14.1078, Review: Syntax: Dehé (2002)

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LINGUIST List:  Vol-14-1078. Fri Apr 11 2003. ISSN: 1068-4875.

Subject: 14.1078, Review: Syntax: Dehé (2002)

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Date:  Wed, 09 Apr 2003 19:11:40 +0000
From:  Tully J Thibeau <thibeau at selway.umt.edu>
Subject:  Particle Verbs in English

-------------------------------- Message 1 -------------------------------

Date:  Wed, 09 Apr 2003 19:11:40 +0000
From:  Tully J Thibeau <thibeau at selway.umt.edu>
Subject:  Particle Verbs in English

Dehé, Nicole (2002) Particle Verbs in English: Syntax, Information
Structure and Intonation, John Benjamins Publishing Company,
Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 59.

Announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/14/14-119.html


Tully J. Thibeau, University of Montana - Missoula

SUMMARY OF PURPOSE AND CONTENT

At issue is that construction in English involving a verb, a
preposition functioning as a particle, and a direct object (i.e., a
transitive particle verb, or PV). A PV's distinguishing feature is its
potential to alternate the linear order of a particle and object: The
particle immediately follows a verb or an object when the object is a
fully-fledged Determiner Phrase (DP), but, if the object is a personal
pronoun, then the particle must follow the pronominal, unless the
pronominal receives contrastive focus. As just intimated, an important
point is the property Focus, part of a clause's Information Structure
(IS) that is unpredictable and not presumable, ''typically new
information [that] cannot be taken for granted'' (p. 105). The book's
most central point is related to Focus, addressing effects of IS on a
uniform underlying syntactic structure for PVs: a Focus feature enters
the derivation according to the minimalist framework, but not by
projecting a phrasal structure (it is not a formal feature) but by
being assigned to one phrasal projection (three Focus domains,
minimal, non-minimal, and maximal, match three projections, direct
object DP, verb phrase, or VP, and Subject-Agreement Phrase, or AgrSP,
respectively). Each chapter pertains to this central point (one basic
phrase structure for alternate derivations that are not optional but
derived from Focus), concluded to be a structure with continuous order
(verb-particle-object) after consideration and rejection of other PV
analyses recommending basic structures for continuous and
discontinuous verb and particle. Finally, an added point of discussion
posits that this uniform syntactic structure underlies all
classifications of English PVs.

EVALUATION BY CHAPTER

The first chapter takes up PV classes. A helpful introduction informs
us that PVs characterize Germanic languages, that they attract
attention of linguists in varying specializations, and that subsequent
chapters address alternations between continuous and discontinuous
verb and particle. Then, Dehé presents three standard PV categories
(compositional, idiomatic and aspectual), a system of classification
exemplified in Emonds 1985 and Jackendoff 2002: The first class,
compositional PVs, derive meaning from literal interpretations of verb
and particle, as in 'throw out.' Contrarily, idiomatic PVs derive no
meaning from interpreting verb or particle literally, as in 'turn
down' (reject). Aspectual PVs involve particles that function
telically as described in Brinton 1985, that is, by furnishing verbs
with an endpoint, resembling notions that have been referred to as
delimitedness (Tenny:1994) or boundedness (Jackendoff:1990). The
system is intuitively appealing, but does not capture telicity effects
often present in all three types. This three-way classification is
contrasted it with Ishikawa 1999, categorizing classes via
interpretation of particle and verb and PV's selection of arguments,
producing three different categories that would reclassify members in
the former system. The former system is favored for its affinity with
empirical data reported later). A two-way system, such as Aarts 1989
or Wurmbrand 1998 (where each class entails unlike syntactic
structures), receives brief mention (but detailed in Chapter Two) and
immediate rejection because PVs behave alike in syntactic environments
like nominalization.  The introduction prepares one for the ensuing
chapters by providing sufficient background for following the course
of development.

