Abstract
A novel analysis of aspectual verbs is proposed according to which aspectual verbs are heads of functional projections rather than main verbs taking clausal complements. As a case study, four Japanese aspectual verbs are analyzed: those that express inception (hajime- ‘begin’), continuation (tsuzuke- ‘continue’), and termination (oe- ‘finish’, and owar- ‘end’). Employing data from previous studies, Japanese aspectual verbs are shown to exhibit the following two characteristic behaviors: (i) they occasionally exhibit mono-clausal properties, and (ii) they impose different selectional restrictions on their verbal complements. These behaviors are characteristic of aspectual verbs cross-linguistically. This paper argues that these behaviors of Japanese aspectual verbs are accounted for if they are analyzed as heads of aspect phrases, the functional heads that encode aspectual information about events. In particular, it is proposed that (a) aspect heads occur in two positions in a clause, where they select for syntactic realizations of different event types, and (b) individual aspectual verbs are distributed differently between these two head positions based on the event types they select. The proposed analysis is shown to account for previously unaccounted for correlations between passivizability of the aspectual verbs and the event types of the verbal complements, as well as interactions between the Japanese aspectual verbs, subject honorification, and the focus particle -dake ‘only’. Finally, cross-linguistic data from previous studies on aspectual verbs in German, Italian and other Romance languages, and Basque are discussed and shown to provide further support for the proposed analysis.
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Notes
There are two issues that concern the status of these passive data. First, there are disagreements in the literature concerning the interaction between the passive morpheme and Japanese aspectual verbs. While Shibatani (1978) maintains that oe- ‘finish’ only allows long passive, Kageyama (1993) states that some speakers allow both a passive complement and long passive with oe- ‘finish’. Second, the reliability of long passive as a syntactic diagnostic has been a matter of debate. For instance, Reis and Sternefeld (2004) deem long passive in German too marginal to be a reliable diagnostic, whereas Bader and Schmid (2009) argue that long passive is grammatical in German based on experimental evidence. (I would like to thank an anonymous reviewer for directing my attention to this study.) For Japanese, Fukuda (2006) reports the results of formal sentence acceptability judgment experiments that examined interactions between the two passive constructions and the four Japanese aspectual verbs. The results strongly support the claim that oe- ‘finish’ is compatible only with long passive, while hajime- ‘begin’ and tsuzuke- ‘continue’ are compatible with both long passive and passive complements. However, the results of the same experiments failed to support the claim that owar- ‘end’ is compatible only with passive complements. The sentences with owar- ‘end’ in both passive constructions were rated poorly, and there was no significant difference in mean acceptability scores between them. In this study, however, I continue to assume that the previously reported judgments about interactions between owar- ‘end’ and the two passive constructions hold. See Fukuda (2006) for a discussion of possible causes of the low acceptability of owar- ‘end’ in the two passive constructions.
An alternative approach to restructuring is to transformationally derive a restructuring (i.e. mono-clausal) structure from a bi-clausal structure (cf. Rizzi 1978, 1982; Roberts 1997). For instance, in Roberts (1997), a restructuring structure is derived from a bi-clausal structure when the embedded verb head-moves to the matrix domain and is co-indexed with the matrix tense. Since it is not clear whether Japanese has head movement (see Kishimoto 2007 for a recent argument against the assumption that lexical verbs in Japanese undergo head movement), I do not consider the head-movement approach to restructuring for the Japanese aspectual verbs.
Here, it should be pointed out that the complement events in the examples in (9) are ambiguous between atelic durative events (activities) and telic durative events (accomplishments), since bare nouns in Japanese can have a quantized interpretation, as in ‘reading the book’, which induces a telic interpretation, or non-quantized (bare plural-like) interpretation, as in ‘reading books’, which induces an atelic interpretation. What is crucial for the current discussion, however, is that the events expressed by the verbal complements in (9) are always interpreted as having duration.
The English counterparts of melt and cool are commonly known as degree achievements and are characterized as being compatible with both telic and atelic interpretations (Dowty 1979; Hay 1998; Hay et al. 1999). Thus, it may seem surprising that their Japanese counterparts toke- ‘melt’ and same- ‘cool’ can only be telic. However, it has been argued that what can be classified as degree achievements in different languages exhibit different aspectual properties, and aspectual properties of degree achievements are not necessarily derivable from their meaning (Csirmaz 2009; den Dikken et al. 2010).
More recent studies such as McIntyre (2004) and Ramchand (2008) propose underlying structures of simple sentences that are more finely grained and articulated than the ones proposed in earlier studies such as Travis (1991) and Borer (1994, 1998). Ramchand (2008), for instance, proposes that different event types are compositionally derived in the underling structure of simple sentences consisting of projections of at most three distinct functional heads: (i) init(iation), (ii) proc(ess), and (iii) res(ult) (the first phase syntax in her terms).
The reason that the older proposals (especially Travis 1991) were adopted here instead of Ramchand’s proposal is that Ramchand (2008) explicitly denies the hypothesis that the passive involves a type of v (the equivalent of init in her proposal), and she assumes that passivization occurs outside of the domain of the first phase syntax (Ramchand 2008:89). However, under the proposed analysis, it is crucial that passivization occur within the syntactic domain where syntactic realizations of events take place, as argued in 3.3. In fact, evidence suggests that voice distinction is closely associated with the composition of events. van Valin and LaPolla (1997) show that in Italian, passivizability of transitive verbs may depend on whether they express activities or accomplishments. For instance, when a transitive verb mangiare ‘eat’ expresses an accomplishment, it can be passivized, but it cannot be passivized when it expresses an activity, regardless of whether the subject is pre- or post-verbal (van Valin and LaPolla 1997:149). This contrast seems to suggest that transitive verbs that are compatible with both activity and accomplishment readings, such as mangiare ‘eat’, can be passivized only when they express accomplishments in some languages.
