Salahaddin University-Hawler
Postgraduate Studies Board
(Applied Linguistics/Master)
General Linguistics
BOOK REVIEW
A FIRST-PHASE SYNTAX
GILLIAN CATRIONA RAMCHAND
Reviewer:
Joanna Ismail Omer
(M.A Student in Applied Linguistics)
Instructor
Assist. Prof. Dr. Himdad Abdul-Qahar Muhammad
2011
Introduction
0
The title of the book is Verb Meaning and the Lexicon by Gillian Catriona
Ramchand. It is first published in 2008 by Cambridge University Press and it is
part of Cambridge Studies in Linguistics.
The relationship between the meaning of words and the structure of
sentences is an important area of research in linguistics. This book arrives at a
modular classification of verb types within English and across languages,
studying the connections between lexical conceptual meaning and event
structural
relations.
Ramchand treats the lexical/syntactic representation of verbs within a broad
perspective that addresses central claims and sentence types that have been put
forward in studies on valency and aspect from a range of theoretical approaches
and places her analyses in a Minimalist syntactic framework she refers to as a
first-phase syntax.
The book is structured as follows: in chapter one which is the introductory
chapter, Ramchand treats a number of approaches to the lexicon with special
reference to the status of semantics, syntax and encyclopedic knowledge and
classifies her proposal as generativist-constructivist. The second chapter is
devoted to a wide range of sentence types Ramchand introduces as basic verbargument structures, which in chapter three she places in a syntactic model, a
first-phase syntax.
Chapter four applies this first-phase syntax to English verbs and
demonstrates how they may be classified on the basis of the position they
occupy in the projected syntactic structure. Chapters five and six take a more indepth and cross-linguistic look at two phenomena that receive specific treatment
in the model, results/paths and causitivization, respectively, and the
programmatic chapter seven explores further possibilities of the proposed
analysis and indicates open questions.
1
Chapter One/ Introduction
Except its introductory part it consists of two sections.
Ramchand devotes the main and introductory part of this chapter to show
that her first task is to define the relation between the mental lexicon and the
syntax, to which she devotes the main part of this introductory chapter. She sets
the stage by putting forth the claim that lexical behaviour is systematic and
generalizable, this is due to syntactic modes of combination.
In brief,
Ramchand distinguishes two conceptions of the nature of the lexicon; the
'lexical-thematic approach' and 'the generativist-constructivist approach' and
both have an extreme and a more
Capturing argument-structure generalizations section consists of two
other subsections:
The lexical–thematic approach; which conceives of the lexicon as a
bundle of information in which each verb is stored with fixed information about
its arguments. Most notably (Dowty, 1990) instantiated in the syntax through
linking rules with no lexicon-internal manipulations prior to insertion (the static
lexicon view). A moderate reading of the lexical-thematic approach leads to a
view in which, although verbs in the lexicon are thought of as carrying
information about argument structure these are determined by regular processes
in the lexicon (the dynamic lexicon), as when it comes to aspect specification.
Generative–constructivist approach; refers to the lexical roots that contain
no syntactically relevant information at all. The generativist-constructivist
approach has two versions as well: in the first one the verb is stored without any
specification of its argument structure and is just a bundle of cognitive and
encyclopedic information (the 'naked roots view'), for example;
2
RUN
continuous directed motion undergone by animate entity
motion involves rapid movement of legs,
no continuous contact with ground
.
.
.
Associations: exercise, boredom, heart attacks etc.
In addition, Borer (2005), for the English verb (Siren), offers the following
examples;
(a) The fire stations sirened throughout the raid.
(b) The factory sirened midday and everyone stopped for lunch.
(c) The police sirened the Porsche to a stop.
(d) The police car sirened up to the accident.
(e) The police car sirened the daylights out of me.
The second includes the one in which at least some information about
valency and semantic roles is stored with the lexical entry (the well-dressed
roots view). It needs to be observed that the main distinction between the static
lexicon view and the well-dressed roots view lies in the theoretical framework
in which it is embedded, de-compositional versus constructivist. Ramchand
does not readily subscribe to any of these views. In her interpretation of the
lexicon a lexical entry is nothing more than the memorized link between chunks
of conceptual structure and conditions of insertion. This could be regarded as a
moderate version of the generative-constructivist view, in which verbs with
limited syntactic labels are associated with particular constellations in a
3
generative syntactic structure but it should be noted that these should not be
seen as properties of individual lexemes since similar patterns are found crosslinguistically.
