16.2503, Review: Syntax/Typology: Carnie, Harley & Dooley (2005)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-16-2503. Mon Aug 29 2005. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 16.2503, Review: Syntax/Typology: Carnie, Harley & Dooley (2005)

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1)
Date: 27-Aug-2005
From: Asya Pereltsvaig < asya_pereltsvaig at yahoo.com >
Subject: Verb First: On the syntax of verb-initial languages 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Mon, 29 Aug 2005 21:45:50
From: Asya Pereltsvaig < asya_pereltsvaig at yahoo.com >
Subject: Verb First: On the syntax of verb-initial languages 
 

EDITORS: Carnie, Andrew; Harley, Heidi; Dooley, Sheila Ann
TITLE: Verb First 
SUBTITLE: On the syntax of verb-initial languages 
SERIES: Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 73 
PUBLISHER: John Benjamins
YEAR: 2005 
Announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/16/16-818.html 

Asya Pereltsvaig, Department of Linguistics, Cornell University

This volume is a collection of papers from a workshop of verb-first 
languages that took place at the University of Arizona, Tucson in February 
2003. It offers a valuable contribution to our understanding of the syntax 
of verb-first languages because it presents the most recent cross-
linguistic research on the subject from a variety of theoretical 
perspectives. This book is of interest to both theoretical syntacticians 
and typologists, as well as scholars who study the particular grammars of 
verb-first languages, including Celtic, Zapotec, Mixtec, Polynesian, 
Austronesian, Mayan, Salish, Australian, and Nilotic languages. It can 
also be used as a text for advanced syntax courses (in fact, I will be 
using several papers from this volume for my seminar on word order 
derivation). The book opens with a short summary of the issues and the 
following articles, written by the volume's editors: Andrew Carnie, Heidi 
Harley, and Sheila Ann Dooley. It also contains a list of abbreviations, a 
joint list of references, and an index; endnotes follow each separate 
contribution. 

SUMMARY

The main assumption shared by most of the contributors in this volume is 
that verb-first orders (including Verb-Subject-Object, or VSO, and Verb-
Object-Subject, or VOS orders) are derived from a different underlying 
order, namely Subject-Verb-Object (SVO). In addition to Kayne's (1994) 
Universal Base Hypothesis, this assumption has been driven by evidence of 
VP constituency in VSO languages. Yet, it should be noted that this 
assumption is not itself uncontroversial; it has recently been challenged 
by Borsley (in press); in fact, several contributions in this volume 
reconsider this assumption and provide new evidence for it. Given this 
assumption, however, the main issues considered by the contributors to 
this volume are whether verb-first orders are derived by V-movement or VP-
movement and whether different verb-first languages should be analyzed in 
the same fashion. Thus, the classical analysis of VSO languages, stemming 
from the work of Emonds (1980), involves head-movement of V to some 
functional projection higher than the subject (such as Tense or 
Complementizer, depending on the analysis, or possibly on the language 
considered). However, recent work on verb-first languages (e.g., Massam 
2000, Rackowsky and Travis 2000) explored a different approach whereby 
verb-first orders (both VSO and VOS) are derived by a movement of VP 
remnant, that is a VP from which the subject (in VOS orders) or both the 
subject and the object (in VSO orders) have been extracted 
(or "evacuated"). If the remnant-VP approach is on the right track, it 
means that VSO and VOS languages are more similar in their structure than 
previously thought. 

The article by Sandra Chung ("What fronts? On the VP-raising account of 
verb-initial order", pp. 9-29) addresses both of these main issues: is the 
verb-first order derived by VP-movement (as opposed to V-movement) and are 
VSO and VOS languages subject to the same analysis? First, she considers 
evidence for movement analysis of the VO string in VOS languages and 
argues that while some languages (e.g., Seediq and Malagasy) conform to 
the predictions of the VP-movement analysis, other languages (such as 
Chamorro) are less amenable to such an analysis. Then, she turns to VSO 
languages and raises an important question, largely ignored by previous 
works that argued for VP-movement analysis (e.g., Massam 2000, Rackowsky 
and Travis 2000), namely what motivation is there for extracting arguments 
(and everything else apart from the verb itself) from the VP prior to 
remnant VP movement? Although she does not give a definitive answer to 
this question, she sets important goals for future research in this area.

