outcome of kick x, then there are accessible worlds where appropriate test conditions obtain (e.g. x’s inertia is overcome) and x must move. Crucially, though, on this definition potential change is an existential generalization over nonquantized change; that is, what 38a encodes is that there exists a world at which change occurred, a weakening of 31b, where the world in question is the real world. Therefore the truth conditions for a nonquantized change are strictly stronger than for a potential change. This makes the conditions on Cruse’s What happened to X is Y diagnostic easy to state: it applies to any proposition for which potential change is entailed, as in 39, which subsumes (non)quantized change. (39) What happened to x is φ is felicitous iff φ is felicitous and entails x has potential for change. But 38a alone is not a strong enough condition to ensure telicity or entailment of change.
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Finally, a participant can be in an event even if no (potential) change is entailed. This is an argument not specified for any of the above properties, as in 40, a condition that alone is not strong enough to guarantee telicity, entail change, or pass What happened to X is Y, as in 41.10 (40) a. x is unspecified for change iff φ → ∃θ [θ (x, e)] b. John saw the wall. ∃e[seeing′(j, w, e)] (41) a. ??John touched/grazed/saw the wall for/??in an hour. b. ??John touched/grazed/saw the wall, but nothing is different about it. c. ??What happened to the wall is that John touched/grazed/saw it. Once again, this degree of affectedness is an existential generalization over the last. Thus the general relation θ in 40a could be instantiated as λxλe◊∃g[result(s, g, x, e)], producing 38a. Since each degree of affectedness is a weakening of the last, Beavers 2011b derives the implicational AFFECTEDNESS HIERARCHY in Table 1, where the weakening definitions of each diagnostic picks out increasingly larger sets of predicates. As Beavers discusses, this hierarchy can also capture other facts, including crosslinguistic variation in which predicates allow secondary result predicates (building on Washio 1997), the number and type of possible secondary result predicates (following Rappaport Hovav 2008), and the degree of transitivity of predicates with these meanings (in the sense of Hopper & Thompson 1980, Tsunoda 1981, Malchukov 2005), and it can be expanded to account for other facts thought to be tied to affectedness, such as the obligatoriness/optionality of the DP representing the theme (Rappaport Hovav 2008). This is summarized in Table 2 (the diagnostics discussed above are boldfaced). TESTS
φ is telic Change entailed of x Obligatory DP for x x permits result phrase What happened to X is Y φ is dynamic Result phrase variation Relative transitivity
DEGREES OF AFFECTEDNESS OF
QUANTIZED
✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ low highest
→
NONQUANTIZED
× ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ low/high high
→
TABLE 2. The affectedness hierarchy.
x FOR PREDICATE φ → UNSPECIFIED × × × × × × ✓/ × × ✓ × ✓ ✓/ × high N/A lower lowest
POTENTIAL
Thus we have a small set of degrees of affectedness defined by increasingly less specific constraints on what change—if any—occurs in the event. These degrees of affectedness are applicable across a range of predicates (where different sorts of changes are reduced to different lexically supplied scales), and by their very definitions they form an implicational hierarchy from strongest to weakest. These are exactly the ingredients we need to build a fragment of a constrained theory of semantic prominence as strength of truth conditions, in this case defined as a stronger or weaker degree of affectedness. I now show how this model is applicable to the data in §2. Such predicates are acceptable in What happened to X is Y in very particularized contexts, for example, a King Midas context where a touch turns something to gold. This is not entailed by the predicate per se, however, and is thus instead what Jackendoff (1990:294, n. 7) calls a ‘discourse patient’. I am interested here in change as entailed by a predicate (Jackendoff’s ‘grammatical patient’). Also, Jackendoff (1990:130) notes that in cases where more than one argument is affected, this diagnostic may sound more natural with the one that is ‘most “directly” affected’, that is, the more affected argument. These factors will muddle the judgments somewhat, and I discuss them where appropriate. 10
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3.2. OBJECT/OBLIQUE ALTERNATIONS AS AFFECTEDNESS CONTRASTS. In this section I argue that the object/oblique alternations discussed above represent different ways of shifting down the affectedness hierarchy in terms of MINIMAL CONTRASTS. I go through each alternation in turn and give appropriate diagnostics demonstrating this. It is not my goal to give a complete analysis of any one alternation; there may be other factors above and beyond what I discuss. Rather, I show that whatever each alternation encodes, it generates an affectedness contrast, and this figures into argument realization and is sufficient to account for adherence to the MAP. Accordingly, the meaning representations I give in each case are just fragments, focusing on this aspect.
CONATIVE ALTERNATIONS. Consider the conative alternation with consumption verbs. As discussed in §2, the difference between John ate the pizza and John ate at the pizza is that the former entails that the entire pizza (or a significant, contextually defined amount) is consumed, while the latter entails that at least some was eaten, but not necessarily all. The two representation fragments are given in 42.11 (42) a. John ate the pizza. ∃e∃s[eating1′(j, p, e) ∧ result′(p, s, size′(p), e)] b. John ate at the pizza. ∃e∃s[eating2′(j, p, e) ∧ ∃g[result′(p, s, g, e)]] But this means that the object variant represents quantized change, and the oblique nonquantized change. Is there evidence for this? In fact there is. As shown in 43, the object variant is telic but not the oblique, yet both entail some degree of change and pass What happened to X is Y. (43) a. John ate the pizza (in/?for an hour), #but nothing is different about it. b. John ate at the pizza (for/??in an hour), #but nothing is different about it. c. What happened to the pizza is John ate it. d. What happened to the pizza is John ate at it. Thus the conative with consumption verbs indicates a quantized vs. nonquantized change contrast (though there may be more going on than this; see below). (As noted in §2, not all conatives with consumption verbs indicate a truth-conditional contrast, including verbs such as gnaw and nibble. The analysis I propose accommodates such verbs as well, though I set aside what conditions the alternation when there is no such contrast.) The conative with cut/slice shows a different contrast. John cut the rope entails only that the rope became cut, but not to a specific degree—it could be all cut up, nicked, cut in half, in quarters, and so on—that is, a nonquantized change as in 44a. By contrast, John cut at the rope does not entail a change. I suggest, however, that cutting at something generates potential for change as defined above, wherein part of the meaning of the predicate is that if certain test conditions obtain (e.g. impact), a result of cutting must obtain (see Guerssel et al. 1985:39, ex. 34 for a similar analysis). This gives us 44b. (I include a third argument since these verbs are triadic, which I return to below.) (44) a. John cut the rope. ∃e∃s∃x[cutting1′(j, r, x, e) ∧ ∃g[result′(r, s, g, e)]] b. John cut at the rope. ∃e∃s∃x[cutting2′(j, r, x, e) ∧ ◊∃g[result′(r, s, g, e)]] 11 As
noted in n. 6, there are assuredly other, alternation-specific contrasts on the nature of the action. Since I am only interested in the encoded result, I ignore action components, though I leave them in the representations for completeness’s sake, with different subscripts in each variant to indicate that they might also differ.
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This contrast is supported by the fact that both variants are atelic and both pass What happened to X is Y (to my ears at least), but only the transitive variant entails change, as in 45. (45) a. John cut the rope (for/??in an hour), #but nothing is different about it. b. John cut at the rope (for/??in an hour), but nothing is different about it. c. What happened to the rope is that John cut it. d. What happened to the rope is that John cut at it. The third type of conative occurs with impact verbs. For John hit the rope, contact is entailed, which again entails potential for change as in 46a. But the oblique variant does not entail contact. It does, however, entail POTENTIAL contact, and if contact is made, we would have potential for change. If we encode potential contact with the same modality as we did potential change, we would thus have 46b. (I again assume a third argument, following Fillmore 1970:125.) (46) a. John hit the rope. ∃e∃s∃x[hitting1′(j, r, x, e) ∧ ◊∃g[result′(r, s, g, e)]] b. John hit at the rope. ∃e∃s∃x[hitting2′(j, r, x, e) ∧ ◊◊∃g[result′(r, s, g, e)]] Unlike 46a, however, what 46b encodes is weaker than potential change, and thus technically 46b is unspecified for change. This is borne out empirically. Neither entails change or is telic. (47) a. John hit (at) the rope, but nothing is different about it. b. John hit (at) the rope (repeatedly) for/??in an hour. Furthermore, to my ears at least, only the object variant sounds natural in What happened to X is Y. The oblique variant sounds markedly worse, and worse also than with cut at in 45d. (48) a. ??What happened to the rope is John hit it. b. ??What happened to the rope is John hit at it. Thus, what hit x and cut at x share is the property of pointing to a class of accessible worlds in which change occurs, whereas hit at x points to a class of accessible worlds in which impact occurs. While this in turn points to a further class of accessible worlds in which a change occurs, it is not itself as strong as potential for change, defined as in 38a, thus yielding an affectedness contrast. This ‘double modality’ analysis of hit at is in fact quite similar to Laughren’s (1988:231) analysis of the conative with impact predicates in Warlpiri, where for her the relevant modality is in order that (following Guerssel et al. 1985:59). She suggests that the Warlpiri equivalent for chop at the tree for honey has the event structure ‘(x manipulate entity) IN ORDER THAT (entity come into contact with y) IN ORDER THAT (x produce effect on y)’, exactly parallel to 44b in terms of potential effect (ignoring the action of the agent). Morphosyntactic evidence for the double modality, she argues, comes from the fact that the dative theme in this case exceptionally triggers so-called ‘double dative’ agreement on the second-position auxiliary clitic, which otherwise occurs only when there are two benefactive or purposive arguments. Laughren (1988:240) therefore suggests that the double dative reflects the presence of two in order that relations, thus supporting a double-modality analysis. More generally, the proposed analysis of cut at and hit at involves embedding the result of the corresponding object variant under some modality. We might therefore look again at eat at and propose that it also encodes potential complete consumption, giving the conative a unified analysis. For now my goal is not to analyze the conative completely, however, so much as to note that whatever it encodes, affectedness contrasts follow from it.