The idea in Excursus on the role of encyclopedic knowledge section is to
make a strict and principled distinction between linguistic meaning and
encyclopedic content.The writer states that a clear- cut distinction between the
two cannot be made because they are interwoven; he argues that Constructionalsemantic and lexical-encyclopedic contributions are unified to form a
proposition at the interface with the cognitive/interpretive systems of the
mind/brain. For example;
The entry for run is an idealization of the distributed nature of the
information involved. Here the strong links of mental association can be seen;
RUN
Label seen by PF: / r ∧ n /
Label seen by narrow syn–sem computation: v,V
continuous directed motion undergone by animate
motion involves rapid movement of legs,
no continuous contact with ground
.
.
Chapter
Associations: exercise, boredom, heart attacks
Two
is entitled
The
Empirical
Ground
In this chapter, the writer argues that although some verbs, e.g. 'eat' may be
applied in a wide range of sentence types (transitive, intransitive, causative,
4
way-constructions etc.) the use of other verbs is much more constrained, as one
can see in, Selection versus variability section that Ramchand mentions that
the specification of syntactic complementation can account for the difference
between transitive and intransitive verbs, for example;
 John saw the lizard./*John saw.
 *John dined the tortellini./John dined.
Or for the difference between the verbs that take CP complements vs. IP
complements on the other, for example;
 John hoped that the rain would fall./ *John hoped the rain to fall.
–*John got that the rain would fall./ John got the rain to fall.
The strategy Ramchand would pursue is first of all to reject the existence of
formal selectional features in the lexicon, but attempt to account for what
rigidity there is in terms of purely syntactic or categorial features, made possible
by a more articulated view of the functional sequence within the verb phrase.
The first step is to establish and motivate the primitives that are empirically
necessary in a decomposition of verbal meaning. This sketch is intended as a
basic outline of the important distinctions that need to be made in the face of the
broadest empirical patterns, not as a complete exegesis of verb types. In doing
so, Ramchand in Causation section argues that the first component of verbal
meaning that has received much empirical support in the literature is that of
causation. Causation has been shown to be a relevant parameter in verbal
differences and shows up veryoften as overt morphology within the verbal
inventory of human languages.Moreover, she mentions the intransitive verbs
and states that the intransitive verbs that possess an external argument can be
demonstrated by their ability to take X’s way objects under certain
circumstances as it can be seen in the following examples;
(a) He stank his smelly way home.
(b) The water spewed its way along the corridor.
5
(c) John ran his way into history.
While in mentioning transitive verb types, she states that among transitive
verbs, external arguments can be volitional agents (as in a, b sentences),
instrumentals (in sentence 'c'), abstract causes/sources (in'd, f' sentences),
showing the generality and abstractness of the external argument relation.
(a) John broke the window.
(b) John built that house.
(c) The hammer broke the window.
(d) The videotape from the secret camera demonstrated the truth of the matter.
(e) The storm broke the window.
(f) John’s money built that house.
In Nonaspectual arguments section Ramchand
introduces a range of
sentence types that have been adduced in the argument structure literature on
the basis of the following reoccurring semantic roles: Initiator (an entity whose
properties/ behaviour are responsible for the eventuality coming into existence),
Undergoer (argument that is interpreted as undergoing the change asserted by a
dynamic verb), Resultee (direct argument related to a result state), Path
and Rheme. The latter two are the most distinctive in Ramchand's proposal.
Ramchand assumes that these are the basic semantic roles of arguments,
accounting
for
such
verb
features
as
'causality'
and
'telicity',
which she considers to be secondary.
Chapter Three: A first-phase syntax
This chapter gives a first overview of Ramchand's model, which she stresses
to be programmatic rather than definitive. On the basis of the sentence types
introduced in the second chapter she distinguishes three subevents in the
event-structure: ''a causing subevent, a process-denotiong subevent and a
6
subevent corresponding to result state''. Each of these subevents is ordered in
the hierarchical embedding relation as shown in the example below:
initP (causing projection)
procP(process projection)
DP2
subj of ‘process’
init
proc
DP3
subj of ‘cause’
resP (result proj)
DP1 subj of ‘result’
res
XP
These are interpreted as three projections: the initiation phrase (initP), of
which the subject position is taken by the subject of a cause, or INITIATOR.
