"Buenos dias", "buenas noches" -- this was the first words in a foreign language I heard in my life, as a three-year old boy growing up in developing post-war Western Germany, where the first gastarbeiters had arrived from Spain. Fascinated by the strange sounds, I tried to get to know some more languages, the only opportunity being TV courses of English and French -- there was no foreign language education for pre-teen school children in Germany yet in those days. Read more
To find some answers Tim Machan explores the language's present and past, and looks ahead to its futures among the one and a half billion people who speak it. His search is fascinating and important, for definitions of English have influenced education and law in many countries and helped shape the identities of those who live in them.
This volume provides a new perspective on the evolution of the special language of medicine, based on the electronic corpus of Early Modern English Medical Texts, containing over two million words of medical writing from 1500 to 1700.
Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2005 00:49:10 +0400 From: Pavel Grashchenkov <gra-paul@mtu-net.ru> Subject: Argument and Structure: Studies on the Architecture of the Sentence
AUTHOR: Hoekstra, Teun EDITORS: Sybesma, Rint; Barbiers, Sjef; Doetjes, Jenny; Den Dikken, Marcel; Postma, Gertjan; Wyngaerd, Guido Vanden TITLE: Arguments and Structure SUBTITLE: Studies on the Architecture of the Sentence SERIES: Studies in Generative Grammar 67 PUBLISHER: Mouton de Gruyter YEAR: 2004
Pavel Grashchenkov, PhD student, Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics, Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia.
INTRODUCTION
The book under review is a collection of papers by one of the leading European generative linguists of the last several decades, Teun Hoekstra (1953-1998). The volume aims to acquaint the reader with Hoekstra's views on a very wide area of grammatical phenomena. The book consists of four parts: "Argument Structure", "T-chains", "The morphosyntax of verbal and nominal projections", "Small Clauses" and contains fourteen articles attributed to the last twenty years of Teun Hoekstra's life and work. Most of these articles have not been published previously.
SYNOPSIS
Part I. Argument structure
Possession and Transitivity This article considers syntax and semantics of verbs HAVE and BE. Following Kayne (1994), Teun Hoekstra supposes that HAVE is derived from BE via incorporation ("Benveniste hypothesis"). All the instances of BE (copula, equative, passive, progressive, existential, main verb) may have the same underlying structure. The main reason to use BE in all this cases is that inflectional information can not be expressed on the complement XP (X Phrase). According to Hoekstra, Agr(eement) head is an inclusion operator. Agr is also present in BE-copula sentences, so that the whole complement of BE constitutes a small clause (SC): (1) Agr ... (BE / HAVE) [Spec F [SC [DP] Agr [PP] ]], Where F is some Tense-like head
Then both (2.a) and (2.b) may be derived by movement of subject DP or XP complement of SC to the main clause subject position due to specificity. (2) a. John was the cause of all the trouble. b. The cause of all the trouble was John.
HAVE is treated as a semantic and syntactic inverse of BE. Languages have either BE or HAVE possessive constructions. In case of BE constructions, found, for instance, in eastern Dutch, we have the locative inversion like in (2) above. Dative here is an underlying PP adjunct in SC. (3) Hem zijn de handen vies him are the hands dirty
In HAVE languages underlying structure is the same as in (1), but PP first moves to Spec-F position, where the prepositional element incorporates to BE (resulting in HAVE) and then the "residual DP" (possessor) moves to the matrix subject position. SC subject (possessum) moves to the Agr-O(bject) associated with HAVE.
The accusativity pattern, either in auxiliary or in possessive sentences, is due to the possibility of HAVE to license Agr-O. BE can not license Agr- O (and accusative) hence both in passives and in possessive sentences with BE one finds no accusative.
In addition to constructions with BE and HAVE as main verbs, some other constructions are at issue: copula use of both verbs, possessive DPs, modal sentences with nominative (English) and dative (Hungarian), ditransitive verbs. The resulting structure allows to build a unifying account of BE and HAVE in different types of constructions.
