25.4826, Review: Syntax: Marelj, Siloni, Everaert (eds.) (2012)

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Subject: 25.4826, Review: Syntax: Marelj, Siloni, Everaert (eds.) (2012)

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Date: Mon, 01 Dec 2014 14:19:53
From: Tomislav Socanac [tsocanac at yahoo.com]
Subject: The T

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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/23/23-1785.html

EDITOR: Martin  Everaert
EDITOR: Marijana  Marelj
EDITOR: Tal  Siloni
TITLE: The Theta System
SUBTITLE: Argument Structure at the Interface
SERIES TITLE: Oxford Studies in Theoretical Linguistics 37
PUBLISHER: Oxford University Press
YEAR: 2012

REVIEWER: Tomislav Socanac, University of Geneva

Review's Editors: Malgorzata Cavar and Sara Couture

SUMMARY

As the title of the volume suggests, “The Theta System: Argument Structure at
the Interface” is primarily concerned with the Theta System (henceforth ThS),
which was developed by Tanya Reinhart (2000, 2002 a.o.) in order to account
for the properties of the lexicon and its interface with syntax. The volume
consists of 13 chapters: an introduction, which provides a summary description
of ThS, and 12 individual contributions dealing  - for the most part - with
various aspects and applications of Reinhart’s theory. The articles included
in the volume approach the issues related to ThS from a wide array of
linguistic perspectives, ranging from theoretical approaches (both formal and
functional) to more experimental approaches, related to psycholinguistics or
language acquisition. 

In the introductory chapter, which is intended to facilitate readers’ access
to the following articles, the editors of the volume provide us with a summary
glance into ThS and some of the puzzles it helps to resolve. The main problem
that Reinhart set out to address concerned the mapping of th(eta)-roles to
syntactic positions, which is not entirely predictable from the roles’ labels
(Agent, Theme, Instrument etc.). Reinhart thus proposed that th-roles as such
should not be seen as atomic units, but rather that they can be decomposed
into more primitive features. More precisely, th-roles are coded through two
binary features: +/- c feature (cause change), which determines whether the
argument is responsible for causing the event denoted by the predicate; and
+/- m feature (mental state), which determines whether the argument is
volitional or not. The various feature combinations (there are nine
altogether) ultimately determine the thematic label of the argument and
prepare the lexical entries for syntactic computation. The introduction ends
with a brief overview of each individual contribution contained in the book. 

In “The Linguistic Expression of Causation,” Ad Neeleman and Hans van de Koot
set out to answer how the concept of causation is encoded in language. They
claim that causation is not a primitive of the linguistic system and that
predicates do not encode causing events either in their lexical semantics or
syntax. Predicates can only emulate causation by combining two independent
linguistic primitives: a crucial contributing factor (CCF) and the culmination
of an event in an end state or a resultant activity. CCF is similar to the +c
feature of Reinhart’s ThS but it differs in one crucial aspect: while +c can
be interpreted in some contexts as encoding a causing event, CCF cannot; it
only refers to the entity which is responsible for bringing about an end
state. CCF is not inherent to causality because it can also be found in
non-causal contexts, such as those involving maintenance (e.g. ‘John’s father
supports him financially’). Therefore, CCF does not intrinsically encode
causing events.

In “The Content of Semantic Roles: Predicate-Argument Structure in Language
and Cognition,” Martin Haiden defends the existence of th-roles and their
constituent features as described in Reinhart’s ThS. He first criticizes some
of the alternative approaches that reject the notion of th-roles, such as
those that view the lexicon as consisting of syntactic trees (as in
Jackendoff, 1983), pointing out that such approaches are unable to account for
the presence of more than one scale of prominence with certain types of verbs
(causation/force, on the one hand, and intentionality/mental involvement, on
the other). The author then goes on to offer a cognitive foundation for
th-roles and the features underlying th-roles within ThS. He puts forward some
cognitive experiments, based on the ‘Theory of Body Mechanism’ and the ‘Theory
of Mind Mechanism’ (Leslie, 1994), which showed that our perception of
causation can differ depending on whether the entities involved in the action
are seen as volitional or not. Thus, both the c and the m features of the ThS
are relevant for the cognitive system. 