This phrase may head a process phrase (procP), the subject of which is the
subject of a process, or UNDERGOER, which in turn may head a result phrase
(resP), the subject of which is a RESULTEE. The object position of the lowest
phrase may both be taken by a PATH or a RHEME. This structure is the first
pillar on which the theory rests. Two other main components are the notions
'merge' and 'monotonicity'.
In Ramchand's proposal the capitalized roles above are not monolithic, but
can be combined to form complex roles. Ramchand characterizes the syntactic
operation with which this is done through the central Minimalist term merge,
which she conciliates with more traditional interpretations of the theoretical
construct by stating that: ''if merge is conceived of asset information, then
nothing prevents a particular item from being a member of more than one set''.
(1-6) are examples of these 'pure' and 'combined' roles:
1. The key opened the door ('the key' = initiator)
2. The ball rolled (= undergoer)
3. Ariel ate the mango ('the mango' = path)
4. Katherine ran her shoes ragged ('her shoes' = result)
7
5. The diamond sparkled (= undergoer-initiator)
6. Katherine broke the stick ('the stick' = resultee-undergoer)
Ramchand would assume the causing subevent to be a state but leave it open
whether further investigation of the data might require relaxing this position to
admit any eventuality more generally.
In the semantic interpretation of structure, the writer states that the
semantics of event structure and event participants is read directly off the
structure, and not directly off information encoded by lexical items.
Ramchand assumes a regular connection between the subevents in macro-events
which can be 'decomposed' into the subevents indicated by the phase types and
the semantic roles of the core and external arguments which are derived from
argument positions in the structure. Based on formalizations proposed by Roger
Schwarzschild, Ramchand conceives of the relation between these two as
property sets that have to be 'monotonic' and a relation between two structured
domains is said to be monotonic if it preserves the ordering from one domain to
the other.
In the Rhematic material section the writer illustrates that rhematic
material always occur in complement position to an eventive head, and will
never occur in the specifier position of an eventive head.
She mentions definitions of some basic terms as in the following;
Initiators are the individuated entities that possess the property denoted by the
initiational subeventuality, which leads to the process coming into being.
(a) The key opened the lock.
Pure initiator
Undergoers are individuated entities whose position/state or motion/ change is
homomorphically related to some path. Undergoers are ‘subjects’ of
process,while paths are complements of process.
(a) Karena drove the car.
Pure undergoers
Resultees (Figures of result) are the individuated entities whose state is
described with respect to the resultative property/Ground.
8
(a) Katherine ran her shoes ragged.
Pure resultees
Grounds of Result possess an inherent nongradable property which describes
the result state.
(a) Karena entered the room.
Ground of result
Undergoer–initiator is a composite role which arises when the same argument
is the holder of initiational state and holder of a changing property
homomorphic with the event trace of the proc event.
(a) Karena ran to the tree.
Undergoer–initiators
Ramchand assumes that a composite role comprising of a rhematic position
anda role in specifier position is not attested. However, she has left it open that
such movements might be possible in special circumstances.
According to the writer the most important point in the Agents and
experiencers: the special case of mental states section is that animate/humanreferring DPs have the option of being interpreted as volitional causers, and as
experiencers of static or changing mental states. There is an analogue in the
psychological domain for every sub-predication and role type in specifier
position that has been discussed in this section.
In this section Ramchand talks about the difference between the pure
‘Causes’ and actual ‘Actors’ which is that an actor is related to both initiation
and process, whereas cause is a pure specifier of initiation. The psychological
version of a pure cause is an ‘intentional initiator’; the psychological version of
‘actor’ is a volitional agent with continuous experiential involvement in the
process. So for the different types of subject there are two distinct dimensions:
i. The first involves the difference between pure initiators and undergoer–
initiators, the latter of which are continually involved in the process and are
represented as such.
9
ii. The second dimension is that of encyclopedic content either via the verb’s
own lexical-encyclopedic information or through the perception of the
referential properties of the DP participant.