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Summarizing, different conatives indicate different possible minimal contrasts along the affectedness hierarchy as in Table 3, with the exact contrast (and scale) idiosyncratic to the verb class. : eat conative : cut conative : hit conative : CONTRAST
QUANTIZED
DO
→ ⇔
NONQUANTIZED
OBL DO
→
⇔
POTENTIAL
OBL DO
→
UNSPECIFIED
⇔
OBL
TABLE 3. Conatives along the affectedness hierarchy.
The affectedness hierarchy thus unifies what would otherwise be three disparate types of alternations, and indeed, this provides further support for this analysis of affectedness.
LOCATIVE ALTERNATIONS. The locative alternation is similar, although the semantics is more complex since there are two noncausers that are or could be affected, and thus TWO scales for each predicate. For spray/load verbs, the alternating participants are the location and the theme, and the scales are a scale of fullness/coveredness (s1) for the location and the scale of the amount moved (s2) for the theme (cp. the amount-consumed scale for consumption predicates).12 Furthermore, recall that when the location is the object it must be completely full/covered while the theme is minimally only partly moved. Conversely, when the theme is the object it is all moved, while the location is minimally only partly filled/covered. This is outlined for load as follows. (49) a. John loaded the wagon with the hay. ∃e∃s1∃s2[loading1′(j, w, h, e) ∧ result′(w, s1, full, e) ∧ ∃g[result′(h, s2, g, e)]] b. John loaded the hay onto the wagon. ∃e∃s1∃s2[loading2′(j, w, h, e) ∧ ∃g[result′(w, s1, g, e)] ∧ [result′(h, s2, size′(h), e)]] The multiple-scale analysis deserves some discussion. Work on scalar approaches typically assumes only one scale per predicate, and given that the scale figures into aspectual properties of the predicate, one wonders if it is even possible to posit two scales. Nothing a priori rules this out, however, provided the two scales do not lead to incompatible results or contradictory aspectual properties. Crucially, the two scales for load operate in tandem: fullness of the location increases with the amount of theme moved and vice versa, so there is no possibility of contradiction.13 The analysis in 49 predicts that there are two quantized/nonquantized change contrasts. Telicity is a hard diagnostic to apply here, since if both variants entail quantized change they are always telic. We can probe for these contrasts indirectly, however, by looking at bare plural/mass nouns. Recall that bare plural/mass themes make normally telic predicates atelic. But on the homomorphic model of Beavers 2011b, this is true only of themes that undergo quantized change. The details are beyond the scope of this article, but in essence the quantity of a theme is relevant for telicity only if the result that must hold for that quantity is specified. We can use this as a quantized vs. nonquantized change diagnostic. Crucially, only a bare plural/mass object ever yields atelicity; the expression of the oblique never has such an effect, as in 50 and 51 (see also Dowty 1991:591–92).
12 In conjunction with the amount-moved scale, there is also a path that defines the motion from the source to the goal of the theme. However, what seems relevant to computing the quantized change is s2 (as pointed out to me by Cleo Condoravdi, p.c.); thus I suppress the relation that actually expresses the motion, and with it the path. 13 Alternatively, following Tenny (1992:23–24) and Beavers 2011a, we could say there is just one complex scale encoding change in two dimensions simultaneously, though the analysis given here is more perspicuous for present purposes.
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(50) a. John loaded the wagon with (the) hay in/?for an hour. b. John loaded wagons with (the) hay for/??in an hour. (51) a. John loaded the hay onto (the) wagons in/?for an hour. b. John loaded hay onto (the) wagons for/??in an hour. Furthermore, other affectedness diagnostics also suggest this contrast, since both variants entail change for both participants,14 and both pass What happened to X is Y.15 (52) a. #John loaded the wagon with the hay, but nothing is different about the wagon. b. #John loaded the hay onto the wagon, but nothing is different about the wagon. c. #John loaded the wagon with the hay, but the hay is not somewhere else. d. #John loaded the hay onto the wagon, but the hay is not somewhere else. (53) a. What happened to the wagon is John loaded it with the hay. b. What happened to the hay is John loaded the wagon with it. c. What happened to the wagon is John loaded the hay onto it. d. What happened to the hay is John loaded it onto the wagon. This suggests that we do indeed have two alternating quantized/nonquantized change contrasts. For cut/slice, we again have motion, although possibly only temporary. But whichever participant is the object is at least somewhat damaged, a nonquantized change (as discussed above). While the oblique is not entailed to change, however, it is entailed to come into forceful contact with the object (see also Guerssel et al. 1985:59, ex. 33), producing potential for change. Thus we can give the two variants of cut the analysis in 54, where the two scales are both of damage (since the motion relation is not relevant for the alternation, I again omit it). (54) a. John cut the window with the diamond. ∃e∃s1∃s2[cutting1′(j, w, d, e) ∧ ∃g[result′(w, s1, g, e)] ∧ ◊∃g[result′(d, s2, g, e)]] b. John cut the diamond on the window. ∃e∃s1∃s2[cutting2′(j, w, d, e) ∧ ◊∃g[result′(w, s1, g, e)] ∧ ∃g[result′(d, s2, g, e)]] A referee asks why the relevant scales for spray/load verbs are fullness/amount moved, but for cut/slice verbs they are scales of damage. The answer is that whatever change a predicate entails—and thus what scales are involved—is an empirical question, and all we can do is see what change is entailed and posit the appropriate scale. To be sure, there IS motion here, and thus presumably a path representing this (though Rappaport Hovav (2008) suggests that some motion predicates may be ‘nonscalar’). But there is no entailment of necessary change along the path at the end of the event (e.g. the theme could end up right back where it started), nor any notion of the quantity moved along it (i.e. the theme is not treated as decomposable). Thus there is at best only potential change along the path, which is not sufficient to figure into object realization (a point I return to in §5 when discussing a problem Dowty claims this exact fact causes for his own analysis). But the fact that different scales figure into objecthood for spray/load verbs and cut/slice verbs is just a fact about these verbs.
As Beavers 2011b discusses, something is different about x holds only for property-change and consumption predicates. For location change the entailment is x is somewhere else. 15 Jackendoff (1990:130) finds What happened to X is Y somewhat less acceptable with obliques, due to being less ‘directly’ affected; I find all equally acceptable. 14
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Crucially, the contrast in 54 is a nonquantized/potential change contrast, and as shown in 55 and 56, both variants are atelic, but only the object undergoes a change. However, both arguments pass What happened to X is Y (though the oblique sounds a little less natural to me). (55) a #John cut the diamond on the window for/??in an hour. b. #John cut the diamond on the window, but nothing is different about the diamond. c. #John cut the diamond on the window, but nothing is different about the window. d. #What happened to the diamond is John cut it on the window. e. ?What happened to the window is John cut the diamond on it. (56) a. #John cut the window with the diamond for/??in an hour. b. #John cut the window with the diamond, but nothing is different about the window. c. #John cut the window with the diamond, but nothing is different about the window. d. #What happened to the window is John cut it with the diamond. e. ?What happened to the diamond is John cut the window with it. What links all locative alternations together is a general pattern of how specific the predicate is about what change occurs along the lexically supplied scale(s), as in Table 4.16 : load location : cut location : load theme : cut theme : CONTRAST
QUANTIZED
DO
DO
→ ⇔
⇔
NONQUANTIZED
OBL DO OBL DO
→
⇔ ⇔
POTENTIAL
OBL
→
UNSPECIFIED
OBL
TABLE 4. Locatives along the affectedness hierarchy.