The Indirect Object: Its Status and Place This paper was written in 1978 and was executed in transformational terms. It considers contemporary approaches to ditransitive clauses, its word order and argument marking. The analyses at issue was implemented by quite technical rules (deletion of prepositions and reordering of remaining NPs). These approaches, however, faced with some problems. First, as is argued by Hoekstra, indirect objects are both semantically and syntactically less close to V (and are generated under V'' and V' correspondingly, against Jackendoff's proposal). This contradicts the fact that indirect object NP can bind an anaphor in DO (direct object). Another problem with binding is that indirect objects PPs may bind DOs: (4) Ik geef aan de kinderen elkaars tekeningen I give to the children each others' drawing 'I give to the children each others' drawing.'
One of the main problems for analysis of IO is its prepositional realization that must be an obstacle to the binding of DO by IO antecedent "through" the preposition (and is not in fact).
Examining causative constructions, Hoekstra considers bisentential analysis for these predications. Here we are faced with another problem: Dutch (as opposed to French) does not always codes subjects of transitive "internal" predications as IOs (indirect objects), but sometimes makes use of DOs. The choice here depends on lexical properties of the verb in subordinate clause. Thus, a problem of the distribution of (in)direct objects in causatives arises.
To explain all these facts, Hoekstra adopted bisentential analysis in spirit of Lexical Decomposition. He suggests that constructions in (5) include two verbs (and hence two clauses): one of which is the embedded lexical verb and another is the component CAUSE that may (5.b) or may not (5.a) surface as an independent lexeme in final structure: (5) a. Ik geef (aan) Mary een boek. 'I give Mary a book.' b. Ik laat (door) de slager mijn koe slachten. 'I have the butcher slaughter my cow.' / 'I have my cow slaughtered by the butcher.'
"Mary" and "the butcher" are underlying subjects and may surface as NPs or PPs. As subjects of some embedded predication they may bind objects "book" and "cow". They are originated as NPs in the embedded VPs, but may end up in derivation either as ("dative") NPs or undergo optional rule of passivization of the whole internal VP, which results in the overt preposition ("by" or "to").
Hoekstra also tries to solve the problem of the choice between indirect and direct objects introducing feature "control": [+control] embedded verbs show up as DOs, whereas [-control] verbs become IOs (cf. the notion of "affectedness" in present theories).
The main result of this research may be articulated as follows: "the relation IO does not exist". It is not an exaggeration to say that some serious steps were made by Hoekstra towards the present understanding of indirect object and the inner structure of VP.
Categories and Arguments The goal of the paper is to propose the universal analysis of clause structure on the grounds of some general concepts of the lexicon. These concepts are taken to be merely nominal. Verbs as syntactic items are always composed from some F-head and a lexical material (which can be A or N). Thus (6.a) is a result of incorporation of adjective "clear" in F. (6) a. The screen cleared. b. John cleared the screen.
In case of transitive clauses, see (6.b), the only difference is that besides of "screen", the SC contains also the abstract preposition P (relator) (AgrS = Agreement Subject). (7) AgrS - T - AgrO - F [SC [AP [the screen] clear] P [John] ]
(7) is reorganized to build (6.b) in the following steps: P incorporates into F, "John" moves to SpecF and then to SpecAgrS, F+P moves to AgrO, "the screen" moves to SpecAgrO to check its accusative. Hoekstra here extended his analysis of HAVE from the first article on all the lexical class of Vs. He also advocates Stowell's (1981) approach to phrase structure, under which phrase of every category may have a subject and argues against Hale and Keyser (1993) theory of argument structure in which AP and PP, being predicates, do not take subjects.
The Active-Passive Configuration In this paper Hoekstra proceeds the investigation of possible consequences of his Strict Separation Hypothesis and applies the approach articulated in the previous articles to passive sentences. (8) Strict Separation Hypothesis: L-primitives are exhaustively characterized in terms of features corresponding to ontological classes of individuals. F-primitives have no features that denote ontological classes of individuals.