In the Stative predications section Ramchand mentions that stative verbs
consist of an init projection, with rhematic material projected as the complement
of init instead of a full processual procP. Since the init does not have procP as
its complement in this case, it is not interpreted as causational, but simply as a
state.
The next chapter that follows, Ramchand argues that there will never be
more than two arguments licensed in specifier position, in the description of the
verb types in English.
Chapter Four is entitled “Deriving verb classes”
The purpose of this chapter is to explore the ways in which this system can
be used to analyze different possible verb types. Here the emphasis is on the
flexibilities and constraints on the system itself. The first-phase syntax relates in
systematic ways to particular verb types, although the association between the
two should more be seen a pattern rather than a one-to-one correspondence. The
present chapter explores these patterns and analyses a wide range of English
sentence types that have been adduced in the argument structure, construcionist
and Aktionsart literature. Systematic correlation between aspect/Aktionsart and
certain constellations in the syntactic structure are indicated, for example ''when
a single lexical item identifies both process and result, the event expressed is
punctual''. Ramchand has also discussed the debate in the literature concerning
the direction of the causative–inchoative alternation. Recalling that Levin and
Rappaport Hovav (1995), Chierchia (2004) and Reinhart (2002) all agree in
deriving theinchoative alternant from a lexically causative base.
In the Initiation–process verbs section Ramchand examines the argument
structure of verbs which have an initiation component as well as a process
10
component. Firstly verbs should be distinguished in which the initiator and
undergoer are distinct, from ones in which the initiator and undergoer are filled
by the same DP constituent. Secondly, genuine undergoer arguments need to be
distinguishing from those which are ‘rhematic’ paths within the process phrase.
In the Initiation–process–result verbs section she states that there are a
number of verbs in English including the transitives such asbreak, throw, find,
explode, enter, and intransitives such as arrive, disappear that seem
independently able to identifythe result state of a process.
In the Transitivity alternations section she mentions that English has the
causative–inchoative alternation where a major point of ontention has been the
direction of lexical derivation for the alternation. According to Levin and
Rappaport Hovav (1995), there is distinction between the two types of
intransitive verb:
(i)
Those which embody internal causation.
(ii)
Those which involve external causation. (the externally caused
verbs include break and open and other verbs that participate in the
causative inchoative alternation in English)
Rmchand also addresses the systematic difference between ‘unaccusative’
alternants of such verbs and productive processes like passive which also create
non-initiator predications. She more explains concerning passive and said that,
while the ‘agent’ is absent, it is somehow still semantically present and can
control purpose clauses, and permit certain agentive adverbial phrases not
possible with real unaccusative verbs. She gives the following examples to more
clarify the point;
- The ball was thrown to annoy Alex.
- *The stick broke to annoy Alex. She believes that with passive, the transitive
verb still retains and projects its [init] feature, although the passive morphology
existentially binds off the actual initiator position.
11
In Conflation verbs section she claims that conflation is the type of verbs
that is derived by abstract incorporation into the head of the verbal projection
from complement position, subject to principles of syntactic movement.
In the Double object verbs section the writer argues that there are verbs
that can take two objects, but as Oehrle (1976) and Jackendoff (1990) which
show the semantic predicational relations for the two structures are actually
subtly different. To illustrate, the contrast described by Oehrle (1976) shows
that there is an animacy requirement on the first object of a double object
construction which does not carry over to the complement of to in the dative
alternant. In order to more elaborate she gives the following examples;
 The editor sent the article to Philadelphia.
 ??The editor sent Philadelphia the article.
In the Statives section she states that the stative verbs are the most
important stative verbs usually refer to a state or condition which is not
changing or likely to change. Statives differ from other classes of verbs in that
they are static; that is, they have undefined duration and cannot normally be
used in the continuous (BE + ING) forms.
They can be divided into verbs of perception or cognition (which refer to
things in the mind), or verbs of relation (which describe the relationships
between things).
In the Summary section Ramchand closes this chapter with the idea that the
many different types of verbs and verb classes can be put together with a
relatively impoverished set of primitives, and that the different possibilities for
verbal event-structure meanings/behaviours can be predicted by syntactic form,
and some general principles of lexical association.
Chapter Five/ Paths and results
12
In this chapter, Ramchand takes up the issues of path construction and
causative formation respectively in more detail, and attempt to make some more
substantive proposals.
