Object Alternations and the Structure of Bulgarian Verb Phrase1
Tzvetomira Venkova
1. Introduction
Unexpressed object alternations cut across verb transitivity classes, thus
presenting a specific task to HPSG and namely to the way it licenses argument
realization. They are valence (diathesis) alternations in which the object argument of a
transitive verb can be either realized or unrealized. Alternations are not regarded as
verb’s idiosyncrasies but rather as ‘systematically related valence patterns’ Sag et al
(2003:262).
This paper discusses the basic issues of unexpressed object alternations effect on
Bulgarian verb complementation in HPSG. Bulgarian data is presented in comparison to
English and the cross-linguistic relevance of the English-based alternations typology of
Levin (1993) is tested. An analysis based on alternation lexical rules is proposed for the
corresponding semantic classes in English and Bulgarian.
2. Previous research
The paper draws on Levin (1993) classification of alternations and also on the
more general comments on approaches to alternations in Levin and Rappaport (2005).
The Sag et al (2003) HPSG proposal for lexical rules formalization of alternations has
been the starting point for the present analysis.
In regard to the cross-linguistic aspect of Levin’s typology, the discussions in
Frense and Benett (1996) - an English-German account and Fernández et al (1999) Catalan-Spanish-English, have been useful. Kordoni (2004) provides an HPSG account
of dative alternation in Modern Greek.
Among the formal accounts of unexpressed object alternations in Bulgarian are
those of Dimitrova-Vulchanova (1999), where they are treated in relation to the aspectual
and semantic characteristics of the verb within the framework of the Sign Model, the
shared-grammar HPSG account of Avgustinova et al (1999) and the research of Koeva
(2004). This issue is also discussed in Penchev (1993:64-65) and Rå Hauge (1999:90).
3. Relevance of Levin’s typology of the unexpressed object alternations to
Bulgarian
The analysis of Bulgarian unexpressed object alternations follows the Englishbased classification and relevant semantic verb classes as presented in Levin (1993:3341). She distinguishes eight subtypes of unexpressed object alternations with one or more
semantic verb classes that exhibit each alternation subtype.
The examples below follow Levin’s classification of unexpressed object
alternations and the semantic classes of verbs (Levin 1993:33-41), providing for each of
them, semantically closest Bulgarian equivalents to the English sentences.
1
The research in this paper was made possible by an Alexander von Humboldt research grant for which I
am very grateful. Special thanks to my academic host Erhard Hinrichs and to Frank Richter, Heike
Zinsmeister and Viara Maldjieva for their comments.
1

Unspecified object alternation
(1a) My mother is cooking a soup.
(1b) My mother is cooking.
(1c) Майка ми готви супа.
(1d) Майка ми готви.

Understood body-part object alternation
(2a) The man nodded his head.
(2b) The man nodded.
(2c) Човекът кимна с глава.
(2d) Човекът кимна.

Understood reflexive object alternation
(3a) John washed himself.
(3b) John washed.
(3c) Джон се изми.

Understood reciprocal object alternation
(4a) John divorced Jane.
(4b) Jane and Jane divorced.
(4c) Джон се разведе с Джейн.
(4d) Джон и Джейн се разведоха.

PRO-arb object alternation
(5a) His voice annoys people.
(5b) His voice annoys.
(5c) Гласът му дразни хората.
(5d) Гласът му дразни.

Characteristic property alternation
o Characteristic property of agent alternation
(6a) Our cat scratches people.
(6b) Our cat scratches.
(6c) Нашата котка драска хората.
(6d) Нашата котка драска.
o
Characteristic property of instrument alternation
(7a) She usually writes with this pen.
2
(7b) This pen writes well.
(7c) Тя обиковено пише с тази химикалка.
(7d) Тая химикалка пише добре.
(7f) С тази химикалка се пише добре.
‘with this pen
write-se-pass well’

Way object alternation
(8a) They pushed their way though the mass of people.
(8b) They pushed though the mass of people.
(8c) Те си пробиха път през тълпата.

