16.2184, Review: Semantics/Syntax: Borer (2005)

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1)
Date: 14-Jul-2005
From: Eugenia Romanova < eugenia.romanova at hum.uit.no >
Subject: Structuring Sense, Volume 2: The Normal Course of Events 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Sun, 17 Jul 2005 15:17:27
From: Eugenia Romanova < eugenia.romanova at hum.uit.no >
Subject: Structuring Sense, Volume 2: The Normal Course of Events 
 

AUTHOR: Borer, Hagit 
TITLE: Structuring Sense, Volume 2 
SUBTITLE: The Normal Course of Events 
PUBLISHER: Oxford University Press 
YEAR: 2005 
Announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/15/15-745.html


Eugenia Romanova, Department of Linguistics, University of Tromso, 
Norway

SUMMARY

This is the second volume of the Exo-Skeletal Trilogy by Hagit Borer, 
The Normal Course of Events. The other two volumes are: volume I, In 
Name Only, published in the same year by the same publisher, and 
volume III, Taking Form, in preparation. The book includes three parts 
with a total of 11 chapters.
 
Part I. Setting course. 
Chapter 1. Exo-Skeletal explanations. A Recap. 
In this chapter the author summarizes the system she laid out in 
Volume I and introduces the theoretical equipment she is going to use 
in Volume II. The generalization underlying this work is that properties 
of functional items define all aspects of the computation, whereby by 
functional items the author refers to both functional vocabulary 
(including all grammatical formatives and affixation) and to functional 
structure. Grammatical formatives can be independent ones (f-
morphs), for example 'the' and 'will', and (phonologically abstract) 
head features such as <pst>, for past tense. Listemes, constituting the 
encyclopedia, a list of all arbitrary pairings of sound and meaning, are 
devoid of any syntactic properties. Functional heads are open values 
with a category label. Here the author (henceforth, HB) introduces a 
mechanism of range assignment, crucial for the system. Open values  
are assigned range by a variety of means: directly, by the Specifier-
Head agreement (by f-morphs in the Spec), and indirectly, by abstract 
head features:
 
1) [DP every.<e>d [#P every.<e># [dog]]]

In (1), the listeme 'dog' is merged with the functional structure that 
includes a quantificational phrase #P and the determiner phrase DP, 
and the quantifier 'every' assigns range to the open values within both 
functional projections.

The theoretical outline above is a gist of the exo-skeletal approach: all 
the aspects of computation are defined listeme-externally, by the 
properties of functional items with which listemes merge. Conversely, 
in endo-skeletal approaches the aspects of computation are defined 
listeme-internally, by the inherent properties of lexical items. The 
detailed comparison of the two systems is given in Chapter 2. One 
more issue has to be added. It is not always the case that the 
functional structure underlies the interpretation of lexical items; the 
latter can have inherent properties and then they are idioms under the 
present views. However, even the stored information is structured:

2) TROUSERS = [pi3+<e>div]

In (2) pi(Greek letter)3(subscript) stands for the phonological index 
/trauser/, and <e>div(subscript, meaning 'divided') stands for a piece 
of functional structure which must be assigned range by the plural 
inflection (cf. vol. I). The degree of specification in idioms allows a 
gradation. In (2) an open value (<e>div) to be projected and an 
obligatory range assigner (plural marker) to this open value are 
specified. In 'cross a bridge', <e>div is specified, but range to be 
assigned to it, is not. In 'kick the bucket', not only is the open value 
specified for 'the bucket' (<e>div), but so is an obligatory range 
assigner to it ('the'), which forces the projection of <e>#(subscript) 
and <e>d(subscript, meaning 'determiner'). The importance of idioms 
becomes obvious in Part III.