The title of Edwin Williams’ article “Combine” makes a direct reference to the
author’s main theoretical claim: he proposes a new grammatical mechanism of
Combine, which is presented as a unique generative operation in grammar. The
Combine mechanism operates both in syntax and in derivational morphology,
which means that they should both be seen as generative. The only difference
between these two components in this context is related to a specific
morphological parameter: the so-called ‘parameter M’ (M simply stands for
morphology), which determines whether Combine operates on a root, a stem or an
entire word. In syntax, the head A is not restricted to combining with the
head B that is closest to it, but with the closest head B that satisfies its
M-value, while in derivational morphology, the head A must combine with the
closest head B regardless of its M-value.

In Hagit Borer’s article, “In the Event of a Nominal,” the author puts forward
a study of different types of derived nominals. Borer’s main theoretical claim
is that words should not be seen as indivisible, syntactically-atomic units,
but that they contain internal syntax. The primary motivation for this claim
is the fact that words of the same morpho-phonological complexity can exhibit
radically different syntactic and semantic properties, depending on the type
of nominal they appear in. In this context, Borer establishes a contrast
between argument structure (AS) nominals (e.g. ‘the driving of a truck’) and
synthetic compounds (SC) (e.g. ‘truck driving’). The former exhibit
grammatical event properties, and contain a functional layer, whereas the
latter do not. Moreover, the meaning of AS is strictly compositional, whereas
the meaning of SC can be non-compositional as well. Borer concludes that these
differences between the two types of nominals can only be accounted for if we
assume the existence of an articulated syntax internal to words.

In “Lexicon Uniformity and the Causative Alternation,” Beth Levin and Malka
Rappaport Hovav focus on the causative-anticausative alternation that certain
verbs (e.g. ‘open’, ‘break’ etc.) exhibit in their argument structure (e.g.
‘He opened the door’ - ‘The door opened’). In this context, the authors
disagree with Reinhart as to which of these two variants is basic and which is
derived from the other. Reinhart claimed that the anticausative variant is
derived from the basic transitive causative variant through the lexical
operation of ‘decausativization’, whereby the external cause argument of the
verb is removed. Levin and Rappaport Hovav make the opposite claim, i.e. that
the anticausative variant is basic and the causative one derived. They
identify a group of intransitive change-of-state verbs (e.g. ‘blossom’,
‘corrode’ etc.), which they define as basic, underived anticausative
predicates. These verbs allow for a causative variant only under a precise
condition - that of ‘direct causation’ - whereby there is no intermediate
cause between the original causer and the caused eventuality. The authors then
generalize this condition to apply to all cases of causative alternation.

The main claim of György Rákosi’s article, “In Defence of the Non-Causative
Analysis of Anticausatives,” is that the anticausative variant of the
causative alternation does not intrinsically contain a causal ingredient. The
primary argument for the contrary assertion that such constructions do encode
a cause is that they allow for the insertion of cause adjuncts (e.g. causal
from-PPs in English or ablative PPs in Hungarian). Rákosi focuses on ablative
cause adjuncts in Hungarian in order to show that they are not licensed by an
underlying causal ingredient in anticausatives but, rather, that they
introduce causation themselves. The main piece of evidence that Rákosi puts
forward for this claim is that such ablative causes can also appear outside of
anticausative constructions in Hungarian. Even though they differ in their
syntactic realization (in anticausatives they are adjoined to VP as thematic
adjuncts, whereas in other contexts they are merged in the left periphery),
ablative causes introduce the same semantic contribution in both types of
contexts - that of direct causation. By showing that anticausative
constructions lack an inherent causal ingredient, Rákosi lends support to
Reinhart’s decausativization account of the causative alternation.

