Small Clauses

The future of English linguistics as envisaged by the editors of Topics in English Linguistics lies in empirical studies which integrate work in English linguistics into general and theoretical linguistics on the one hand, and comparative linguistics on the other. The TiEL series features volumes that present interesting new data and analyses, and above all fresh approaches that contribute to the overall aim of the series, which is to further outstanding research in English linguistics.

These previously unpublished articles offer a cross-linguistic perspective on small clauses. They discuss subjects such as the different types of small clauses across languages and lexical items, the internal syntax of small clauses and their structure, and the general topic of the grammar of predication, ranging from a total questioning of the existence of small clauses to claims that they exist in every predication context. The editors' cross-linguistic approach addresses syntactic and lexical issues as well as the relationships between small clauses and language acquisition among children. It surveys the problems raised by small clauses in light of recent developments in the principles and parameter model. The data is drawn from Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Hebrew, Hungarian, Icelandic, Irish, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Russian, Slovak, and Swedish. The contributions share theoretical assumptions about small clauses. The cross-linguistic comparison offers the potential for defining variable and static elements of small clauses, as well as distinguishing ways that they resemble full clauses.

This book investigates specific syntactic means of event elaboration across seven Indo-European languages (English, German, Norwegian, French, Russian, Latin and Ancient Greek): bare and comitative small clauses (“absolutes”), participle constructions and related clause-like but non-finite adjuncts that increase descriptive granularity with respect to constitutive parts of the matrix event (elaboration in the narrowest sense), or describe eventualities that are co-located and connected with but not part of the matrix event. The book falls in two parts. Part I addresses central theoretical issues: How is the co-eventive interpretation of such adjuncts achieved? What is the internal syntax of participial and converb constructions? How do these constructions function at the discourse level, as compared to various finite structures that are available for co-eventive elaboration? Part II takes an empirical cross-linguistic perspective. It consists of five self-contained chapters that are based on parallel corpora and study either the use of a specific construction across at least two of the seven object languages, or how a specific construction is rendered in other languages.

The study The Non-verbal Type of Small Clauses in English and Lithuanian is one of the first attempts to apply the methods of generative grammar to the analysis of a fragment of Lithuanian grammar, i.e., constructions with secondary predicates of the type V [NP1 NP2] and V [NP1 AP], the sub-strings [NP1 NP2] and [NP1 AP] of which in generative works are usually called small clauses. The investigation is contrastive; the evidence of Lithuanian is compared with that of English. Whereas the syntactic study of secondary predicates in English has a certain tradition, traditional Lithuanian grammar does not have a single notion to what is known elsewhere as secondary predicates. In Lithuanian traditional grammar secondary predicates are usually referred to as a part of compound nominal predicates, predicative attributes, a part of complex objects and are not singled out as a distinct category but are given different, often contradictory treatments. Thus the research can be considered pioneering work as far as Lithuanian is concerned. It not only contributes to the theoretical discussion about the adequate way of dealing with secondary predicates in Government and Binding framework, but can also be considered instrumental in propagating modern methods of syntactic analysis in tradition-ridden Lithuanian grammar. The present work addresses an important problem whether the Lithuanian and English constructions under investigation express a subject-predicate relationship and form a constituent and can be described as having the syntactic function of a clause. For this purpose, the syntactic and semantic as well as clausal properties of the sequences [NP1 NP2] and [NP1 AP] in the two languages under consideration are discussed. The clausal properties of the sub-strings [NP1 NP2] and [NP1 AP] are investigated on the basis of the presence of agreement features, sentence negation, the resemblance to full clauses, theta-role assignment, word order, and applying sentence constituency tests.

This monograph examines the syntax of bare infinitival and participial complements of perception verbs in English and other European languages, and investigates the general conditions under which verbal complement clauses are licensed. The introductory chapter is followed by an overview of the major syntactic and semantic characteristics of non-finite complements of perception verbs in English. The third chapter presents an analysis within the framework of Chomsky's (1995) Minimalist Program according to which event-denoting complements are minimally realised as projections of an aspectual head. In the next chapter, it is argued that verbs capable of licensing aspectual complement clauses must be able to function as a special type of control predicate, an assumption which is shown to account for a number of seemingly unrelated properties of the constructions under consideration. The final chapter examines syntactically reduced clausal complements from a cross-linguistic perspective, showing that Southern Romance languages differ from Germanic ones with respect to the availability of 'bare' aspectual complement clauses, a difference that is attributed to morphological properties of verbs in these languages.

LC Number: 2005054553

Reconstruction effects in relative clauses are a class of phenomena where the external head of the relative clause seems to behave as if it occupied a position within the relative clause, as far as some commonly accepted principle of grammar is concerned. An often cited type of example is “The [relative of his] [which every man admires most] is his mother.”, where the pronoun “his” in the relative head appears to be bound by the quantified noun phrase “every man” in the relative clause – although the latter does not c-command the former, which is commonly required for binding. Several solutions have been developed in various theoretical frameworks. One interesting aspect about reconstruction effects in relative clauses is that they can be used as a benchmark for competing theories of grammar: Which architecture of the syntax-semantics interface can provide the most satisfying explanation for these phenomena? This volume brings together researchers working in different frameworks but looking at the same set of empirical facts, enabling the reader to develop their own perspective on the perfect tradeoff between syntax and semantics in a theory of grammar.

Offers a cross-linguistic perspective on small clauses. This book discusses topics such as the different types of small clauses across languages and lexical items, the internal syntax of small clauses and their structure, and the general topic of the grammar of predication. It also addresses syntactic and lexical issues.