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Applicatives without verbs

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Abstract

In this paper, we argue that Applicatives can occur without verbs, more specifically, internal to nouns and adjectives, as previously proposed by Ingason (2015, 2016). We extend Ingason’s theory and separate the noun-internal Root-Selecting Event Applicative of the Icelandic type (Applexp) from another Root-Selecting Applicative attested in Basque (referred to here as Applgoal). Evidence supporting this hypothesis comes from two empirical domains: (i) result/process nominals taking datives attested in the syntax of headlines, where no v is projected at all; and (ii) predicative configurations headed by adjectives and process nouns taking internal datives. On the basis of distributive and morphological evidence, as well as constituency tests, we argue that the presence of these internal datives is independent from v. On the other hand, we depart from Ingason’s analysis in that the Root-selecting Applicative of the Basque type, although related to an event, does not strictly correspond to Pylkkänen’s High Appl projection, but rather resembles the Low one in that it introduces goal/source datives. Finally, we show that the Appl projection introducing experiencer datives in Basque is in fact dependent on the projection of v.

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Notes

  1. As an anonymous reviewer notes, to state that a nominal head is causative might be problematic for the long-established connection between the verbal category and causativity (Chomsky 1970). We will not pursue this issue further, since we are not assuming the presence of a nominal head with causative flavor in our analysis.

  2. In this paper, we will address mostly DPs interpreted as goals, as these instances are the most common and extended in this empirical context in Basque. Nevertheless, there are some cases where the noun/adjective-internal dative DPs can be also interpreted as sources, as in alergia salizitatoei ‘allergy to salicylate’. In this paper, we will restrict our analysis to goals, but we consider it can be similarly extended to sources. On the other hand, although most data gathered for our study show animate goals, inanimate goals are also attested. Here we provide the reader with more examples including inanimate goals:

    1. (i)
      figure c

  3. This restriction also holds for PPs. Actually, nP-internal PPs are ungrammatical outside headlines (if not selected by the relational postposition -ko, see Sect. 3.3). As pointed out by de Rijk (1998: 378), the restriction of nP-internal PPs to headlines is also attested inlanguages such as Quechua, Japanese and Turkish.

  4. The example from Fernández and Sarasola (2010) was furnished by Josu Landa by means of the syntactic browser Corpus Arakatzaile Sintaktikoa (CAS), which is available at http://corsyntax.ametza.com/cas/, accessed 19 November 2018.

  5. This approach cannot be extended to all verbless headlines involving datives. For instance, in some cases (e.g. (i)) the dative seems to be the goal of a silent verb, presumably give, and not of the noun itself.

    1. (i)
      figure i

    Although instances like these are similar to the ones we have analyzed in the paper, unlike the headlines we are discussing they are compatible with temporal adverbs such as aurrerantzean ‘from now on’ or manner adverbs such as apurka-apurka ‘little by little’. As we show in example (9b), the headlines we are analyzing are incompatible with these adverbs.

  6. Non-eventive nouns that are somehow related to an event can be grammatical in this context. For instance, in the Basque journal Argia ‘the light’, there is a section called Zuzendariari gutuna ‘a letter to the editor’ lit. ‘a letter to the director’. In this particular case, the noun does not name an event, but it denotes an entity that is nevertheless the result of a writing event. Not all nouns of this kind seem to be grammatical, since liburua irakurzaleari / irakurzaleari liburua ‘a book to the reader’ is not acceptable. Hence, the grammaticality of this example needs further explanation. Nevertheless, we think that the main distinction applies, as other non-eventive/concrete nouns are completely unattested and seem to be out (ex. (10)a). We thank an anonymous reviewer for bringing this to our attention.

  7. The verb may not be nominalized immediately above vP. Actually, several works have proposed that -tze infinitives involve more clausal projections, like Infl/T (see, among others, Ortiz de Urbina 1989; Zabala and Odriozola 1996; Duguine 2013). For instance, these clausal projections have been argued to also be responsible for assigning the subject ergative case (e.g. Ortiz de Urbina 1989; Rezac et al. 2014). Since this is not strictly relevant for our analysis, we will assume for simplicity that nP is projected on top of vP.

  8. We are abstracting away from the discussion on the separation between Voice and v, and we presume, for the sake of simplicity, that v is both the verbalizer and the head assigning absolutive case.

  9. As a reviewer notes, analysing nres and nproc as different heads is reminiscent of Moulton’s (2014) analysis of complex event nominals, simple event nominals and result nominals, where n is associated to different semantics in each case.

