Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-g7gxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-15T06:44:06.516Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Syntax of Direct Object Mutation in Welsh

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 June 2016

Ian Roberts
Ian Roberts*
Affiliation:
University of Stuttgart
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

The central hypothesis of this article is that Welsh direct object mutation—the only instance of mutation in the Celtic languages not triggered by a specific lexical item—is the PF-realisation of AgrO’s accusative Case as the floating lenition-triggering phonological feature L (cf. Lieber 1983 and Zwicky 1984). The analysis proposed in this article is an empirically adquate analysis of initial consonant mutation in Welsh, which fully integrates direct object mutation with other cases of mutation, relates mutation to phonosyntactic processes found in other languages, notably Southern Italian /u/-propagation (Rizzi and Savoia 1991) and French liaison (Manzini 1983), and fits naturally into a non-checking-theoreticconception of Parametric Variation of the sort outlined in Roberts and Roussou (1997a).

Résumé

Résumé

L’hypothèse centrale de cet article est que la mutation de l’objet direct en gallois— le seul exemple d’une mutation dans les langues celtiques qui n’est pas déclenchée par un item lexical donné—est la réalisation en Forme Phonologique du Cas accusatif d’AgrO comme le trait autosegmental L qui déclenche la mutation (cf. Lieber 1983 et Zwicky 1984). L’analyse proposée dans cet article est une analyse empiriquement adéquate de la mutation en gallois, qui intègre la mutation des objets directs avec les autres cas de mutation, qui relie la mutation aux processus phonosyntaxiques observés dans d’autres langues (notamment la propagation du /u/ dans les dialectes italiens méridionaux (Rizzi et Savoia 1991) et la liaison en français (Manzini 1983)), et qui s’intègre bien dans une conception de la variation paramétrique du type élaboré dans Roberts et Roussou (1997a), qui se passe de la théorie de la vérification des traits.

Type
Articles
Information
Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique , Volume 42 , Special Issue 1-2: Topics in Celtic Syntax , June 1997 , pp. 141 - 168
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Linguistic Association 1997