Julie Fadlon also examines the causative alternation (she uses the
transitive-unaccusative terminology) in her article “Hidden Entries: a
Psycholinguistic Study of Derivational Gaps.” She focuses on the problem of
derivational gaps with such constructions, i.e. cases where the unaccusative
does not have the corresponding transitive variant in a given language (e.g.
‘The castle collapsed’ - * ‘Mary collapsed the castle’). Reinhart analyzed
such cases in terms of hidden lexical entries, proposing that the basic
transitive entry is frozen in the lexicon and cannot be inserted in syntax.
Fadlon provides evidence for this claim by using a psycholinguistic experiment
in order to demonstrate the cognitive reality of hidden lexical entries. Her
experiment tested the cognitive accessibility of an external cause (and hence
of the transitive concept) in several types of unaccusative constructions. It
showed that the external cause is more accessible with verbs whose transitive
variant is argued to be a hidden lexical entry than with underived
unaccusative verbs which lack a transitive variant altogether, thus proving
the psychological reality of hidden lexical entries.  

In “To Have the Empty Theta-Role,” Peter Ackema and Marijana Marelj explore
the least studied option within ThS - the empty role option, i.e. the empty [ 
] cluster which does not contain either the c or the m feature. They apply
their analysis to the verb ‘have’, which they view as a light verb with no
independent semantic content. As a result, the verb ‘have’, like all light
verbs, assigns a single [  ] th-role, which only allows for the insertion of a
semantically empty external argument (external merge being the default option
within ThS). The authors propose that this external argument receives semantic
content through a mechanism of theta-merger, whereby its empty th-role merges
with another semantically meaningful th-role, whose properties differ
depending on the semantic context in which the verb ‘have’ is used. This
analysis allows the authors to account for various different types of uses of
the verb ‘have’, including the auxiliary, possessor, experiencer and causative
‘have’.

In “Emission Verbs,” Joseph Potashnik focuses on a class of intransitive
unergative predicates within the framework of ThS. Reinhart assumed that
underived intransitive predicates do not undergo any lexical marking and hence
merge externally by default. This assumption was necessitated by the existence
of a class of emission verbs (e.g. ‘buzz’, ‘flash’, ‘flicker’ etc.), which
Reinhart analyzed as theme unergatives. As any type of theme-predicate, these
verbs would have to be marked with a [-c/-m] th-cluster and hence undergo
internal merge (only an all [-] cluster obligatorily merges internally within
ThS). This would be contrary to facts, since emission verbs are unergatives.
Therefore, Reinhart assumed that this type of verbs has to be excepted from
any lexical theta-marking. Potashnik finds this solution problematic on
conceptual grounds and proposes an alternative analysis. He uses a syntactic
test called ‘the caused-NP experiment’ in order to show that emission verbs
contain an internal causal component (e.g. ‘The torch shone’ - ‘The torch
caused the shine’). As a result, they should not be marked with a [-c/-m]
cluster but rather with a [+c/-m] cluster. Since they contain a mixed [+/-]
cluster, emission verbs can merge externally within ThS, which renders their
exclusion from lexical marking unnecessary. In the second part of his paper,
Potashnik accounts for the cases in which emission verbs may undergo
transitive alternation. 

In “Verbal Passives in English and Hebrew: a Comparative Study,” the author,
Aya Meltzer-Asscher, is primarily interested in the properties of the demoted
external argument in English and Hebrew passive constructions. Unlike
unaccusatives, the demoted external argument in passives remains semantically
accessible. Some have argued that this is because it remains present as a null
argument in syntax, while others have claimed that it is only recuperated in
the interpretative module. Meltzer-Asscher argues that both of these options
exist in language, but they should be parameterized. Thus, in English passives
the demoted argument is present in syntax, while in Hebrew it is represented
only at the level of interpretation. This claim allows the author to explain
some syntactic contrasts, as well as a number of thematic and distributional
differences between the passive constructions in two languages.

In “An Event Semantics for the Theta System,” Alexis Dimitriadis provides a
semantic implementation of ThS's primitives. The main contrast that
Dimitriadis focuses on is the one between the lexicon, which involves
unordered th-feature clusters, and the formal semantic representation, which
involves ordered lambda forms. He concludes that there has to be a change in
linguistic representation at some step in the derivation, which transforms an
unordered linguistic object into an ordered one. He situates this step just
before lexical items are inserted in syntax and calls it ‘assembly’. At the
point of assembly, unordered th-feature clusters are assembled into ordered
model-theoretic functions representing the verb's denotation. This demarcation
allows the author to explain why certain arity operations (i.e. operations
changing the verb's valency) are cross-linguistically restricted to the
lexicon while others can occur in syntax as well.  

