LINGUIST List 13.1931

Wed Jul 17 2002

Books: Morphology:Introducing Arguments,L.Pylkkanen

Editor for this issue: Dina Kapetangianni <dinalinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Ora Matushansky, Morphology - Introducing Arguments, MIT PhD thesis 2002

Morphology
MIT PhD thesis 2002

Liina Pylkk�nen: Introducing Arguments
$12. For ordering information, visit our Web page:
http://mit.edu/mitwpl/

Abstract

Verbal arguments can be divided into two different types: those that
are true arguments of the verb and those that are "additional" in the
sense that there is evidence that they do not belong to the basic
argument structure of the verb. Theories of argument structure are
largely theories about how these additional arguments are introduced,
but at present few such theories propose explicit mechanisms for
deriving cross-linguistic variation in argument expression. This
thesis develops a tightly constrained universal system of functional
units and argues that cross-linguistic variation arises either from
differences in the inventory of units that a language selects for or
from the way a language groups the universal units into syntactic
heads. The core system consists of three different types of causative
heads, two different types of applicative heads and the external
argument introducing head Voice (Kratzer 1994). The thesis shows that
the properties of applicative constructions are such that they can
only be predicted by a theory in which the external argument is also
"additional", i.e. not a true argument of the verb. 

Ora Matushansky

http://www.mit.edu/people/matushan/home.html