Steffen Heidinger

French anticausatives : a diachronic perspective

This dissertation describes the emergence and spread of the French reflexive anticausative and the consequences of the emergence and spread for the already existing unmarked anticausative. With respect to the first issue, I argue, based on a corpus study, that the French reflexive anticausative emerged in the 12th century. I further show that the mechanism of language change can not be determined empirically and that the emergence can be modelled with both reanalysis and analogical extension as the relevant mechanism. I further argue that the underspecification of the French reflexive construction is a necessary condition for this change. As regards the spread of the reflexive anticausative, I argue on the basis of a corpus study that the spread is a slow and presumably irregular process, that has not yet come to an end. The innovation continuously spreads on the level of the verbal lexicon. It does so in a parallel fashion in different semantic verb classes and it does not spread from one semantic verb class to another. Finally, the consequences of this change for the unmarked anticausative are discussed from the perspective of the semantic relation between French reflexive and unmarked anticausatives. Based on a corpus study, I argue that the two types of anticausatives differ with respect to their aspectual and causal properties, but that this difference is a tendency and not absolute.

Causalness and the encoding of the causative–anticausative alternation in French and Spanish

In French and Spanish, both parts of the causative–anticausative alternation can be formally encoded in two ways: Depending on the form of the verb, marked and unmarked causatives and marked and unmarked anticausatives can be distinguished. The goal of this paper is to verify whether causalness is a factor in the encoding and whether the two languages differ in this respect (verbs used more often as causatives than as anticausatives have a high degree of causalness, while verbs used more often as anticausatives than as causatives have a low degree of causalness). On the basis of a corpus study of 20 French and 20 Spanish verbs, it will be shown that in both languages a strong correlation between causalness and encoding exists. A high degree of causalness increases the likelihood that a verb’s anticausative is marked and the causative is unmarked, and a low degree of causalness increases the likelihood that a verb’s anticausative is unmarked and the causative is marked.

The persistence of labile verbs in the French causative-anticausative alternation

Abstract This paper describes the diachronic development of labile verbs in the French causative-anticausative alternation. The aim is to show that the development is best described with the notion of persistence (defined as “endurance under competition”). In the first part of the paper I will show that French labile verbs indeed had (and still have) a serious competitor, viz. the reflexively marked anticausative. While mostly labile verbs were used to encode the alternation in 12th century Old French, in present-day French the pattern with a formally derived anticausative dominates. In the second part of the paper I will focus on the second aspect of the notion persistence and provide the following empirical evidence for the endurance of the labile pattern: (i) the high number of labile verbs used to express the alternation in present-day French, (ii) labile verbs in the French causative-anticausative alternation are not just remnants from an older stage of the language, (iii) the decrease in lability is a very slow process, and (iv) unmarked anticausatives still appear in the same semantic contexts as reflexive anticausatives.

Information focus, syntactic weight and postverbal constituent order in Spanish

In Spanish, postverbal constituents – such as direct object, locative adjunct or depicitive – can be ordered in different ways (e.g. Juan bailo desnudo en su casa vs. Juan bailo en su casa desnudo ). The present paper examines two possible factors for postverbal constituent order: information focus and syntactic weight. Based on data from a perception experiment it will be shown that information focus and syntactic weight indeed influence in postverbal constituent order in Spanish: both the focalization of a constituent and the increase of the weight of a constituent increase the frequency with which the respective constituent takes up the sentence final position. As concerns the strength of the two factors, our results suggest that information focus and syntactic weight influence in postverbal constituent order to a similar extent. As concerns the syntatic position of narrow information focus in Spanish, our results show that the sentence final position is the preferred position for narrowly focused constituents, but such constituents are not limited to the sentence final position. Normal 0 21 false false false DE X-NONE X-NONE

Frequenz und die Kodierung der Kausativ-Antikausativ-Alternation im Französischen

