Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dk4vv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-21T14:58:07.906Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Word-based morphology–syntax interdependencies: Thai passives1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 December 2015

LESLIE LEE  and
FARRELL ACKERMAN
LESLIE LEE*
Affiliation:
National University of Singapore
FARRELL ACKERMAN*
Affiliation:
University of California, San Diego
*
Author’s address: Department of English Language and Literature, National University of Singapore, AS5, 7 Arts Link, Singapore 117570, Singapore[email protected]
Author’s address: Department of Linguistics, University of California, San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA 92093-0108, USA[email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In this article, we argue that insights concerning the word-based nature of morphology, especially the hypothesis that periphrastic expressions are cross-linguistically common exponents of lexical relations, permit a novel lexical constructional analysis of periphrastic predicates that preserves the restriction of morphosyntactic mapping operations, such as passive, to the lexicon. We do this in the context of the periphrastic Thai thuuk passive, justifying in detail the monoclausal status of the construction, its flat phrase structure, the semantics of affectedness associated with it, and its paradigmatic opposition with other passive constructions in the language. Building on the proposal of Bonami & Webelhuth (2013) and Bonami (2015) that a periphrase relies on a form of the main verb that selects collocationally for an auxiliary element, we develop an analysis of Thai periphrastic passives in which the surface syntax of these predicates is mediated by appropriate lexical representations. Crucially, the rearrangement of arguments in the passive is done lexically, via lexical rule, rather than in the syntax. The resulting analysis is consistent with the classical tradition of Word and Paradigm morphology, which posits periphrastic expression as one of several encoding strategies for the realization of morphosyntactic information within words.

Keywords

lexicalismmorphology–syntax interfaceperiphrasisWord and ParadigmThai
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Linguistics , Volume 53 , Issue 2 , 01 April 2017 , pp. 359 - 406
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

[1] We are grateful to the Journal of Linguistics editor and four anonymous reviewers for their patient help throughout the review process. Among other things, reviewer A pointed out several technical problems with our previous analysis and suggested improvements; reviewer B engaged us in stimulating and clarifying discussion; reviewer D identified many ways to improve the contextualization of the paper. We also thank Olivier Bonami and Gert Webelhuth for useful discussion during various stages of the writing of this paper. Needless to say, we remain responsible for any remaining inadequacies.