In the PPs: paths and places section the writer states that there is an
interaction between full prepositional phrases and resultative formation. So in
this section path and result sentences are further illustrated and path phrases are
decomposed in a path phrase heading a place phrase (following Ray
Jackendoff's distinction between path and place prepositions). Ramchand
demonstrates the cross-linguistic relevance of the proposed structure by
introducing constructions from Korean (in which path phrases need not be
introduced by a preposition), Swedish, Norwegian, Russian (demonstrating the
interaction between aspect prefixes and argument structure in the language) and
Indic languages.
In the APs: paths and results section there is an explanation that in
English AP results with selected objects are always formed from adjectives that
are gradable and closed scale (Wechsler, 2001). So Ramchand argues that
gradable adjectives represent the property analogue of a scalar path which is
equivalent to Path Ps in the prepositional domain and incremental theme objects
of consumption verbs.
In the Types of resultatives in the first phase section Ramchand argues
that verbs which contain both initiation and process can usually be
systematically augmented in English by means of a secondary predicate
(adjective or particle) which describes afinal-result property or location arrived
at by a thematic argument.
Chapter Six/ Causativization
In its introductory part, Ramchand explains that causativization is one of
the important factors underlying verb alternations in English, and one which is
13
built in to the interpretation of verbal decompositional structure in a
fundamental way.
In the An analytic causative in Hindi/Urdu part the she picks out one
particular construction in Hindi/Urdu that has received some attention in the
literature, the causative construction, and demonstrates that the first-phase
syntax may account for the alternations found in the language. At the same
time, the comparison between English and Hindi/Urdu will allow us to
formulate some specific hypotheses about the nature of parametric variation in
constructing verbal meaning. The larger picture will be, frstly, that there is
explicit evidence for decomposition from morphological and analytical
constructions, and secondly, languages vary only in the ‘size’ of their lexical
items, not in the fundamental building blocks of meaning.
In the Overview of Hindi/Urdu transitivity alternations part (Kachru
1980, Hook 1979, Masica 1991, Saksena 1982) state that Hindi/Urdu verbs that
undergo morphological causativization fall into three classes;
i. Older stage of causativization in the language consists in a strengthening
process applied to the internal vowel of the root.
ii. The addition of the -aa suffix to the root; and
iii. The addition of the -vaa suffix to the root, representing direct and indirect
causation respectively.
In the Transitive–intransitive pairs via vowel alternation part Ramchand
concerns with the class of alternations, since he believes that it is the primary
source in the language for nonsuffixed transitive verbs. According to Panini and
the ancient grammarians, causatives were formed by root ‘strengthening’, while
Saksena (1982) and Bhatt (2003a) argue on the basis of predictability that the
phonological alternation must go in the direction of ‘transitive → intransitive’
like, (aa →a, ii →i, uu →u,o →u,e →i). Saksena (1982) argues that there are
cases of innovated intransitive forms in the history of Hindi/Urdu, back-formed
from certain transitives, Thus, the vowel alternating roots will be considered
14
‘causativization’ and is important in so far as both transitive and intransitive
alternants which will be input to the suffixing causatives –aa and -vaa.
In the Status of the causee part the writer states that under certain
conditions, a -se-marked (instrumental) adjunct is licensed in Hindi/Urdu
causatives. Causees, in Hindi/Urdu causatives, in the sense of instrumental (-se)
case-marked nominals interpreted as an ‘intermediate agent’ are always
optional; i.e. with -vaa causatives they are always possible while with –aa
causatives they are possible only when the base is a transitive.
In the Status of causer part she mentions that both the -aa and -vaa
causative are also used, and in each case only the –aa causative is possible with
the particular choice of subject. As in [ban-aa-naa/ban-vaa-naa ‘build’]
The Analysis part includes the subsections as, Representing the verb classes
in Hindi/Urdu, Direct vs. indirect causation, Direct causativization in –aa,
‘Indirect’ causativization in –vaa, In which the difference between direct and
indirect causation for the two morphemes is captured by the difference in lexical
specification for category features of the two different morphemes.
Chapter Seven/ Conclusion
This is the last chapter of the book in which Ramchand summarizes the
study and further specifying the relation between tense, aspect and verbal
decomposition,
the
book
concludes
with
a
number
of
open
questions, among which the place of case in the system and stative verbs.