The second chapter systematically reviews literature on generative
analyses. Dehé lists five types: traditional, small clause (SC),
extended VP (EVPA), functional category, and other. Traditional types
receive brief attention and are set aside for their incongruity with
the minimalist operation Merge, a strictly binary branching structure-
building procedure. Because they view PV as a complex head in
continuous order and derive discontinuous order via head plus two
complements with ternary branches, traditional analyses suit Dehé's
content and purpose poorly. Yet, such analyses require our attention
for their account of modification of discontinuous particles by
'right,' a basis for the SC analysis, too. However, such modification
is used against this analysis: Directing criticism at Kayne 1985,
popularizing SC analyses, Dehé argues that 'right' modification,
nominalization, and operations like wh-extraction from DP do not
distinguish them as the only correct one since such evidence also
agrees with EVPA. Technical points (adjunction, for one) are
considered problematic, and rightly so, for this and other SC
analyses, like Den Dikken 1995, Gueron 1990, Hoekstra 1988, and
Svenonius 1996, but it is rejected primarily because PVs do not
simulate SCs (We found him foolish/ We found that he was foolish v. I
put the clown down/*I put that the clown was down). Rejecting SC
analyses on grounds that PV patterns unlike SC seems inadequate: Some
constructions construed as SCs avoid the pattern noted by Dehé (I
made him an associate /*I made that he is an associate).

The favored EVPA follows Larson's 1988 VP-shell where functional
projections dominate VP, forming sites for displaced VP-internal
elements. The support in its favor does not so much involve different
evidence used in SC analyses but interprets it as displaying a
restricted use of SC's discontinuous order in syntactic environments,
mainly coordination. In coordinate structures (turn the radio off and
the TV on), we see in EVPA's displaced constituents that well-
formedness need not refer to underlying discontinuous order. Yet EVPAs
explain coordination using either word order as basic, depending on
how constituents move, and are never clear about what motivates
movements setting apart basic and derived order. Thus, EVPAs in Harley
and Noyer 1998 or Nicol 2002 seem inadequate. Johnson's 1991 propose
object- raising serves as impetus for the EVPA most favorably received
in Chapter 2 and developed in Chapter 5 (analyzing data collected
Chapter 3 and 4): Koizumi 1993 exemplifies the approach well but
suffers from defects in the other EVPAs, namely no motive for
necessitating derived order.

The principal defect in this chapter is its rationale for rejecting SC
analyses, which conform with the data equally as well as EVPAs, in
spite of the empirical data inclined to the latter. Regardless, the
last two analytical types, not as prevalent as the previous two, are
determined to be insufficient: Functional category analyses in Dehé
2000 and Solà 1996 conceive particles as functional heads raised to a
Telicity head, but not all particles function to telicize, so it is
rejected; other analyses involve Aarts 1989 and Wurmbrand 2000,
proposing two basic PV structures, one that can coordinate and one
that cannot, rejected due to complications of ternary branching and
secondary predication ascribed to some particles, but the ultimate
reason must be that they are contrary to a uniform PV phrasal
structure.

The third chapter ascertains a neutral order for all PV classes.
Factors believed to govern alternating order reduce to one, IS.
Svenonius 1996 refers to phrasal heaviness as conditioning
clause-final DP, but, for Dehé, heaviness may be only a processing
constraint or reflect that modifications making DP heavy also augment
its news value (NV), a matter of IS. NV's role is examined in Erades
1961, where DPs bearing NV appear clause-final (continuous PV) but DPs
bearing none follow verbs (discontinuous PV). Erades adds that, in the
latter position, particles function as predicates and, in the former,
as adverbs, a point not raised here, one that resounds an SC analysis.
Dehé, following Olsen 2000, views clause-final particle more as an
adverb in compositional PVs, and empirical data reported here seem to
bear that point out. Before presenting the data, two other sources
supporting continuous order should be noted: First, degree modifier
'right' suggests that clause-final particles behave as adverbial
prepositions allowing such modification, and nominalized PVs require
continuous order, implying a restricted clause-final particle; second,
processing constraints, like Hawkins' 1994 Early Immediate Constituent
(EIC) Principle (read: locate complex constituent toward clause-final
position) entail continuity, so deducing basic discontinuity on the
premise that it could not exist if it were not basic (as Hawkins does)
is counterintuitive, and presuming IS as the condition for alternate
order respects EIC by defining complexity as NV.