Chapter 2. Why Events?
The chapter shows how and where the Exo-Skeletal approach has 
advantages over the Endo-Skeletal approaches. The issues touched 
upon in the course of the discussion are: variable behavior verbs 
(cross-linguistically), aktionsart, and UTAH (Baker (1988)). How is the 
present approach superior? HB argues that the verb 'drop', for 
example, can be embedded under any syntactic structure, where the 
functional structure associated with the arguments determines their 
interpretation, rather than any information associated with 'drop'. The 
proponents of Endo-Skeletal approaches would have to admit 
that 'drop' either has several lexical entries (transitive and intransitive) 
or is associated with different semantic roles it has to assign (UTAH).  
However, according to the author, the verb itself cannot define what 
arguments will be projected, either external or internal -- originator or 
subject-of-quantity, as she labels argument roles. In the following 
chapters she elaborates on the functional projections that host the 
arguments, for not only is the external argument severed from the 
verb (Kratzer (1994)), but so is the internal argument.

Part II. The Projection of Arguments.
Chapter 3. Structuring Telicity.
In this chapter HB translates telicity from purely semantic 
representations into syntactic structures. The tools needed for this 
operation are: a) internal arguments with some specific properties 
(Verkuyl (1993)), b) the notion of homogeneity and the notions of 
divisibility and cumulativity (Krifka (1992, 1998)). From the previous 
chapter we already know that telicity is not an inherent property of a 
verb, but depends on many factors, the presence of the internal 
argument being one, it is logical to expect that this chapter will present 
us with a structure responsible for the telic interpretation of the event. 
So it does. The telicity-inducing piece of (functional) structure is the 
aspectual projection, ASPq(subscript). The projection contains an 
open value, <e>#, where '#' stands for 'quantity'. In English-like 
languages in most cases the range to this open value is assigned by 
the internal argument DP which, as we learnt in the previous chapter, 
is a subject-of-quantity. As the internal argument is projected only in 
two configurations, transitive and unaccusative, the ASPq is absent 
from unergatives and non-quantity transitives, for the open range 
<e># cannot be assigned range here. In addition, ASPq is a site 
where accusative case gets assigned to the subject-of-quantity. In 
unaccusatives, 'the case is not available by assumption, the s-o-q DP 
must move to receive nominative case, presumably in [Spec, TP]' 
(Specifier of Tense Phrase). 

Chapter 4. (A)structuring Atelicity.
Here the famous Finnish paradigm comes into the picture: accusative 
objects yielding a telic interpretation, partitive objects atelic 
interpretation of events. Having shown the wrongness of approaches 
trying to explain the case alternation by weakness vs. strongness of 
DPs (de Hoop (1992), van Hout (1992, 1996), Borer (1994)), the 
author offers an alternative. Atelic structures do not have a quantity 
projection, ASPq, the one hosting a subject-of-quantity and assigning 
accusative to it. Instead, they project a shell functional projection FP, 
in the specifier of which partitive is checked. Impersonal constructions 
in Italian, Spanish and Hebrew support this hypothesis.

Chapter 5. Interpreting Telicity.
The chapter is mostly devoted to a critique of the semantics literature 
on telicity. The author clearly shows that a) events cannot be mapped 
onto objects  ('an atelic event does not have quantifiable sub-events 
that are distinct from the whole'); b) Verkuyl's system is contradictory 
(the feature [+ADD TO] is on the lexical verb, whereas the feature 
[+SQA] (Specified quantity of A) is on the determiner, a functional 
element; c) aspectual ambiguity of 'push' ('push the cart' vs 'push a 
button') cannot be lexically encoded and the verb is aspectually 
interpreted according to the world knowledge; d) the interpretation of 
the verbs unspecified for boundedness in Finnish (Kiparsky (1998)) 
depends on the case of their object; e) scalar approaches (Hay, 
Kennedy and Levin (1999) and Kennedy and Levin (2000)) also 
compare disfavorably to the present theory, due to the high role of 
context in deciding upon the telicity of 'lengthen' and 'empty' (so, 
telicity is not encoded in the lexical meaning of the adjectives giving 
rise to the corresponding verbs).

Chapter 6. Direct Range Assignment and The Slavic Paradigm. 
This chapter introduces the Slavic paradigm of structuring telicity. It is 
achieved via prefixation on the verb: prefixes are the phonological 
spell-out of head features in the specifier of ASPq that directly assigns 
range to <e># within ASPq. However, prefixes, being quantificational 
in nature (Filip (1999, 2000)) perform a double role. As there are no 
determiners in most Slavic languages and as an object DP must be in 
the specifier of ASPq, whenever the latter is projected, the open value 
<e>d inside the nominal domain is assigned range by the prefix as 
well. Thus, non-quantity DPs are barred in [Spec, ASPq]. This and the 
following chapters will receive my special attention in the critical 
evaluation part of the review.