Henry Davis in his "Coordination and constituency in St'at'imcets 
(Lillooet Salish)" (pp. 31-64) takes up the issue of whether the 
assumption that verb-first orders are derived from an underlying SVO order 
is valid. He re-examines the evidence for subject-object asymmetries and 
VP constituency in St'at'imcets and concludes that all tests except 
coordination point to a hierarchical structure, with an underlying VP 
constituent. As regards coordination, he concludes that its special status 
in St'at'imcets is a property of coordination in general and not of 
St'at'imcets in particular.

Yuko Otsuka's article "Two derivations of VSO: A comparative study of 
Niuean and Tongan" (pp. 65-90) challenges the idea that all VSO 
languages/orders are derived in the same fashion and claims that even such 
closely related (Polynesian) languages as Niuean and Tongan require 
different analyses: Niuean VSO order is derived by remnant VP-movement and 
Tongan VSO order -- by head movement of V-to-T-to-C. The technical 
implementation of this analysis is in saying that the two languages differ 
in the nature of the Tense's EPP feature: in Niuean it is [Pred], while in 
Tongan it is [D]. The important conclusion of this paper is that an 
analysis that works for one VSO language cannot be immediately extended to 
any and all VSO languages. 

Felicia Lee ("Force first: Clause-fronting and clause typing in San Lucas 
Quiaviní Zapotec", pp. 91-106) develops the line of analysis that relies 
on string-vacuous movement of large constituents and argues that covert 
clausal movement is both syntactically and semantically motivated in San 
Lucas Quiaviní Zapotec. Her evidence comes from the existence of similar 
overt movement in the language and semantic/interpretative constraints on 
constructions that require that high projections in the left periphery be 
filled. Thus, in the absence of base-generated particles in ForceP (such 
as yes/no markers), remnant VP movement must apply, bringing the remnant 
VP into the specifier of ForceP. 

Thus, Lee's conclusions are at odds with those of the next article, "V1 
and wh-questions: a typology" by Kenji Oda (pp. 107-133), who argues that 
verb-first languages derived by VP-movement are banned from introducing 
interrogatives by T-to-C movement. The only alternative available in this 
languages, according to Oda, is the cleft strategy for fronting wh-items. 
Oda further applies this conclusion to Irish and argues that Irish wh-
questions are pseudo-clefts; given this and the conclusions of the first 
part of the article, it is concluded that Irish VSO order is best analyzed 
with VP-movement rather than V-movement (but see Carnie and Harley, 
forthcoming, for arguments against VP-movement analysis of Irish).

Dirk Bury in his article "Preverbal particles in verb-initial languages" 
(pp. 135-154) seeks to explain the generalization that verb-initial 
languages have preverbal particles. To do so, he proposes a model of 
syntax where structural representations only state the dominance relations 
between categories and the size of a given clause is determined by head 
and specifier/adjunct positions that need to be merged. In his system, V-
movement is taken to be a PF (Phonological Form) operation which spells 
out a verb either in the position of a derived head or in the position of 
an independent category. While derived heads have no overt material and 
always require a filled specifier, independent categories do contain 
phonological material and in such structures the moved verb will appear 
adjacent to some other overt material. 

James McCloskey ("A note on predicates and heads in Irish clausal syntax", 
pp. 155-174) turns his attention to the most-widely studied VSO language, 
Irish. He considers data from ellipsis and coordination and argues that, 
regardless of whether V-movement or VP-movement turns out to be the 
correct analysis for Irish verbal clauses, clauses with non-verbal 
predicates must be analyzed with head movement which raises at least 
adjectival heads (and optionally prepositional heads) from the predicate 
to a higher inflectional position. (Non-verbal predicates in VSO languages 
are also considered briefly in Otsuka's article.)  

