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Dissertation Information
| Title: | The Syntax of Non-verbal Causation: The causative apomorphy of 'from' in Greek and Germanic languages | Add Dissertation |
| Author: | Alexandra Ioannidou | Update Dissertation |
| Email: | click here to access email | |
| Institution: | CUNY Graduate Center, Linguistics | |
| Completed in: | 2012 | |
| Linguistic Subfield(s): | Semantics; Syntax; | |
| Language Family(ies): |
Germanic |
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| Director(s): |
Marcel den Dikken William McClure Christina Tortora Thomas Leu |
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| Abstract: | This is a study of the meaning and syntax of non-(lexical)verbal causation. Macroscopically, it examines the preposition 'from' as attested in contexts like 'X is/comes from Y'. Syntactic diagnostics are applied to formally distinguish the causative from the spatial interpretations of 'from'-PPs in Greek, English, Dutch, and German. The syntactic landscape of causative 'from' will turn out to be very minimal with 'from' directly selecting the Cause-DP, in contradistinction to its spatial counterpart, where 'from' always selects for another PP layer. More microscopically then I focus on the causative interpretations only, which are particularly revealing because (i) they give an in-depth view of CAUSE, stripped of all verbal layers⎯traditionally considered the locus of CAUSE⎯suggesting that the source of causation in non-(lexical)verbal environments has to be the preposition per se and (ii) they single-handedly provide a rudimentary structure for causation, where 'from' introduces the Cause in its complement and is predicated of the Causee. Finally, with a basic predicational structure in place, I offer a detailed cross-linguistic account for the syntactic mechanism that forces the use of particle verbs in causative 'from'-less environments. |
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