What follows from (8) is that verbs in the underlying structure are present only as some abstract F heads, which supply sentences with grammatical features of tense, aspect etc. The lexicon contains As, Ns and Ps.
Hoekstra relates transitivity (and accusative case licensing) to possibility of incorporation of some abstract preposition P. Thus we have an explanation to Burzio generalization: both projection of external argument and licensing of accusative are due to the phenomenon of abstract P. When P can not be incorporated, external argument may receive only oblique marking (via overt P) and no accusative can be assigned, see (7) above.
Verbal Affixation The article is attributed to 1986 and was not previously published. The author poses some questions that have been somehow ignored in previous researches, as for instance: what is the difference between the passive and perfect participles? To answer this and some other questions, he proposes his own approach to verbal morphology based to some extent on the traditional analyses. He states that the external argument is no doubt present in the thematic grid in accordance with the following principle: (9) Participial Morphology (PM) bears the external argument role iff it has case. (cf. Roberts 1985)
Considering perfect constructions (10.a) he observes that they have only agentive interpretation, whereas in constructions like (10.b) "we" does not obligatorily have agentive interpretation: (10) a. We have hidden fugitives. b. We have fugitives hidden.
In the latter case there is a whole small clause, the subject of which receives the case from HAVE. In the former example HAVE assigns case to PM and thus there remains a possibility for V ("hide") to assign case to the internal argument "fugitives". In this case (i.e. in perfect clauses) PM and subjects constitute an argument chain, hence only the agentive interpretation is allowed.
The crucial role of HAVE in licensing PM-argument can be traced in the prenominal use of unergative verbs. In this case PM receives thematic role from the verb and hence must have case assigner, which is absent in these examples. The ungrammaticality of (11) follows from (9): (11) *a worked housewife / *the worked children / ...
Under this analysis passive and perfect participles represent the same item, properties of which depend on the syntactic environment: it may be used to construct the perfect clauses with the auxiliary HAVE licensing PM or passive clauses with BE, which has no such possibility.
Hoekstra observes that a similar analysis may be applied to infinitives, where PRO(noun) can be treated as analogous to the overtly absent external argument in passives. He argues that, just like in case of PM, it is I (infinitival) M(orphology) that bears an argument role and requires case (thus we don't need PRO any more).
To support his analysis of verbal morphology, Hoekstra examines examples of Dutch impersonal passives, Icelandic quirky case, French "etre" / "avoir" distribution, Norwegian infinitives and some others.
Part II. T-chains
Why Kaatje Was Not Heard Sing a Song (with Hans Bennis) The starting point for the paper is the ungrammaticality of passivization in clauses headed by perception verbs, which also take sentential complements: (12) *Kaatje was heard sing a song.
The ungrammaticality of (12) is even more surprising since both ECM (13.a) and SC (13.b) constructions do allow passivization: (13) a. Kaatje was believed to have sung a song. b. Kaatje was considered a good singer.
Hoekstra and Bennis propose an explanation based on the theory of T- chains. According to Pollock (1989), the verbs may surface in a language in one of the following positions: (14) [ C [ T [ Agr [ V ]]]]
T-chains are subject to the following constraints: (15) T-linking: A verb must be identified by tense. (16) T-chains may vary across languages on two parameters: a. the base position of tense; b. the way in which the chain is established: by verb movement or by percolation.
Hoekstra and Bennis argue that in (17-18) and both (a) and (b) SCs are tenseless AgrPs. Passivization is absolutely grammatical when Agr has an AP or PP complements, but impossible with VP complements:
(17) a. John was considered [t foolish]. b. He was kicked [t off the street]. c. *John was heard [t sing a song].
Hoektrsa argues that unlike English, where T-chaining between matrix and embedded clauses is established by percolation, Dutch forms T-chains by movement: V-raising (18.a) or (non-)finite complement extraposition (18.b). (18) a. dat Jan [een appel t] moet eten that John an apple must eat b. dat Jan belooft [(om) een appel eten] that John believe for an apple eat
The ungrammaticality of (12) in both Dutch in English is explained by the non-tense (and, moreover nominal) nature of passive participles, which serves a "barrier" and does not allow movement of the embedded verb through the matrix V in Dutch and the similar T-percolation in English.