Chapter 7. Direct Range Assignment: Telicity without Verkuyl's 
Generalization.
The reason for rejecting Verkuyl's generalization for Slavic is the 
presence of intransitive perfectives in the languages, such as 
semelfactives, reflexive verbs and the verbs with superlexical prefixes 
(cf. Romanova (2003), (2004), Svenonius (2004)). As prefixes are 
direct ranges assigners to [ASPq <e>#], the presence of the DP in 
ASPq for this purpose is unnecessary in Slavic. However, telicity 
without Verkuyl's generalization is also achievable in English, with 
adverbs of quantification ('twice', 'once') or particles and prepositions. 

Chapter 8. How Fine-Grained?
In this chapter Hagit Borer argues against event decomposition. She 
points out that a) expressions like 'float under the bridge' are not 
decomposable, they can be modified by both 'in an hour' and 'for an 
hour'; b) not all telic events have an end-point; c) there are no causal 
relations in resultative constructions; d) 'babies' is ok as the subject of 
the 'simple' state in 'babies are asleep', but disallowed as the subject 
of the resultant state in resultative constructions (*'he sang babies 
asleep'). Therefore she rejects the Small Clause analysis of resultative 
constructions (cf. Dehe et al. (2002) and references cited there) in 
favor of a Complex-Predicate approach (cf. Zeller (2001)): 'hammer-
flat' in 'hammer the metal flat'. A big part of the chapter is devoted to 
the speculation about predicate modification (by 'for x time'/'in x time') 
and anti-telicity effects (reflexive dative in Hebrew and nominalizer '-
ing' in English).

Part III. Locatives and Event Structure.
Chapter 9. The Existential Road: Unergatives and Transitives.
This chapter, like the other chapters in part III, deals with the topmost 
projection discussed in Borer's system: EP (Event Phrase) (not to be 
confused with Travis's EP (Travis (1994, 2000)). EP is projected 
above TP (Tense Phrase) for a number of reasons (the author 
demonstrates the presence of the event argument even in statives; in 
addition T never binds the event argument). There are several 
possibilities for binding the event argument represented by the open 
value <e>E(subscript, meaning 'event') merging as the head of EP: 
the range to this open value can be assigned by a) a referential DP, 
having the originator argument role; b) an expletive; c) an existentially 
closed DP through the specifier-head agreement; d) by a locative. 
However, the account for the paradigm in Hebrew and Italian in 
examples (1)-(5), p. 255, is not yet clear. The paradigm presents the 
following problems: a) Why are weak postverbal subjects possible with 
unaccusatives? b) Why aren't strong postverbal subjects possible? c) 
Why doesn't the same hold of unergatives? And the author herself 
adds a question: why locatives? First, it is a well-known fact that 
locatives have an existential force (Freeze (1992)). Second, bare DPs 
are licit when they can be located in space (Dobrovie-Sorin and Laca 
(1996)). Third, in French existential preverbal subjects can occur only 
in the presence of locative expressions. As for the weak postverbal 
arguments in Hebrew, they are subject to the 'slavified' behavior of the 
locative clitic, which directly assigns range to the <e>E and indirectly, 
via specifier-head agreement, to a relevant open value inside the DP 
(this DP comes into agreement with the lower copy of V-loc -- the verb 
with the locative clitic, which must raise to EP).