The causative-anticausative-alternation (e. g. John broke the glass vs. The glass broke) can be formally encoded in different ways (both across languages and within individual languages). In this paper I show that in French a statistically significant correlation exists between frequency and form in the encoding of the alternation: the less frequent alternant of an alternating verb tends to be formally marked, while the more frequent alternant tends to be formally unmarked. Despite this result, I argue against a causal relation between frequency and formal encoding and show how the correlation between frequency and formal encoding can be accounted for on semantic grounds. 1. Problemstellung und Zielsetzung1 Das Interesse der Linguistik an formalen Asymmetrien, wie zum Beispiel zwischen Buch – Büch-er, ist evident (vgl. etwa Dressler u. a. 1987, Battistella 1990). Warum ist die Pluralform des Lexems Buch formal markiert gegenüber der Singularform? In zwei rezenten Aufsätzen plädiert Haspelmath (2006, 2008) dafür, dass die Frequenz eine zentrale Stellung bei der Beantwortung solcher Fragen einnimmt. In diesem Beitrag soll überprüft werden, inwiefern die Dimension Frequenz auch bei der Analyse jener formalen Asymmetrien nützlich ist, die innerhalb der Kausativ-Antikausativ-Alternation (s. u.) im Französischen existieren. Nach Haspelmath (2008: 8) resultieren formale Asymmetrien innerhalb von Oppositionen – wie z. B. Singular vs. Plural im Bereich Numerus oder Positiv vs. Komparativ im Bereich Komparation – aus der unterschiedlichen Frequenz der Oppositionsteile: Der jeweils seltenere Teil der Opposition wird formal markiert. 1 Teile dieses Artikels habe ich auf der 38. Österreichischen Linguistiktagung in Graz, im Kolloquium des Romanischen Seminars der Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg und im Kolloquium des Instituts für Romanistik der Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz präsentiert. Ich danke den Zuhörern dieser Veranstaltungen für zahlreiche wertvolle Hinweise. Weiters danke ich Daniel Jacob für seine umfassenden Anmerkungen zu einer früheren Version dieses Artikels und Emmerich Kelih für seine Hilfe bei der statistischen Auswertung der Daten. DOI 101515/roma.62.2 Die Daten in (1) und (2) zeigen die Singularund die Pluralform des Lexems book und die Positivund die Komparativform des Lexems low. In beiden Oppositionen besteht eine formale Asymmetrie zwischen den Oppositionsteilen. Der Plural von book ist formal markiert gegenüber der Singularform (book-s vs. book), der Komparativ von low ist formal markiert gegenüber der Positivform (low-er vs. low). (1) Numerus a. Singular: book b. Plural: book-s (2) Komparation a. Positiv: low b. Komparativ: low-er Aus den formalen Asymmetrien in (1) und (2) und aus der oben geäußerten Annahme Haspelmaths, dass jeweils der seltenere Oppositionsteil formal markiert wird, ergeben sich folgende Vorhersagen hinsichtlich der Frequenz der Oppositionsteile: (i) das Lexem book wird häufiger im Singular als im Plural verwendet, (ii) das Lexem low häufiger im Positiv als im Komparativ. Anhand von normalisierten absoluten Frequenzen zeigt Haspelmath (2008: 10; basierend auf Leech u. a. 2001), dass die Lexeme book und low dieser Vorhersage entsprechen (vgl. Tabelle 1 und 2; Vorkommen pro einer Million Wörter). Der jeweils seltenere Oppositionsteil (Plural bzw. Komparativ) ist formal markiert. Der Vergleich von book und low mit den Frequenzen der Lexeme notebook und bright zeigt weiters, dass die formalen Asymmetrien mit der relativen und nicht mit der absoluten Frequenz in Beziehung stehen. Obwohl der Plural des Lexems book absolut häufiger ist als der Singular des Lexems notebook, ist dennoch der Plural von book formal markiert gegenüber dem Singular von notebook (books = Stamm+s vs. notebook = Stamm). In gleicher Weise verhält es sich mit der Komparativform von low und der Positivform von bright; auch hier ist die absolut häuSteffen Heidinger 32 Singular (= unmark.) Plural (= markiert)

Intermediate information status for non-nominal constituents: Evidence from Spanish secondary predicates in adversatives

Abstract This paper shows that non-nominal constituents can have intermediate information status (i. e., be neither given nor new). The main idea is that the state denoted by an adjectival secondary predicate can already be evoked by an event denoted by a verb from the preceding context – similar to bridging cases in the nominal domain. For example, the event cry can evoke the state sad just as the event drive can evoke the referent driver. It will be shown that the intermediate information status of secondary predicates can have a perceivable linguistic reflex, namely in the felicitous and infelicitous use of (Spanish) secondary predicates in adversatives. In addition, two ways will be discussed in which the intermediate information status can come about (activation and construal), and it will be shown that both ways apply to nominal and non-nominal constituents alike.