  10. Chomsky’s (2001:13) PIC1 is slightly different:

    1. (i)

      The domain of H is not accessible to operations outside HP; only H and its edge are accessible to such operations.

    Following Embick (2010) and related work, we adopt the second version of the Phase Impenetrability Condition. In well-known scenarios like T agreement with the quirky nominative object in Icelandic (Chomsky 2001) and root-determined allomorphy in the English past tense (Embick 2010), it is necessary that the domain of H stays accessible until the next phase-head (i.e. Z) is merged, something that is possible with the PIC2 but not with the PIC1. More specifically, in these two cases, T (a non-phase head projected between v and C) must be able to access the material in the domain of v.

  11. In the list of derived verbs (26), both Romance loan (errespetu/errespetatu) and non-loan (gorroto/gorrotatu, aipu/aipatu) pairs are included. As can be seen, the process of lowering the final vowel to /a/ takes place in both cases. It must be noted, though, that in Spanish (one of the two Romance languages in contact with Basque), the counterpart to errespetatu is respetar, with the /a/ theme vowel attached to the verbal Root (i.e. respeta-r). In the nominal environment, the Root ends in /o/, i.e. respeto ‘respect’. On the basis of this, it could be argued that there is no lowering phonological process affecting the final vowel in Basque; rather, the Root (in the verbal context) is directly borrowed from Spanish with a final vowel /a/. The same could be argued for the pair abisu ‘warning’ and abisatu ‘to warn’, which in Spanish have the counterparts aviso ‘warning’ and avisar‘to warn’.

    This does not affect our analysis, since we argue that the vowel change is a context-dependent and lexically restricted process. The /a/ ending lexical item is the exponent of the Root in the context of the verbalizer. It does not matter whether it is listed as a phonological process affecting only certain Roots in certain derivational environments, or whether it involves Root allomorphs for some Romance-loan Roots.

  12. Our analysis is similarly compatible with a view of dative arguments as DPs, instead of KPs.

  13. Similar instances have been obtained from technical texts and exhaustively analyzed by Makazaga (1999) and Zabala (1999).

  14. We assume that dative agreement markers on the auxiliary are really dative clitics, in line with Rezac et al. (2014), Odria (2017) and references therein. In any case, nothing in our analysis hinges on this view, as our analysis is similarly compatible with the view of dative greement markers (instead of clitics).

  15. The evidence of the optional dative cliticization exemplified in (40) and (41) for the adjective-internal dative analysis is relevant for Central and Western varieties of Basque, but not for Eastern ones. In fact, Eastern varieties show optional dative cliticization in instances similar to those in (41) (Etxepare and Oyharçabal 2009, 2013; Fernández and Landa 2009; Fernández et al. 2009). As a consequence, the lack of dative cliticization in Eastern varieties can be argued to be related to the independent dative clitic drop phenomenon attested in these varieties, and not to the adjective-internal nature of the dative. Nevertheless, we would still argue that, in these predicative configurations under discussion, the dative is introduced internally to the adjective/noun also in Eastern dialects. With regards to optional dative cliticization, see also fn. 30.

  16. As a consequence, the absolutive DP in these predicative configurations is not subject to the Person Case Constraint, as pointed out by Rezac (2003, 2008, 2009 and references therein).

  17. In the case of iraun ‘remain’ in (46), the presence of a lexical verb seems to block the raising of the dative clitic first to [spec, a] and then to [spec, vP]. If it cannot rise, it will be sent to Spell Out once v is merged into the structure, together with the whole ApplP (according to PIC2). At this moment, we cannot find a theoretical explanation for this analysis. Nevertheless, we believe that the data are significant per se, since they show that dative arguments of adjectives are not necessarily cross-referenced in the finite verbal form, an aspect that is remarkable for the Basque inflectional pattern.

  18. The analysis of adverbs as including a silent P (a relational element) and a noun (a non-relational element) was already proposed in Mateu (2002) and Mateu and Rigau (2002). In particular, they propose that adjectives and adverbs must be regarded as relational elements to which a non-relational head has been incorporated or conflated.

  19. In fact, this is a fully productive process in Basque. Aspectual verbs like egon ‘(stage level) be’, ibili ‘walk’, or ari ‘be engaged in’ can take postpositional complements with a noun naming an event: lan-ean [work-INE] ‘in work’, meaning ‘working’, igeri-an [swim-INE] ‘in swim’, meaning ‘swimming’, surf-ean [surf-INE] ‘in surf”. These event-naming nouns do not have matching verbal roots. Either they need egin ‘do’ in order to be used as verbs or the Root is just different: lan egin ‘to work’ but *lan-du ‘to work’, igeri egin ‘to swim’ but *igeri-tu ‘to swim’, surf egin / surfeatu ‘to surf’ but *surf-(a)-tu etc.

