Origins of Predicates

Evidence from Plains Cree

Tomio Hirose

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2004
• eBook ISBN: 9781135885519
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This book offers a new perspective on natural language predicates by analyzing data from the Plains Cree language. Contrary to traditional understanding, Cree verbal complexes are syntactic constructs composed of morphemes as syntactic objects that are subject to structurally defined constraints, such as c-command. Tomio Hirose illustrates this in his study of vP syntax, event semantics, morphology-syntax mappings, unaccusativity, noun incorporation, and valency-reducing phenomena.

CHAPTER 1
Introduction

1.0
Introduction

This thesis proposes a new perspective in terms of which “predicates” of natural language are to be understood. By predicate, I refer to linguistic expressions such as the English verbs run, break, and tell in (1), for instance.¹

(1)

1. Claudia ran.
2. Claudia broke a dish.
3. Claudia told Ottilie a story.

It is often said that the verb run takes one argument expression to form a wellformed sentence, e.g., the subject Claudia in (1a). Likewise, the verb break is said to take two argument expressions, to derive a grammatical sentence, e.g., the subject Claudia and the object a dish in (1b). Predicates that take one argument expression such as run are called “intransitive” predicates. Those that take two argument expressions such as break are called “transitive” predicates. Verbs can also take three argument expressions such as tell in (1c). This sentence has three argument expressions: the subject Claudia; the indirect object Ottilie; and the direct object a story. Predicates that take three arguments are called “ditransitive” predicates.²

Verbs or predicates such as run, break, and tell are regarded as “words” in English in the sense that they each constitute a phonological unit to which a stress (of a varying degree of strength) is assigned.³ A word is commonly taken as the smallest syntactic unit to which syntactic operations apply; the internal structure of words, if any, is invisible to syntactic operations. In other words, words are “syntactic atoms” or X⁰. Thus, the above-mentioned English verbs are syntactic atoms of the verbal category, i.e., V⁰. Now, in English, the syntactic atomicity of predicates in general matches their morphological atomicity.⁴ That is, one cannot break the predicates run, break, and tell into smaller morphological units (i.e., morphemes), as they have no internal morphological structure; they are mono-morphemic. In contrast, there are languages in which predicates have internal morphological structure. One such example is Plains Cree, an Algonquian language.⁵ To illustrate, the Plains Cree equivalents of the above English sentences are given in (2).

See Table

See Table

See Table

The bracketed portion of each example is a predicate in Plains Cree. (This point will be explicated later in Chapter 3.) Thus, pimpahtâ is approximate to intransitive run, pîkonam to transitive break, and wîhtamawê to ditransitive tell. These Plains Cree predicates take as many argument expressions as do their English correspondents. Unlike their English correspondents, which are composed of a single morpheme, Plains Cree predicates are morphologically complex: they are composed of more than one morpheme. For instance, the predicate pîkonam ‘x breaks y (inanimate)’ is composed of three morphemes, the root pîkw ‘break,’ the transitive suffix -(i)n ‘by hand,’ and the inanimate “theme sign” -am. Such internal morphological complexity is characteristic of the majority of predicates in Plains Cree.

The above Plains Cree data casts doubt on the commonly-practiced identification of a predicate as a syntactic atom. That is, do predicates need to be syntactic atoms? Isn’t the complex morphological structure of Plains Cree predicates indicative of their having complex syntactic structure? The central aim of this dissertation is to argue on the basis of Plains Cree that natural language predicates are in fact syntactic constructs that are made of smaller syntactic objects. This aim is attained by demonstrating that the defining properties of a predicate are indeed distributed over syntactic structure. This demonstration itself is implemented by postulating a set of syntactic structures that represent natural language predicates, and showing that these syntactic structures properly capture morphosemantic and morphosyntactic properties pertaining to Plains Cree predicates. This is the enterprise that I am to undertake in this dissertation.

The ensuing portion of this introductory chapter is organized into six sections. Section 1.1 identifies the three properties that define a predicate as (i) argumenttaking ability, (ii) temporality, and (iii) conceptual content, and clarifies what I mean by them. Section 1.2 demonstrates that Plains Cree verb roots are not predicates, and argues that this is because they possess only conceptual content, and crucially lack argument-taking ability and temporality. Section 1.3 shows that a predicate only arises subsequent to combination of a root with a transitivity suffix in Plains Cree, and proposes that this combination occurs in the syntax. This leads to the central claim of this thesis: predicates are syntactic constructs. An implementation of this idea by means of “νP syntax” is illustrated in section 1.4. Section 1.5 in turn clarifies two auxiliary theoretical assumptions necessary for the proposed νP syntax to properly serve its function. Section 1.6 provides a brief grammatical description of Plains Cree to enhance the reader’s comprehension of the phenomena to be discussed in later chapters. Section 1.7 describes the methodology that is adopted to conduct the current project. Finally, section 1.8 outlines the upcoming chapters of this dissertation.

1.1
Three Defining Properties of the Predicate

What are the characteristics that define predicates in the relevant sense? As an answer to this question, I propose that predicates are characterized as having the following three properties:

(3) Three defining properties of the predicate

1. argument-taking ability
2. temprality
3. conceputal content

I will clarify what these properties refer to immediately below.