Thus while the alternations in §2 differ, they share a common core property not provided by event structures, namely stronger vs. weaker degrees of affectedness along a limited, independently motivated affectedness hierarchy. If we take this as a constrained type of semantic prominence, then we have the basis of a prominence-preservation theory at the level of generality of decompositional approaches: stronger truth conditions regarding affectedness yield more prominent morphosyntactic encoding for the alternating argument. The next question is how to define linking rules that accommodate this. For this I adopt the framework of argument realization of Dowty (1989, 1991) (see also Ladusaw & Dowty 1988, Primus 1999, Ackerman & Moore 2001, Beavers 2005, 2006, Grimm 2005, 2011), which makes stating the relevant prominence-preservation principle trivial. 4. LEXICAL ENTAILMENT-BASED APPROACHES. 4.1. LEXICAL ENTAILMENTS TO ARGUMENT REALIZATION. The fundamental idea in this framework is that every verb has a predicate argument structure, and its meaning can be
16 Unlike conatives, I do not believe there are any potential/unspecified locative alternations. This may have to do with the fact that the core semantics of locative verbs involves motion of the theme that brings it into contact with the location, meaning there is always potential change.
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thought of as an association of each of its arguments with a set of lexical entailments constituting its thematic role, that is, the set of things that must be true of that argument in order for it to have had that role in the described event. For example, build describes events in which one participant causes another to come into existence by being built. What must be true of each participant is some set of (possibly overlapping) lexical entailments that together codify this relationship. We might refer to these sets of lexical entailments—whatever they are—as the BUILDER and BUILDEE roles respectively. For any verb, the set of lexical entailments associated with each argument is idiosyncratic to that verb, and Dowty (1989:76) refers to them as INDIVIDUAL THEMATIC ROLES. As Dowty points out, however, individual thematic roles are not that linguistically interesting. This is because they are verb-specific, yet argument realization patterns tend to apply to many verbs. In order to generalize across individual thematic roles assigned by different verbs, Dowty (1989:77) defines THEMATIC ROLE TYPES as intersections of individual thematic roles. For example, the intersection of BUILDEE and, say, the CRACKEE role of the object of transitive crack is a thematic role type τ containing only the lexical entailments common to both. A generalization restricted to arguments bearing τ will therefore apply to BUILDEE and CRACKEE arguments. But as Dowty further points out, not all thematic role types are necessarily linguistically interesting either, since it is unlikely that every possible intersection of any set of individual thematic roles will figure into any significant generalizations. Dowty (1989:77) therefore distinguishes the L-THEMATIC ROLE TYPES—that is, the ‘linguistically significant thematic role types’—that can be argued to figure into significant generalizations. For example, τ is probably not an L-thematic role type because it presumably does not figure into any significant argument realization fact. But the intersection of all of the individual thematic roles associated with the objects of all transitive change-of-state verbs may well converge on a thematic role type PATIENT that is an L-thematic role type by virtue of figuring into the determination of objecthood. By definition, the lexical entailments that constitute L-thematic role types are of a more general flavor, so as to cover a range of verbs, even as specific verbs also encode more specific meanings. Thus, the difference between L-thematic role types and individual thematic roles is the correlate of grammatically relevant event templates vs. grammatically irrelevant lexical roots in decompositional approaches (see §2). I suggest below that the degrees of affectedness in §3 constitute a set of general lexical entailments that automatically generate the L-thematic roles needed to analyze object/oblique alternations. Turning to linking principles, in some cases arguments with certain L-thematic roles may be constrained to be realized in certain ways. For example, we might identify an L-thematic role SOURCE that subsumes various types of what are intuitively sources, and a rule that SOURCES are realized by from. Dowty (1991), however, argues that the subject and object grammatical functions are (perhaps uniquely) not associated with necessary or sufficient lexical entailments, that is, a specific L-thematic role. Rather, the entailments that figure into subject and object selection form prototypes or PROTO-ROLES, with Dowty’s given in 57 and 58 respectively (Dowty 1991:572, exx. 27–28). (57) Dowty’s proto-agent a. volitional involvement in the event or state b. sentience (and/or perception) c. causing an event or change of state in another participant d. movement (relative to the position of another participant) (e. exists independently of the event named by the verb)
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(58) Dowty’s proto-patient a. undergoes change of state b. incremental theme c. causally affected by another participant d. stationary (relative to movement of another participant) (e. does not exist independently of the event, or not at all) A canonical agent is volitional, sentient, causes an event, has independent motion properties, and has independent existence. A canonical patient undergoes a change, is the incremental theme (measures out the event’s temporal progress; Tenny 1992, 1994), is causally affected, is stationary relative to other participants, and does not necessarily exist independent of the event. Dowty’s (1991:576, ex. 31) linking principle for subjects and objects is given in 59. (59) ARGUMENT SELECTION PRINCIPLE: In predicates with a grammatical subject and object, the argument for which the predicate entails the greatest number of Proto-Agent properties will be lexicalized as the subject of the predicate; the argument having the greatest number of Proto-Patient entailments will be lexicalized as the direct object. Dowty (1991:572) suggests that BUILDER contains all of the proto-agent entailments and none of the proto-patient ones, and the opposite is true for BUILDEE, so that the former is categorically the subject and the latter the object. Thus by 59 the argument structure of build is as in 60, with two arguments assigned two different individual thematic roles determining two different sets of proto-role entailments that make BUILDER the subject and BUILDEE the object.17 (60) build < DPbuilder, DPbuildee > 5 PROTO-AGENT ENTAILMENTS 5 PROTO-PATIENT ENTAILMENTS Three comments are in order pertaining to object/oblique alternations. First, lexical entailment-based theories do not require proto-roles, and not all generalizations are based on them. But since I am interested in object realization, proto-roles will figure here. Second, since proto-patient is a prototype, actual objects could be assigned any subset of 58, and any such combination that determines object realization is therefore an L-thematic role. Positing L-thematic roles for object/oblique alternations will be a key issue here. Third, as Dowty defines it, the argument selection principle is not an online rule of argument realization. Rather, it is a guide to lexicalization (perhaps active at acquisition), leaving argument structures fixed in the lexicon. Thus it predicts POSSIBLE AND IMPOSSIBLE TRANSITIVE VERBS. When it comes to object/oblique alternations, however, we have a verb associated with two argument realization patterns, in this case sharing the same number of arguments but differing in how one of them is realized, with a corresponding meaning difference. Following Dowty (1991:588), I assume that the two argument structures in object/oblique alternations are lexicalized (although, also following Dowty, the relationship between them may be statable via some redundancy rule restricted to particular lexemes). Although alternations are sometimes modeled as involving lexical or syntac17 The individual thematic role is subscripted to the argument, and the relevant L-thematic role, for example, the set of proto-role entailments, is indicated below. I indicate external arguments by underlining. The notation does not conform to any particular previous proposal, but is easily understood as the θ -grid of a standard principles-and-parameters approach or the ARG-ST of HPSG, and so forth, and the relevant syntactic facts follow from principles of those theories.
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tic derivation, several factors support a lexicalization account. First, the semantic contrasts found in alternations are difficult to capture derivationally, especially if alternations are reduced to types of movement. Second, there is considerable idiosyncrasy in which verbs do and do not alternate. For example, fill does not undergo a locative alternation in English but does in many other languages, including the cognate in Danish (Herslund 1995). The verb meaning put does not alternate in most languages, but does in Sesotho (Machobane 1996). This idiosyncrasy makes derivational rules difficult to state, since they have to be indexed by the exact lexical entries they apply to, effectively reducing to lexicalization (though there may still be subregularities in which verbs do or do not alternate). Thus, lexicalization is a standard way of capturing alternations. The question is, once a word is associated with two argument structures, what governs how those argument structures are related, especially in a way that conforms to the MAP?18
4.2. PREVIOUS ENTAILMENT-BASED PROPOSALS. Left as is, Dowty’s theory roughly captures the facts of at least the locative alternation, as discussed extensively by Dowty (1991:587–96) himself. This follows from Dowty’s corollary 2 to the argument selection principle. (61) COROLLARY 2: With a three-place predicate, the nonsubject argument having the greater number of entailed Proto-Patient properties will be lexicalized as the direct object and the nonsubject argument having fewer entailed ProtoPatient properties will be lexicalized as an oblique or prepositional object (and if two nonsubject arguments have approximately equal numbers of entailed P-Patient [sic] properties, either or both may be lexicalized as direct object). (Dowty 1991:576, ex. 33) In general this predicts that any remaining nonsubject, nonobject arguments get oblique realization. Both variants of the locative alternation fall under the parenthetical in 61. In load the hay onto the wagon vs. load the wagon with the hay both the hay and the wagon have roughly the same proto-patient lexical entailments: undergoing a change, being causally affected, and being stationary (relative to the subject). If we assume that Dowty’s incremental theme lexical entailment—which accounts for the holistic effect— can ‘float’ to one participant or the other, it tips the balance toward object realization for that participant. Likewise, in cut the window with the diamond vs. cut the diamond on the window, the two nonsubjects share the proto-patient lexical entailments of being causally affected and being stationary (relative to the subject). The tipping point comes in which is assigned the lexical entailment of undergoing a change. Thus the crucial shape of the MAP is already in place here: alternations rest on assigning extra lexical entailments (strengthening the truth conditions) to give one participant the edge for objecthood. As stated, however, the argument selection principle and corollary 2 are relatively narrow in their scope, and leave many questions open, including the following (see also Primus 1999:47–55, Davis 2001:61–73 for discussion). • What happens with two-argument intransitive verbs (cf. the oblique variant of the conative)? Dowty’s proposal applies only to verbs with a subject and an object.