On the terms 'constructivist', 'constructionalist' and 'constructionist', the
influence of construction grammar (esp. Goldberg, 1995) can be felt
throughout this study. In his book Ramchand attempts to implement an old idea
in the light of current, accumulated knowledge concerning the nature of 'lexical'
generalizations and patterns. This knowledge refers to the constructionist
approach, but it is the old idea which makes Ramchand's book a valuable and
innovative contribution to the constructionist debate, although the author
15
explicitly distances herself from constructionism: so the view proposed here
will be generative-constructivist in spirit, but not constructionist.
This reaction appears to be addressed to what Ramchand calls the 'radical
constructionalist approach' to the lexicon in which no lexical information is
present at all, but lexical items are inserted into syntactic contexts according to
compatibility with encyclopedic and real-world knowledge. One may question
if this is an accurate depiction of Radical Construction Grammar approaches in
the sense of Croft (2001) in which the notion of insertion is irrelevant since
there is simply no fundamental distinction between conventionalized meaning
on the level of lexemes or on the level of phrases, which reduces the difference
of opinion to a rather more fundamental theoretical position on the nature of the
required operations in the grammar.
But the main distinction between her model and construction grammar
models Ramchand aims to stress is that unlike the constructional grammar of
Goldberg (1995) event-compositional semantics will not be associated with
arbitrarily large syntactic objects, but constructed systematically on the basis of
primitive recursive syntactic relationships. It seems that Ramchand defines
'constructivist' as a systematic way of deriving meaning from structure, whereas
by 'constructional' she refers to surface structures which receive their meaning
from syntax internal operations, which, she argues, are overlooked in current
construction
grammar
approaches.
However, in another place the author does use the term 'constructional' to
refer to her own model, because she believes that this is a constructional system,
the wide variety of different verb types and role types will be derived from the
different combinatoric possibilities of the syntax. Here, the term according to
her refers to the entire syntactic structure from which meaning is derived. These
remarks are not as contradictory as Ramchand leads us to believe in her first
chapter, in fact, the notions are quite well-matched while the model outlined in
16
the present chapter is a specific account of constructional meaning and as such
forms part of a larger constructionist debate.
Conclusion
The book is written in a goog style, although it is somehow complex , but it
is designed in a systematic way helping readers make sense of what is
written.The smooth movement from a chapter to another is a good technique
used by the author to make the link stronger among the chapters.
It is a good source for gaining some knowledge about other levels of
linguistics such as syntax and semantics. For me, it is a great experience, being
acquainted with such subject.
The book constitutes a contribution to the Minimalist Program to others,
but the ways in which in the proposed first-phase syntax multiple roles may be
combined in a Merge operation to form complex semantic collection certainly
seems an interesting alternative to monistic Principles & Parameters proposals
and fully in the spirit of simplicity as I understand it.
But above all, Ramchand's study opens a dialogue between constructionist
approaches to grammar and formal grammar models. If simplicity is to be
interpreted as a step towards union in linguistic theory, just as constructionist
approaches to language structure might be seen, having come to permeate
formal and cognitive-functionalist grammars alike, the volume is of potential
interest to a wide range of readers. It may serve as an excellent starting point for
opening up a discussion between currents in theoretical linguistics about a topic
every
linguistic
theory
has
to
address.
17
In this work of Ramchand, one can find a fascinating study in which the
author builds up her argument carefully, unveiling her proposal layer by layer
while raising profound and interesting questions in the process. The model she
presents is descriptively elegant and Ramchand applies it to a collection of
phenomena and structures, many of which have not been previously treated in
an
integrated
account.
However there is a clear prediction that can be made and tested on the basis
of the proposed structure. The author argues for the model based on English and
then applies it to a number of selected examples from other (mainly IndoEuropean) languages. On the other hand, the volume does shed new light on the
non-English examples as well. For example, the proposed link between
argument structure and Russian aspect prefixes is an interesting and innovative
proposal in the study of aspect, although I would be curious to see how min
some
languages
would
have
to
be
treated
under
this
view.
Finally, an understanding of the morpho-syntax and of the semantic
primitives involved in the buildup of linguistic forms goes hand in hand. This
crucially involves separating out the semantic elements that are structural from
those that are purely conceptual or lexical encyclopedic.
18