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Functional relations in the English auxiliary system

Functional relations in the English auxiliary system. by Yehuda N. Falk presented by Rachel Nye. Contents. Auxiliaries: the issue Supportive DO Perfective HAVE Progressive BE and passive BE The modals Falk’s conclusions Final remarks. 1. Auxiliaries: the issue.

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Functional relations in the English auxiliary system

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  1. Functional relations in the English auxiliary system by Yehuda N. Falk presented by Rachel Nye

  2. Contents • Auxiliaries: the issue • Supportive DO • Perfective HAVE • Progressive BE and passive BE • The modals • Falk’s conclusions • Final remarks

  3. 1. Auxiliaries: the issue “There are two main ways to analyze auxiliaries. On the one hand, an auxiliary can be treated as a special type of raising verb, which has two arguments, a SUBJ and an XCOMP…On the other hand, auxiliaries can simply be considered as feature carrying elements, which contribute tense/aspect or voice information to the clause, but which do not have a PRED value or subcategorization frame.” (A Grammar Writer’s Cookbook (1999: 60-61) Butt, King, Niño and Segond)

  4. Falk illustrates these two possibilities for the functional relation between auxiliaries and the verbal elements which follow them with this example:- • (1) a. The children will take syntax. • b. will is the head of the sentence, and [take syntax] is a • complement of will [aux-predicate] • c. take is the head of the sentence, and will is a ‘‘modifier’’ or morphological marker expressing/realizing future tense [aux-feature] • (2) a. aux-predicate (2) b. aux-feature

  5. Falk claims that most LFG accounts choose either the aux-predicate or the aux-feature analysis for all auxiliaries. • Whilst this is perhaps something of an over-simplification, it is certainly true that even for those accounts which do distinguish aux-predicate from aux-feature, the division is no more fine-grained than modal vs. non-modal auxiliaries (see Table 1). • - Falk, however, argues that each auxiliary must be considered individually to determine whether it is of the type aux-predicate or aux-feature.

  6. Table 1: An overview of LFG approaches to auxiliaries

  7. 2. Supportive DO (aux-feature) (3) a. The children took syntax b. The children did take syntax. (4) (5) a. did: TENSE = PAST b. take: PRED = ‘take <SUBJ, OBJ> c. took: PRED = ‘take <SUBJ, OBJ> TENSE = PAST

  8. -The use of the synthetic form (3) a. over the analytic form (3) b. is, according to Falk, a simple reflex of ‘the Economy of Expression Principle, which…prefers morphological expression to syntactic expression’. -As such, ‘There is no reason to think that DO itself has a focusing function, or that the emphasis facts are a “theoretically central issue” which must be expressed as a lexical property of DO.’

  9. -Falk (1984) concludes that DO is a feature-carrier, not a predicate ‘on the basis of co-occurrence restrictions’ use to (6) TENSE =c PAST [i.e., the clause in which used to appears must have the past tense feature] (7) a. The children used to take syntax. b. The children did not/so use to take syntax. c. Did the children use to take syntax? - did in (7) b. and (7) c. plays the same role that the past tense suffix –d plays in (7) a - i.e. a morphological feature-carrier. -If it were a separate PRED, then the condition in (6) would not be met.

  10. 3. Perfective HAVE (aux-feature) • ‘[perfective] HAVE provides two features, a tense feature and an aspectual feature. The past participle form, on the other hand, provides the verb’s predicate but no tense or aspectual information.’ (8) have TENSE = PAST ASP = PERF (9) a. The children have taken syntax. (9) b.

  11. Evidence that have is the (aspect) feature carrier:- • The participle is not sufficient for the perfective aspect • (10) a. Anyone taking syntax [=anyone who is taking syntax] should • have his head examined. [present participle] • b. Any subject taken by the children [=any subject which is • taken by the children] is boring. [passive participle] • c. *Anyone taken syntax [=anyone who has taken syntax] • should have his head examined. [past participle] • (ii) And it isn’t even always necessary • (11) A: (Taking orders for lunch.) Who eats falafel? • B: Well, I have in the past, but I really don’t want any now.

  12. There are also co-occurrence restrictions (parallel to the situation with DO and used to) • better • (12) PRED = ‘better <XCOMP> SUBJ’ • TENSE =cPAST • ASP =cPERF • The children had better take syntax. • - If HAVE had a predicate, the constraints in (12) would not be met.

  13. (14) If the verb has a c-structure complement, it belongs to the category VP[part]. • The constraint in (14), which Falk suggests forms part of the lexical entry of forms of HAVE, ensures that when perfective HAVE selects a complement, this complement takes the form of a past participle.

  14. 4. Progressive BE (aux-predicate) and passive BE (aux-feature?) -Progressive BE is often grouped together with perfective HAVE, but Falk suggests that there are reasons to believe this is misguided:- (15) a. The children were taking syntax. b. The children started taking syntax. c. The children kept taking syntax. d. The children stopped taking syntax. (16) a. The children were in the state of taking syntax. b. The children entered the state of taking syntax. c. The children continued in the state of taking syntax. d. The children left the state of taking syntax. ‘It is the participial complement which is progressive in these examples, the governing verbs specify the relationship between the subject and the progressive state’.

  15. Thus it is the participle and not progressive BE which is specified as:- (17) ASP = PROG The f-structures for (15) a. The children were taking syntax and (15) b. The children started taking syntax are thus very similar, as represented below in (18)a. and (18)b. respectively:- (18)a. (18)b. Progressive BE is no different to main verb BE, which also expresses a state. It can even be co-ordinated with other uses of BE.

