Susan Rothstein

The Syntactic Forms of Predication

In Chapter 2 I argued for a syntactic predication relation which cannot be reduced to a thematic relation. I argued that this syntactic relation is a saturation relation between a predicate and an argument, its subject, and I claimed that there was a locality relation between subject and predicate, namely that subject and predicate have to c-command each other. The discussion in Chapter 2 concentrated on primary, or clausal, predication relations, and in particular on the predication relation within small clause complements of consider and other ECM verbs, where the predication relation is realised in its simplest form. By this I mean that small clause predication has two basic characteristics, and the predication relation is more complicated if either of these properties is changed. Small clause predication is direct predication, by which I mean that the subject and predicate c-command each other, and it is primary predication, which means that the subject and predicate form a constituent. If either of these properties does not hold of a predication relation, then we need to say something more than what was said in Chapter 2.

Counting and the Mass–Count Distinction

This article offers an account of the mass/count distinction and the semantics of count nouns, and argues that it is not based on an atomic/non-atomic nor on a homogeneous/non-homogeneous distinction. I propose that atomicity in the count domain is atomicity relative to a context k, where k is a set of entities that count as atoms (i.e. count as one) in a particular context. Assuming for simplicity Chierchias (1998a) and Rothsteins (2004) theory of mass nouns, in which they denote atomic Boolean semi-lattices closed under the complete join operation, we define an operation COUNT k that applies to the mass noun denotation N mass and derives the count noun meaning: a set of ordered pairs where d is a member of N ∩ k and k is the context k relative to which the operation applied. So, there is a typal distinction between mass nouns, which are of type , and count nouns, which are of type . The grammatical differences between count and mass nouns follow from this typal distinction. This allows us to encode grammatically the distinction between semantic atomicity, that is, atomicity relative to a context k, and natural atomicity, that is, inherent individuability. We show a number of ways in which this distinction is grammatically relevant.

Adverbial quantification over events

This paper gives an analysis of the adverbial quantifiers exemplified in “I regretted it every time I had dinner with him.” Sentences of this kind display what I call a ‘matching effect’; they are true if every event in the denotation oftime I had dinner with him can be matched with an event regretting that dinner event. They are thus truth-conditionally equivalent to sentences of the form “There are at least as many As as Bs.” The difficulties of giving a compositional interpretation to sentences of this form have been discussed in, e.g., Boolos 1981. I first show that the matching effect is semantic and not pragmatic. I then give an analysis of these sentences in a neo-Davidsonian framework, interpreting the adverbials as quantifiers over events. Syntactically they are analyzed as objects of a null preposition. This allows a simple compositional semantic interpretation in which the null preposition is interpreted exactly as other prepositions are by Davidson (1967), namely as denoting a function from the event argument of the matrix verb to the prepositional object. The matching effect then follows automatically. I extend the analysis to account for other sentences which directly instantiate the schema “For every A there is a B” and its equivalents, and show how the matching effect follows in general from the functional nature of thematic roles and prepositions.

FINE-GRAINED STRUCTURE IN THE EVENTUALITY DOMAIN: THE SEMANTICS OF PREDICATIVE ADJECTIVE PHRASES AND BE

This paper presents an account of the semantics of copular be as displayed in its behaviour in be+AP configurations. I begin by arguing against the Partee/Dowty distinction between a semantically null be of predication and a thematically relevant agentive be, and I propose that there is one semantically relevant verb whose grammatical role is to turn an AP predicate into a verbal one. The denotation of be must thus be a function from denotations of Adjective Phrases to denotation of Verb Phrases. I argue that these denotations are crucially different in kind: verbs (and thus VPs) denote eventualities, which are count entities and which are temporally locatable, while adjectives (and thus APs) denote mass entities, which are states and which are not temporally locatable. Be thus denotes a locating function which maps from the mass to the count domain, and is the analogue of the ‘packaging’ function in the nominal domain. After a comparison between the mass/count distinction in the verbal and nominal domains, I show how this theory accounts for properties of be in small clause and progressive constructions which have hitherto been explained by positing a so-called agentive be.

Perspectives on phrase structure : heads and licensing

Part 1 Heads: a case for emerging functional categories, J. Kornfilt two functional categories in noun phrases - evidence from modern Hebrew, E. Ritter on the position of subjects, H. Contreras phrase structure of ellipsis in English, A. Lobeck alignment of arguments in adjective phrases, T. Stowell. Part 2 Licensing: syntactic licensing and sub-categorization, S.D. Rothstein adjunct-predicate licensing and D-structure, T.R. Rapoport a phrase structure theory for tertiaries, T. Ernst relative clauses, licensing and the nature of derivation, D. Lebeaux generalized transformations and the D-structure position of adjuncts, M. Speas.