18 Alternatively, for English at any rate, it could be that each lexical entry has one argument structure underspecified for the category and role of its complement(s), which is filled in by context as in Beavers 2005. However, this would not scale up to other languages that also show marking on the verb in such alternations. For example, in Hungarian, German, and Dutch, locative alternations show not just an argument alternation but also additional marking on the verb in one or the other variant (though languages are not always consistent in which variant is marked; see Beavers 2006:58–63 for a review). The semantic effects are generally the same, and my intent, following Ackerman and Moore (2001) (see below), is that the MAP covers them as well.
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• How do oblique arguments work (are there restrictions on their lexical entailments)? Corollary 2 predicts that a nonsubject, nonobject of a transitive verb will have less proto-agent and proto-patient lexical entailments than its coarguments, but which, and why? • What possible roles are there (any combination of lexical entailments or just some)? Dowty gives five proto-patient lexical entailments for a possible thirtytwo combinations. But does anything rule out certain combinations of lexical entailments?
The first question is an obvious lacuna in the predictions, and precludes being able to analyze conative alternations, but is not difficult to overcome with a sufficiently modified argument selection principle. The other two questions, however, are fundamentally related, and undermine to some degree Dowty’s proposals about the locative alternation. For example, Dowty’s analysis does not address the question of why we see exactly the contrasts we do see. Why is the relevant ‘floating’ lexical entailment in the spray/load alternation the incremental theme lexical entailment? It could just as easily have been any of the other four proto-patient lexical entailments. For example, there could be a verb shload where in I shload the hay onto the wagon vs. I shload the wagon with the hay the hay is an incremental theme in both cases but lacks the lexical entailment of independent existence in the oblique variant. But as far as I am aware, in any object/oblique alternation where the direct object is an incremental theme, this is the lexical entailment that is dropped in the oblique variant, and similarly for change of state in the absence of incremental themehood, and so on. Furthermore, the strictly monotonic nature of the strength of truth conditions in the MAP is not directly captured. Nothing rules out the possibility that the oblique argument GAINS lexical entailments, such as proto-agent lexical entailments or different proto-patient entailments. Nor does this approach say how many lexical entailments may be ‘floated’. For example, we find no alternations where an object has all of the proto-patient entailments as an object and none as an oblique. Clearly, additional constraints are needed that rule out certain types of alternations. Dowty tentatively makes reference to ‘weighting’ of relatively more ‘significant’ entailments to account for such patterns (1991:597); I show below that weighting of entailments can follow without stipulation if we take their relative truth-conditional strength into account. As far as I am aware, the only major attempt to address these problems is Ackerman & Moore 2001. Building directly on Dowty’s proto-agent and proto-patient roles, the authors propose a paradigmatic argument selection principle (p. 169, ex. 2) that places constraints on what oblique arguments may look like in alternation with direct arguments.19 (62) PARADIGMATIC ARGUMENT SELECTION PRINCIPLE: Let P(… , argi, …) and P′(… , arg′i, …) be related predicates, where argi and arg′i are corresponding arguments. If argi and arg′i exhibit different grammatical encodings and argi is more prototypical with respect to a particular proto-role than arg′i, then argi’s encoding will be less oblique than arg′i’s encoding. Thus, for Ackerman and Moore, alternations reflect paradigmatic relationships between two related predicates with different argument structure and thematic role assignments.
Primus (1999:61–63) posits a series of updated argument selection principles that capture intuitions similar to Ackerman and Moore’s regarding proto-typicality and markedness. However, she focuses primarily on case marking, word order, and agreement for core arguments in nominative/accusative vs. ergative/absolutive languages, and not on direct/oblique alternations. I thus set her interesting and detailed proposals aside. 19
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One form takes argument i as a direct argument, the second as an oblique, and the former assigns a ‘more prototypical’ role to i than the latter. Thus, while the argument selection principle predicts possible and impossible verbs, the paradigmatic argument selection principle makes predictions about POSSIBLE AND IMPOSSIBLE PARADIGMS FOR DIFFERENT USES OF THE SAME VERB. Among object/oblique alternations, Ackerman and Moore (2001:83–140) motivate this on the basis of partitive vs. accusative/genitive case alternation in Finnish and Estonian (Kiparsky 1998, 2001a,b). Interestingly, like Dowty’s analysis of the locative alternation, Ackerman and Moore’s analysis also conforms to the MAP. In particular, they suggest that accusative/genitive realization indicates the presence of a new proto-patient entailment they call ‘bounding entity’ that figures into computing telicity (distinct from the incremental theme entailment), while partitive realization indicates its absence, all else being equal. Thus, accusative/genitive realization has monotonically stronger conditions than the more marked partitive realization, in line with the MAP.20 Nonetheless, the paradigmatic argument selection principle, while incorporating oblique arguments into the picture, suffers from the same problem as Dowty’s corollary 2: nothing in Ackerman and Moore’s approach indicates (a) which proto-role lexical entailments will vary for a given alternation and (b) whether or not the less prototypical role contains any lexical entailments not assigned to the more prototypical role. For example, on Ackerman and Moore’s (2001:34–46) counting algorithm, each proto-agent lexical entailment contributes some positive integer n toward the prototypicality of the participant, while each proto-patient lexical entailment contributes a negative integer –n. The sum of these numbers is the participant’s ‘thematic loading’. Something is more protoagentive if it has a higher thematic loading and more proto-patientive if it has a lower thematic loading. But this means that by the paradigmatic argument selection principle something could become less proto-patientive simply by GAINING a number of protoagent entailments and not losing any proto-patient lexical entailments. As far as I am aware, this never happens in object/oblique alternations; that is, there is no conative where the oblique has all the same entailments as the corresponding object but also several proto-agent properties.21 Thus, while previous approaches are not incompatible with the data on direct/oblique alternations, certain options must be ruled out, requiring additional constraints. I show next how we can capitalize on the ways that lexical entailments are related implicationally to restrict the space of possible alternations. 4.3. STRENGTH OF TRUTH CONDITIONS AND ARGUMENT REALIZATION. Building on Ackerman and Moore’s insights, a simple modification to Dowty’s proposal, plus a redefinition of proto-patient, gives us the crucial constraints. First, to account for dyadic verbs with oblique complements, I redefine the argument selection principle as in 63, making objects optional. (63) ARGUMENT SELECTION PRINCIPLE (revised): In predicates with a grammatical subject, the argument for which the predicate entails the greatest number of Proto-Agent properties will be lexicalized as the subject of the predicate; IF
20 Nonetheless, Beavers 2006:107–14 argues that bounding entity, as Ackerman and Moore define it, is not the appropriate condition for these alternations, and that whatever the appropriate condition is, it is not thematic-role based. If so, this data is beside the point. 21 In differential-object-marking languages objects are marked for having normally agentive properties such as being human (Aissen 2003). But such properties are not thematic role properties (they do not relate the argument to the event) and are instead independent properties of the referent (see Evans 1997 for more on this distinction).