A problem with Dehé's analysis emerges in consideration of pronouns,
assumed to be coreferential, causing discontinuous order, but the
indefinite pronoun 'one' appears in both orders (Diesing &
Jelinek:1994). This assumption that PV objects need be definite
pervades experimental findings reported here. Subjects were presented
six permutations of verb, particle and definite DP and asked to
arrange them in a grammatical order; they preferred continuous over
discontinuous order. This is not surprising, given that no context
surrounds any array, rendering DPs as NV constituents. Yet, among
items, subjects showed preference for discontinuous order in
compositional PVs over idiomatic and aspectual PVs, intimating that
the classification has validity and that particles in compositional
PVs pattern with prepositional adverbs.

The fourth chapter discerns a motive for choosing one order over the
other. Since IS is deemed the most central factor by reducing others
to it, content is directed at surveying IS, examining its interaction
with intonation, and reporting data that advance the previous
chapters' claims. A survey begins the discussion, clearly addressing
ideas such as Theme/Rheme, Given/New, and Topic/Comment, constructs
believed to organize clauses with respect to their contexts. Adopting
a Focus- Background Structure (FBS) as illustrated in Steedman 2000,
Dehé establishes concatenations of IS and a tonal template that will
place pitch accent on focused material. A relation exists between
Focus and NV, recognized as early as 1909 by Behagel, who noted
interaction of NV and complexity. Krifka 1998 lends the analysis vital
support insomuch that it proposes all VP-internal constituents raise
except for focused ones, responsible for scrambling (alternating PV
order is not scrambling, though). IS's role in scrambling is
elaborated in Steube 2000, where checking formal features is
completely VP-internal and raising from it is motivated by semantic
feature Focus: New information receives +F marking and remains in situ
and is realized in clause-final position, recognized in Krifka 1998.

This useful survey precedes an intricate one on intonation,
concentrating on pitch accent. This survey concerns matching up the
concept of focus domain from the prior survey with the concept of
intonational phrase, a structure mapped onto the surface of a
syntactic derivation, providing phrases and clauses with tonal contour
and pitch prominence. The section is very dense, demanding close
attention, justifiably since it is devoted to the interface that links
phonetic performance with a formal object, unclearly culminating in a
Sentence Accent Assignment Rule (SAAR) from Gussenhoven 1984, stating
that arguments of a predicate located in the focus domain receive
accent.  Dehé conducts two experiments demonstrating clause-final PV
constituents receive pitch accent and extended syllable duration when
the context suits the NV of object DP (the design involves only
definite DPs, matching either NV context, continuous order, or no NV
context, discontinuous order). One may desire to know possible results
of nondefinite DPs in unmatched contexts and wonder why a neutral
order exists but normal stress or context must not.

The fifth chapter revises Dehé 2000, where alternating order involve
objects marked +F raising out of VP, deriving the discontinuous from
the continuous. The crucial difference in the revision is that object
raising is understood to be overt, so PV alternations arise from
stranding particles in VP to meet a Condition on Focus Domains, based
on SAAR. Fundamental to this analysis is overt object raising posited
in Koizumi 1993, elaborated in Lasnik 1999. Koizumi's was a favored
analysis in Chapter 2, where PV as complex head excorporated verb and
particle while object stood between, but it did not specify why
excorporation ensued. However, Dehé's revised analysis provides a
clearer motivation for this operation, namely it is costly but
necessary (and hence not optional) for meeting the condition stating
that a particle binds its +F feature when it does not match F-features
for PV objects (Condition on Focus Domain). Thus, DPs with no NV
(entailing pronouns) are marked -F, causing a mismatch in the focus
domain of VP and thus motivating PV excorporation, the motive for non-
optional discontinuous order.

Grounds for assuming a complex VP head are central to the analysis. If
particles bind +F features and receive pitch accent, then why do
simplex VP heads with contrastive focus raising from VP retain accent
if nothing binds +F?

Relying on Keyser and Roeper's 1992 Abstract Clitic Hypothesis (ACH),
Dehé proposes an unrealized affix binds +F in simplex verb cases, but
this affix is phonetically realized in a PV. This portion of the
analysis hinges on Ishikawa's 1999 view of verb heads (V) as having
two domains, a lower domain where only morphological rules apply to V
(tense affix) and an upper domain where morphological and syntactic
operations (excorporation) apply to V. The account explains facts
about prefixation (re-), suffixation (-ed) and excorporation,
centralized on abstract clitic affix (particles excorporate, affixes
cannot, and verbs are tensed instead of particles). If particles obey
ACH, and clitics are functional categories, then the revised analysis
(other than its non-optional alternating orders) is not radiacally
different from Dehé 2000 (particle as functional category) and
approaches an analysis where a particle is a functional SC head,
raising to a functional category VP-sister (Thibeau:1999), deriving a
continuous order. The simple advantage of the revised analysis is that
it avoids SC discontinuity, putatively proved lacking in Chapter 2 and
complicated by the data reported earlier.

