s éminaire Structure Argumentale à Paris 8 le 27.02: exposé de Jacqueline Guéron

[elenasoleil]

Le projet de la Fédération TUL

Structure Argumentale et Structure Aspectuelle

et l'UMR 7023 Structures Formelles du Langage – Equipe
Architecture
Grammaticale

ont le plaisir de vous inviter à un exposé de


Jacqueline Guéron, Université de Paris 3


Minimal Verbs in Space and Time

Date : le lundi 27 février 2012

Heure : 14h – 16h30

Lieu :  Université de Paris 8 Vincennes – Saint Denis,
Bâtiment D, salle D143

Plan d'accès : http://www.umr7023.cnrs.fr/Plans-d-acces,672.html


Abstract
We will examine two puzzles concerning the syntax and semantics of the 
minimal verbs (auxiliaries or light verbs) HAVE, BE, and NEED.
1. Puzzle one:  HAVE vs BE.
       Although HAVE and BE lack descriptive content, they seem to have
sufficient formal content to provide the verbal base for a series of
stative propositions with varying semantics, i.e.,  Existential,
Possessive, Psychological, Perfect, and Modal. And although they are not
interchangeable, (cf. "Madame Bovary has a book" vs "Madame
Bovary is a book") HAVE and BE  can project  sentences with the very
same semantic construals, both  over languages (cf. Eng. Poss. "I
have a book" vs. Russian "U menya ect' kniga") and within a
single language  (Latin  Poss. "Mihi est liber" vs "habeo
librum"; English Exist. "There is a book on the table" vs
"The table has a book on it"; Modal "John has to leave'"
vs "John is to leave"; Russian Poss. "U Ivana bila (was)
mashina" vs "Ivan imel (had) mashinu"; or French Perf.
"Jean a parlé" vs "Jean est venu"). To distinguish
"HAVE languages" from "BE languages" for any of these
sentence types, as is commonly done, is thus an oversimplification.
         In the general case, HAVE and BE derive identical logical forms
by means of a distinct syntax, however. To account for this, I  propose
that (i) HAVE and  BE have partially  distinct lexical content: they
share  the minimal V Features  T, Aspect, and Agr (which exhaustively
define BE),  but HAVE contains in addition a P element which determines 
transitivity in syntax (cf. Freeze 1992, Kayne 1993, Guéron 1995);
(ii) identical interface conditions can be  satisfied by two different
types of syntactic structures in UG.
2. Puzzle two: HAVE vs NEED.
     Extending an observation of  Isachenko for Slavic,  Harves and Kayne
(2008/2012) assign to the verb NEED, cross-linguistically, a syntactic
structure in which verbal HAVE incorporates nominal NEED.  Following
earlier work by  Ross and McCawley, Den Dikken, Larson & Ludlow (1996)
and Schwartz (2006) propose, rather, that the verb NEED merges in syntax
with an embedded verb HAVE. Structure (2) can account for the ambiguity
of (1): the temporal adverbial may modify either matrix NEED or embedded
HAVE.
      (1) John needed spare change [before the concert]
           a. But he doesn't need it any more.   (wide scope of T-Adv)
           b. rather than after the concert.          (narrow scope of
T-Adv)
      (2) John NEEDED [to HAVE spare change] (before the concert]
       We consider both proposals partially redundant, however, since
intuitively, NEED already means something like (3). Moreover, the N NEED
in (4) admits  the same adverbial ambiguity as the V NEED in (1) –
this is a problem for Harves and Kayne- as does  the N LACK –  this
is a problem for the Ross-McCawley approach.
(3)    NEED = not to have a thing or situation (which it is otherwise
necessary or desirable to have).
      (4) [John's NEED for/ LACK of spare change [before the concert]]
was disconcerting.
3. I already proposed that HAVE lexically contains (the formal Fs which
constitute) BE (Guéron,1995) and that NEED lexically contains (the
formal Fs which constitute) HAVE  plus a NEG F (Guéron, 2000).  Here
I develop the latter proposal in a direction compatible with  Moltmann's
(2008)  focus on the situation of satisfaction evoked by NEED and Copley
and Harley's (2011) investigation of situations in which normal inertial
results fail to obtain.
         Adopting the hypothesis (Guéron, 2004) that the  sentence
structure is divided into two distinct domains/phases for construal, vP 
the domain of spatial construal, and TP/CP the  domain of temporal
construal, I propose that the formal F content of NEED is distributed
independently over the two domains. In vP, the purely spatial content of
P and its arguments defines a relation between two disjoint objects. In
TP, the purely verbal Fs of HAVE  (T and Asp) plus the NEG F of NEED 
merge with the tense morpheme in T,  projecting a temporal interval
characterized by the absence of  the spatial configuration vP denotes.
The spatial configuration cannnot be annuled (no backtracking). Rather,
it is placed on the boundary  of the privative temporal interval T
denotes where it functions as its natural telos.  The distribution of
the spatial and temporal Fs of  NEED over two syntactic domains results
in a separation of the Reference Time from the Event time (cf. the NEG+T
particles laa, lan, and lam in Arabic  (Derraz, 2011)) which can account
for the ambiguity of  (1) without multiplying predicates in syntax.
          Finally, the intentional component of NEED (in parentheses in
(3)),  responsible for deriving a psych interpretation of NEED+DP and a
modal interpretation of NEED+(bare) verbal complement, depends on  the
presence or absence of a syntactic subject and more generally on the way
in which the syntactic structure satisfies  an output condition on the
construal of temporal intervals. (We will propose relevant output
constraints in the talk.)
          Alternatively, NEED may correspond to NEG+BE. This derives an
unaccusative syntactic structure - not only in e.g. Russian, which uses
BE for Possession, but also in e.g., Rumanian or French, which use HAVE
for Possession - rather than the transitive structures of  English or
Spanish. In the absence of a P element,  the aspectual content of BE+T
is the source of  the   existential connotation of NEED noted by
Ciucivara (2010) for Rumanian.

References
Ciucivara, O.S. (2010) "A Few Notes on the "Need" Field in
Romanian" Bucharest Working
       Papers in Linguistics, 12,2.
Copley, B. & H. Harley (2011) "Force dynamics for event semantics:
reifying causation in
       event structure" draft, CNRS/Paris VIII and U. of  Arizona.
Derraz, N. (2011) Temps et aspect en anglais et en arabe, Diss. U. Paris
3.
Guéron, J. (1986) "Le verbe avoir", Recherches Linguistiques,
14, U. Paris 8.
Guéron, J. (1995) "On HAVE and BE", NELS 25, GLSA, U.Mass
Amherst, 191-206).
Guéron, J. (2000) "From Need to Necessity: a Syntactic Path to
Modality" in J. van der Auwera
       & P. Dendale, eds., Modal Verbs n Germanic and Romance Languages,
Belgian Journal of
        Linguistics 14,  3-87.
Guéron, J. (2004) "Tense Construal and Auxiliaries" in
Guéron & Lecarme, eds., The Syntax
        of Time, MIT Press, 299-328
Harves, S. & R. Kayne (2008/2012) "Having Need and Needing Have in
Indo-European"
Moltmann, F. (2008) "Intensional verbs and their intentional
objects" Nat. Lang.Semantics, 16,
       239-270.
Schwarz, F. (2006) "On needing Propositions and looking for
Properties"



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