Chapter 10. Slavification and Unaccusatives.
>From this chapter we learn more about quasi-functional items, like 
locative clitics in Hebrew, and how they are related to Slavic prefixes.  
Hebrew locative clitics are really like Slavic prefixes, in that they can 
merge with [ASPq <e>#] and assign range to it. Then they move with 
the verb to E and assign range also to <e>E. If they merge with T, 
they fail to assign range to [ASPq <e>#], but still can do so to <e>E. 
However, Hebrew locative clitics have one distinction from Slavic 
prefixes: the former are not quantificational in nature, so they cannot 
assign range to [DP <e>#]. Therefore, a DP in [Spec, ASPq] does not 
have to be strong. In unergative structures there is no functional 
specifier that could hold the postverbal DP and keep it from 
agreement with locative (=existential operator), therefore weak 
postverbal subjects in unergatives are banned. The question remains 
about achievements with non-quantity object DPs ('discovered gold' 
and 'found rare coins'). The answers are: a) a covert locative is 
present in the structure; b) achievements are idioms. The author 
develops the latter idea some more in the chapter. We find out that 
not all achievements allow their objects to be non-quantity -- which 
gives further support to the idiom hypothesis. At the same time, 
achievements mostly behave like accomplishments: as was said 
above, their object DPs must be quantity and they can be progressive. 
All in all, taking into account examples in (53)-(56), pp. 331-332, the 
author concludes that there is no separate event type 'achievements'. 
They are just cases in which the projection of ASPq is obligatory 
(unlike in regular accomplishments-activities). This already makes 
achievements idiomatic: it is specified what open value is going to 
project ('finish'). In 'discover' or 'notice' which can take non-quantity 
DP objects, the specification is even higher: it is specified what is 
going to assign range to [ASPq <e>#], and this is a covert locative. 

Chapter 11. Forward Oh! Some concluding remarks.
The concluding chapter of this work makes the following points: a) 
there is no inter-language variation that couldn't be attested within the 
same language, the variation being attributed to formal properties of 
grammatical formatives; b) the exo-skeletal approach overgenerates, 
but this overgeneration can be curtailed by the existence of 
idioms, 'cases in which some grammatical formative is specified to 
occur with a phonological index, and meaning is assigned to the 
complex constituent as a whole.' Idioms are a concession, the author 
admits, however 'it is to be hoped that future research will shed some 
light on them' and then 'an exo-skeletal approach can be completely 
successful.'

CRITICAL EVALUATION

The book is written in a clear language and has a very clear layout. 
Each chapter begins with a 'recap' of the conclusions made and the 
discussions conducted in the previous chapters. The questions asked 
inspire curiosity and a detective spirit in the reader, and the author 
confidently leads him/her to the answers, step by step, with no (big) 
digressions from the main path. The author also dares ask questions 
unanswerable at the moment, and has the courage to offer directions 
towards the solutions to 'future researchers'. The review and the 
critique of the relevant literature is fairly exhaustive. Not a single major 
work on the topic has escaped HB's attention. It also creates a feeling 
of one scientific continuum -- the present analysis hasn't sprung up 
from nowhere, it has grown from the well fertilized soil. 

If it were a work of fiction, I would say that the metaphor chosen by the 
author is so apt that now it can break free of the author's will and start 
developing on its own. It will certainly influence generations of 
researchers. Importantly, the empirical data and the analysis offered in 
the work in most cases do not contradict each other. However, at this 
point I would like to switch over to some critical remarks, especially 
concerning the Slavic languages. I had a number of questions while 
reading the book, both big and small, technical and empirical. Here, 
for the lack of space, I will restrict myself to three broad questions. 

1. Slavic paradigm.
Some mistaken assumptions have been made about Slavic. I suspect 
the reason is that all the prefixes are treated in the same way 
(although the distinction between them is cited from Svenonius (2003) 
on page 195). Not all of them are quantificational and even 
quantificational prefixes are not a homogeneous group. For instance, 
na-, widely discussed in the work, always requires a partitive genitive 
on its mass and bare plural objects, which already hints at the 
absence of #P inside the DP, thus making it impossible for the prefix to 
assign range to [DP <e>#]. According to the author, such structures 
must be excluded in the presence of a quantificational prefix. In 
addition, HB notes: 'in the presence of telic structures, partitive case 
can never occur'. But the Russian partitive does, not only with na- 
verbs, but also with the verbs with purely perfectivizing prefixes or with 
prefixless perfectives ('kupit' chaju' buy.P tea.PART'). The system 
proposed by HB also predicts the impossibility of strong quantifiers 
with perfectives, but they can co-occur: 'On s'jel vse jabloki.' he ate.P 
all apples.ACC' (the reason for this claim is that the prefix na- has 
been analyzed in the greatest detail and it does disallow strong 
quantifiers with the objects of the verb). In pursuing the reasoning in 
favor of atelicity as the lack of syntactic quantity structure, the author 
repeats the following point but never really explains it: 'the primary 
and the secondary imperfectives are by necessity not a uniform 
semantic class... the secondary imperfective inflection has a 
progressive function', so it is a species of outer aspect in the sense of 
Verkuyl (1972), whereas the primary imperfectives are species of the 
inner aspect. The empirical data do not support this view. Both the 
primary imperfective and the secondary imperfective have a) a 
progressive function; b) a habitual function. 