Arthur Holmer ("Seediq: Antisymmetry and final particles in a Formosan VOS 
language, pp. 175-201), like Davis, provides further support for the 
validity of the assumption that verb-initial languages are derived from an 
underlying SVO order, as proposed by Kayne (1994). His evidence comes the 
occurrence of final particles in a VOS language, Seediq. He also 
contributes to the discussion of whether verb-initial orders in different 
languages are derived the same. Like Chung and Otsuka, Holmer argues that 
the answer to this question is negative: Seediq and Tagalog differ in the 
position of particle (final particles in the former and second position 
particles in the latter) and hence differ as to the derivation of their 
verb-initial orders.

Lisa deMena Travis in her article "VP-internal structure in a VOS 
language" (pp. 203-224) considers how VP-ellipsis works in verb-first 
languages. She shows that VP ellipsis in Malagasy (a VOS language) is 
significantly different from VP-ellipsis in both an SVO language like 
English and a VSO language like Irish. To account for these facts, Travis 
argues that the basic mechanics of VP-ellipsis are the same across 
languages, and the differences between Malagasy, on the one hand, and 
English and Irish, on the other hand, arise from two considerations: (i) 
the structure of the VP in Malagasy is created via iterative predicate 
fronting and (ii) Malagasy VP-ellipsis involves an extra step of specifier-
head licensing that is missing in VSO and SVO languages. 

Diane Massam's article "Lexical categories, lack of inflection, and 
predicate-fronting in Niuean" (pp. 227-242) uses the previously developed 
analysis of Niuean predicate fronting (including deriving its VSO order 
via remnant VP-movement) to shed new light on the issue of lexical 
categorization. She claims that Niuean verbs are not morphosyntactic verbs 
in the same sense that English verbs are; instead, they are participial in 
nature, have no features for finiteness and tense, and as such do not 
establish a relation with INFL (Inflectional Head), undergoing predicate 
fronting instead. The claim that Niuean does not have "proper" verbs is 
especially interesting in light of Baker's (2003) recent claims that verb, 
noun and adjective are universal lexical categories present in all 
languages.

David Gil's article "Word order without syntactic categories: How Riau 
Indonesian does it" (pp. 243-263) continues with the theme of lexical 
categorization in verb-first languages. Gil bases his work on a previous 
claim that Riau Indonesian has no distinction between lexical categories 
such as verb, noun and adjective. Yet this language is known to show many 
of the correlates of verb-first syntax, such as postnominal adjectives. 
The question addressed in this article is how such statements can be made 
without reference to lexical categories. The answer that Gil provides is 
to state (most of the) word order observations in terms of a single 
principle: heads precede their modifiers, with the residue of word-order 
facts accounted for in terms of two additional principles: iconicity and 
information flow. Thus he argues that the verb-first nature of Riau 
Indonesian is epiphenomenal. It remains to be seen if the same claims can 
be extended to other verb-first languages. 

Mélanie Jouitteau ("Nominal properties of vPs in Breton: A hypothesis for 
the typology of VSO languages", pp. 265-280) looks at the parallels 
between CPs and DPs and argues that they are due to the fact that Breton 
clauses (but not clauses in languages like English) have a [+D] feature on 
the little v category. Using this idea, she provides an account for the 
genitive case assignment system on internal arguments, the distribution of 
preverbal prepositions and the fact that verbs appear to show Case-filter 
effects. 

Hilda Koopman ("On the parallelism of DPs and clauses: Evidence from 
Kisongo Maasai", pp. 281-301) also turns her attention to the parallelism 
between DPs and CPs; however, her claim is that the parallelism is due to 
the fact that DPs in Kisongo Maasai are relative clauses with the [D CP] 
structure. Furthermore, she shows that the differences between DPs and CPs 
derive from independently motivated causes.

Loren Billings ("Ordering clitics and postverbal R-expressions in Tagalog: 
a unified analysis?", pp. 303-339) takes up the issue of whether the 
notion of subjecthood has any meaning (beyond a purely semantic one) in 
Austronesian languages (specifically, Tagalog). His answer to this 
question is positive: under his account, the possibility of both VSO and 
VOS orders with Actor voice is due to the fact that in one of these orders 
a proper name stands in what is normally a position reserved for pronouns.

