Let-causatives and (a)symmetric DAT-NOM constructions

Heimir F. Viðarsson. 2017. Grimm’s “floating” datives: Applicatives and NP/DP configurationality in Icelandic from a diachronic perspective. Working Papers in Scandinavian Syntax 99:30-53., 2017

‘Free’ dative benefactives, elements that do not clearly belong to the obligatory argument structure of the verb, have long been considered elusive by linguists, referred to by Grimm (1837), for instance, as datives floating in-between. Applicative Theory (e.g. Pylkkänen 2008, Marantz 2013) has made this notion more precise by identifying certain cross-linguistically attested readings with specific structural positions, High vs. Low. In this paper I attempt to combine this theory in the context of diachronic change in Icelandic with recent discussion about NP/DP configurationality and the absorption of benefactives and external dative possessors into the nominal domain (Van de Velde 2010, Van de Velde & Lamiroy 2017). It is shown that Old Norse allowed a wide range of dative benefactives and that High and Low structural positions of applicatives could both be filled simultaneously by a dative. Both these positions typically require prepositional marking in Modern Icelandic. Since Icelandic thus lost ‘free’ dative benefactives while retaining its morphological case system, deflection arguably cannot be invoked as an explanation. Based on the approach of Van de Velde & Lamiroy (2017) and data obtained mainly from the IcePaHC and MÍM corpus of Icelandic, it is argued that the rise of obligatory determiners in the history of Icelandic may at least go some way towards accounting for these (and perhaps other) changes.

Linguistic Inquiry, 2020

The goal of this article is to understand the syntax of Icelandic indirect causatives (ICs), especially with respect to the implicit causee. We show that the complement of the causative verb must be at least as large as a VoiceP, and that it shares some properties with active VoicePs and others with passive VoicePs. We make sense of this state of affairs by proposing that the causee, while phonetically silent, has an explicit syntactic representation, but as a φP rather than a DP. We further propose that ICs are built by stacking a second VoiceP on top of the lexical verb’s first VoiceP, and that this configuration, along with the underspecified interpretation of φP, leads to a special thematic interpretation of both the causer and the implicit causee. Our analysis suggests that there are certain core ingredients involved in building ICs—such as stacked VoicePs and an underspecified causee—but that the source of these ingredients can vary across languages and constructions, dependin...

Proceedings of the 34th Western Conference on …, 2007

This paper considers how analysis of adjectival resultatives in German, such as the example in (1), extends to Icelandic.

2013

This paper focuses on the conditions under which dative–nominative alternations take place, mainly within the Germanic family, with a view to illuminate the nature of dative case cross-linguistically. In particular, we investigate the properties of bekommen/krijgen passives in different varieties of Dutch and German and compare these passives to other instances of Dat-Nom alternations attested in Icelandic. We consider two parameters of variation: (i) the environments where Dat-Nom alternations take place (monotransitives and ditransitives or only ditransitives) and (ii) the extent to which these depend on the organization of the Voice systems in the languages under discussion (passives or non-passives). The proposal we defend, within the generative framework, is that mixed approaches towards dative are correct. There are three types of languages: languages where dative is always structural, languages where dative is never structural and finally languages where dative qualifies as s...

2013

This paper focuses on the conditions under which dative-nominative alternations take place, mainly within the Germanic family, with a view to illuminate the nature of dative case cross-linguistically. In particular, we investigate the properties of bekommen/krijgen passives in different varieties of Dutch and German and compare these passives to other instances of Dat-Nom alternations attested in Icelandic. We consider two parameters of variation: (i) the environments where Dat-Nom alternations take place (monotransitives and ditransitives or only ditransitives) and (ii) the extent to which these depend on the organization of the Voice systems in the languages under discussion (passives or non-passives). The proposal we defend, within the generative framework, is that mixed approaches towards dative are correct. There are three types of languages: languages where dative is always structural, languages where dative is never structural and finally languages where dative qualifies as s...

Studies in Honor of Paul Kiparsky, 2008

This paper argues that case assignment to indirect objects in Icelandic is determined by theta-roles in that recipient and benefactive indirect objects are always assigned dative case. Indirect objects with accusative case are neither recipients nor benefactives. The association between dative case and recipients or benefactives holds for direct objects and subjects as well as indirect objects. Nominative subjects which seem to be counterexamples are argued to have some agent properties which prevents them from getting dative case. The idea is independently motivated by the fact that all ditransitive verbs in Icelandic have nominative subjects even if some of these subject are not agents in the usual sense of that word.