References

Abeillé, Anne & Godard, Daniele. 2002. The syntactic structure of French auxiliaries. Language 78, 404–452.Google Scholar
Abeillé, Anne, Godard, Daniele & Sag, Ivan A.. 1998. Two kinds of composition in French complex predicates. In Hinrichs, Erhard, Kathol, Andreas & Nakazawa, Tsuneko (eds.), Complex predicates in nonderivational syntax (Syntax and Semantics 30), 1–41. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Ackerman, Farrell & Moore, John. 2001. Proto-properties and grammatical encoding: A correspondence theory of argument selection. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Ackerman, Farrell & Nikolaeva, Irina. 2014. Descriptive typology and linguistic theory: A study in the morphosyntax of relative clauses. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Ackerman, Farrell & Stump, Gregory T.. 2004. Paradigms and periphrastic expression: A study in realization-based lexicalism. In Spencer, Andrew & Sadler, Louisa (eds.), Projecting morphology, 111–157. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publication.Google Scholar
Ackerman, Farrell, Stump, Gregory T. & Webelhuth, Gert. 2011. Lexicalism, periphrasis and implicative morphology. In Borsley, Robert D. & Börjars, Kersti (eds.), Non-transformational syntax: Formal and explicit models of grammar, 325–358. New York: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Ackerman, Farrell & Webelhuth, Gert. 1998. A theory of predicates. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Alsina, Alex. 1996. The role of argument structure in grammar: Evidence from Romance. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Anderson, Gregory D. S. 2011. Auxiliary verb constructions (and other complex predicate types): A functional-constructional overview. Language and Linguistics Compass 5/11, 795–828.Google Scholar
Anderson, Stephen R. 1992. A-morphous morphology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Aronoff, Mark. 1994. Morphology by itself: Stems and inflectional classes. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Baltin, Mark R. 1982. A landing site theory of movement rule. Linguistic Inquiry 13, 1–38.Google Scholar
Beavers, John T.2006. Argument/oblique alternations and the structure of lexical meaning. Ph.D. dissertation, Stanford University.Google Scholar
Blevins, James P. 2001. Realization-based lexicalism. Journal of Linguistics 37, 355–365.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blevins, James P. 2003. Passives and impersonals. Journal of Linguistics 39, 473–520.Google Scholar
Blevins, James P. 2015. Word and Paradigm morphology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bochner, Harry. 1993. Simplicity in generative grammar. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Bonami, Olivier. 2015. Periphrasis as collocation. Morphology 25, 63–110.Google Scholar
Bonami, Olivier & Samvelian, Pollet. 2015. The diversity of inflectional periphrasis in Persian. Journal of Linguistics 51, 327–382.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bonami, Olivier & Webelhuth, Gert. 2013. The phrase-structural diversity of periphrasis: A lexicalist account. In Chumakina & Corbett (eds.), 141–167.Google Scholar
Booij, Geert. 2005. Constructional idioms and periphrasis: The progressive construction in Dutch. In Ackerman, Farrell, Blevins, James P. & Stump, Gregory T. (eds.), Paradigms and periphrasis, 54–78. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Börjars, Kersti, Vincent, Nigel & Chapman, Carol. 1997. Paradigms, periphrases and pronominal inflection: A feature-based account. In Booij, Geert & van Marle, Jaap (eds.), Yearbook of morphology 1996, 155–180. Dordrecht: Kluwer.Google Scholar
Bresnan, Joan. 1982a. The passive in lexical theory. In Bresnan (ed.), 3–86.Google Scholar
Bresnan, Joan(ed.). 1982b. The mental representation of grammatical relations. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Bresnan, Joan. 1994. Locative inversion and the architecture of universal grammar. Language 70, 72–131.Google Scholar
Bresnan, Joan. 2001. Lexical-Functional Grammar. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Briscoe, Ted & Copestake, Ann. 1999. Lexical rules in constraint-based grammar. Computational Linguistics 25, 487–526.Google Scholar
Brown, Dunstan, Chumakina, Marine, Corbett, Gregory, Popova, Gergana & Spencer, Andrew. 2012. Defining ‘periphrasis’: Key notions. Morphology 22, 233–275.Google Scholar
Butt, Miriam. 1995. The structure of complex predicates in Urdu. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 1973. Conditions on transformations. In Anderson, Stephen & Kiparsky, Paul (eds.), A Festschrift for Morris Halle, 232–286. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 1977. On wh-movement. In Culicover, Peter W., Wasow, Thomas & Akmajian, Adrian (eds.), Formal syntax, 71–132. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Chumakina, Marina. 2012. Nominal periphrasis: A canonical approach. Studies in Langauge 35, 247–274.Google Scholar
Chumakina, Marina & Corbett, Greville G. (eds.). 2013. Periphrasis: The role of syntax and morphology in paradigms. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Curme, George O. 1960. A grammar of the German language. New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing.Google Scholar
Davis, Anthony R. & Koenig, Jean-Pierre. 2000. Linking as constraints on word classes in a hierarchical lexicon. Language 76, 56–91.Google Scholar
Goldberg, Adele E. 1995. Constructions: A construction grammar approach to argument structure. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press.Google Scholar
Harris, Alice C. & Campbell, Lyle. 1995. Historical syntax in cross-linguistic perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Haspelmath, Martin. 2000. Periphrasis. In Booij, Geert, Lehmann, Christian & Mugdan, Joachim (eds.), Morphology: An international handbook on inflection and word-formation, vol. 1, 654–664. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Hippisley, Andrew. 2007. Declarative deponency: A network morphology account of morphological mismatches. In Baerman, Matthew, Corbett, Greville G., Brown, Dunstan & Hippisley, Andrew (eds.), Deponency and morphological mismatches, 145–173. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hoonchamlong, Yuphaphan. 1991. Some issues in Thai anaphora: A government and binding approach. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Wisconsin–Madison.Google Scholar
Iwasaki, Shoichi & Ingkaphirom, Preeya. 2005. A reference grammar of Thai. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Jackendoff, Ray. 1975. Morphological and semantic regularities in the lexicon. Language 51, 639–671.Google Scholar
Jenks, Peter. 2011. The hidden structure of Thai noun phrases. Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University.Google Scholar