T-Chains and Auxiliaries (with Jacqueline Guéron) The paper investigates the syntax of verbs which can take CP, IP or VP complements. The authors define auxiliaries as a class of verbs that can take VP complements whereas full verbs may govern CP, IP, NP or zero complements. What straightforwardly follows from this statement is that auxiliaries do not assign theta-roles. Then, VPs differ from the other types of complements in that they normally do not contain subjects and hence allow movement of internal NPs to the domain of matrix verb.
Following Kayne (1985), Hoekstra and Gueron suggest that even in clauses where only auxiliaries are present there may be more than one embedded VP. Allowing the possibility of VP1,2 and movement through the VP2 adjoined position is the only way to avoid the ECP (Empty Category Principle) violation. Adjunction to VP is thus the SC subject position resulting in participial agreement: (19) NP(i) V1 [VP2 e(i) [VP2 V2 e(i) ]]
According to Hoekstra and Gueron, "a temporal marker in INFL(ectional) attributes a Temporal index (T-index) to a VP it governs". This creates T- chains: (20) T(k) - AUX(k) - [VP(k) V(K)], where k represents the T-index.
Every CP has its own T-index that explains the ungrammaticality of examples in which the imbedded verb selects the auxiliary of the matrix verb: (21) Jean a / *est su que Pier est venu.
VPs must receive T(emporal)-roles just like NPs receive theta-roles. An XP which is assigned T / theta role is a Complete Thematic Constituent (CTC): all theta roles associated to X are assigned internal to XP. Then, the verb "etre", which does assign T-role, governs a CTC, whereas "avoir" does not assign T-role and admit percolation of the agent role of the embedded V up to the matrix subject.
Causative constructions, resulting in clitic climbing in French (22.a) and presence of past participle in Italian (22.b) allow to conclude that causatives also take VP complements. They assign T-roles to VP complement and accusative case to their subjects. (22) a. Je le(i) fais [VP e(i) voir e(i)] b. I libri(i) furonto [VP e(i) fatti [VP e(i) leggere e(i) ]]
The same analysis may be applied to modal verbs, complements of which are also VPs. This holds in Italian but not in French, where modal verbs do not allow for clitic climbing and are always incompatible with "être". The embedded phrases in French modal sentences hence must be regarded as CPs.
Clitics in Romance and the Study of Head Movement Here Hoekstra focuses on differences between main and auxiliary verbs. According to his proposal, main verbs introduce an e(vent)-role, whereas auxiliaries do not have e-role (they do not denote, but modify an event).
It is further argued that Tense must be locally linked to a unique e. Clitic placement obey the following constraint: (23) Attach a clitic to the Tense that licenses its governor.
Italian "volere" differs from its French counterpart in that the former but not the latter can be either main or auxiliary. This difference is due to verb raising to Agr (higher Tense), which is obligatory in Italian and is not possible in French in case of verbs without overt agreement. Some XP barrier between Agr and T does not allow this in French.
Thus, the configuration in which Tense from the main clause would be linked to the embedded verb is also barred by XP barrier. Hence the only possible use of "vouloir" is that, which is linked to Tense of the matrix clause, i.e. the use of a main verb. We then can explain the absence of clitic climbing to "vouloir" in French: in sentences with "vouloir" there are always two (matrix and embedded) Tenses, hence no climbing happens (and the opposite holds for Italian).
As Hoekstra concludes, clitic climbing in Romance is not a successive cyclic, but a long distant movement.
ECP, Tense and Islands The point of departure here is the following examples, where (24.a) demonstrates the well-known that-trace phenomenon.:
(24) a *Who do you think that bought this novel? b I don't think that anyone will be arrested.
As can be seen from (24), that-trace works on S-structure but becomes irrelevant in case of L(ogical) F(orm)-movement. However, for instance, in French and Dutch that-trace is not found. It is puzzling then, that in these languages extraction from negative and factive islands is prohibited whereas in English extraction from negatives is acceptable: (25) ?Who don't you believe would buy this book?
