crest


Syntax Project Group

at

University of Toronto





Fall 2005

Place:
RL 6071

Time:
Friday,10 am - noon

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Schedule

September  | October | November | December


September 30

 No Meeting

October 7

Marco Nicolis
Topic: Prodrops, free inversion, and that-trace

October 14

Peter Hallman
Topic: "So" in "do so"

Tanya Slavin
Semantic consequences of structural position of preverbs in Ojibwe


October 21

Edith Aldridge
Case and Agreement (not Case Agreement) in Tagalog

and

Edith Aldridge
Typology of Ergativity in Western Austronesian Languages
(starting at 15:00 at Woodsworth College Room 120)
 A guest lecture hosted by the Department of Linguistics


October 28

Jonathon Herd
Topic: Maori left periphery


October 31
(12:00-14:00 at the departmental seminar room)

Leora Bar-el
Topic: Aspect in Salish


November 4

Elizabeth Cowper
Topic: TBA

Susana Bejar
Topic: TBA


November 11

Javier Bucio
Topic: Preverbal causee and causatives

Reading Chomsky's manuscript "on phases"


November 18

Meeting Cancelled

November 18-19
Toronto Workshop on Phonetics, Gender, and Sexual Orientation


November 25

Kenji Oda
Topic: Irish headless relatives

and
Continuing to read Chomsky's manuscript "on phases"
resuming from around page 8.

and

Peter Hallman
University of Toronto
Keeping Things in Proportion:
Interactions of Cumulativity and Proportionality
(starting at 15:00 at Woodsworth College Room 119)
 A guest lecture hosted by the Department of Linguistics

December 2

Diane Massam
Topic: Nominal wardrobe

and
Continuing to read Chomsky's manuscript "on phases"

December 9

Meeting Cancelled

Bilingual Workshop in Theoretical Linguistics 9
at the University of Western Ontario



December 17

Mike Barrie
Topic: Aspects of Iroquoian syntax

Bettina Spreng
Topic: TBA



Directors: Elizabeth Cowper, Alana Johns, Diane Massam

Schedule & Announcements: Christine Pittman

Department of Linguistics at University of Toronto

Last Update: Nov. 2, 2005 by Kenji Oda

Logs:

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Spring 2003

Summer 2003

Fall 2003

Spring 2004

Fall 2004

Spring 2005

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Case and Agreement (not Case Agreement) in Tagalog

In this talk, I propose an analysis of certain key aspects of Tagalog syntax, including case marking and dislocation possibilities, based on my assertion that Tagalog is an ergative language. Under this approach, the case marker ang (traditionally assumed to be nominative) is taken to mark absolutive case, while ng (traditionally called genitive) marks inherent case: ergative, oblique, or genitive. Consequently, non-actor topic (or non-actor focus) constructions like(1a) are treated as transitive, absolutive case appearing on an internal argument and ergative case on the external argument. Actor topic constructions like (1b) are analyzed as antipassives, with absolutive case on the external argument and oblique case on the semantic direct object.

(1)a. B-in-ili ng babae ang isda.
-TT.Perf-buy Gen woman Nom fish
"The woman bought the fish."
b. B-um-ili ang babae ng isda.
-AT.Perf-buy Nom woman Gen fish
"The woman bought a fish."

In this talk, I further contrast my proposal with Rackowskifs (2002) case agreement approach to Tagalog case and voice marking. Under this approach, ang and ng are not case markers, per se. Rather, in any semantically transitive clause, nominative case is assigned by T to the external argument and accusative by v to the direct object. The theme topic morphology on the verb in (1a) and actor topic morphology in (1b) are taken to be the spell-out of agreement with the case feature of the nominative DP. ?in-/-in registers accusative case agreement, -um- nominative. Finally, I show that, although the ergative and case agreement approaches are similar in many respects, there are a number of constructions which are better accounted for under the ergative approach.

Reference
Rackowski, Andrea. 2002. The Structure of Tagalog: Specificity, Voice, and the Distribution of Arguments. Ph.D. dissertation, MIT.


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Typology of Ergativity in Western Austronesian Languages

The status of Austronesian languages as ergative, accusative, or neither continues to be debated. For example, while Payne (1982), Gerdts (1988), and others have argued for an ergative analysis of Philippine languages, Paul and Travis (2003) dispute this claim with evidence from Malagasy. This talk addresses these divergent points of view by proposing a typology of ergativity in Western Austronesian languages. In this typology, Tagalog is treated as a fully ergative language, standard Indonesian as predominantly accusative, while Malagasy, Balinese, and Toba Batak are shown to be split-ergative. The defining characteristic distinguishing the three types is the status of the actor topic construction as transitive or intransitive. In standard Indonesian, actor topic (or active) constructions which contain a direct object are transitive, structural accusative case being available for the object. In Tagalog, on the other hand, this construction displays the expected characteristics of an antipassive, in which structural case is not available for the direct object, this object receiving inherent oblique case. Non-actor topic clauses are transitive, with ergative case being assigned to the external argument and absolutive to an internal argument. In the split-ergative languages (Malagasy, Toba Batak, and Balinese), ergative syntax is found in non-actor topic constructions, parallel to Tagalog. However, these languages display accusative syntax in the actor topic constructions. I propose that these languages have lost the antipassive construction. This construction is no longer intransitive but provides structural case available for the object. The analysis I propose of Tagalog ergativity provides a straightforward account of this variation. In Tagalog, transitive (non-actor topic) v has a structural case feature which it checks with an internal argument, i.e. the absolutive DP. Intransitive, including antipassive, v lacks a structural case feature. Inherent oblique case is assigned to the object by the verb. The change from ergative to split-ergative syntax involves the acquisition of a case feature on antipassive v. I further discuss in this talk why it is the antipassive construction which is the locus of change from ergative to accusative syntax. In transitive clauses in ergative languages, properties generally attributed to subjects are distributed between the ergative and absolutive nominals. It is only in intransitive constructions where all subject properties converge in the absolutive grammatical function. In an antipassive, not only does the external argument behave like a subject, but there is additionally a direct object present, making this construction strikingly similar to transitive constructions in accusative languages.

References
Gerdts, Donna B. 1988. Antipassives and Causatives in Ilokana: Evidence for an Ergative Analysis. In R. McGinn, ed., Studies in Austronesian Linguistics, 295-321. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Center for International Studies.
Paul, Ileana and Lisa Travis. 2003. Ergativity in Austronesian Languages: What it can do, what it canft, but not why. Paper presented at the 10th meeting of the Austronesian Formal Linguistic Association (AFLA), University of Hawaii.
Payne, Thomas E. 1982. Role and Reference Related Subject Properties and Ergativity in Yupfip Eskimo and Tagalog. Studies in Language 6, 1:75-106.


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Keeping Things in Proportion: Interactions of Cumulativity and Proportionality

Certain quantifiers license a reading of the progressive that undermines the usual entailment from the preterit to the past progressive. For example, (1a) entails (1b) but (2a) does not entail (2b) (Stanley may have been giving every child a piece of candy).

(1) a. Stanley gave the child a piece of candy.
b. Stanley was giving the child a piece of candy.

(2) a. Stanley gave most children a piece of candy.
b. Stanley was giving most children a piece of candy.

I claim that predicates like 'give most children a piece of candy' are activities, and the quantifiers that license the relevant reading ('most' but not 'the') are the just the quantifiers that are compatible with the cumulativity' property of activities--that every subpart of an activity is itself such an activity. This requirement isolates exactly the class of proportional quantifiers.