  20. Note, however, that examples with a silent P do not admit adjectives. Thus, a variant of Mitxelena’s example in (64) with a silent P *Begiramen horreneske lotsagabenator is out, whereas a similar one without the adjective is good: Begiramen horreneskenator. On the other hand, it is worth noting that configurations with an overt P also admit dative goal arguments.

    1. (i)
      figure bb

  21. For a related phenomenon, see high-lowapplicatives in Wood’s (2015:216–220) typology of Icelandic applicatives. Wood’s high-low applicatives are based on Marantz (2009a, 2009b), apud Wood (2015:217), that argues that English benefactives share many properties with high applicatives and thus, involve a kind of High-Low applicative. Wood extends this idea to some Icelandic dative-nominative constructions and claims that in configurations involving change-of-state or creation verbs, some direct object DPs can be interpreted as eventualities (states or events). As Wood claims, in these configurations, the applicative takes this eventive DP as a complement, and it is therefore semantically interpreted as a High Applicative. However, this very same applicative is syntactically low as it takes a DP complement and applies a second argument to that eventive complement.

  22. A Root is not a verb but belongs to the semantic type <s,t>, i.e. it denotes a set of events. A related approach to Roots has been adopted in Levinson (2010) for pseudo-relative configurations such as She braided her hair tight, where the Root braid is proposed to denote a set of individuals before being verbalized, and as such, it can be modified by the adjective tight.

  23. The semantic denotation of the nominal head of process is not considered here, since we are going to deal with it in the analysis of predicate configurations headed by nouns (see the definitions in (81) below).

  24. It is worth noting that some psych nouns such as laket or atsegin ‘pleasure/pleasant’ can also be attested in the temere-type configuration, with an ergative marked experiencer and an absolutive stimulus (see Etxepare 2003; Fernández and Ortiz de Urbina 2010, and references therein). In this paper, we will limit our analysis to the dative-absolutive configuration of these predicates. Furthermore, other psych nous like beldur ‘fear’ and gorroto ‘hatred’ can also take dative arguments (beldurra iluntasunari [fear the darkdat] ‘fear of the dark’). Nevertheless, these dative arguments are not experiencers like those analyzed in this section but rather stimulus arguments. We leave the study of this type of psych noun for future research.

  25. It is worth mentioning that the examples in (85) have verbal counterparts that allow dative experiencers. See for instance example (i) which involves a dative experiencer and the psych noun/adjective atsegin ‘pleasure, pleasant’ in a verbal predicate. Similar instances will be presented and analysed in Sect. 6.2.

    1. (i)
      figure bl

  26. Our approach therefore diverges from other analyses of experiencers such as Landau (2010), which fail to account for the asymmetries between experiencer and goal datives in Basque.

  27. Roughly speaking, the agreement contrast in Eastern dialects is as follows: goal datives of ditransitives (e.g. eman ‘to give’), bivalent unergatives (behatu ‘to look at’), and bivalent unaccusatives (jarraiki ‘to follow’) show optional dative cliticization; by contrast, dative experiencers (ahantzi ‘to forget’) and possessors, and ethical datives never drop the dative clitic (Etxepare and Oyharçabal 2009, 2013; Fernández and Landa 2009; Fernández et al. 2009).

  28. Note that, in (98), the ungrammaticality involves the projection of the dative KP. There is nothing wrong with having a SC headed by atsegin ‘pleasure/pleasant’ in the complement position of iruditu.

    1. (i)
      figure ca

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the three anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments on a previous version of this paper. We would also like to thank Jon Ortiz de Urbina for discussion and valuable comments and José Ignacio Hualde for feedback. The authors also acknowledge the research funding received from the Basque Government (IT665-13), the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (FFI2014-51878-P) and Agence National de la Recherche (ANR-17-CE27-0011-01). The research leading to these results has also received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Program for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no. 613465.

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  1. University of Deusto, Bilbao, Spain

    Ane Berro

  2. University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain

    Beatriz Fernández

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  1. Ane Berro
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  2. Beatriz Fernández
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Correspondence to Beatriz Fernández.

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Berro, A., Fernández, B. Applicatives without verbs. Nat Lang Linguist Theory 37, 1273–1317 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11049-018-09437-4

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