Factive islands display the same properties as negative in case of direct object and adjunct extraction, but extraction of subject from factive islands is not possible: (26) *Who do you regret (that) bought this book.
For languages, where that-trace effect is not valid, it is argued that the trace is licensed by the movement of V to C position at LF. Such V2 movement allows for trace to be head governed by V. Moreover, EV2, embedded V2, are overt in some Germanic languages.
To explain the ungrammaticality of extraction from sentences with "regret" and some other factive verbs, Hoekstra suggests that factive CPs are licensed by case marking, whereas non-factive ones - by T-marking. In the latter case V raises to C for T-linking. This creates conditions for trace licensing by the V head. On the contrary, factive CP complements have a nominal nature and extraction from non T-linked yields that-trace effect. This analysis is supported by the fact that in "regret" sentences EV2 is impossible.
Under negation, the negative operator is in C, which forces V to C movement and thus the subject trace may be licensed. This movement may be sometimes overt in English: (27) Who did John say that never in his life had t been insulted like this?
Part III. The morphosyntax of nominal and verbal constituents
Bracketing Paradoxes Do Not Exist (with Harry van der Hulst and Frans van der Putten) The paper considers rules of word formation in English. Two approaches to the derivation of the noun "ungrammaticality" are possible: (28.a) ("un" may be attached only to adjectives) and (28.b) (the so-called "level ordering" theory). (28) a. [[[un]grammatical]ity] b. [un[grammatical[ity]]]
Hoekstra et al. distinguishes three types of bracketing paradoxes: (a) unhappier-type, where order "unhappy" - "unhappier" violates the phonological rule, whereas "happier" - "unhappier" is semantically ill- formed and is not consistent with the so-called level ordering theory (inflectional morphology must be attached after the derivational, compounding must follow affixation, etc.); (b) modifier scope paradox: "ungrammatical", "model-theoretic", Dutch "blauwogig" ("blue-eyed"); and (c) deverbal compounds: "truck-driver".
One of the most interesting questions is thus: is the level ordering theory on the right track or it must be rejected?
Regarding the (a)-type paradox, they note that it is not a problem at all and that two possible ways of generating "unhappier" correspond to two levels of grammar (which may not go hand in hand): phonological and morphosyntactic ones.
As for (b), it is argued that some examples clearly force us to abandon the level ordering hypothesis, while the others was assigned semantic structure in the wrong manner. In the former case the proposal is that words "ungrammatical", "model-theoretic" etc. are formed by the consequent attachment of the most "native" morphemes to the lexical head ("stratal constraints" on morpheme combination). In the latter case the traditional analysis of "blauwogig" as semantically derived from the paraphrase "with blue eyes" is not valid. Hoekstra et al. criticize the paraphrase method and points out that not only morphologically complex items may receive more than one paraphrase, but also such non-derived lexemes as "strategist", cf.: "a great strategist" etc.
Finally as for (c), there is no reason to believe that in "truck driver" or "driver of a truck", "driver" receives its theta role from the verb stem "drive", because in many obviously nominal stems theta role may be also assigned by the head noun: "book author" / "author of a book" etc.
To summarize, "the category of bracketing paradoxes falls apart into a number of heterogeneous categories for which separate approaches are required".
The Nominal Infinitive (with Pim Wehrmann) This paper concentrates on the infinitival nominalization. As Hoekstra and Wehrmann observe, there are three types of infinitive constructions in Dutch that exhibit the external behavior of noun phrases and in the same time have the verbal core. The first type, (29), allows for both adverbial and adjectival modification, places their prepositional complements either before or after the infinitive head and takes the articles. (29) het schillen van aardappels the peel-Inf of potatoes 'the peeling of potatoes'
Another type of nominalized infinitives, (30), goes further in getting verbal properties: it can be preceded by the (in)direct object NPs as well as by adverbial adjuncts. (30) het aardappels schillen the potatoes peel-Inf the peeling of potatoes'
The third type of nominalizations, (31), which is formed in the absence of the definite article, seems the most verbal one. It can not have "van" ("of") complements and does not receive adjectival modification. It also can not take "door" ("by") adjuncts. (31) aardappels schillen potatoes peel-Inf 'peeling potatoes'
Only the latter type of nominalizations contain Vmax (Verb maximal projection) and have PRO subject position. All the nominalizations in question inherit their external nominal properties from the nominalizer "- en", the head of the construction.