2. Achievements. 
The question about achievements is their idiomatic nature. Intuitively, 
idioms are language-specific. Achievements that allow non-quantity 
DP objects in English share similar properties cross-linguistically.
English:
3). He found gold.

Finnish:
4). Hän löytyi kultaa. he found gold.PART.

Russian:
5). On nashël zoloto. he found.P gold.ACC

According to HB's analysis, the possibility of a non-quantity object in 
(3) is accounted for by a covert locative that assigns range to the 
open value inside EP. The question about Finnish is: how can a covert 
locative help the partitive marked object avoid aspect-related effects? 
The reading of the VP is still bounded. The partitive here stands 
for 'some gold'. The question about Russian: assume a covert locative 
is also present in Russian. How can the head features of the prefix 
avoid range assigning to [DP <e>#], for here there is no quantity 
interpretation of 'gold' -- this DP is vague between a weak and a 
strong reading.

3. What comes first?
The question that has been with me throughout the whole process of 
reading is 'what comes first?'. However, I think the author herself is 
asking it -- also in the book. How do we know that some functional 
head does not project? How do we tell the difference between its not 
being projected and its not being assigned range? If we know that the 
shell FP projects instead of ASPq, we know that the nominal will be 
partitive. On the other hand, the presence of existential pro indicates 
that the structure cannot be unaccusative (p. 120). Does the verbal 
structure determine the nominal structure or does the nominal 
structure determine the verbal structure? Does the projection of ASPq 
forces the merger of the subject-of-quantity or does the s-o-q forces 
ASPq to project (p. 228)? Do we first know that it is an achievement 
and the ASPq is obligatory or does the presence of ASPq identify the 
event type? etc.

At the end, I will just point out the typos I noticed in the foreign 
examples: 
p. 210, ex.(52) -- missing umlauts in the Finnish examples, 
p. 138 ex.(24, d) -- a missing letter in the Finnish example (äiti), 
p. 173 ex.(25, a) -- a plural  instead of singular marker in the Polish 
example (must be 'artykul'), 
p. 188 footnote 4 -- there is no such a stem as 'krac' in Russian 
('krik'?),
p. 189,  ex.(15, a) -- must be 'a' instead of 'o' in 'vyprashivat''; 
(15, b) -- the form given as imperfective does not exist; the form given 
as perfective is actually imperfective, 
p.195 ex. (24, b) -- the infinitival marker is just a softness sign, not 'i'.

REFERENCES

Baker, Mark. 1988. Incorporation. Chicago: University of Chicago 
Press

Borer, Hagit. 1994. The projection of arguments. University of 
Massachusetts occasional papers in linguistics 17, (eds.) Elena 
Benedicto and Jeff Runner. Amherst: GLSA, University of 
Massachusetts

Borer, Hagit. 2005. Structuring Sense, volume I. In Name Only. Oxford 
University Press

Dehe, Nicole, Ray Jackendoff, Andrew McIntyre and Silke Urban
(2002, eds.): Verb-Particle Constructions. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter

de Hoop, Helen. 1992. Case Configuration and Noun Phrase 
Interpretation, (Groningen Dissertations in Linguistics). Groningen: 
University of Groningen (Published by Garland, New York, 1997)

Dobrovie-Sorin, Carmen and Brenda Laca. 1996. Generic Bare NPs, 
ms., University Paris 7 and University of Strasburg 

Filip, Hana. 1996. Domain restrictions on lexical quantifiers, ms., 
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Filip, Hana. 1999. Aspect, situation type and nominal reference.  
Garland, New York

Filip, Hana. 2000. The Quantization Puzzle In Tenny, Carol, 
Pustejovsky, James (eds.) Events as Grammatical Objects, pp. 39-96. 
Stanford: CSLI publications