Kálmán, Béla. 1976. Chrestomathia vogulica [Vogul chrestomathy]. Budapest: Tankönyv Kiadó.Google Scholar
Kaplan, Ronald M. & Bresnan, Joan. 1982. Lexical-Functional Grammar: A formal system for grammatical representation. In Bresnan (ed.), 173–281.Google Scholar
Kathol, Andreas. 1994. Passive without lexical rules. In Nerbonne, John, Netter, Klaus & Pollard, Carl J. (eds.), German in Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar, 237–272. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Kathol, Andreas. 2003. Cooperating constructions in Lai “lexical insertion”. In Müller, Stefan (ed.), 10th International Conference on Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar, 203–221. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Keenan, Edward L. & Comrie, Bernard. 1977. Noun phrase accessibility and universal grammar. Linguistic Inquiry 8, 63–99.Google Scholar
Kiparsky, Paul. 2005. Blocking and periphrasis in inflectional paradigms. In Booij, Geert & van Marle, Jaap (eds.), Yearbook of morphology 2004, 113–135. Dordrecht: Springer.Google Scholar
Koenig, Jean-Pierre. 1999. Inside-out constraints and description languages for HPSG. In Webelhuth et al. (eds.), 265–279.Google Scholar
Koenig, Jean-Pierre & Muansuwan, Nuttanart. 2005. The syntax of aspect in Thai. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 23, 335–380.Google Scholar
Lasnik, Howard & Uriagereka, Juan. 1988. A course in GB syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Lee, Leslie M. C.2006. Passives in Thai: The case of thuuk. Honors thesis, National University of Singapore.Google Scholar
Levin, Beth & Rappaport Hovav, Malka. 2005. Argument realization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Malouf, Robert. 2003. Cooperating constructions. In Francis, Elaine J. & Michaelis, Laura A. (eds.), Mismatch: Form–function incongruity and the architecture of grammar. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Manning, Christopher D. & Sag, Ivan A.. 1999. Dissociations between argument structure and grammatical relations. In Webelhuth et al. (eds.), 63–77.Google Scholar
Matthews, P. H. 1970. Morphology, 1st edn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Matthews, P. H. 1991. Morphology, 2nd edn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Muansuwan, Nuttanart. 2002. Verb complexes in Thai. Ph.D. dissertation, University at Buffalo, State University of New York.Google Scholar
Müller, Stefan. 2002. Complex predicates: Verbal complexes, resultative constructions and particle verbs in German. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Müller, Stefan & Wechsler, Stephen. 2014. Lexical approaches to argument structure. Theoretical Linguistics 40, 1–76.Google Scholar
Nash, David. 1982. Warlpiri verb roots and preverbs. In Swartz, Stephen M. (ed.), Papers in Warlpiri grammar: In memory of Lothar Jagst, 165–216. Darwin: SIL.Google Scholar
Pike, Kenneth L. 1962. Dimensions of grammatical constructions. Language 38, 221–244.Google Scholar
Pollard, Carl J. & Sag, Ivan A.. 1987. Information-based syntax and semantics. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Pollard, Carl J. & Sag, Ivan A.. 1994. Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press & Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Popova, Gergana & Spencer, Andrew. 2013. Relatedness in periphrasis: A paradigm-based perspective. In Chumakina & Corbett (eds.), 191–225.Google Scholar
Prasithrathsint, Amara. 2006. Development of the thuukpassive marker in Thai. In Abraham, Werner & Leisiö, Larisa (eds.), Passivization and typology: Form and function, 115–131. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Primus, Beatrice. 1999. Cases and thematic roles: Ergative, accusative and active. Tübingen: Max Niewmeyer Verlag.Google Scholar
Pullum, Geoffrey K. 1977. Word order universals and grammatical relations. In Cole, Peter & Sadock, Jerrold M. (eds.), Grammatical relations (Syntax and Semantics 8), 249–277. New York, San Francisco & London: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Richter, Frank & Sailer, Manfred. 2003. Cranberry words in formal grammar. In Beyssade, Claire, Bonami, Olivier, Hofherr, Patricia C. & Corblin, Francis (eds.), Empirical issues in formal syntax and semantics, vol. 4, 155–171. Paris: Presses de l’Université de Paris–Sorbonne.Google Scholar
Richter, Frank & Sailer, Manfred. 2010. Phraseological clauses in constructional HPSG. In Müller, Stefan (ed.), 16th International Conference on Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar, 297–317. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Robins, Robert H. 1959. In defense of WP. Transactions of the Philological Society, 116–144.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sadler, Louisa & Spencer, Andrew. 2001. Syntax as an exponent of morphological features. In Booij, Geert & van Marle, Jaap (eds.), Yearbook of morphology 2000, 71–96. Dordrecht: Kluwer.Google Scholar
Sag, Ivan A. 2012. Sign-Based Construction Grammar: An informal synopsis. In Boas, Hans & Sag, Ivan A. (eds.), Sign-Based Construction Grammar, 69–202. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Sailer, Manfred. 2000. Combinatorial semantics and idiomatic expressions in Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar. Ph.D. dissertation, Eberhard-Karls-Universität, Tübingen.Google Scholar
Spencer, Andrew. 2006. Periphrasis. In Brown, Keith (ed.), The encyclopedia of language and linguistics, 2nd edn., 287–294. Oxford: Elsevier.Google Scholar
Steever, Sanford B. 1993. Analysis to synthesis: The development of complex verb morphology in the Dravidian languages. Oxford: Elsevier.Google Scholar
Stump, Gregory T. 2002. Morphological and syntactic paradigms: Arguments for a theory of paradigm linkage. In Booij, Geert & van Marle, Jaap (eds.), Yearbook of morphology 2001, 147–180. Dordrecht: Kluwer.Google Scholar
Stump, Gregory T. 2006. Heteroclisis and paradigm linkage. Language 82, 279–322.Google Scholar
Sudmuk, Cholthicha. 2003. The thuukconstruction in Thai. In Butt, Miriam & King, Tracy H. (eds.), LFG ’03 Conference, 402–423. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Tsujimura, Natsuko. 1996. An introduction to Japanese linguistics. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Wagner-Nagy, Beáta. 2011. On the typology of negation in Ob-Ugric and Samoyedic languages. Helsinki: SUS.Google Scholar
Walther, Géraldine. 2013. De la canonicité en morphologie: Perspective empirique, théorique et computationnelle. Ph.D. dissertation, Université Paris Diderot.Google Scholar
Webelhuth, Gert, Koenig, Jean-Pierre & Kathol, Andreas (eds.). 1999. Lexical and constructional aspects of linguistic explanation. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar