Afternoon of causal morphosyntax
11 avril (vendredi) - 14:00 - 17:30
CNRS site Pouchet: 59 rue Pouchet, Paris 75017, salle 221
métro ligne 13 Guy Môquet ou Brochant,
RER C Porte de Clichy (sortie La Jonquière)
14:15 -15:30 Proto-agentivity in event nominalizations
Marta Donazzan (Universität zu Köln) et Lucia Tovena (LLF)
15:30 - 16:00 pause café
16 :00 -17:15 The expression of the verb’s external argument in -ble adjectives
Isabel Oltra-Massuet (Universitat Rovira i Virgili)
The expression of the verb’s external argument in -ble adjectives
Isabel Oltra-Massuet (Universitat Rovira i Virgili)
In this talk I examine the internal structure of -ble adjectives in Catalan and Spanish. Specifically, I concentrate on the availability and expression of the verb’s external argument in the event structure of -ble adjectives, i.e. what would correspond to the grammatical subject of the underlying verb. Empirical evidence suggests that -ble imposes two requirements on its base: (i) it must have an internal theme argument and (ii) (at least the implication of) an initiator or originator, which must be understood as agent, cause, experiencer or natural force. However, although this proposal neatly accounts for the contrasts in (1)-(2), it leaves the productive cases in (3)-(4) and those in (5) a priori unexplained. The examples in (3)-(4) challenge the validity of condition (ii); those in (5) challenge both requirements, since there are no verbs *alcaldar ‘to mayor’, *obispar ‘to bishop’, etc.
(1) a. *una persona envejecible (anticausative meaning) (Sp)
a person age.ble
b. aleación no envejecible (causative meaning)
alloy non ageable
(2) *una planta florecible, *un árbol crecible, *un accidente ocurrible (Sp)
a plant bloom.ble a tree grow.ble an accident happen-ble
(3) Creció todo lo crecible.
a. It grew everything that could grow: plants, trees, grass ...
b. Something grew up to the highest possible extent / as much as possible.
(4) Ocurrió todo lo ocurrible.
a. It happened everything that could happen: a puncture, an accident, a delay ...
b. *Something happened up to the highest possible extent / as much as possible.
(5) alcaldable, obispable, papable, presidenciable, rectorable mayor-ble bishop-ble
minister-ble Pope-ble presidence-ble rector-ble
‘that can {become / be made / be appointed} N’
I will discuss where and how the relevant properties of the construction in (3)-(4) and the nouns in (5) are encoded to meet the requirement on the implication of an originator for -ble affixation.
Proto-agentivity in event nominalizations
Marta Donazzan (Universität zu Köln) and Lucia Tovena (Paris 7 - LLF)
The Italian -ATA nominalisations have received quite some attention, primarily from syntacticians and morphologists (Scalise, 1984; Ippolito, 1999; Gaeta, 2000; Samek-Ludovici, 2003; Acquaviva, 2005; Folli and Harley, 2013, among others). However, the issues they raise are not yet completely explored. The suffix ATA can attach to a verbal or a nominal base, and the output is a name of event.
Potential verb bases undergo aspectual restrictions, because only atelic verb phrases can be nominalized, according to Gaeta (2000), Tovena (2014) and contra Folli and Harley (2013). When the nominalization is built on a nominal base, the position that the denotatum of the base N can occupy on the gradient defined by proto-agentivity (Dowty 1991) influences its ability to occur as a prototypical agent or asinstrument in the resulting event (Donazzan and Tovena 2013).
In this talk, we extend the discussion to other cases where restrictions can be related to the semantic notion of proto-agentivity. The (high) position of the denotatum on a proto-agentive scale is connected to its ability to legitimate a processive reading of nominalisations that can have a semelfactive base. Next, proto-agentive properties seem also relevant in allowing the nominalization of unaccusative verbs. These observations will help us highlight the connection between agentivity and telicity, on the one hand, and between agentivity andevent conceptualization in case of events constructed out of nominal bases.