  16. Evidence in favour of a bi-clausal analysis of progressive BE:- • The participle complement of BE as well as verbs such as START, KEEP can be replaced by a PP predicative complement: • (19) a. John kept Bill running/at a run. • b. Moe went on working/with his work. • c. Rodgers is working/at work on a new play. • (ii) It is possible to have distinct modifiers for each of the clauses: • (20) Today, the workman is coming tomorrow (but tomorrow that may change). • The f-structures in (21) a. and (21) b., showing an aux-predicate and an aux-feature analysis respectively make clear why the former is necessary. • (21) a. (21) b.

  17. This analysis of progressive BE also accounts for the word order restrictions shown in (22) a. and b. :- (22) a. The children have been taking syntax. b. *The children are having taken syntax. The f-structure for (22) a. is well-formed, as shown in (23) a. In contrast, the f-structure in (23) b. is ill-formed because the present participle having specifies two conflicting values for the feature ASP – PERF as it is a form of HAVE, and PROG because it is a present participle form, as (23) b. shows. (23) a. well-formed (23) b. ill-formed

  18. Passive BE • Unclear whether it should be analysed as aux-predicate or aux-feature. • Passive BE should be treated as a separate predicate just as passive GET (presumably) is? • But ‘this putative predicate seems impossible to isolate’ – cannot be modified separately, doesn’t have a ‘be in state’ reading and can’t be co-ordinated with other complements of BE. • Hence passive BE may just be a way to provide tense. • Falk states that more research is needed before the status of passive BE can be confirmed, but argues that the current state of the evidence favours an aux-feature analysis.

  19. 5. The modals • WILL and WOULD (aux-feature) (24) a. The children did take syntax. (past tense) b. The children do take syntax. (present tense) c. The children will take syntax. (future tense) d. The children would take syntax. (conditional tense) - WILL and WOULD are simply tense carriers. - Falk claims that there is evidence for the aux-feature status of WOULD from co-occurrence restrictions similar to those discussed for DO and HAVE:- (25) a. The children would rather take syntax. b. I would rather the children take syntax. c. rather PRED = ‘rather <SUBJ, COMP> TENSE =c CONDIT

  20. Other modals (aux-predicate) • (26) The children may take syntax. • a. ≈ It is possible that the children will take syntax. (epistemic) POSSIBILITY • b. ≈ The children are permitted to take syntax. • (root) PERMISSION • The fact that the modal can be paraphrased with the predicates possible and permitted, suggests that an aux-predicate analysis for the modal itself is plausible.

  21. - Stronger evidence for a predicate analysis comes from the fact that in the root usage, the modal places selectional restrictions on its subject which is a thematic argument of the modal. (27) below, with a pleonastic subject, can only have an epistemic reading:- • (27) There may be children taking syntax. (≈ It is possible that there are children taking syntax.) • Modals such as DARE, which have only a root use, cannot occur with pleonastic subjects:- • (28) a. The children dare not take syntax. • b. *There dare not be any children taking syntax.

  22. For the modals analysed as aux-predicate (i.e. all those besides WILL and WOULD), root modals are taken to be equi (control) predicates, whilst epistemic modals are raising predicates. • The f-structures corresponding to the two readings of (26) The children may take syntax are given below in (29) a. and b:- • (29) a. (29) b.

  23. Falk admits, ‘For the epistemic modals, the argument for an aux-predicate analysis is weaker, since there is no relation of selection between the modal and the subject’. • Nevertheless, there is some evidence which inclines one to such a view:- • (i) Separate modification of the two clauses is acceptable for some speakers • (30) ??Today, the repairman may come tomorrow (but tomorrow that • may change). • (ii) Adverbials can modify the verb or the modal, as the differences in grammaticality/interpretation below show • (31) a. *Tabs never may be kept on syntax students. • b. Tabs may never be kept on syntax students. • (32) a. Tabs never should be kept on syntax students. • (≈There is never an obligation.) • b. Tabs should never be kept on syntax students. • (≈There is an obligation to never keep tabs on them.)

  24. Epistemic modals • - There is at least some weak evidence in favour of an aux-predicate analysis even for epistemic modals. • No positive arguments in favour of the alternative aux-feature analysis e.g. no co-occurrence restrictions. • Root modals • - Must be aux-predicate. • There is no alternative analysis possible for root modals, given that they thematically select their subjects. • So even if an aux-feature analysis is later found to be preferable for epistemic modals, this will not influence the status of root modals.

  25. 6. Falk’s conclusions • There is no single analysis that covers all auxiliaries. • Some must be aux-feature whilst others are aux-predicate. • Most other accounts (wrongly) assume one analysis across the board for all auxiliaries. • LFG, with the distinct levels of c-structure and f-structure, is particularly well-suited to capturing the functional diversity of auxiliaries, despite their similarities in constituency.

  26. 7. Final remarks • Falk includes quite a lot of data from other languages, which I haven’t discussed here. Despite explicitly stating that analysis of an auxiliary as aux-predicate or aux-feature in another language does not entail anything about the correct analysis for English, I find it hard to believe he would include it if he didn’t think it strengthened his case. • His dismissal of (potential) differences in the use of auxiliaries in dialects other than his own (at least some of which are dismissed as “substandard varieties”) seems unhelpful, and somewhat surprising, given that his goal is to give a finer-grained analysis of the auxiliaries than other accounts have offered.

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