In the last article of the volume,“Children Acquire Unaccusatives and
A-Movement Very Early,” João Costa and Naama Friedmann put forward the results
of a number of experiments they have conducted in order to assess the
acquisition and production of unaccusatives and unergatives by children
acquiring Hebrew and European Portuguese. The conclusions they come up with go
against some of the previous studies which have argued that children at the
early stages of language acquisition lack the notion of A-movement and, as a
consequence, misanalyze unaccusatives projecting a preverbal subject as
unergatives. This would go against ThS, because the latter implies that the
thematic properties of unaccusatives and their transitive variants are
universal and innate, thus predicting that children should map unaccusatives
correctly from the outset. On the other hand, Costa and Friedmann’s study
supports ThS, because their results indicate that children as young as two
years old have already acquired A-movement and make a correct distinction
between unaccusatives and unergatives.

EVALUATION

Through analyses centered on Reinhart’s ThS, the authors contributing to this
volume give us a comprehensive glance into the area of lexical semantics and
its interface with syntax, because they  not only  focus on Reinhart’s system
but also situate it in relation to other influential theories dealing with
this area of grammar. The brief overview of ThS provided by the editors in the
introductory chapter is very useful and it considerably facilitates the
reading and the comprehension of the following articles. It is nevertheless
unavoidable that, given the wide range of theoretical perspectives contained
in the volume, the readers will have more difficulties with certain articles
depending on their own theoretical background. This, of course, should not be
seen as a shortcoming of the book itself.

Despite containing a wide variety of linguistic approaches, the volume on the
whole is largely coherent with regards to its subject matter, with most
contributors conforming to the following outline set out by the editors in the
introduction: “The goal of this volume is to present the Theta System, examine
its underpinnings, explore its advantages, and suggest further developments
and improvements” (15). There are, nonetheless, a few articles that do not
entirely conform to this objective and that are somewhat less relevant for the
overall theme of the volume. This can be said of Williams’ and Borer’s
contributions, because, while the authors deal with the issues related to the
lexicon, they do not touch upon ThS.

One of the main strengths of the book is the fact that most contributions
contained in it are largely data-driven. Depending on their domain of study,
the authors put a great emphasis either on experimental data or on linguistic
examples in order to back up their theoretical claims. Most of the empirical
examples come from English, but languages such as Hebrew, Hungarian, Dutch or
Portuguese are represented as well. The balance between theoretical claims and
data is generally very satisfactory. The authors rarely advance major
theoretical proposals without thoroughly backing them up with evidence,
without shying away from data that appears more problematic for their theory
and attempting to address them as well. The only slight criticism in this
context could be leveled against Williams’ and Rákosi’s articles, because each
of these authors only briefly mentions the most problematic data that go
against their theories (long distance movement and se-anticausatives,
respectively), without addressing them in any detail.

Nevertheless, these few critical remarks do not undermine the general merits
of the volume. The book will be a valuable and interesting read for any
scholar or advanced student interested in lexical semantics and in the
relation between structure and meaning in general.

REFERENCES

Jackendoff, Ray. 1983. Semantics and Cognition. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

Leslie, Alan M. 1994. ToMM, ToBy, and Agency: Core architecture and domain
specificity. in L.A. Hirschfeld and S.A. Gelman (eds.), Mapping the Mind:
Domain Specificity and Culture. New York: Cambridge University Press. 119-48.

Reinhart, Tanya. 2000. The Theta system: Syntactic realization of verbal
concepts. Uil-OTS Working Papers. University of Utrecht.

Reinhart, Tanya. 2002. The Theta system: an overview. Theoretical Linguistics
28 (3). 229-90.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Tomislav Socanac is a PhD candidate in Linguistics at the University of
Geneva. The subject of his dissertation is the syntax and the semantics of
subjunctive mood in Slavic languages. His main areas of interest are formal
syntax and the syntax-semantics interface.








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