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Title:
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Radical Decomposition and Argument Structure
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Author:
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Patrycja Jablonska
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Email:
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Degree Awarded:
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University of Tromsø
, Department of Linguistics
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Degree Date:
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2007
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Linguistic Subfield(s):
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Morphology
Syntax
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Director(s):
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Tarald Taraldsen
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Abstract:
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The thesis is an attempt to arrive at the cartography of the low
thematic domain of the clause using data from various argument structure
constructions in Polish. It assumes the existence of a universal
functional sequence (cf. Cinque (1999)) and the theory of morphology
where morphemes are lexically specified to spell out chunks of the
universal sequence. Furthermore, functional vocabulary items are flexible
in the sense that they can be inserted for different subsets of their
lexical specification.
Part I deals with Polish conjugation class markers (so-called 'Themes'),
where a typology of the latter is proposed: high Themes spell out a
superset of the featural hierarchy spelled out by low Themes. Two domains
sensitive to the type of Theme are discussed: (i) verbs displaying the
reflexive clitic (i.e. reflexive, anticausative, prefix-induced, and
Reflexiva Tantum) and (ii) the Impersonal construction in -NO/TO. The
conclusion is that bare stem inchoatives (i.e. Polish low Theme stems or
inchoatives in causativizing languages) should not be equated with
anticausatives. More generally, the notion 'split intransitivity' should be
deconstructed, given a very fine-grained universal sequence.
Part II focuses on another type of functional vocabulary items, so-called
Event Separators (ES) - morphology occurring in various participial
constructions, as well as nominalizations. The main tenet is that the
constant negotiation of spell out options between two items with
overlapping lexical specification (i.e. Theme and ES) results in a typology
of participial and nominalizing constructions. Furthermore, an analysis of
Impersonal -NO/TO is advanced, where an analogy to Germanic/Romance Perfect
Tense is drawn.
The specific algorithm of mapping assumed to hold between the
verbal and nominal functional sequence derives semantic restrictions
on external arguments (i.e. features on Silverstein's Hierarchy,
e.g. animate, human, pronoun, etc.), as well as different degrees of
'subjecthood'.
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