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THE PREDICATE LICENSES A GRAMMATICAL OBJECT,
the argument having the greatest number of Proto-Patient lexical entailments will be lexicalized as the direct object. Technically, this does not predict that nonsubjects, nonobjects can be realized as obliques, and certainly not what type of oblique. Therefore, I also posit a (relatively trivial) oblique selection principle to cover nondirect arguments, effectively replicating Dowty’s corollary 2 (though see Beavers 2009b for how the oblique selection principle may determine argument realization patterns based on oblique-marking inventories across languages). (64) OBLIQUE SELECTION PRINCIPLE: An argument not realized as a direct argument can be realized as an oblique (marked by a compatible oblique marker). We can capture object/oblique alternations by capitalizing on the fact that the lexical entailments that constitute the proto-patient role may not be independent of one another as they are for Dowty or Ackerman and Moore.22 Rather, they may be related implicationally in a way that restricts their cooccurrence. For the purposes of this sketch, I set aside Dowty’s proto-patient entailments for now, and posit only the three in 65 (though I revise this in §5). (65) a. undergoes a QUANTIZED change b. undergoes a NONQUANTIZED change c. has POTENTIAL for a change Of course, Dowty’s argument realization principles do not operate on entailments but sets of entailments. Given 65, we should expect up to 23 = 8 such sets—possible L-thematic role types. But the entailments in 65 stand in implicational relationships to one another. This has the effect of restricting the space of semantically contentful L-thematic roles to just four, which form the subset hierarchy in 66. (For convenience, I name each set by its strongest entailment.) (66) name: QUANTIZED NONQUANTIZED POTENTIAL UNSPECIFIED quantized nonquantized role: nonquantized ⊃ ⊃ {potential} ⊃ { } potential potential This subset hierarchy is just a recasting of the affectedness hierarchy given in Table 2 into sets, which are in turn organized into a structured subset hierarchy—in essence an old-fashioned thematic role hierarchy. Furthermore, ONLY these four roles are semantically contentful. The remaining four possible roles are all semantically vacuous since they are reducible to the four above. quantized quantized (67) a. potential b. nonquantized c. {nonquantized} d. {quantized} Each role is ruled out because some lexical entailment not in the role is entailed by one that is. For example, since 67a has the quantized change entailment, it necessarily entails nonquantized change. Thus 67a is truth-conditionally equivalent to the QUANTIZED role. The rest of 67 suffer from similar problems. Thus the implicational relationships between lexical entailments restrict the space of contentful roles to those in 66.
{
{
}
} {
{
}
}
Both Primus (1999:48–53) and Grimm (2005:20–33, 2011) also posit implicational relationships between lexical entailments that rule out certain combinations, though focusing primarily on proto-agent entailments. Grimm in turn proposes to eliminate proto-patient entailments in favor of defining patienthood via the presence/absence of certain proto-agent entailments. Primus conversely posits positive proto-patient entailments, but notes that many of them imply the existence of an agent and vice versa, what she calls ‘thematic dependence’. 22
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To capture the alternation facts we simply need a prominence-preservation principle that governs what happens when an argument can be realized either as a direct argument or as an oblique, à la Ackerman and Moore’s paradigmatic argument selection principle, taking strength of truth conditions into account. I first define a notion of a ‘minimal contrast’ along a hierarchy of possible L-thematic roles such as 66 as in 68. (68) MINIMAL CONTRAST: Q is minimally weaker than R (Q ⊆ M R) on a hierarchy of L-thematic roles iff Q = R or Q ⊂ R and there is no role P on the hierarchy such that Q ⊂ P ⊂ R. In terms of this we can formalize the MAP as in 69. (69) MORPHOSYNTACTIC ALIGNMENT PRINCIPLE (MAP) (version 2): When participant x may be realized as either a direct or oblique argument of verb V, it bears L-thematic role R as a direct argument and L-thematic role Q ⊆ M R as an oblique. The MAP does not refer to particular thematic roles, but only to the direct/oblique contrast and some hierarchy of L-thematic roles. Like Ackerman and Moore’s approach, it predicts what possible argument structures a verb can have among the ones left open by the argument selection principle. This predicts that if a verb has two uses with two different argument structures regarding some argument that may be an object or oblique, the argument will have a stronger role as an object than as an oblique. For example, in the conative there are two uses for eat; in both the causer is the subject, and the object/oblique contrast for the second argument is constrained by the MAP, as in 70. DP > (70) eat conative: a. < DP, PROTO-AGENT QUANTIZED b. < DP, PP > PROTO-AGENT NONQUANTIZED Three principles are active here. The argument selection principle determines that WITHIN the argument structure of EACH variant the object has the most proto-patient entailments. The oblique selection principle determines that WITHIN the argument structure of EACH variant nonsubject, nonobject participants are oblique. The MAP determines that ACROSS the argument structures of BOTH variants the theme has a stronger L-thematic role as an object than as an oblique. For cut and hit verbs the alternation is identical, save that such verbs assign different roles to their objects, determining different minimal contrasts. DP > (71) cut conative: a. < DP, PROTO-AGENT NONQUANTIZED b. < DP, PP > PROTO-AGENT POTENTIAL (72) hit conative: a. < DP, DP > PROTO-AGENT POTENTIAL b. < DP, PP > PROTO-AGENT UNSPECIFIED Similar analyses can be given for locative alternations (I index each argument with a label indicating which specific argument it is, which is part of its individual thematic role). (73) load/spray locative: a. < DP causer, DPlocation, PPtheme > PROTO-AGENT QUANTIZED NONQUANTIZED b. < DP causer, DPtheme, PPlocation > PROTO-AGENT QUANTIZED NONQUANTIZED
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a. < DP causer, DPlocation, PPtheme > PROTO-AGENT NONQUANTIZED POTENTIAL b. < DP causer, DPtheme, PPlocation > PROTO-AGENT NONQUANTIZED POTENTIAL Conversely, the MAP does allow that some alternations may not show a contrast of weakening truth conditions, since the two realization options may have the same thematic role. This predicts, for example, that we should find alternations such as the removal locative alternation in §2 (clear the table of dishes/clear the dishes from the table) where the two variants are equivalent. (75) clear locative: a. < DP causer, DPlocation, PPtheme > PROTO-AGENT QUANTIZED QUANTIZED b. < DP causer, DPtheme, PPlocation > PROTO-AGENT QUANTIZED QUANTIZED Other such combinations are also possible. The MAP rules out anything else, however—for example, verbs where the alternating participant has MORE lexical entailments as an oblique than the corresponding object realization, as in 76, or where the contrast is ‘too great’, as in 77. (76) Impossible conative: a. < DP, DP > PROTO-AGENT POTENTIAL b. < DP, PP > PROTO-AGENT NONQUANTIZED (77) Impossible locative: a. < DP causer, DPlocation, PPtheme > PROTO-AGENT QUANTIZED POTENTIAL b. < DP causer, DPtheme, PPlocation > PROTO-AGENT QUANTIZED POTENTIAL In general, anything other than the possible contrasts in 66 is ruled out. Indeed, this gives an independent way to implement Dowty’s ‘weighting’ of lexical entailments, since the one eliminated on this approach is by definition the strongest. Again, nothing predicts WHICH verbs will lexicalize an alternation. Rather, like Dowty and Ackerman and Moore, this analysis predicts what the contrast will look like when it IS lexicalized, ruling out unattested cases by capitalizing on the implicational relationships between lexical entailments. Strength of lexical entailment in turn creates L-thematic roles that automatically form subset hierarchies, redefining implicational hierarchies into sets of entailments so as to fit into Dowty’s framework. Thus the MAP is just a prominencepreservation principle, relating morphosyntactic prominence to semantic prominence, now defined in terms of monotonic strength of truth conditions, a point I discuss in greater detail in §6. However, there is one caveat I discuss here: as a referee points out, the version of the MAP in 69 differs from the informal one in 27 in one crucial respect, namely that it deals in L-thematic roles, that is, general lexical entailments presumed to figure into a theory of argument realization. But this does not preclude the possibility that OTHER lexical entailments may be added to the individual thematic role of the oblique. The referee suggests that this may be possible, giving the following examples. (78) a. The rock cut the paper. b. The rock cut at the paper. The referee suggests that in 78a the paper may or may not be in motion, while in 78b the paper is definitely NOT in motion, meaning something new is entailed of it in the oblique variant, even though its degree of affectedness has been reduced. Regarding 78,
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I am not sure this is the case; I can get a reading where the paper is moving and the rocks are stationary, for example if a breeze blows it over rocky terrain. The example in 79 gets at this reading. (79) He walked through a field of green that soon faded to a black, Vulcan valley of jagged, sharp rock. … The smell of sulfur burned at his nose and the rocks cut at his feet, but he kept on walking.
(http://mtt.just-once.net/fanfiction/viewstory.php?sid=1669&textsize=0&chapter=9)
But the referee’s point is well taken. In the data examined so far obliques seem to carry NO entailments not found in the object variant, and thus we should update the MAP to accommodate this by placing an appropriate constraint on the individual thematic role of the alternating participant, though I maintain 69 for simplicity (Beavers 2006:135–41 discusses the relation of individual and L-thematic roles, which does complicate the statement of the MAP). If indeed other things may hold above and beyond the relevant L-thematic roles, however, 69 as stated accommodates this, and the relevant notion of semantic prominence is the somewhat more narrow one of monotonic strength of a certain class of lexical entailments, namely those that comprise L-thematic roles. I do not discuss this further here. Before examining the MAP as a prominence-preservation principle, I first discuss how this proposal fits into Dowty’s larger approach to transitive verbs. I also discuss further alternations, including additional object/oblique and dative alternations, based on implicational networks other than degree of affectedness, showing how an approach of this sort can be expanded.