Monica Macaulay's contribution ("The syntax of Chalcatongo Mixtec: 
Preverbal and postverbal, pp. 341-366) is two-fold: first, she introduces 
a new language into the linguistic discussion and describes the relevant 
facts of Chalcatongo Mixtec; second, she closely examines the distribution 
of the "left periphery elements" (which happen to be preverbal in this 
otherwise verb-first language), including topic and focus. The difference 
between topic and focus subjects in Chalcatongo Mixtec is that the former 
is always doubled by a pronominal clitic, while the latter never is. 
Macaulay's account for this is that the focused element is taken to be 
moved to preverbal position, while the topic is taken to be base-generated 
there.

Mary Laughren, Robert Pensalfini and Tom Mylne ("Accounting for verb-
initial order in an Australian language", pp. 367-401), like Macaulay, Gil 
and Billings, argue that syntax-external factors drive the clause-initial 
placement of the verb. Specifically, they identify factors such as focus 
and information structure as relevant in determining word order in Wanyi, 
a verb-first language from Australia. (I might add here that focus and 
information structure are also crucial in determining the word order in at 
least some of the so-called "free word order languages", such as Slavic 
languages). 

EVALUATION

This books presents valuable insights into the syntax of a variety of verb-
initial languages and as such is a great contribution to our understanding 
of syntax. Accounting for word order across languages is one of the main 
goals of syntactic theory, yet it is the word order problems that often 
present the toughest challenges for syntacticians. The research 
represented in this book goes a long way in elucidating the issues related 
to a particular subset of word orders, those where the verb comes first. 
As such, this book not only provides an overview of the cutting-edge 
research on this subject, but also sets goals for future research.

One such goal and probably the biggest challenge in this domain of inquiry 
today, to my mind, is buttressing the proposal that verb-initial orders 
(be they VOS or VSO) are derived by remnant VP-movement; although this 
analysis has already gained many proponents, it cannot be viewed as a 
viable alternative to V-movement analyses as long as the question of 
independent motivation for the creation of the remnant remains open. 
Although this issue comes up in the first article in the volume (by Sandra 
Chung), nowhere in the volume (or in fact anywhere else in the verb-first 
literature) was I able to find a satisfactory answer to this question. 
Since the remnant VP-movement itself is said to be triggered by the EPP, 
the latter cannot be the motivation for the movement(s) that take 
arguments outside the VP, thus creating the remnant. The fact that PP 
arguments as well as DP arguments vacate the VP strongly suggests that 
Case is not to blame either (see Chung's article in this volume, also 
Rackowsky and Travis 2000). So what is it that forces everything apart 
from the verb itself to vacate the VP in the first place? Without the 
answer to this question, the remnant VP-movement analysis lacks in 
explanatory adequacy and is nothing more than a mechanical account of what 
moves where in order to get the word order right at the end of the 
derivation. 

REFERENCES

Baker, Mark C. (2003) Lexical Categories. Verbs, Nouns, and Adjectives. 
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Borsley, Robert D. (in press) "On the nature of Welsh VSO clauses". Lingua.

Carnie, Andrew and Heidi Harley (forthcoming) "Clausal Architecture: the 
Licensing of Major constituents in a verb initial language". Ms., 
University of Arizona.

Emonds, Joseph (1980) "Word Order and Generative Grammar". Journal of 
Linguistic Research 1: 33-54.

Massam, Diane (2000) "VSO and VOS: Aspects of Niuean word order". In 
Andrew Carnie and Eithne Guilfoyle (eds.) The Syntax of Verb Initial 
Languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pp. 97-116.

Rackowsky, Andrea and Lisa Travis (2000) "V-initial languages: X or XP 
Movement and Adverbial Placement". In Andrew Carnie and Eithne Guilfoyle 
(eds.) The Syntax of Verb Initial Languages. Oxford: Oxford University 
Press. Pp. 117-143. 

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Asya Pereltsvaig is a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of 
Linguistics of Cornell University. She is interested in derivations of 
various word orders (both in clauses and in noun phrases). Most recently, 
she has been working on the problems posed by word orders in noun phrases 
in Slavic and Semitic languages.





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