Time span Spring 2003 through Fall 2003 (one year)
Goals The syntax, morphology, and lexical semantics of Germanic verb-particle and separable prefix constructions is by now quite well understood (see Svenonius 1994, 1996a, 1996b, 2002, Ramchand & Svenonius 2002 for my own understanding of it, building on much earlier work by others). Such constructions bear striking resemblances to spatial and aspectual preverbal systems cross-linguistically, for example in Hungarian (É. Kiss 1987), in various North American languages (Craig & Hale 1987 for Rama, Nadëb, and Winnebago, Ackerman & LeSourd 1996 for Fox), Australian languages (Schultze-Berndt 2000 for Jaminjung, Wilson 1999 for Wagiman), and others. Furthermore, the relationship of such constructions to South Asian-style light verb constructions has been explored recently by Gillian Ramchand (2002, with special reference to Bengali). In this subproject, the relationship of these constructions to the rich system of Slavic aspectual prefixes is explored in detail. Preliminary indications suggest that the theory developed for Germanic particles can be applied to Slavic prefixes as well.
In brief, it is hypothesized that a substantial subset of Slavic prefixes represents VP-internal functional material which determines argument structure. This is in accordance with Filip’s (1999, 2000) analysis of the semantics of Slavic prefixes as only epiphenomenally aspectual, with Brody’s (1997, 2000) and Julien’s (2000, 2002) theory of morphology as obeying a very strict Mirror Principle (predicting certain verbal prefixes to be generated inside VP). However, the existence of multiple prefix constructions is problematic, and seems to force another source for certain prefixes. This subproject quite straightforwardly furthers the goals of the broader efforts in syntax, specifically as an investigation of the structure of the verbal domain.
The Team includes native speakers of Russian, Bulgarian, Serbian, Czech, and Polish, facilitating microcomparative investigations. It includes researchers with specialties in morphology, syntax, and semantics, which is important since this project stands at the interface of those domains.
Activities The plan includes intense activity in the spring: a graduate-level course on morphology taught by Øystein Nilsen, an advanced weekly seminar led by me in which recent papers on Slavic prefixes will be read; Thursday night lectures by our top scholars; a three-day forskerutdanningskurs in morphosyntax for doctoral students, taught by invited lecturers; a lengthy stay by Professor Jorge Hankamer of UCSC, and a conference on morphology in May.
The course is aimed mainly at the graduate students and the seminar is aimed mainly at the more advanced researchers, but all are expected to participate in both; the process should lead to a situation where by the time the forskerutdanningskurs and the conference are held in May, the students will be at a sufficiently advanced level to participate actively in the discussion. This is crucial because among them they represent five different Slavic languages, allowing an intense microcomparative investigation. Hopefully the activity will inspire some significant work on Slavic prefixes.
Activity on the Subproject for Fall 2003 is less intense, consisting mainly of a weekly seminar, allowing the Team to concentrate on processing findings, conducting fieldwork, and writing up the results. The Subproject is expected to result in a collection of papers published in Fall 2003, and hopefully also at least one relevant Master’s thesis to be completed in Spring 2004.
Funding: The Organizer gratefully acknowledges financial support from the Norwegian Science Foundation.
Bibliography (preliminary)
Ackerman, Farrell, and Phil LeSourd. 1996. Ms.
Brody, Michael. 1997. Mirror Theory. UCL Working Papers.
Brody, Michael. 2000. LI
Craig, Collette, and Ken Hale. 1987. Relational Preverbs in Some Languages of the Americas: Typological and Historical Perspectives. Language.
Filip, Hana. 1999. Aspect, Eventuality Types, and Noun Phrase Semantics. Garland.
Filip, Hana. 2000. The Quantization Puzzle. In Events as Grammatical Objects, CSLI.
Julien, Marit. 2000. Syntactic Heads and Word Formation. PhD, University of Tromsø.
Julien, Marit. 2002. OUP.
É. Kiss, Katalin. 1987. Configurationality in Hungarian. Reidel.
Ramchand, Gillian. 2002. A particle theory of light verbs. Ms. University of Oxford and University of Tromsø.
Ramchand, Gillian, and Peter Svenonius. The lexical syntax and lexical semantics of the verb-particle construction. WCCFL.
Schultze-Berndt, Eva. 2000. Simple and Complex Verbs in Jaminjung. PhD, Nijmegen.
Svenonius, Peter. 1994. Dependent Nexus. PhD, UCSC.
Svenonius, Peter 1996a. The verb-particle construction in the Scandinavian languages. Ms. University of Tromsø.
Svenonius, Peter. 1996b. The Optionality of Particle Shift. Working Papers in Scandinavian Syntax.
Svenonius, Peter. 2002. Filling in holes vs. falling in holes. To appear in Proceedings of SCL 19.
Wilson, 1999. CSLI