Impersonal passives are impossible in both types of nominalizations due to the following: PRO in "het"-less nominalizations must govern the trace in the object position, but there are no objects in the active counterpart of impersonal passives. Thus, no thematic role is associated with PRO. In "het"-nominalizations with impersonal passive, not only accusative, but also nominative case assigner is absent: there is no Vmax in this case. Thus, the passive morphology (see above) argument can not receive any case (see above).
At the end of the article some parallels between "het"-less nominalizations and non-countable nouns are discussed.
Parallels Between Nominal and Verbal Projections One of the main topics of the paper is the so-called "of"-insertion. What is not quite clear from the original Chomsky's (1970) formulation is whether "of"-phrase a PP or NP. Here Hoekstra again examines the nominalized infinitives in Dutch, which differ from their English counterparts in the pre-head position of the unmarked direct object (since Dutch is an OV language).
Hoekstra assumes, following Kayne (1994) that prepositional objects move from the post-head position to Spec,AgrOP in one type of nominalizations and receive nominal case by virtue of "van" ("of")-insertion in the other type. But then the question arises: why only indefinite objects may move to preverbal position in nominalization, whereas in simple clause the option of object raising is available only for definite NPs?
One more puzzle is how to explain cases where (postoposed) van-NPs may bind (take scope of) the elements preceding the verb: (32) het over zichzelf praten van Jan the about himself talk-Inf of John 'John's talking about himself'
Hoekstra defends Kayne's analysis of DP, according to which DP is an IP or [D [CP]] where "of" is a C. Under this view Hebrew construct state and free state constructions can receive strict analysis as in (33.a) and (33.b), respectively: (33) a. [DP N(i) [IP [DP] I ... [... N(i) ...]]] b. [DP D [CP [NP(i)] C [IP [DP] I ... [NP(i)]]]]
The same analysis can be adopted to Germanic 's-genitive constructions and "of"-constructions with the difference that in Hebrew it is the possessed head N-to-D movement that feeds DP, whereas in Germanic such movement is the SpecIP-to-SpecDP movement of possessor.
Infinitival nominalizations then have the same [D [IP]]-structure. This accounts for the backward control mentioned above: V+N phrase complement of I, which raises to Spec, CP in accordance with (33.b), is lower that ("van")-possessor in the initial structure and thus is c-commanded by the latter.
The analysis in (33) can explain also why only non-specific objects occur in the pre-infinitival position - this is the result of the whole VP movement to Spec, CP. On the contrary, definite DPs must scramble out of the object position to the complement of "van" due to the definiteness restrictions on object raising. In the rest of the paper Hoekstra discusses the constraint on complementation in some syntactic environment, as for instance in (34): (34) *a proud of his children man
He formulates the following constraint for such cases: (35) The structure D [CP [XP ... X YP] C [... is ill-formed for certain choices of X, YP, and, C, if YP is non-null.
This constraint results in the ungrammaticality of constructions like: (36) *the examining in the yard of the patient
Part IV. Small clauses
Complex Verbs (with Monic Lansu and Marion Westerduin) Hoekstra et al. start the discussion with the following observation: the postposition of PPs in Dutch, allowed in other cases ("PP-over-V"), in resultative constructions is prohibited. But when the verb is prefixed, PP postposition is again grammatical: (37) dat ik hem [tot voorzitter] benoem / [tot voorzitter] that I him to chairman appoint / to chairman '... that I appoint him chairman.'