5. ADDITIONAL PHENOMENA. 5.1. PROTO-PATIENT AND FURTHER OBJECT/OBLIQUE ALTERNATIONS. I formalized the MAP within Dowty’s theory of lexical meaning and argument realization, although this is not necessary; we could have developed an alternative system that mapped strength of truth conditions directly to morphosyntax. Adopting Dowty’s framework, however, has the advantage of embedding the MAP into an independently established approach to argument realization, where the MAP provides a more restricted constraint on possible object/ oblique alternations than either Dowty’s original approach or Ackerman and Moore’s update. The question does arise of whether the modifications upset any previously captured generalizations. In this section I briefly address this issue, and in the process also examine a case of an object/oblique alternation that is not based on affectedness. Regarding Dowty’s (1991:571–82) analysis of transitive verbs, there is no change to the argument selection principle other than to make it compatible with intransitive dyadic predicates. I have, however, proposed a different set of proto-patient lexical entailments than Dowty, though nothing too deep is to be read into this. If it turns out that one of Dowty’s lexical entailments cannot be reconceived as one of mine, then we can simply add it back into the definition of a proto-patient; it is, after all, just a proto-role. There is, however, a significant correspondence between Dowty’s proto-patient entailments, repeated here, and my own, suggesting that much of his proposal can be accommodated.23
Ackerman and Moore adopt Dowty’s proto-patient lexical entailments, adding only the extra bounding entity entailment (see below). Thus this discussion applies equally well to them. 23
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(80) a. undergoes change of state (Dowty 1991:572, ex. 28) b. incremental theme c. causally affected by another participant d. stationary (relative to movement of another participant) (e. does not exist independently of the event, or not at all) First, 80e is mainly meant to cover creation verbs, though as Dowty himself suggests (p. 573) this could also be analyzed as just a change of state, and thus assimilated under 80a (see also Beavers 2011b). He also sweeps under 80e de dicto nonspecific DPs that do not exist (e.g. lacks enough money); this is not covered by my entailments but could be added back into the proto-patient role. In turn, 80a is the obvious analog of nonquantized change, subsuming any state change. Two entailments in 80 I am less certain of are 80c and 80d. ‘Causally affected’ is motivated solely by the example Smoking causes cancer. I am not sure what is intended here, though it seems to correspond to an object that represents a caused event. This could likely be reduced to a type of creation, which in turn is reducible to (non)quantized change. If not, then it could simply be added back into the proto-role.24 Relative stationariness is intended to encompass dependent motion or being fully stationary in an event. Dependent motion (which may not result in a lasting change of location) can be subsumed under potential change, though stationariness proper corresponds to nothing I have proposed and may have to be added back into the list. There does not appear to be a more direct analog of potential for change. However, Dowty (1991:595–96) notes that on his proposal hit the fence with the stick is technically a violation of the argument selection principle. This is because the object is not affected but the oblique undergoes dependent motion, and thus the instrument has one more proto-patient entailment and by rights should be the object. To account for this, Dowty hypothesizes that there is a change of state of the object as well, giving it also one proto-patient entailment, since many such verbs (e.g. smack, wallop, swat, clobber) typically take human objects, with a goal of inflicting pain. The ‘goal’ of some action in context is a matter of pragmatics, however, and is not encoded in the meaning of the verb (since otherwise it would rule out inanimate objects of hit-type verbs), and thus it cannot explain the argument realization patterns. But if we analyze impact as potential for change as I have proposed, and assuming themes also have potential change by virtue of both impact and dependent motion (as discussed above), the location and theme are now even in proto-patient entailments, predicting that either can be the object (cp. hit the stick against the fence). Thus my approach fills in a gap in Dowty’s. This just leaves 80b, the incremental theme lexical entailment. The prima facie correlate of incremental themehood is quantized change, since they seem to do roughly the same work (cp. my analysis of spray/load alternations vs. Dowty’s in §4.2). But there is evidence to suggest that this is not quite correct, and this comes from a new object/oblique alternation with traversal objects as in 81 (Levin 1993, Wheeler 1996; on Japanese, Kuno 1973:96–101). (81) a. John climbed the stairs. (stairs all traversed) b. John climbed up the stairs. (stairs all or partly traversed) 24 Dowty does later (p. 577) indicate that the traditional notions of ‘patient’ vs. ‘theme’ differ in the causally affected entailment, but without giving examples or without defining those terms in this context. It may be that what is meant is ‘manipulated by a causer’, in which case ‘causally affected’ might be subsumed under potential for change. In general, I am unsure what Dowty means by ‘causally affected’, though it ultimately plays no critical role in his proposal.
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Here the object variant has a reading in which all of the stairs were traversed, but the oblique allows that some but not necessarily all of the stairs are traversed—that is, 81a entails 81b. This is a type of holistic effect, so we might say that the stairs undergo a quantized change. But in fact, the stairs are not affected, as shown by the failure of What happened to X is Y. (82) ??What happened to the stairs is John climbed them. As Beavers 2009a and 2011b argue, however, there is an affected participant here, and that is John: he has undergone change of location, where the object variant represents quantized change and the oblique variant nonquantized change, indicated by the telicity contrast. (83) a. John climbed the stairs (in/?for an hour), #but he is not somewhere else. b. John climbed up the stairs (for/??in an hour), #but he is not somewhere else. So what is the role of the stairs? On the scalar approach, this is simple: it is the path and thus the scale, which I illustrate as in 88 (where end′ picks out the end of a path scale). (84) a. John climbed the stairs. ∃e[climbing1′(j, e) ∧ result′(j, s, end′(s), e)] b. John climbed up the stairs. ∃e[climbing2′(j, e) ∧ ∃g[result′(j, s, g, e)]] Since the alternation is conditioned by how much of the path is necessarily traversed, we thus need to expand proto-patient to take coverage of paths into account. However, although coverage of the path is not itself a type of affectedness, it is the flipside of the degree of affectedness of the theme, which is a relationship between the theme and the scale. Thus we can define the relevant notions using the same relations, but instead abstracting over the scale s as in 89, for theme x in event e described by predicate φ. (These definitions in turn generate an implicational TRAVERSAL HIERARCHY akin to the affectedness hierarchy.) (85) a. s is totally traversed iff φ → [result′(x, s, gφ, e)] b. s is traversed iff φ → ∃g[result′(x, s, g, e)] c. s is potentially traversed iff φ → ◊∃g[result′(x, s, g, e)] d. s is unspecified iff φ → ∃θ [θ(s, e)] The stairs in 84a bear the totally traversed lexical entailment (and by implication all others in 85), while in 84b they bear the traversed entailment (and all weaker ones). But by 84 it is just the presence/absence of total traversal that determines the alternation. I am not aware of any evidence that any other entailment in 85 plays a role in object realization. Thus we have no reason to include them in the proto-patient definition, giving us the definition in 86. (86) a. undergoes a QUANTIZED change b. undergoes a NONQUANTIZED change c. has POTENTIAL for a change d. is TOTALLY TRAVERSED But we now have three lexical entailments having to do with degree of affectedness that are related implicationally, plus one having to do with traversal that is not. A referee asks if this constitutes a step backward. As noted in §3 and above, however, I do not suppose that affectedness is the ONLY factor relevant for objecthood, and we should not be bothered by the fact that proto-patient has a heterogeneous set of entailments. Objects are SUPPOSED to be semantically heterogeneous, hence the introduction of proto-
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patients (cp. Dowty’s own proto-patient). What is important is that we again have a minimal implicational contrast in some set of broad semantic primitives that correlate with argument realization patterns. One issue, though, is that 86 allows the possibility of something that is both affected to some degree AND traversed, that is, an affected path. I suppose it is theoretically possible that a predicate could describe an event where a path changes as a result of the event. But I am not aware of any such predicate, and so I assume that such combinations are ruled out, leaving just the five L-thematic roles in 87 that figure into objecthood (the symbol ∪ is the superset relation ⊃ rotated ninety degrees to indicate that the empty set is a subset of the one above it). (87) {totally traversed} ∪ quantized nonquantized nonquantized ⊃ ⊃ {potential} ⊃ { } potential potential This produces exactly the hierarchies needed for locative/conative and traversal object alternations: the affectedness hierarchy (left-to-right) and the traversal hierarchy (topto-bottom). Returning now to Dowty’s proto-patient, I suggest that total traversal is the real correlate of incremental theme, and indeed its introduction puts this approach in better alignment with Dowty and Ackerman and Moore. Dowty himself distinguishes between incremental theme and what he calls ‘holistic theme’ (1991:569), a counterpart to an incremental theme for entities that change along a scale (Ackerman and Moore’s additional bounding entity entailment is, they suggest, a variant of this idea; see p. 103). This is motivated by data such as John crossed the desert (cp. 84), where the desert is the incremental theme and John is the holistic theme that traverses it. As Beavers 2011b suggests, on a scalar approach to change the analog of the holistic/incremental theme distinction is indeed just the theme/scale distinction, so that totally traversed is the true correlate of incremental theme and quantized change of holistic theme.25 Although Dowty does not add the holistic theme lexical entailment to his proto-role list, if we assume it, we get the rough correspondence between proposals given Table 5.