Freeze, Ray. 1992. Existentials and other locatives, Language 68, pp. 
553-95

Hay, Jennifer, Christopher Kennedy and Beth Levin. 1999. Scalar 
structure underlies telicity in Degree Achievements, in Matthews, 
Tanya and Devon L. Strolovich (eds.). The Proceedings of the Ninth 
Conference on Semantics and Linguistic Theory, pp. 127-44. Santa 
Cruz: CLC Publications

Kennedy, Christopher and Beth Levin. 2000. Telicity corresponds to 
degree of change, paper presented at Michigan State University, 30 
Nov. 2000

Kiparsky, Paul. 1998. Partitive case and aspect, in Greuder, William 
and Miriam Butt (eds.) The Projection of Arguments, pp. 265-307. 
Stanford: CSLI

Kratzer, Angelika. 1996. Severing the external argument from the 
verb, in (eds.) Johan Rooryck and Laurie Zaring Phrase Structure and 
the Lexicon, pp. 109-37. Dordrecht: Kluwer

Krifka, Manfred. 1992. Thematic relations as links between nominal 
reference and temporal constitution, in (eds.) Ivan A. Sag and Anna 
Szabolsci Lexical Matters, pp. 29-53. Stanford, CA: Center for the 
Study of Language and Information

Krifka, Manfred. 1998. The origins of telicity, in (ed.) Rothstein, 
Susan,   Events and Grammar, pp. 197-235. Dordrecht: Kluwer 

Romanova, Eugenia. 2003. Prefixes and secondary imperfectives in 
Russian. A presentation given at the Syntax Reading Group 
27.03.2003, University of Tromso

Romanova, Eugenia. 2004. Superlexical versus Lexical Prefixes. 
Nordlyd 32, No 2, pp. 255-278

Svenonius, Peter. 2003. The morphosyntax of Slavic prefixes, paper 
presented at the East European Generative Summer School, Lublin, 
Poland

Svenonius, Peter. 2004. Slavic Prefixes and Morphology : An 
Introduction to the Nordlyd volume. Nordlyd 32, No 2, pp. 177-204

Travis, Lisa. 1994. Event phrase and a theory of functional categories, 
Proceedings of the 1994 Annual Conference of the Canadian 
Linguistic Association, (Toronto Working Papers in Linguistics), (ed.) 
P.Koskinen, pp. 559-70. Toronto

Travis, Lisa. 2000. The L-syntax/S-syntax boundary: evidence from 
Austronesian, Formal Issues in Austronesian Syntax, (eds.) Ileana 
Paul, Vivianne Phillips, and Lisa deMena Travis (Studies in Natural 
Language and Linguistic Theory 49), pp. 167-94. Dordrecht: Kluwer

van Hout, Angeliek. 1992. Linking and projection based on event 
structure, ms., Tilburg University

van Hout, Angeliek. 1996. Event Semantics of Verb Frame 
Alternations PhD dissertation. Tilburg: Tilburg University 

Verkuyl, Henk. 1972. On the Compositional Nature of the Aspect. 
Dordrecht: Reidel

Verkuyl, Henk. 1993. A Theory of Aspectuality. The Interaction 
between Temporal and Atemporal Structure. Cambridge: Cambridge 
University Press 

Zeller, Jochen. 2001. Particle Verbs and Local Domains. 
Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins 

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Eugenia Romanova is in her last year of PhD studies at the University 
of Tromso, Norway. In her dissertation she connects prefixation and 
argument projection in Russian, specifically focusing on a) 
quantificational effects the former has on the latter, which can be seen 
from case alternation on direct objects (accusative vs partitive 
genitive); b) versatile behavior of motion verbs, where directed motion 
verbs represent typical unaccusative structures and non-directed 
motion verbs typical unergative structures. The two groups of motion 
verbs help to show the structural complexity of prefix-verb-object 
conglomerates and the relationships between events and nominals, in 
tackling the question "What gets quantified?" She developed an 
interest in particle verbs in Germanic as a by-product of the main 
work, whereas the interest in the Finnish direct object case system 
was the trigger for starting the dissertation.





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