Case and NP licensing

This paper considers the theory of Case proposed in Pesetsky (1982) and adopted in Chomsky (1986a) and compares it to that proposed in Burzio (1986). Pesetskys proposal is that a lexical feature of the verb determines whether or not it assigns accusative Case, and that possessing the feature [+Case] is what allows a head to c-select NP complements. I show that this proposal is empirically inadequate since (i) some heads that can assign Case are predicted by Pesetsky to be marked [−Case] and (ii) [+N] heads which do not assign Case differ as to whether they c-select NP complements. Furthermore, Pesetskys proposal is stipulatory since there is no general way of predicting which V is marked [+Case]. Burzios proposal that Case is a structural property of all verbs with specific theta properties is more adequate, both empirically and explanatorily. An additional conclusion is that Grimshaws (1979, 1981) claim that heads subcategorize as well as select semantically is vindicated.

Heads, Projections, and Category Determination

This paper examines heads, in the sense in which the term is used in the government-binding theory of syntax (Chomsky 1981, 1986). In the first part, I discuss ways of defining the term. In Section Two I show, through an analysis of conjunctions and the degree word too, that heads do not/ necessarily determine the category of their projections. I assume Chomsky’s (1986) analysis of IP and CP, and Abney’s (1987) theory of DPs.

Vendlerian Classes and the Russian Aspectual System

This paper considers the relevance of the Vendlerian lexical aspectual classification of verbs in Russian. We focus on the lexical classes of accomplishments and activities and argue that the classification of verbs into activities and accomplishments cuts across the classification into perfective and imperfective verbs. Accomplishments display incremental structure and occur as perfectives and imperfectives. Activities do not display incremental structure and also occur in the perfective and imperfective aspect. The distinction between activities and accomplishments is expressed through their interactions with what we call incremental modifiers: modifiers which are sensitive to the incremental structure of the verb meaning. These modifiers include postepenno ‘gradually’, and ‘X by X’ modifiers such as stranica za stranicej ‘page by page’ and ètaž za ètažom ‘floor by floor’. Imperfective activities do not occur with either postepenno or the ‘X by X’ modifiers, and neither do the verb forms which Padučeva 1996 calls “delimited activities” (delimitativ). Accomplishments in both the imperfective and the perfective aspects occur with postepenno and the ‘X by X’ modifiers (although some Russian speakers find some examples of perfective accomplishments with ‘X by X’ modifiers unnatural owing to what we consider to be pragmatic reasons). We show that the behavior of these modifiers generally follows if we assign accomplishments the incremental structure posited in Rothstein 2004 and treat the modifiers as directly modifying the incremental structure.

States and modification : A reply to maienborn

Abstract This very interesting paper investigates differences between copula verbs on the one hand, and ‘truly eventive’ verbs, on the other, discussing a number of important topics, including the effect of word order on modification relations, and the difference between internal and external event modification. The core claim of the paper is that states and eventualities have a different logical structure, and that the differences between them follow from this. Rather than commenting directly on the arguments made in the paper, I am going to concentrate in my response on this issue, trying to show that statives and eventualities are more similar than Maienborn assumes, and suggesting that the differences between them might be explained without postulating different logical structures.

The Felicity of Aspectual For‐Phrases – Part 1: Homogeneity

This paper is the first in a series of two papers presenting recent developments concerning the interaction between aspectual classes of predicates and the semantics of aspectual for-phrases. Aspectual for-phrases can felicitously modify stative and activity predicates, but not (basic) accomplishment and achievement predicates. Earlier literature proposed that this is because aspectual for-phrases must modify predicates which are homogeneous– meaning that the predicate spreads appropriately to subintervals – and it proposed a notion of homogeneity which is appropriate for stative predicates. We argue in this first paper that neither the earlier literature, nor later proposals have managed to come up with an adequate account of the felicity of aspectual for-phrases with eventive predicates, and that, in particular, accomplishment and achievement predicates with bare arguments and iterative constructions remain challenges that these accounts cannot properly meet. We show that the problem lies in the notion of homogeneity for eventive predicates: the semantic tradition has provided us with static notions of homogeneity – insensitive to the arrow of time – but what is needed is a dynamic notion.