Instructional imperative
(9a) Beat the mixture for 10 minutes.
(9b) Beat for 10 minutes.
(9c) Разбивайте сместа 10 мин.
(9d) Разбивайте 10 мин.
The research is based on empirical analysis that tested the relevance of each particular
subtype of unexpressed object alternations to the corresponding semantic verb classes in
Bulgarian. Several types of correspondences have been distinguished:
 Type 1: An object alternation, such as the unspecified object alternation in (1) above, is
expressed by similar structures cross-linguistically (although with some language-specific
semantic or aspectual properties):
(10)
--
NPi V NPj
(Engl),
(Bulg)
NPi V
 Type 2: The same object alternation is exhibited in both languages but Bulgarian VP
structure has some additional variations, e.g. (11) refers to 7 a-d:
(11)
(Engl),
(Bulg)
PP
NPi V
P
--
NPj V
NPj
and there is also an additional Bulgarian expression (7 f) in the se-passive.
 Type 3: An English object alternation is expressed in Bulgarian by a different structure
in one of the alternative VPs, cf. (12-13) referring to examples 2 a-d above.
(12)
(Engl)
NPi
V
NPj
--
NPi V
(Bulg)
NPi
V
PP
--
NPi V
(13)
P
NPj
3
 Type 4: An English object alternation is not relevant to Bulgarian, cf. 3 a-c above
(14)
(Engl)
NPi
V
NPi
--
(15)
(Bulg)
NPi
V
NPi
-- no alternative structure
NPi V
The table in (16) shows the correspondence type and the semantic class for each
alternation. The semantic classes are indicated according to Levin’s enumeration. Some
of them have particular labels, e.g. verbs of gestures/ signs involving body parts, others
are not coherent enough to be named and they bear the number given in Levin (1993).
For the sake of simplicity, correspondence type 1 is indicated by ‘+’ and type 4 - by ‘–‘.
(16)
Unexpressed Object
alternation types for English
Unspecified object alternation
Understood body-part object
alternation
Understood reflexive object
alternation
Understood reciprocal object
alternation
PRO-arb object alternation
Characteristic property
alternation
- Characteristic property of agent
- Characteristic property of
instrument
Way object alternation
Instructional imperative
Semantic class
Bulgarian
(37)
(39) verbs of gestures/signs
involving body parts
(42) verbs of caring for a
specific body part
(47) verbs of caring for the
whole body
(54) load verbs
(56) push/pull verbs
(58) verbs of social
interaction
- marry verbs
- meet verbs
(62) verbs of contiguous
location
(67) advice verbs
(69) amuse type psychverbs
+
type 3
(71)
+
(73)
type 3
(78) push/ pull verbs
(80)
type 2
+
type 3
-
type 2
type 2
type 2
+
+
4. Analysis
The HPSG distinction between verb transitivity classes, as given in Sag et al
(2003:237), does not account for the alternations in (1) – (7) above. Following the
principles of their lexeme sort hierarchy, all verbs in (1) – (7) should be ascribed to only
one transitivity class. However, if they are defined only as strict transitive, their lexical
4
entry will only license the (a) and (c) verb projections in each alternation type above and
there is nothing in the grammar to account for sentences (b) and (d).
The paper suggests a solution of this problem following a lexical rule approach,
which is suggested as a general direction for accounting for alternations in Sag et al
(2003:263): ‘patterns of valence alternations are governed by both semantic and syntactic
constraints of the kind that could be described by finely tuned lexical rules’. The proposal
below draws on this claim in attempting to develop particular solutions for the
unexpressed object alternations that are valid for both English and Bulgarian.
Changes in the sort hierarchy of lexical rules and a particular alternation rule form
are proposed.
4.1. Augmentation of Bulgarian verb lexical entries
The HPSG analysis of Bulgarian verbs presupposes a verb lexical entry reflecting
its specificity. A number of Bulgarian-specific attributes and attribute values are
introduced below. It is mainly those concerning argument realization and some basic
features, such as grammaticalized aspect, lack of infinitive verb forms, evidential forms
and dative case for prepositions, that have been considered. Some other syntactic
phenomena might require further augmentation. The differences in verb lexical entries
are briefly described below in comparison to the HPSG English-based attributes and
appropriateness conditions in Sag et al (2003:493-500).

