Summary Details
| Query: |
Cognate Objects/Unaccusatives
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| Author: | Andrew McIntyre | |
| Submitter Email: | click here to access email | |
| Linguistic LingField(s): |
General Linguistics
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| Summary: |
Dear linguists,
this summarises the responses to a query (Linguist 14.697) I sent a while ago about the occurrence of cognate objects with unaccusative verbs. The following people are thanked for answering: Werner Abraham, Nino Amiridze, Martin Haiden, Jaume Mateu, Ora Matushanksy, Thomas McFadden, Asja Pereltswaig, Natalya Serdobolskaya, Anja Wanner A couple of apologies: the summary will be long because I found it hard to condense some of the replies in a fair way. I did not summarise every response because some points are duplicated in other replies or in the cited literature. ***** Asya Pereltswaig, who has worked on matters directly bearing on the query, made the following observations: ''Essentially, the normal assumption that cognate objects are impossible with unaccusatives is correct with two notable exceptions (which you've predicted in your message): 1) Some languages (e.g., Russian, Hebrew) allow a different type of ''cognate objects'' (which, as I have argued, are neither really objects, nor cognate in any syntactically interesting way). These ''quasi-cognate objects'' exhibit a number of non-object-like properties (catalogued in my WCCFL and CJL papers [see below, A.M.]). Where morphological case is available (as in Russian) they are non-accusative (e.g., instrumental in Russian). 2) Even languages like English and French, which normally do not allow cognate objects with unaccusatives (perhaps, German is like that too), allow cognate objects with some ''unaccusative'' verbs, DIE being one of the most common ones cross-linguistically. GO, which you have in the second example, may also turn out to be really an unergative verb. Talke Macfarland has a whole chapter in her dissertation on why DIE allows cognate objects and whether it is really unaccusative'' The literature cited by Asya was: -Macfarland, Talke (1995) Cognate Objects and the Argument/Adjunct Distinction in English. Ph.D. dissertation, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois. Finally, I've found examples of cognate objects with causativized verbs in Hebrew and Russian (see my papers).'' -Pereltsvaig, Asya (1999) Two Classes of Cognate Objects. In Kimary Shahin, Susan Blake, and Eun-Sook Kim (eds.) The Proceedings of the WCCFL XVII. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications. Pp. 537-551.20 -Pereltsvaig, Asya (1999) Cognate Objects in Russian: Is the Notion ''Cognate'' Relevant for Syntax? Canadian Journal of Linguistics 44(3):267-291. -Pereltsvaig, Asya (2002) Cognate objects in Modern and Biblical Hebrew. In Jamal Ouhalla and Ur Shlonsky (eds.) Themes in Arabic and Hebrew Syntax. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Pp. 107-136. www.hum.uit.no/a/pereltsvaig/home_page.htm ***** Martin Haiden, who is writing an article dealing with German cognate objects, makes the following points: -Tanya Reinhart has work suggesting that some unaccusativity diagnostics are sensitive to argument reduction rather than to unaccusativity; if this applies to the verbs at hand, the paradox with cognate objects is only apparent. This work can be downloaded: www.tau.ac.il/~reinhart/ling_dl/download.htm -The verbs taking cognate objects (and path and vehicle objects) tend to have volitional subjects. This suggests that they are agents, giving us grounds for querying whether we are dealing with unaccusative (variants of) verbs. ***** Thomas McFadden notes that (older) German also exhibits genitive-marked cognate objects with ''die'' like (1), attestable by web search. This could be part of a more general diachronic tendency in which the formerly more common verb-selected genitives been dying a slow death, dwindling down to about half a dozen memorised relics. (The claim is not that this predicts the constructions to exist, since with the demise of the genitive, we might a priori have expected a blanket ban on cognate objects with this verb, rather than an accusative object.) (1) sie sind eines elenden Todes gestorben they are a miserable death(GENITIVE) died ***** Nino Amiridze noted that the constructions I alluded to in the original query are possible in Georgian. For example: (2) igi sashinel-i sikvdil-it mo-kvd-a (s)he.NOM horrible-NOM death-INSTR PREVERB-die-S3.SG(3D(s)he.died)) ''(S)he died a horrible death'' (4) man igi sashinel-i sikvdil-it mo-0-kl-a (s)he.ERG (s)he.NOM horrible-NOM death-INSTRPREVERB-DO3-kill-S3.SG(3D(s)he.killed.him/her) ''(S)he killed him/her a horrible death'' ***** Jaume Mateu wrote: I remember that for example ''morire una bella morte'' (to die a wonderful death) is an example attested in Italian, but you can't say ''*Gianni ? morto una bella morte'' (Gianni IS died a wonderful death) nor ''*Gianni ha morto una bella morte'' (Gianni HAS died a wonderful death). I think that those defectivity effects are described in the Grande Grammatica Italiana di Consultazione by Renzi et al. Take a look at this Italian grammar. ***** Werner Abraham wrote: ''There is no good reason against, and there are only good reasons for, the occurrence of cognate objects with unaccusative verbs, at least in Ls where the uV can reliably be identified. In English, this is not the case. In German they are always perfectives, and with perfectives (irrespective of whether they are intransitives or transitives), the end of the resultative may very well be expressed by a nominal or PP (if the semantics allows that). Please see my paper: Abraham, W. 1999. ''The aspect-case typology correlation: perfectivity triggering (split) ergativity. Burzio's generalization explained.'' In E. Reuland (hg.) Arguments and case: explaining Burzio's Generalization. Amsterdam: J. Benjamins, 129-190. All writings on unaccusativity in English blur the issue a lot because there is nothing that makes unaccusativity clearly and intuitively identifiable, while it is in German. I argued in this paper that this is due to the lack of perfective morphology in English.'' *********************** Dr. Andrew McIntyre Universitaet Leipzig www.uni-leipzig.de/~angling/mcintyre |
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| LL Issue: | 14.960 | |
| Date Posted: | 01-Apr-2003 | |
| Original Query: | Read original query | |
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