Lingua, 2010

Jouitteau's 2005 generalization that absolute V1 is not allowed introduces an interesting perspective on the possible structural relatedness between V1 and V2 grammatical systems. This article examines whether Celtic and Germanic display additional convergences beyond those that involve the left periphery. The verb-subject order in finite declarative clauses is one of them. It is shown that, once certain assumptions are made concerning the syntax of formal features (they ''fission'' when unsatisfied) and the featural endowment of Tense (the phi-requirement should carefully be distinguished from the EPP-requirement), some of the characteristics of the Celtic and Germanic peripheries straightforwardly follow from the properties of the inflectional domains. As far as the latter are concerned, three dimensions of variation are isolated, which decisively contribute to shaping clausal structure and determining word order: the inflectional richness of verbal forms, whether tense has a featural/morphemic representation within vP, and the presence/absence/optionality of T's [EPP].

2015

At a broad level, this dissertation looks at Voice phenomena that are between what is traditionally called active and passive and allows a further departure from a construction-based conception of grammar.1 The conception of passive in transformational syntax was a languagespecific approach, deriving the passive from the active with a passive-specific transformation rule (Chomsky 1957, 1965). In the Extended Standard Theory (EST) and Government and Binding (GB) era (X′-theory), approaches in modelling grammar shifted from language-specific rules to general principles applying to language. Ambitious research was conducted on case and Voice phenomena, along with their interaction (Chomsky 1981; Vergnaud 1977/2008; Jaeggli 1986; Baker et al. 1989). The Principles and Parameters approach, which has its roots in GB, is pursued further in Minimalism (Chomsky 1993, 1995, et seq.). In recent years, many important cross-linguistic observations and discoveries regarding Voice phenomena and ca...

2016

This has been accounted for in terms of DEFECTIVE INTERVENTION: the φ-features of the dative argument cannot value the probing features of the verb, but nevertheless prevent it probing further. However, this is not enough to explain the ungrammaticality of (1)—“default” 3rd person agreement on the verb should still be available, just as it is in contexts such as (2), when the low nominative is not an argument of the agreeing verb, but originates in a small clause (Sigurðsson 2000, Schütze 2003). Hence it has been proposed that 1st/2nd person pronouns require licensing by entering into an agreement relation specifically with a Person probe, as motivated for the PCC in other languages (see discussion in Preminger 2011). However, this still does not account for the availability of (2), as the 2sg low nominative does not agree with the main verb. Therefore (2) should be as bad as (1), but it is not.

Nordic Journal of Linguistics 35.3, 219–249 (2012, publ. 2013).

This article investigates themorphosyntactic status of dative case in Norwegian, Icelandic, and Faroese. We hypothesize that these three languages represent three diachronic stages signalled synchronically by the degree of preservation or non-preservation of dative under movement. Thus, we explore the synchronic status of dative under passive movement and topicalization in the three languages, while simultaneously paying attention to the larger questions of diachronic preservation and non-preservation of dative. We suggest that our findings have interesting ramifications for the categorization of case as structural and non-structural in generative grammar.

It is well-known cross-linguistically that some classes of transitive verbs are more likely than others to have dative objects. Thus, verbs whose object participant is active independent of the actions of the subject participant have a strong tendency to take dative objects. In this article, I show how this is reflected in the Insular Scandinavian languages, especially Faroese, where verbs whose objects are furthest away from the dative prototype have been the prime targets of dative loss with two-place verbs. By contrast, verbs that are semantically closest to the dative prototype seem to be the most resistant to dative loss.

Working papers in Scandinavian syntax 68: 1-14., 2001

Icelandic and Faroese appear to be exceptional with respect to the distribution of ACC-marked arguments: In spite of the mandatory ACC-to-NOM conversion that is characteristic of NOM-ACC case systems and operative in Icelandic and Faroese, too, there are instances of argumental DPs with ACC case without there being a patent instance of NOM in finite clauses. It will be shown that these instances are just regular options in a regular case system. The impression of exceptionality vanishes as soon as the crucial contributions of independently acknowledged, specific grammatical settings of Icelandic and Faroese are honored.

This article discusses the morphosyntax of accusative subject constructions in Icelandic, from the point of view of the 'dependent case' analysis of accusative. The primary focus is on deriving the Accusative Subject Generalization (ASG), the generalization that accusative subjects are never related thematically to a morphologically intransitive verb. After it is demonstrated that the ASG holds, it is proposed that the ASG follows from the claim that there is no such thing as inherently case-marked accusatives in Icelandic. The accusative subject constructions under scrutiny in fact involve a silent external argument that distributes like a clitic syntactically and is interpreted like a weather pronoun semantically. The account is explanatory insofar as it involves one stipulation—the presence of a silent clitic—from which the ASG and numerous other syntactic, semantic, and morphological properties of accusative subject constructions follow. The explanatory value of the account hinges on a grammatical architecture where morphological idiosyncrasy and semantic idiosyncrasy are computed in distinct components of the grammar, and case marking—even structural case marking—is divorced from DP licensing.