Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-b95js Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-11T02:08:29.738Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Unaccusativity and the VP node in Cayuga

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 January 2016

Michael Barrie
Michael Barrie*
Affiliation:
Sogang University, Seoul
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In this squib, I discuss the iterative marker in Cayuga (Northern Iroquoian) and how it helps us to understand VP structure and unaccusativity in that language. This discussion bears directly on the issue of configurationality and clausal structure (Hale 1983, Jelinek 1984, Baker 1996, Legate 2002). A fundamental question about discourse-configurational languages is whether they have a distinct VP node or a flat structure. I show that the iterative marker takes scope over objects but not over subjects, supporting the notion that a distinct VP node is present in this language. Furthermore, I show that the iterative marker also takes scope over the subjects of unaccusatives, thus distinguishing unaccusatives from unergatives.

Type
Squibs/Notules
Information
Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique , Volume 59 , Issue 2 , July 2014 , pp. 235 - 242
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Linguistic Association. 2015

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abbott, Clifford. 2000. Oneida. Munich: Lincom Europa.Google Scholar
Abrams, Percy. 2006. Onondaga pronominal prefixes. Doctoral dissertation, State University of New York at Buffalo.Google Scholar
Baker, Mark C. 1985. The mirror principle and morphosyntactic explanation. Linguistic Inquiry 16: 373–416.Google Scholar
Baker, Mark C. 1988. Incorporation: A theory of grammatical function changing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Baker, Mark C. 1991. On some subject/object non-asymmetries in Mohawk, Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 9:537–576.Google Scholar
Baker, Mark C. 1996. The polysynthesis parameter. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Froman, Frances, Keye, Alfred J., Keye, Lottie, and Dyck, Carrie. 2002. English-Cayuga/Cayuga-English dictionary. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.Google Scholar
Hale, Ken. 1983. Warlpiri and the grammar of non-configurational languages. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 1:5–47.Google Scholar
Jelinek, Eloise. 1984. Empty categories, case, and configurationality. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 2: 39–76.Google Scholar
Kornfilt, Jaklin. 2003. Scrambling, subscrambling and case in Turkish. In Word order and scrambling, ed. Karimi, Simin, 125–155. Maiden, MA: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Legate, Julie Anne. 2002. Warlpiri: Theoretical implications. Doctoral dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.Google Scholar
Lounsbury, Floyd Glenn. 1949. Iroquoian morphology. Doctoral dissertation, Yale University.Google Scholar
Lounsbury, Floyd Glenn. 1953. Oneida verb morphology. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Matthewson, Lisa. 2004. On the methodology of semantic fieldwork. International Journal of American Linguistics 70: 369–415.Google Scholar
Mithun, Marianne. 1984. The evolution of noun incorporation. Language 60: 847–894.Google Scholar
Mithun, Marianne. 2004. The non-universality of obliques. Paper presented at the Syntax of the World's Languages, Leipzig.Google Scholar
Perlmutter, David. 1978. Impersonal passives and the unaccusative hypothesis. Paper presented at the 4th Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, Berkeley.Google Scholar
Rice, Keren. 1991. Intransitives in Slave (Northern Athapaskan): Arguments for unaccusatives. International Journal of American Linguistics 57: 51–69.Google Scholar
Sezer, Engin. 1991. Issues in Turkish syntax. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University.Google Scholar
Woodbury, Hanni. 1975. Noun incorporation in Onondaga. Doctoral dissertation, Yale University.Google Scholar
Woodbury, Hanni. 2003. Onondaga-English/English-Onondaga dictionary. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.Google Scholar