References

Aoun, Joseph, Hornstein, Norbert, Lightfoot, David, and Weinberg, Amy. 1987. Two types of locality. Linguistic Inquiry 18:537–579.Google Scholar
Baker, Mark, Johnson, Kyle, and Roberts, Ian. 1989. Passive Arguments Raised. Linguistic Inquiry 20: 219–251.Google Scholar
Belletti, Adriana, and Rizzi, Luigi. 1981. The syntax of ne: Some theoretical implications. The Linguistic Review 1:117–154.Google Scholar
Benua, Laura, and Borer, Hagit. 1996. Passive/antipassive in a predicate-based approach to argument structure. Paper read at the GLOW Colloquium, Athens.Google Scholar
Borer, Hagit. 1981. Parametric variation in clitic constructions. Doctoral dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.Google Scholar
Borsley, Robert D. 1996a. On a nominal analysis of Welsh verb-nouns. Ms., University of Wales, Bangor.Google Scholar
Borsley, Robert D. 1996b. Mutation and constituent structure in Welsh. Ms., University of Wales, Bangor.Google Scholar
Borsley, Robert D. 1996c. Mutation and Case revisited. Paper read at the Fifth Welsh Syntax Seminar, University of Wales, Bangor.Google Scholar
Borsley, Robert D., and Tallerman, Maggie. 1996. Phrases and soft mutation in Welsh. Journal of Celtic Linguistics 5:1–49.Google Scholar
Brown, Lea. n.d. Nominal mutation in Nias. Ms., University of Sydney.Google Scholar
Burzio, Luigi. 1986. Italian syntax: A Government-Binding approach. Dordrecht: Kluwer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cardinaletti, Anna. 1991. The affrication of /s/ in a central Italian variety: Syntactic conditions on a “sandhi” rule. In Syntactic theory and the dialects of Italy, ed. Belletti, Adriana, 99–129. Turin: Rosenberg and Sellier.Google Scholar
Cheng, Lisa. 1990. On the typology of wh-questions. Doctoral dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 1981. Lectures on government and binding. Dordrecht: Foris.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 1995. The Minimalist Program. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Clack, Susan. 1993. Towards a more nominal verb-noun in Middle Welsh. Paper read at the Linguistics Association of Great Britain, Autumn Meeting, University of Wales, Bangor.Google Scholar
Comrie, Bernard. 1977. In defense of spontaneous demotion. In Syntax and semantics 8: Grammatical relations, ed. Cole, Peter and Sadock, Jerrold, 25–55. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Emonds, Joseph. 1978. The verbal complex V-V’ in French. Linguistic Inquiry 9:151–175.Google Scholar
Emonds, Joseph. 1980. Word order in generative grammar. Journal of Linguistic Research 1:33–54.Google Scholar
Friedemann, Marc-Ariel. 1995. Sujets syntaxiques: positions, inversion et pro. Doctoral dissertation, Université de Genève.Google Scholar
Harlow, Steve. 1989. The syntax of Welsh soft mutation. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 7:289–316.Google Scholar
Hendrick, Randall. 1996. Some syntactic effects of suppletion in the Celtic copulas. In The syntax of the Celtic languages: A comparative perspective, ed. Borsley, Robert D. and Roberts, Ian, 75–96. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kayne, Richard S. 1984. Connectedness and binary branching. Dordrecht: Foris.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kayne, Richard S. 1994. The antisymmetry of syntax. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.Google Scholar
King, Gareth. 1993. Modern Welsh: A comprehensive grammar. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Laka, Itziar. 1990. Negation in syntax: On the nature of functional categories and projections. Doctoral dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.Google Scholar
Larson, Richard. 1988. On the double object construction. Linguistic Inquiry 19:335–391.Google Scholar
Lasnik, Howard, and Saito, Mamoru. 1991. On the subject of infinitives. In Papers from the 27th Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society Part 1: The General Session, ed. Dobrin, Lise M., Nichols, Lynn, and Rodriguez, Rosa M.. Chicago Linguistic Society, University of Chicago.Google Scholar
Lieber, Rochelle. 1983. New developments in autosegmental morphology: Consonant mutation. In Proceedings of the West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics 2, ed. Barlow, Michael, Flickinger, Daniel P., and Wescoat, Michael T., 165–175. Stanford Linguistics Association, Stanford University.Google Scholar
Longobardi, Giuseppe. 1995. The syntax of genitive. Part one: Construct state across languages: A minimalist interpretation. Ms., Università di Venezia.Google Scholar
Manzini, M. Rita. 1983. Syntactic conditions on phonological rules. In MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 5, ed. Haïk, Isabelle and Massam, Diane, 1–9. Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.Google Scholar
Manzini, M. Rita. 1994. Locality, minimalism and parasitic gaps. Linguistic Inquiry 25:481–508.Google Scholar
Manzini, M. Rita. 1995. From Merge and Move to form dependency. University College London Working Papers in Linguistics 7:323–346.Google Scholar
Manzini, M. Rita, and Savoia, Leonardo. 1997. Parameters of subject inflection in a grammar without pro. Paper read at the Workshop on Subjects, Expletives and the EPP, Tromsø.Google Scholar
McCloskey, James. 1996. On the scope of verb movement in Irish. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 14:47–104.Google Scholar
Pollock, Jean-Yves. 1989. Verb movement, UG and the structure of IP. Linguistic Inquiry 20:365–424.Google Scholar
Postal, Paul. 1974. On raising. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Ritter, Elisabeth. 1988. A head-movement approach to construct-state noun phrases. Linguistics 26:909–929.Google Scholar
Rizzi, Luigi, and Savoia, Leonardo. 1991. Conditions on /u/ propagation in southern Italian dialects: A locality parameter for phonosyntactic processes. In Syntactic theory and the dialects of Italy, ed. Belletti, Adriana, 252–312. Turin: Rosenberg and Sellier.Google Scholar
Roberts, Ian. 1987. The representation of implicit and dethematized subjects. Dordrecht: Foris.Google Scholar
Roberts, Ian. 1994. Two types of head movement in Romance. In Verb movement, ed. Lightfoot, David and Hornstein, Norbert, 207–242. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Roberts, Ian, and Roussou, Anna. 1997a. Interface interpretation. Paper read at the 20th GLOW Colloquium, Rabat.Google Scholar
Roberts, Ian, and Roussou, Anna. 1997b. The EPP as a condition on tense. Paper read at the Workshop on Subjects, Expletives and the EPP, Tromsø.Google Scholar
Roberts, Ian, and Shlonsky, Ur. 1996. Pronominal enclisis in VSO languages. In The syntax of the Celtic languages: A comparative perspective, ed. Borsley, Robert D. and Roberts, Ian, 171–199. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Rouveret, Alain. 1994. Syntaxe du gallois: principes généraux et typologie. Paris: CNRS Editions.Google Scholar
Rouveret, Alain. 1996. Bod in the present tense and in other tenses. In The syntax of the Celtic languages: A comparative perspective, ed. Borsley, Robert D. and Roberts, Ian, 125–170. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Siloni, Tal. 1991. Noun raising and the structure ofthe noun phrase. In MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 14, ed. Bobaljik, Jonathan D. and Bures, Tony, 255–270. Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.Google Scholar
Suoni, Tal. 1994. Noun phrases and nominalizations. Doctoral dissertation, Université de Genève.Google Scholar
Sportiche, Dominique. 1994. Subject clitics in French and Romance: Complex inversion and clitic-doubling. Ms., University of California, Los Angeles.Google Scholar
Sproat, Richard. 1985. Welsh syntax and VSO structure. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 3:173–216.Google Scholar
Stowell, Tim. 1981. The origins of phrase structure. Doctoral dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.Google Scholar
Tallerman, Maggie. 1996. Fronting constructions in Welsh. In The syntax of the Celtic languages: A comparative perspective, ed. Borsley, Robert D. and Roberts, Ian, 97–124. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tallerman, Maggie. To appear. The uniform Case-licensing of subjects in Welsh. The Linguistic Review.Google Scholar
Zanuttini, Raffaella. 1991. Syntactic properties of sentential negation: A comparative study of Romance languages. Doctoral dissertation, University of Pennsylvania.Google Scholar
Zwicky, Arnold. 1984. Welsh soft mutation and the case of object NPs. In Papers from the Twentieth Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, ed. Drogo, Joseph, Mishra, Veena, and Testen, David, 387–402. Chicago Linguistic Society, University of Chicago.Google Scholar