{
}
DOWTY’S ENTAILMENTS a. incremental theme b. holistic theme c. undergoes change of state
{
}
d. stationary (relative to movement of another participant) e. causally affected by another participant (f. does not exist independently of the event, or not at all
NEW PROPOSED ENTAILMENTS
totally traversed quantized change nonquantized change potential change potential change/? (non)quantized change? (non)quantized change)
TABLE 5. Correspondence between Dowty’s and new proposed entailments.
Thus Dowty’s examples are likely subsumable under 86, perhaps adding back in some of his entailments and/or modifying some of mine. But as noted above, this is an empirical question; what I have added is a more restricted notion of possible argument alternations, whatever the ultimate lexical entailments are. I turn next to yet another extension of this approach, moving not just beyond affectedness but also beyond direct objects. 25 On the Beavers 2009a,b, 2011b,c model, both themes and scales figure into telicity via a three-way homomorphic relation; as noted in §2 I ignore the effect of themes on telicity.
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5.2. DATIVE ALTERNATIONS. In §1 I motivated syntactic reranking of coarguments in direct/oblique alternations with the dative alternation, so the question arises of whether the MAP is applicable here as well. In this section I very briefly outline the argument that it is, though again the alternating participant is not affected in the sense defined above. As noted in §1, indirect objects must be capable of possession, a constraint that does not necessarily hold for the oblique. Thus a goal indirect object—something that in general cannot possess—is infelicitous, except on a reading that it refers to an entity that can, as in 88.26 (Note that actual possession or arrival need not obtain, only the possibility of this; I set this aside for now.) (88) a. Kim mailed/tossed Mary/#London a ball. (only recipient ‘Scotland Yard’ reading) b. Kim mailed/tossed a ball to Mary/London. (goal or recipient reading) As noted in §1, a standard decompositional analysis of 88 is that 88a encodes a caused HAVE event and 88b a caused GO TO event. But why should this correspond to a prominence shift in the goal/recipient argument? I argue that the MAP offers an explanation. Although not all ditransitives show a truth-conditional contrast in the alternation, Beavers 2011a notes that those that do are a subset of those that categorically encode (physical or electronic) motion (e.g. send, mail, ship, throw, toss, flip, slap, kick, poke, fling, shoot, blast, bring, take, email, telegraph, wire, fax). In the to variant, these verbs encode simple arrival of the theme at the goal, while in the indirect-object variant they encode both arrival and also receiving of the theme by the goal/recipient (both of which Beavers argues represent affectedness of the theme, with the goal/recipient defining part of the result state on the scale). (89) a. Kim mailed the letter to Mary/London, #but it never left her hand. b. Kim mailed Mary/#London the letter, #but it never left her hand. In other words, in contentful dative alternations, being a goal is always part of the L-thematic role of the goal/recipient, and the indirect-object variant monotonically adds possession, just as for example in a conative alternation the object variant monotonically strengthens the degree of affectedness over the oblique, all else being equal.27 This strengthening could be thought of as simply a privative contrast in possession, though alternatively, the type of possession involved may be classed as a specific type of alienable possession that can or does arise from co-location with an animate entity, that is, ‘arrival into the possession of’, which of course entails simple arrival. I leave open which analysis is correct, but adopting the latter for convenience, we have the
Thus, unlike object selection, which Dowty (1991) argues is not subject to necessary or sufficient conditions, indirect-object realization ALWAYS requires prospective possession. This in turn precludes a proto-role analysis, which would incorrectly predict that it should be possible to have an indirect object that does not encode recipienthood, just as we have objects that lack all of the proto-patient entailments. This represents another difference between the approach I outline and Ackerman and Moore’s: their paradigmatic argument selection principle crucially relies on relative prototypicality, a notion inapplicable to indirect objects. The MAP relies only on L-thematic roles. Primus (1999:54–55) does posit a proto-recipient role, but on her definition it is indeed always positively defined. 27 This conforms to Pesetsky’s (1995:141) observation that whatever can be expressed by an indirect object can also be expressed by to, but not conversely, so that indirect-object variants describe a subset of the situations to variants do; see also Krifka 2004, Rappaport Hovav & Levin 2008. Harley (2003:41–42) argues against the subset analysis, though see Rappaport Hovav & Levin 2008:150–60 and Beavers & Nishida 2010 for specific rebuttals. Beavers and Nishida also argue for a subset relationship between indirect-object and oblique variants in Spanish, which allows a wider range of obliques in dative/oblique alternations than just goal-markers, and a wider range of semantic contrasts than just those having to do with possession and motion, some of which involve types of affectedness. 26
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L-thematic role hierarchy as in 90, using the label ‘recipient-goal’ and ‘goal’ for the lexical entailments of ‘arrival into the possession of’ and ‘being arrived at’ respectively.28 (90) name: RECIPIENT GOAL recipient-goal role: ⊃ {goal} goal Thus we have a truth-conditional prominence contrast that corresponds to a direct/ oblique contrast, exactly as in object/oblique alternations, albeit again not having to do with affectedness per se. Of course, there are also non-truth-conditional factors at play in dative alternations (as noted in §2), and how such factors play out for verbs that show a contrast is an open question. Furthermore, there are also alternations with for obliques with verbs of creating and obtaining, as in Defarge baked/got Marie a cake vs. Defarge baked/got a cake for Marie, and it is often thought that possession is encoded in the indirect object for these as well (see e.g. Green 1974:98–103, Nishigauchi 1994:228–29, Pinker 1989:113–18, 219–23). Whether a MAP-type contrast arises and what the appropriate analysis is I leave for future work. But in general, the idea that restricted sets of implicationally related lexical entailments figure into prominence preservation can be extended to semantic domains beyond affectedness, and grammatical functions beyond direct objects.
{
}
6. CONCLUSION: PROMINENCE PRESERVATION REVISITED. The contrasts found in direct/oblique alternations are not motivated by event structure. Rather, they have to do with strength of the different truth conditions associated with the realization options. I have shown that, although the alternations I have examined here are semantically distinct— even for different applications of the ‘same’ alternation—the contrasts they encode include basic notions having to do with a handful of general, independently motivated types of meanings, including affectedness, traversal, and possession. The relevant meanings form implicational hierarchies, and the morphosyntactic prominence contrast between direct and oblique realization corresponds to different sorts of semantic prominence contrasts along these hierarchies, resulting in a general but constrained theory of prominence preservation (as outlined in §1). In this article I have discussed several types of object/oblique alternations, and also briefly sketched an argument that this analysis is applicable to dative alternations as well. Space precludes a discussion of subject/oblique alternations, though Beavers (2006:226–34) very tentatively suggests that the same patterns of strength of truth conditions hold for them as well, drawing on data discussed by Dowty (1991) and Ackerman and Moore (1999, 2001). Here the relevant primitives are those having to do with proto-agentivity, including volitional causers vs. causers unspecified for volitionality, coerced vs. permitted causation, and so forth (see also Grimm 2005, 2011 for a related approach to degrees of agentivity that also relies on relationships between lexical entailments and subset relations between sets of lexical entailments). I do point out here, 28 These are not, however, the L-thematic roles for indirect objects and to PPs IN GENERAL; they are just the ones that figure into contentful dative alternations. As noted above, indirect objects more generally encode simple possession, while to variants may encode either simple possession, simple arrival, or both. How to subsumes these two meanings is an open question. At worst, its meaning is simply disjunctive. More ideally, it encodes a single, more general underlying relation that subsumes recipient and goal, for example, the notion of ‘central coincidence’ of Hale and Keyser (2002:202), or a generalized ‘end of path’ notion à la Jackendoff (1990:135–37). At the very least, recipienthood is likely metaphorically derived from goalhood, as suggested by Rappaport Hovav and Levin (2008:141), perhaps by some analogy that possessors (or recipients) are essentially animate locations (or goals) (Aristar 1996).