Moreover, in these constructions the resultative attributes may be omitted without changing the meaning of the verb. The proposal here is that in constructions in questions, PPs are not complements but adjuncts. The authors argue that in general SCs are complements with a trace in the subject position that must be governed by the matrix subject or object. According to Stowell (1981) small clauses are maximal projections of their heads. PP in (37) can not be moved out past the verb since it is not the maximal projection. The whole small clause can not also be moved since SCs must be canonically governed by the verb.
It is claimed then, that the only instance of SC constructions where small clause lacks the resultative reading are sentences with the stative matrix predicate: (38) *Medusa saw the hero stone / into stone.
Hoekstra et al. observe that some examples of transitive clauses with SCs become ungrammatical in the absence of SC, (39.a). At the same time they are perfectly correct if the verb is prefixed, (39.b): (39)a. dat Jan zich *(vol) drinkt that John self full drinks '... that Jan drinks himself into a stupor.' b. dat Jan zich be-drinkt that John self drinks '... that Jan drinks himself stupid.'
The main proposal is to treat verbal prefix as a small clause predicate with its own argument which surfaces as the matrix object ("zich"). The structure in (40) thus allows to explain some properties of "be" / "ver"- prefixed verbs in Dutch. (40) dat Jan [SC [NP] be / ver ] V
Under this assumption the difference between Dutch and English can be accounted for: whereas in Dutch prefixed verbs "with" PPs are adjuncts to the prefix predicate, in English they are parts of resultative SCs. This explains the fact that in Dutch but not in English "with"-PPs are (usually) omissible: (41) a. de muur beplaken the wall plaster b. stick the wall *(with leaflets)
Small Clauses Everywhere This article is a part of the book, which Hoekstra started to write but ceased working on long before his death.
In the beginning of the paper he observes three possible analyses of SCs: the predication analysis (42.a), the complex predicate formation (CPF) analysis (42.b) and the SC analysis (42.c). (42) a. We found [NP John](i) [AP guilty](i). b. We [found guilty] John. c. We found [SC John guilty].
Based on different properties of the constructions in question (theta- assignment, word order, PP extraposition in Dutch, and others), Hoekstra himself defends the SC approach. Following Stowell (1981) and Chomsky (1981) he defines SCs as the predicates, the extended projection of which is the AgrP. The subject (of SC) then is defined as follows: (43) Subject: an agreeing specifier position.
Argumentation for (43) is provided with some examples from the distribution of the Dutch pronoun "het" and French pseudo-relative clauses.
Another piece of evidence is adduced in favour of the SC analysis. If one assumes, following Dotjes (1992), that floating quantifiers (FQ) adjoin to some projection, if this projection contains a trace of the removed NP modified by this FQ, examples like (44) also support SC analysis: (44) Il a [XP tous(i) [XP voulu [ les voir t(i) ] ] ].
One of the main contributions to syntactic theory concerns theta- assignment. Hoekstra reformulates theta-criterion in the following manner. Theta roles are assigned inside the lexical projection of SC, but every noun phrase may receive no more than one theta-role in the projection of its lexical head. Then, the subjects of SCs, which seem to be theta marked twice (by the SC predicate and by the matrix verb) can be regarded as follows: (45) X [ NP(i) F [t(i) Y NP ]], where the small clause subject NP(i) is first theta-marked by the SC predicate Y and then moves to some Spec, FP to receive theta-role from the matrix verb X (thus the condition on the theta-assignment inside lexical projections is not violated).
Another serious (but not indisputable) elaboration of syntactic theory is the proposal to reduce complements and specifiers in favour of adjuncts. According to Hoekstra, distinction between arguments and adjuncts can be captured in terms of theta-assignment. Another important difference, the difference between external and internal arguments, may be reduced to the aspectual properties of the predicates on the one hand, and to the configurational distinction on the other. In the latter case Hoekstra postulates an empty predicates for some class of verbs.
