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The role of tense and agreement in the licensing of subjects: evidence from participial clauses in Bangla

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Abstract

This paper examines the subject-licensing properties of Bangla non-finite participles. In this paper, I show that tense plays a pivotal role in explaining the distribution of subjects in participles. Three participles, the imperfective participle, the perfective participle and the conditional participle, have been examined regarding their different choices of (c)overt subjects, and their compatibility with different types of control. Following the ‘T-Agr calculus’ of Landau (2000, 2004), I show that tense unifies the different types of participles. Clausal selection along with the presence of tense, also has a crucial role in the distribution of subjects across the participles. I suggest that tense is not only vital in licensing the subjects, but also pivotal for their compatibility with different types of predicates. Additionally, I show that a temporal restriction, in the guise of covert agreement, motivates different subject selection in the participles in Bangla.

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Notes

  1. Bangla (Bengali) is spoken primarily in the Indian states of West Bengal and Tripura, and in Bangladesh. The data in this paper represents a variety spoken near Kolkata, which is considered to be the standard variety spoken in West Bengal.

  2. Gerundives in Bangla, morphologically marked with -(w)a-(no), appear in the subject position whereas none of the participial clauses do, as illustrated below.

    1. (i)
      figure b

  3. Here and elsewhere ec marks the empty category that is the subject of the participial clause. The lexical subjects in the matrix clause are in morphologically null nominative case, which I do not specify in the glosses.

  4. Overt subjects in non-volitional PPL clauses (van Der Wurff 1989; Bagchi 1993, 2005) are illustrated below:

    1. (i)
      figure d

    These non-volitional predicates are unaccusative in nature. Although the events in the participle and the matrix clause are sequential, like in their null subject counterparts, the events share an implicit causal relationship. (See Bagchi 2005 for details.) The licensing of overt unaccusative subjects and the connection with volitionality remains to be explained.

  5. Backward control is reported for similar examples of conjunctive participles in Assamese (a closely related language). The controller is argued to be in the embedded clause while the empty subject is the matrix subject (Haddad 2007). Case-mismatch between the subjects of the matrix and embedded clause is a diagnostic of backward control. However, such case-mismatch, common in Assamese, is not possible in the current variety of Bangla. Thus, the possibility of backward control can be ruled out in Bangla.

  6. A reduplicated imperfective participle gives rise to different readings. For example, when a telic verb is reduplicated, the matrix event instantly follows the participial event. A simultaneous temporal reading arises when an imperfective participle of an atelic verb is reduplicated. For example, the event of ‘ringing bell’ is simultaneous with ‘seeing the man’, as in (i). The reduplication does not occur with a purpose reading.

    1. (i)
      figure i

  7. This diagnostic fails in conditional correlatives (Bhatt 2003) and apparently in subjunctive clauses (Bagchi 1991; Dasgupta 1996, 2005 and Bhattacharya 2013). However, Probal Dasgupta (p.c.) states that the diagnostic does not hold because the subjunctives are not head-final structures.

  8. The disjoint reference of the null subject from the matrix subject in the given word order is not natural. However, if the embedded clause is extraposed, such a reading is available when appropriate contextual information is provided. See Simpson et al. (2012) for a similar observation. Positioning of embedded clauses with respect to the verb (i.e., pre-verbal or post-verbal) often influences the interpretation in Bangla.

    Context given: Rick has been persistent that Sudha takes medicine, although Sudha doesn’t want to do so.

    1. (i)
      figure r

  9. The PROarb, which is not controlled, appears only with gerunds or verbal nouns in Bangla.

  10. However, as an anonymous reviewer suggests, the temp-IPL and the CPL might also allow an OC PRO, in addition to allowing a pro. In contexts where the null subject is co-referential with the matrix subject, there is no certain way to distinguish between a pro and a PRO as the pro has a superset of properties of the obligatory controlled PRO. The availability of the pro subject can be proved, but the unavailability of the OC PRO subject cannot be disproved. Thus, if a pro-subject is available in the temp-IPL and CPL, an OC PRO-subject might be available as well.

  11. Pro-drop, non-argument ellipsis languages (e.g., Spanish, Italian) allow strict readings and sloppy readings only of a certain kind. This is illustrated for Spanish below, reproducing examples from Simpson et al. Example (ib) allows a strict reading, with the null subject of the embedded clause interpreted as “Maria’s daughter”. It crucially does not allow a sloppy reading with the null subject interpreted as “Juan’s daughter”. This is typical for a pro subject. (pro, of course, also allows co-reference with Juan, which can be thought of as a sloppy reading of a different kind, not relevant for Simpson et al’s argument, but is expected, given everything said in this section.)

    1. (i)
      figure ac

  12. Overt DPs in the ‘want’-class predicates can occur in a benefactive construction (i), which is not a control structure, and the same construction is possible for try-predicates too.

    1. (i)
      figure aj

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Acknowledgements

I am indebted to Roumyana Pancheva for her guidance throughout the project. Without her invaluable comments, suggestions and corrections, this paper would not exist. Special thanks to Thomas McFadden for many helpful suggestions on the first draft, and to the two anonymous reviewers, whose comments improved the paper. Thanks also to Tista Bagchi, Probal Dasgupta, and Andrew Simpson for reading and commenting on the first draft. Detailed editorial comments on content and formatting by Sandhya Sundaresan helped immensely towards improving the paper. Thanks to Arunima Choudhury for checking the data and Christina Hagedorn for proofreading the preliminary draft. Finally, comments and suggestions from the audience of FiSAL at the University of Tromsø were very helpful as well. Of course, all errors are mine.

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    Priyanka Biswas

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Biswas, P. The role of tense and agreement in the licensing of subjects: evidence from participial clauses in Bangla. Nat Lang Linguist Theory 32, 87–113 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11049-013-9212-x

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