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however, that among subject/oblique alternations, Ackerman and Moore discuss two putative counterexamples to the MAP. First are Spanish accusative/dative causee alternations, where they argue that the dative bears an additional proto-agent entailment of volitionality not found with the accusative, and second are certain cases of nominative/dative alternations in Slavic and Indo-Aryan languages where they claim the dative argument bears an additional entailment of NONvolitionality over the nominative. Beavers 2006 suggests that in some of these cases the ‘extra’ entailment of the oblique variant may arise by implicature but is not entailed, thus not contradicting the MAP.29 In addition, some nominative/dative alternations discussed by Ackerman and Moore are in fact subject/indirect-object alternations (i.e. direct/direct alternations; see Moore & Perlmutter 2000), in which case they are not in the domain of the MAP. However, considerably more work is needed on this topic. Returning to the larger issue of the mapping of lexical semantics to morphosyntax, although I have said the MAP is a prominence-preservation principle, it is different from the prominence preservation found with event decompositions in two ways, and it is instructive to compare the two approaches to see whether the proposals I have made can still accommodate the same facts that decompositional theories do. First, the notion of semantic prominence encoded in the MAP is one of strength of truth conditions: an argument is more semantically prominent if it has a stronger set of truth conditions associated with it. Unlike decompositional approaches, this has nothing to do with how these truth conditions are represented, but instead with their actual meanings, an independent, empirically justified fact about the variants in any alternation. Part of the appeal of decompositions, however, is that semantic prominence is based on a limited set of basic event primitives and a limited complex event calculus that produces a constrained yet general theory of semantic prominence. This is not lost on the proposal I have outlined: basic, wide-coverage meaning components akin to basic event types may be related to one another implicationally in ways that define a limited notion of truthconditional semantic prominence. For example, the alternations in §2 include as part of their meanings a limited set of independently motivated degrees of affectedness (cp. BECOME) that, by their very definitions, form an implicational affectedness hierarchy that constrains possible semantic prominence contrasts. So we have not lost either generality or a constrained notion of possible alternations, but have captured generalizations that event structures cannot. Second, while in decompositions relative morphosyntactic prominence is computed between coarguments in the same clause, on the MAP it is computed between different realizations of the same argument across clauses. We can thus view the morphosyntactic prominence shifts in direct/oblique alternations not as rerankings of coarguments but simply as a choice about how prominent to make a particular argument relative only to other possible ways of realizing it. While this may be fine for the alternating argument, however, without comparing coarguments can we capture syntactic rerankings such as the c-command asymmetries in locative and dative alternations in §1 that have been a hallmark of decompositional approaches? I believe we can. Suppose the morphosyntactic prominence hierarchies in §1 exist INDEPENDENTLY of semantics, as ways of telling arguments apart (as in e.g. Silverstein 1976, Aissen 2003, inter alia). This is often assumed for structural case, and we could assume the same for 29 Grimm (2005:71, n. 3) makes a similar point in his analysis of the Hindi dative, which he says does not technically encode nonvolitionality, although it may take on that meaning in contrast with other cases that expressly encode volitionality.
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other coding properties, including grammatical functions and even c-command. Given this, I argue that coargument reranking such as c-command asymmetries can arise EVEN THOUGH direct/oblique alternations technically affect only one argument. Consider the ccommand hierarchy SU > IO > DO > OBL (see e.g. Pesetsky 1995:160–63). A conative alternation is an alternation between DO and OBL positions on this hierarchy, but this does not affect its position relative to any other arguments, there being none between those two positions. But a dative alternation is an alternation between IO and OBL positions, over the nonalternating DO position. This means the recipient changes its relative c-command relationship with the theme despite being the only argument alternating. Finally, a locative alternation involves two arguments undergoing two DO/OBL shifts. But there is only one DO in English; thus one argument always outranks the other. For each alternation, the agent is always SU and thus always c-commands the other arguments. These possibilities are summarized in 91. CONATIVE b. DATIVE c. LOCATIVE (91) a. (no coargument) (fixed coargument) (variable coargument) agent theme agent theme agent theme SU > IO > DO > OBL
SU > IO > DO > OBL
SU > IO > DO > OBL
recipient location Thus, syntactic reranking of coarguments does not necessitate their semantic reranking. Rather, it reflects the interaction of prominence preservation à la the MAP with independent levels of syntax. In sum, the MAP is a prominence-preservation principle, defined in terms of semantic and morphosyntactic prominence that are distinct from those in event structures, but no less general and no less predictable. Although I have above rejected event structure as explanatory for the alternations I have examined, some event structure may still be relevant for argument realization. For example, as Davis (2001:61–73) suggests, causation has a more categorical effect on argument realization: causers always outrank all other arguments, especially in nominative/accusative languages, and are temporally and causally the most prior arguments (Croft 1990, 1991, 1998). This is particularly striking in languages with derived causatives, where the added causer ALWAYS outranks every other participant, regardless of the underlying semantics. This is shown in 92 for Finnish, where an intransitive verb for ‘talk’ is causativized. In Finnish, as in all other languages I am aware of, the added causer is always the subject.30 (92) Uutinen puhu-tt-i nais-i-a pitkään. news.item talk-CAUS-PAST woman-PL-PART long.ILL ‘The news made the woman talk for a long time.’ (Davis 2001:69, ex. 60) Davis, in a critique of Dowty’s proto-role proposal, notes that in 92 the causer has the causation lexical entailment, but the causee is presumably both volitional and sentient and therefore has two proto-agent entailments to the causer’s one, predicting it should be the subject. Yet somehow, being the first causer outranks any proto-agent entailments other arguments may have.31 This suggests that decompositions of at least the The following abbreviations are used: CAUS: cause, PL: plural, PART: partitive, ILL: illative. There may, however, be ways of capturing this in a lexical entailment-based theory, if we assume that causal structure contributes more lexical entailments to more causally prior arguments (see Beavers 2006:25–28 for discussion). 30 31
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form [φ CAUSE ψ] may well be motivated.32 Indeed, the data discussed so far has focused on what happens below CAUSE; that is, in decompositional terms object/oblique and dative alternations are about the internal structure of ψ (and subject/oblique alternations would be about the internal structure of φ). Thus we can say that the MAP fills in a gap in explanation where subevent structure fails, namely what happens below CAUSE in [φ CAUSE ψ]. Conversely, causal decomposition fills a gap in the model presented here: it makes predictions about causer/noncauser (i.e. subject vs. nonsubject) asymmetries. The upshot of both approaches is summarized as in 93. (93) SEMANTICS MORPHOSYNTAX Decompositions: gross causal/temporal structure subject/nonsubject asymmetries MAP: fine-grained lexical entailments direct/oblique alternations In this way we can overlay the two types, filling in gaps in the application of the other. A final question is why weakening of truth conditions is the relevant relationship between lexical entailments. Why not some other relation (e.g. negation)? Here the answer is more of a mystery, but there is a possible functional explanation. For a predicate φ that describes an event e, there is only one way for a participant x to conform to the role A φ assigns to it, namely for x to bear all of the lexical entailments in A. There are, however, an infinite number of ways x could deviate from A: some lexical entailments could fail to obtain, the truth of some entailments could be unknown even if they do obtain, and any number of new entailments could stand in the place of those that do not obtain. Thus, conformity to A vs. deviation from A is a one-to-many relation. Economically speaking, though, it is much simpler to encode deviation from A as a binary contrast: conform to A vs. not conform to A. The only way to do this is weakening the truth conditions: for nonconformity, certain lexical entailments that may not obtain in e are simply left unspecified, and context fills in exactly why they do not obtain (if they indeed do not; this strategy could also be employed to conceal whether the lexical entailments obtained). Assuming that conforming to A receives the less marked realization (direct argument) and nonconformity to A receives the more marked realization (oblique), we have a simple alignment of markedness to canonicality. (94) DIRECT ARGUMENTS OBLIQUES Semantics: conformity nonconformity (of any type) Realization: less marked more marked Of course, this does not explain why we see MINIMAL implicational contrasts. But it does provide an intuitive reason why we see the patterns we do: implicational contrasts provide a simple, binary way to encode a conformity vs. nonconformity to a canonical role in an event. Nonetheless, to the degree to which an analysis of the sort presented here is motivated for direct/oblique alternations, then we see a very general pattern in a specific domain of argument realization facts that does not follow from event structure. Crucial in this is that the lexical semantics of a verb consists at least partly in a network of lexical entailments of varying degrees of specificity that figure into significant generalizations about argument realization. Such lexical entailments may stand in implicational hierarchies, and these hierarchies define a type of semantic prominence that does some of the 32 Recall that the causer/patient asymmetry, that is, the proto-agent/patient asymmetry, is stipulated in the argument selection principle, though ideally it should follow from something else.
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[Received 9 May 2008; revision invited 6 November 2009; revision received 9 February 2010; accepted 19 May 2010]