Hoekstra also observes that SCs are statives (with the possible empty head) which must be embedded under some predicates (primarily, non-telic ones) and denote the final state in the activity, represented by the whole predication. On other hand, there are also some empty predicates (CAUSE in (46)) that take the clause introduced by the verb as their argument: (46) Jan bevuilt zijn kamer John BE-dirty-s his room Jan CAUSE [SC [zijn kamer] be-[vuil] ]
More generally, Hoekstra argues that the SC schemata, (47), underlies many types of constructions, for instance, constructions with light verbs, serial verbs, double objects, verb particles and others. (47) NP Pr [ NP Pr NP]
Such an analysis has very important theoretical advantage - it helps to save binary branching in case of double objects and similar constructions.
EVALUATION
One of the most characteristic features of Hoekstra's approach to language is that his researches were always in the front line of linguistic theory. Thus, as become clearly evident from this volume, the Lexical Decomposition methods, split VP hypothesis, Abney's hypothesis, an approach in the spirit of Distributed Morphology, and other remarkable proposals were either adopted by Hoekstra just after their appearance in the linguistics literature or even anticipated by him.
Teun Hoekstra's viewpoints on this or that linguistic problem may seem quite unusual at first sight. But all his ideas, often not commonly accepted, constitute very consistent way of thinking, which he tried to lead through the wide range of linguistic material. His proposal of T- chains, views on passive morphology as anaphoric pronoun with argument function, denial of the existence of verbs as a lexical category, preposition / empty predicate incorporation into the lexical verb, and the "everywhere" nature of SCs may be cited among ideas that Hoekstra proposed and tried to develop in his works.
An interesting question that comes into one's mind when reading the book is: what the linguistic theory would be if the Hoekstra's proposals constitute the basis of syntactic theory? Would we have more or less powerful apparatus at hand than we do now? What will be the consequences for other areas of morphosyntax, not directly addressed by Hoekstra? However, this collection of Hoekstra's writing seems not only interesting, but also useful reading for contemporary researchers, since both the problems and the ideas discussed in this volume are very far from being outdated.
REFERENCES
Chomsky, Noam. 1970. Remarks on nominalization. In Readings in English transformational grammar, Roderick Jackobs and Peter Rosenbaum (eds.), 184- 221. Waltham, MA: Ginn.
Chomsky, Noam. 1981. Lectures on Government and Binding. Dodrecht: Foris Publications.
Doetjes, Jenny. 1992. Rightward floating quantifiers float to the left. The Linguistic Review 9 (4): 313-332.
Hale, Kenneth and Samuel Jay Keyser. 1993. On argument structure and the lexical expression of syntactic relations. In The view from building 20: essays in linguistics in honor of Sylvain Bromberger, Kenneth Hale and Samuel Jay Keyser (eds.), 53-109. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Kayne, Richard. 1985. L'accord du participe passé en français et en italien. Modèles Linguistiques 7 (1): 73-89.
Kayne, Richard. 1994. The antisymmetry of syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Pollock, Jean-Yves. 1989. Verb movement, universal grammar and the structure of IP. Linguistic Inquiry 20 (3): 365-424.
Roberts, Ian. 1985. Absorption parameters and the passive in UG. Paper presented at GLOW 8, Brussels. Abstract in GLOW Newsletter 14: 71-73.
Stowell, Tim. 1981. Origins of phrase structure. Doctoral dissertation, MIT.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER:
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Pavel Grashchenkov has graduated from the Department of Theoretical and
Applied Linguistics of Moscow State University. His diploma "Typology of
Numeral Phrase" deals with the morphosyntax of the noun phrases with
numerals in the languages of the world. Now he is finishing his
thesis "Syntax and Typology of Genitives", in which some problems
concerning the position and the status of genitive noun phrases are
discussed. His academic interests include: Morphosyntax of DP - syntax and
typology of PossP, NumP and other DP-internal projections, structure of
APs; Case Theory - inherent vs. structural cases, grammatical cases in
ergative languages, genitive case assignment; Typology - Caucasian,
Turkic, Slavic, Finno-Ugric languages; Part-of-Speech Systems - languages
without lexical classes, non-universal lexical classes.