In a section that thoroughly tests the structure analyzed in Chapter
5, Dehé qualifies the completeness of her analysis by saying it has
concentrated on full DPs only. But in fact it has concentrated on
definite full DPs only. One might expect some elaboration on potential
findings for quantified DPs in PVs, which have been exhibited to
influence acquisition (Van Hout:1997), but the concluding Chapter 6
entertains other implications, like relating PVs to dative shift verbs
and applying the proposed English PV structure to PVs in other
Germanic languages (constructive avenues for future research).

Dehé's book is a welcome addition to the recently growing literature
on PVs, including variety of data yet balanced with precise
theoretical examination, splendidly organized for easy reading and
altogether a worthwhile endeavor for all interested in a discussion on
interfaces between language systems, especially for linguists
specializing in PV and related constructions found in English and
across languages.

REFERENCES

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Behagel, O. (1909) Beziehungen zwischen Umfang und Reihenfolge von
Satzgliedern. Indogermanische Forschungen, 25, 110-142.

Brinton, L. (1985) Verb Particles in English: Aspect or Aktionsart?
Studia Linguistica, 39, 157-168.

Dehé, N. (2000) English particle verbs: Particles as functional
categories. In H. Janssen (Ed.), Verbal Projections (pp. 105-121).
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Diesing, M., and E. Jelinek (1994) Distributing Arguments.  Natural
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Dikken, M. den (1995) Partilces: On the Syntax of Verb-Particle,
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Jackendoff, R. (2002). English Particle Constructions, the Lexicon,
and the Autonomy of Syntax. In N. Dehé, R. Jackendoff, A. McIntyre, &
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Johnson, K. (1991) Object Positions. Natural Language and Linguistic
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Kayne, R. (1985) Principles in Particle Constructions. In J Guéron,
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Keyser, S., & Roeper, T. (1992) Re: The Abstract Clitic Hypothesis.
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Koizumi, M. (1993) Object Agreement Phrases and the Split VP
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Larson, R. K. (1988) On the Double Object Construction. Linguistic
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Lasnik, H. (1999) On Feature Strength: Three Minimalist Approaches to
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Nicol, F. (2002) Extended VP-Shells and the Verb-Particle
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(Eds.), Linguistische Arbeitsberichte, 74 (pp. 149-172). Universität
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(pp. 217-251).  Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Steedman, M. (2000) Information Structure and the Syntax-Phonology
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Steube, A. 1997 Ein kognitionswissenschaftlich basiertes Modell für
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Niemeyer.

Svenonius, P. (1996) The Optionality of Particle Shift. Working Papers
in Scandinavian Syntax, 57, 47-75.

Tenny, C. (1994) Aspectual Roles and the Syntax-Semantics Interface.
Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Press.

Thibeau, T. (1999) English Prepositions in Phrasal Verbs: A Study in
Second Language Acquisition. Tucson: University of Arizona
dissertation.

Van Hout, A. (1997) Learning Telicity: Acquiring Argument Structure
and the Syntax-Semantics of Direct Objects in Dutch. Proceedings from
the Boston University Conference on Language Development, 21, 678-688.

Wurmbrand, S. (1998). Heads or Phrases? Particles in particular. In
W. Kehrein & R. Wiese (Eds.), Phonology and Morphology of the Germanic
Languages (pp. 267-295). Tübingen: Max Niemeyer.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Tully J. Thibeau divides his interest in verb-preposition combinations
between generative models accounting for constructions such as the PV
and empirical research on the development of verb and preposition
collocations in adult English language learners. His most current
career goals include firmly establishing a research program in
studying second language knowledge of the English PV in particular,
with a specific objective of following trends in pedagogical grammar
that direct a learner's attentional resources at problematic forms
(like the English PV) to help natural internalization of the
principles governing their systematicity via classroom instruction.


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