September 26, 2007

1. September 26, 2007 11-721: Grammars and Lexicons Lori Levin

2. Behavioral Properties of Objects • Passive voice • Object creating rules • Dative shift • Applicatives

3. Passive Voice • See handout on passives in several languages. • Assume for a moment that Passivization is a transformation • A meaning-preserving tree-to-tree mapping • Describe the Passive transformation for each language on the handout. • If the transformations are so different, why do we call them all passives? • What do they have in common?

4. Passive as a lexical rule • Morphology (word formation) • Rules for making new words out of old words by adding affixes and making other changes. • English Passive: make a past participle out of a verb • Lexical Mapping • Find the role that links to OBJ for the active verb. Link that role to SUBJ. • Find the role that links to SUBJ for the active verb. Link that role to OBL.

5. VP VP V NP V PP OBJ OBL How to understand an English Sentence [s [np Sue] [vp was interviewed [np by Sam ]]] constituent str. SUBJ PRED OBL grammatical rlns. patient interview agent semantic roles interview< agent patient > lexical mapping OBL SUBJ Encoding of Gml. Rlns. For English!!! S NP SUBJ

6. VP VP V NP V PP OBJ OBL How to understand an English Sentence [s [np Sam] [vp interviewed [np Sue ]]] constituent structure SUBJ PRED OBJ grammatical rlns. agent interview patient semantic roles interview< agent patient > lexical mapping SUBJ OBJ Encoding of Gml. Rlns. For English!!! S NP SUBJ

7. What about all the other stuff? • Why does the patient come before the verb in an English passive?

8. What about the other stuff? • Why is an auxiliary verb inserted? • English sentences must contain a tensed verb. Participles are not tensed. • Tensed verbs are present or past in English • He walks. • He walked. • She is smart. • She was smart. • You can use a passive in a context that does not require a tensed verb: • Admired by her friends, Sue had no reason to be worry. • Passive verb phrases can occur as complements to other verbs: • The car needs washed. • He got arrested by the police. • We had them arrested by the police.

9. Functions of Passives • Discourse focus on a participant other than the subject. • Make the sentence impersonal • unidentified agent • Syntactic need for something other than the agent to be the subject. • See discussion of Malagasy, coming in a week or two. • Other • Express adversity in Japanese.

10. Object Creating Rules • Dative shift • Applicatives

11. Behavioral Test for Object • The semantic role that is encoded as object in the active sentence takes the encoding of subject in the passive sentence.

12. English Dative Shift • Which noun phrase passes the test for objecthood? • The teacher gave some books to the students. • Some books were given to the students (by the teacher). • The teacher gave the students some books. • The students were given some books (by the teacher).

13. Dative Shift and Passive Give< agent theme goal > SUBJ OBJ OBL Give< agent theme goal > SUBJ OBJ2 OBJ Give< agent theme goal > OBL SUBJ OBL Give< agent theme goal > OBL OBJ2 SUBJ

14. Other alternations in English • The committee awarded the prize to Sue. • The committee awarded her the prize. • Sam sprayed the wall with paint. • Sam sprayed paint on the wall. • Sam loaded the truck with hay. • Sam loaded hay onto the truck.

15. Applicative Constructions • Morphology: • An affix is added to the verb. • Lexical mapping • A recipient, benefactive, locative, or instrumental is linked to OBJ • The role that was linked to OBJ for the non applicative verb is linked to OBJ2 (usually).

16. Applicative Constructions in Chichewa • See handout from Kroeger’s book.