A similar contrast is also observed in Japanese. When transitive verbs such as kak- ‘write’ are active, they are compatible with both a durative adverbial and a time-span adverbial (ia). Once they are passivized, however, they become compatible only with a time-span adverbial, which suggests that they express accomplishments only when passivized (ib).
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(i)
These observations show that voice is closely associated with event composition. As such, I assume that the passive v should be in the syntactic domain of event composition, as in the proposed analysis, and contra Ramchand (2008).
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(i)
I remain agnostic about the exact nature of the case licensing system in Japanese. See Inoue (2005) for a comprehensive review of studies of case licensing in Japanese.
Koizumi (1994, 1995, 1998) does not present data with owar- ‘end’ and -dake ‘only’. As pointed out by an anonymous reviewer, the nature of the scope interactions between owar ‘end’ and -dake ‘only’ is not clear, as the intuitions appear to differ among native speakers. I do not discuss owar- ‘end’ in this section given the unclear nature of the data.
Here I assume that a proposition can be complete without information that involves functional projections above vP, such as tense, viewpoint aspect, and force.
In fact, MacDonald (2008:138; fn.19) suggests that time-span adverbials are adjoined to an aspect phrase (his equivalent of L-AspP) in English.
As pointed out by an anonymous reviewer, this argument can be strengthened if there are examples of idiomatic expressions that involve subjects that are compatible with owar- ‘end’ and oe- ‘finish’. However, I was unable to find such idiomatic expressions. One possible explanation for the incompatibility of the completive aspect verbs with idiomatic expressions is that the completive aspect verbs require eventive complements, unlike hajime- ‘begin’ and tsuzuke- ‘continue’, which are compatible with stative complements, as shown below.
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(i)
Since idiomatic expressions are non-referential and therefore non-eventive, they are incompatible with the completive aspect verbs that require eventive complements.
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(i)
I would like to thank an anonymous reviewer for providing the judgments for (107).
As an anonymous reviewer points out, the proposed analysis predicts that the embedded event must be an accomplishment when there are two aspectual verbs in a given sentence, because the embedded event under L-Asp must be an accomplishment. This prediction is borne out by all of the examples in (107) through (109), with the exception of (109d). The embedded event in (107b) and (108b) can only be an accomplishment because the first aspectual verb (L-Asp) is oe- ‘finish’, which requires an accomplishment event. As for the embedded events in (109a–c), they are interpreted as telic durative events with iterative interpretations. This suggests that they must be accomplishments, since only accomplishments are durative and telic. In contrast, the embedded event in (109d) can be interpreted as atelic, contra the prediction. One way in which this observation can be reconciled with the proposed analysis is to assume that there are two head positions within H-Asp, as suggested above in light of example (110). Under such an analysis, the two aspectual verbs in (109d) are both H-Asp.
An anonymous reviewer asks if these aspectual verbs also show ordering restrictions with other known functional elements, such as the potential morpheme and negation. The negative -nai can only appear in finite contexts (cf. Kishimoto 2007). Since the verbal complement of the aspectual verbs must be in non-finite form, negation can only follow these aspectual verbs. It turns out that the potential morpheme must also follow an aspectual verb.
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(i)
These ordering restrictions suggest that the position of the potential morpheme is between H-Asp and T. However, recent analyses of the potential morpheme, as in Nomura (2005) and Bobaljik and Wurmbrand (2007), argue that the potential morpheme can be as low as v. I leave this issue for future research.
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(i)
In (117), the subject DPs appear post-verbally, presumably because passive sentences with pre-verbal bare DP subjects are ungrammatical in Italian unless accompanied by a modifier. (See Longobardi 2000 for relevant discussions.) As for (117b), Ivano Caponigro (p.c.) points out that adding a modifier to the bare DP phrase improves its grammaticality, as in (i):
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(i)
This observation is problematic for Cinque’s analysis, since these modifiers only change the bare DP’s informational status, and do not make the VP telic.
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(i)
According to Wurmbrand, only deontic modals can be embedded under scheinen ‘seem’.
Under this analysis, it is not clear why versprechen ‘promise’ and drohen ‘threaten’ cannot have embedded passive when they are control verbs, since their complement is vP. A possible alternative is to analyze versprechen ‘promise’ and drohen ‘threaten’ as v selecting a VP complement.
In fact, Wurmbrand herself suggests the possibility that beginnen ‘begin’ is a functional head (i.e. aspectual head), although she does not pursue this possibility (Wurmbrand 2001: 214, fn.76). However, an anonymous reviewer points out that an aspect head analysis does not provide a complete account for the syntactic distribution of beginnen ‘begin’, as there are several pieces of evidence that beginnen ‘begin’ behaves as lexical verb. For instance, Wurmbrand (2001) shows that beginnen ‘begin’ allows for extraposition and selects for a CP complement, while functional heads are assumed to do neither.
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Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Chris Barker, Ivano Caponigro, Marcel den Dikken, Mark Garwon, Grant Goodall, Hideki Kishimoto, John Moore, Masha Polinsky, Kenichi Takita, Asako Uchibori, the audiences at WAFL3 and FAJL4, and four anonymous NLLT reviewers for their insightful comments and very helpful suggestions. Many thanks are also due to Kunio Nishiyama and Yoshiki Ogawa for sharing their manuscript with me. Special thanks go to Marcel den Dikken and Frances Blanchette for editorial assistance, and to John Kupnick for proofreading the manuscript. All remaining errors are of course my own.
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Fukuda, S. Aspectual verbs as functional heads: evidence from Japanese aspectual verbs. Nat Lang Linguist Theory 30, 965–1026 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11049-012-9171-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11049-012-9171-7