The first property, argument-taking ability, is tantamount to the fact that a predicate requires a certain number of argument expressions to give rise to a well-formed proposition.⁶ For instance, the English verb know needs two noun phrases for a grammatical sentence to be formed.

(4) a. *knows.
b. *Claudia knows.⁷
c. *knows German.
d. Claudia knows German.

(4a) has no noun phrase. (4b) and (4c) have only a single noun phrase, the subject and the object, respectively. These three “sentences” are all ungrammatical. Only (4d), which has both the subject and the object noun phrase, is a full-fledged English sentence. The requirement that the verb know take two arguments is often implemented in the form of the “argument structure” (or “theta grid”) associated with it (Stowell 1981). Argument structure is a specification of the number of arguments that a predicate takes in the syntax. For instance, the verb know has the argument structure in (5).

(5) know <x,y>

This notation indicates that the verb know takes two arguments x and y. The underline below x indicates that it is the “external argument” (i.e., roughly, the subject) and the lack thereof under y indicates that it is the “internal argument” (i.e., roughly, the object) in Williams’s (1980) sense. Only if the two arguments, x and y, are syntactically “saturated,” i.e., realized by two noun phrases in the syntax, can a sentence containing the verb know be grammatical.

The second defining property of a predicate is its temporality. This refers to a dimension that distinguishes know from, say, learn, for instance. Consider the sentences in (6).

(6)

1. I know Cree.
2. learn Cree.

On the one hand, a proposition that x knows y describes x’s state of mind, i.e., x’s knowledge of y. Thus, (6a) talks about a cognitive state that holds at the moment of utterance, namely, that I am in possession of (some) knowledge of Cree. On the other hand, a proposition that x learns y describes a cognitive activity that I am engaged in, and that requires that I be involved in acquiring (some) knowledge of Cree. Thus, whereas (6a) describes a state, (6b) describes a dynamic activity. The contrast between these static and dynamic predicates appears, for instance, in the context of the progressive construction.

(7)

1. *I am knowing Cree.
2. I am learning Cree.

(7a) is ungrammatical, exhibiting the incompatibility of the static predicate know with the progressive construction, whereas (7b) is grammatical, exhibiting the compatibility of the dynamic predicate learn with the progressive construction. Chapter 2 argues that the static vs. dynamic contrast is the only temporal property that is intrinsic to predicates. All other aspectual distinctions (e.g., telic vs. atelic or state, process, νs. transition) are derived compositionally.

The third defining property of a predicate is its conceptual content. The conceptual content of a given predicate is the meaning that we associate with it. Two predicates may have the same argument-taking abilities, and have the same temporal properties, but nevertheless differ in their conceptual content. For illustration, compare the two English verbs hit and wipe in (8).

(8)

1. Ottilie hit the table.
2. Ottilie wiped the table.

First, both these verbs take two arguments, as required by their respective argument structures.

(9)

1. hit <x,y>
2. wipe <x,y>

That hit and wipe respectively have such argument structures is evident from the paradigms in (10)–(13).

(10)

1. *hits.
2. *wipes.

(11)

1. *Ottilie hits.⁸
2. *Ottilie wipes.

(12)

1. *hits the table.
2. *wipes the table.

(13)

1. Ottilie hits the table.
2. Ottilie wipes the table.

Only when a subject and an object noun phrase are both present does the sentence containing the relevant verb become grammatical. Second, the verbs hit and wipe are not contrastive with respect to temporality either. They are both dynamic predicates, as shown by the fact that they may each occur in the context of the progressive:

(14)

1. Ottilie is hitting the table.
2. Ottilie is wiping the table.

Thus, neither argument-taking ability nor temporality distinguishes between hit and wipe; in these respects, they are identical as predicates. What distinguishes these two verbs from one another is the concept they denote. That is, the verb hit is appropriate to describe a situation in which, for instance, one forcefully contacts one’s fist or something against a surface, whereas the verb wipe is appropriate to describe a situation in which, for instance, one uses a wet cloth to remove dust or a spill on a surface. Information of this sort is what makes us recognize a situation as hitting or wiping. This extra-linguistic or real-world knowledge associated with each predicate is what I call conceptual content, cf. Marantz 1997.

Suppose that the necessary and sufficient conditions for predicatehood are the three properties just discussed, namely, argument-taking ability (θ); temporality (τ); conceptual content (π).

(15) Predicate =def {θ, τ, π}

If so, the absence of any one of these three properties should disqualify a linguistic expression from being a predicate. With this in mind, we can now turn our attention to Plains Cree, and ask whether the elements which are identified as “roots” in that language satisfy the conditions for predicatehood. We shall see that they do not.

1.2
Plains Cree Roots Are Not Predicates

Plains Cree is a polysynthetic language.⁹ In such languages, a single (pho...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations and Symbols
• Chapter 1: Introduction
• Chapter 2: The Zero Eventuality Hypothesis
• Chapter 3: νP Structures and the Syntax of Affixation
• Chapter 4: νP Structures and Noun Incorporation Phenomena
• Chapter 5: νP Structures and Operator-Binding Phenomena
• Chapter 6: Conclusion
• Chapter 7: Appendix: Deriving Dynamic Unaccusatives via Reflexivization
• References