September 26, : Grammars and Lexicons Lori Levin

Behavioral Properties of Objects Passive voice Object creating rules –Dative shift –Applicatives

Passive Voice See handout on passives in several languages. Assume for a moment that Passivization is a transformation –A meaning-preserving tree-to-tree mapping Describe the Passive transformation for each language on the handout. If the transformations are so different, why do we call them all passives? –What do they have in common?

Passive as a lexical rule Morphology (word formation) –Rules for making new words out of old words by adding affixes and making other changes. –English Passive: make a past participle out of a verb Lexical Mapping –Find the role that links to OBJ for the active verb. Link that role to SUBJ. –Find the role that links to SUBJ for the active verb. Link that role to OBL.

How to understand an English Sentence [ s [ np Sue] [ vp was interviewed [ np by Sam ]]] constituent str. SUBJ PRED OBL grammatical rlns. patient interview agent semantic roles interview lexical mapping OBL SUBJ S NP SUBJ VP V NP OBJ VP V PP OBL Encoding of Gml. Rlns. For English!!!

How to understand an English Sentence [ s [ np Sam] [ vp interviewed [ np Sue ]]] constituent structure SUBJ PRED OBJ grammatical rlns. agent interview patient semantic roles interview lexical mapping SUBJ OBJ S NP SUBJ VP V NP OBJ VP V PP OBL Encoding of Gml. Rlns. For English!!!

What about all the other stuff? Why does the patient come before the verb in an English passive?

What about the other stuff? Why is an auxiliary verb inserted? –English sentences must contain a tensed verb. Participles are not tensed. Tensed verbs are present or past in English –He walks. –He walked. –She is smart. –She was smart. –You can use a passive in a context that does not require a tensed verb: Admired by her friends, Sue had no reason to be worry. –Passive verb phrases can occur as complements to other verbs: The car needs washed. He got arrested by the police. We had them arrested by the police.

Functions of Passives Discourse focus on a participant other than the subject. Make the sentence impersonal –unidentified agent Syntactic need for something other than the agent to be the subject. –See discussion of Malagasy, coming in a week or two. Other –Express adversity in Japanese.

Object Creating Rules Dative shift Applicatives

Behavioral Test for Object The semantic role that is encoded as object in the active sentence takes the encoding of subject in the passive sentence.

English Dative Shift Which noun phrase passes the test for objecthood? –The teacher gave some books to the students. –Some books were given to the students (by the teacher). –The teacher gave the students some books. –The students were given some books (by the teacher).

Dative Shift and Passive Give SUBJ OBJ OBL Give SUBJ OBJ2 OBJ Give OBL SUBJ OBL Give OBL OBJ2 SUBJ

Other alternations in English The committee awarded the prize to Sue. The committee awarded her the prize. Sam sprayed the wall with paint. Sam sprayed paint on the wall. Sam loaded the truck with hay. Sam loaded hay onto the truck.

Applicative Constructions Morphology: –An affix is added to the verb. Lexical mapping –A recipient, benefactive, locative, or instrumental is linked to OBJ –The role that was linked to OBJ for the non applicative verb is linked to OBJ2 (usually).

Applicative Constructions in Chichewa See handout from Kroeger’s book.