Syntax or Lexicon?

Ok, if we're gonna get this blog started again, I thought a good way to do this would be to ask a question.

So, I've got a question. A rather vague "how do you feel about this approach?" question, that's been a bit of a topic in my syntax class.

I've recently been trying to make my way through"The Normal Course of Events" by Hagit Borer. One of her main themes is that several phenomena traditionally accounted for through lexical specification should actually be accounted for through structural/syntactic means.

For instance, Borer argues that the difference between mass nouns and count nouns, which is traditionally accounted for by stating that each noun in the lexicon is specified as either mass or count[1], is actually structurally represented, so that count nouns have more functional structure than mass nouns.

This is extended to the verbal domain as well. So the difference between unergative and unaccusative verbs, argues Borer, is not a lexical difference, such that "run" is specified as an "unergative" verb, while "arrive" is specified as an "unaccusative" verb, but is actually a structural difference such that unergative verbs have more functional structure than unaccusatives.

And again, the difference between telic and atelic verbs is that telic verbs have more functional structure than atelic verbs.

So what do you think about this approach that consists of taking all of the information out of the lexicon and instead representing it structurally? Like it or don't like it? Good move or bad move? Why or why not?

As for me, going with my gut feeling, I kind of like the idea that everything is structurally represented (so that even a notion like "verb" and "noun" is derived in the syntax). But then I wonder: what does such an approach mean for languages like Yucatec Mayan?

In Yucatec Mayan, there are (at least) two types of intransitive verbs: inherently telic, and inherently atelic intransitives. The inherently telic verbs, when unmarked, are interpreted as (hence the name) telic. They need to be overtly marked by an atelic morpheme to be interpreted as atelic. The inherently atelic verbs, on the other hand, when unmarked, are interpreted as atelic, and they require an overt telic morpheme to be interpreted as telic.

So if Borer is arguing that atelicity is universally represented by less functional structure, what does it mean to have these inherently telic verbs, where an overt morpheme marks atelicity, and telicity is unmarked?

Now, I have yet to fully read Borer (and have the suspicion that her theory actually may be able to account for this [2]) but at first glance this seems problematic, IF I assume that overt morphological marking corresponds to more functional structure.

So yes, two questions: What do you think of having all the information represented structurally, as opposed to being listed in the lexicon, and is the assumption that overt morphological marking corresponds to more functional structure valid?

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[1] On a random note...why is "e-mail" a count noun, but "mail" a mass noun?
[2] My paper topic for this syntax class! It's getting somewhat ridiculous: I don't know how to get around using the following phrase "inherently atelic (i.e. possible unergative) intransitives," but really, there ought to be a limit to the number of morphological negations you can use in a single noun phrase...

First post! Yucatec Mayan Agreement

Yay! A blog for sharing random things about language and linguistics!

So I thought I'd start this thing off with some linguistic research that I've been(was?) doing...

Last semester I was doing a group research project for my morphology class - the topic was cross-linguistic agreement, where the basic idea was to look at a whole bunch of languages and try to categorize the types of agreement we found according to the typology outlined in Elouazizi & Wiltschko 2006.

Here's a pdf of the poster that we presented as our final project. It deals with agreement in Yucatec Mayan (a super-cool language, btw) which while at first glance seems problematic for the typology, is actually predicted by the theoretical framework. I thought it was pretty cool...

(Note: when we were working on the poster, none of us were really good with the distinction between lexical aspect and grammatical aspect, so, er, please forgive those mistakes ...I know better now *hangs head in shame*)

And here's an introduction to the theoretical framework, because the poster kind of assumed familiarity with it, and thus lacks an intro.


START Introduction

1.0 Theoretical Framework and Assumptions

Elouizizi and Wiltschko 2006:

Under the assumption that agreement is pronominal (Ritter 1995), and following Déchaine & Wiltschko’s 2002 approach where there are three different types of pronouns, D-pronouns, φ-pronouns and N-pronouns, Elouazizi and Wiltschko propose that there must be three types of agreement: D-agreement, φ-agreement and N-agreement, later positing an additional level; n-agreement.

Each type of agreement corresponds to a different level of representation, D-agreement mapping on to Comp, φ-agreement mapping onto Aux/Infl, n-agreement mapping onto little v, and N-agreement mapping onto V.

Each type of agreement has different distribution, different targets, different sensitivities, and different binding-theoretic properties, falling out from the category of agreement and the corresponding level of representation.

END introduction

So, yeah, I think now that what we called, very vaguely, X-agreement on Aspect, might be Classifier-agreement on Aspect, since classifiers seem parallel to aspect in that they can be seen as distinguishing between mass/count nouns the same way that aspect distinguishes between imperfective/perfective. If it was the case that it was Classifier-agreement on Aspect, it might predict that this type of agreement could only show up in languages that have a Classifier Phrase....(Yucatec Mayan does have classifiers)...but I haven't been able to find the time to look into it more closely. And we couldn't figure out a way to account for Georgian agreement either. Too bad! It's way more interesting than the anthropology paper I am procrastinating from working on by posting this.

Comments? Questions? Scathing remarks?

References

Déchaine, Rose-Marie and Martina Wiltschko. 2002. “Decomposing Pronouns.” Linguistic Inquiry; Vol.3, No. 3: p. 409-442.

Elouazizi, Nouredine & Martina Wiltschko.. 2006. “The Categorical Status of Subject Verb Agreement”. Presented at the UBC Department of Linguistics Research Seminar.

McGinnis, Martha. 2001. “Semantic and Morphological restrictions in Experiencer Predicates”. In Proceedings of the 2000 CLA Annual Conference, ed. John T. Jensen & Gerard van Herk, 245-256. Cahiers Linguistiques d'Ottawa. Department of Linguistics, University of Ottawa

McGinnis, Martha. 2005. “Phi-feature Competition in Morphology and Syntax”. Submitted to the Proceedings of the McGill Workshop on Phi-Theory, ed. Daniel Harbour, David Adger, and Susana Béjar; Ms., University of Calgary.

Ritter, Elizabeth. 1995. “On the syntactic category of pronouns and agreement”. Natural Language& Linguistic Theory 13:405–443

Tonhauser, Judith. 2003. “F-constructions in Yucatec Maya”, in: Anderssen, Jan; Menéndez-Benito, Paula &Werle, Adam (eds.), The Proceedings of SULA 2. Vancouver, BC: GLSA, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Travis, L. 1991. “Inner aspect and the structure of VP”. Paper presented at NELS 22.

Wunderlich, Dieter, and Martin Krämer. 1999. “Transitivity alternations in Yucatec, and the correlation between aspect and argument roles”. Linguistics 37: 431-479