the IMPERF attribute
An additional attribute is proposed so as to account for the grammaticalized
aspectual system of Bulgarian verbs. The aspect values of Bulgarian verbs can be either
perfective or imperfective2. Almost any verb can be paired with a verb of the alternative
aspect3. Thus, the English verb eat can be expressed in Bulgarian either by ям оr изям,
and sit by сядам or седна, depending on the aspectuality of the action. Although
aspectual pairs are traditionally analyzed derivationally, here I stick to the hypothesis,
supported by some authors, cf. Rå Hauge 1999:85-89, among others, that the members of
the aspectual pair are two distinct lexical items.
Therefore in our HPSG account each verb’s lexical entry is regarded as having a
particular aspect value, which is independent of the value of the other element in the
pair4. The proposal is to define verb’s aspect as a HEAD feature IMPERF with a Boolean
value. Respectively, the verbs of perfective aspect are IMPERF +, and those of perfective
aspect: IMPERF-.
The aspect values in Bulgarian determine the realization of some unexpressed
object alternations types, e.g. the unspecified object alternation, since, in principle, the
prefixed perfective verbs can not have projections with unspecified objects (cf.
Vulchanova (1999), Penchev (1993:64-65), e.g.
2
Exceptionally, there are also biaspectual verbs.
There also verbs, which are ‘defective’ in this respect.
4 In principle, it is also possible to use the morphological-derivation approach to license the HPSG lexical entries by
stating some kind of class relatedness between the members of aspectual pairs, which can be captured by lexical rules.
However, such relatedness is complicated not only morphologically (e.g. often these are actually triples because of the
secondary aspect derivation) but also semantically, since the prefixation, for example, can lead to change of meaning.
Therefore it is considered as inefficient here.
3
5
(17) Тя пя
тая песен вчера.
She sing-aor,IMPERF+ this song
‘She sang this song yesterday’
(18) Тя изпя
Тя пя
--
she sing-aor,3sg IMPERF+ yesterday
‘She sang yesterday’
--
*Тя изпя
вчера.
--
*she sing-aor, IMPERF-
yesterday
--
*
yesterday
тая песен вчера.
She sing-aor,IMPERF- this song
--
yesterday
‘She sang this song yesterday’
вчера.
Thus, aspect value, as a factor determining some alternations, should be present in
the lexical entry.

the INF attribute
A specific feature of Bulgarian, in contrast not only to English but also to the other Slavic
languages, is that it has no infinitive forms. A finite verb form, preceded by da, occurs in
positions where other languages have non-finite verb forms:
(19) Аз искам да чета – Ти искаш да четеш - Те искат да четат.
I want-1sg da read-1sg - you want-2sg da read-2sg - they want-3pl da read-3pl
‘I want to read’
- ‘You want to read’
- They want to read’
This specific aspect of Bulgarian necessitates the change of two attributes in the
verbs lexical entry description compared to English. In particular, the INF (INFINITIVE)
attribute is no longer declared and the FORM attribute has no ‘base’ and ‘to’ values.
All examples shown in (1) – (7) above are simplified in regard to the verb form.
Actually the corpus data shows many occurrences of complex verb forms, as well as
modals such as:
(20a) John is reading/will read/has been reading etc. (all morning).
(20b) Иван чете, ще чете, беше чел и т.н. (цяла сутрин).
Since often the underspecifcation of the object is related to the focus on the action
as an ability, the verbs often occur with modals:
(21a) John can/must/ read.
(21b) Иван може/трябва да чете.
The VP mechanism, according to which the verb combines with the auxiliary first
and then the verbal complex takes the NP as a complement, cf. Hinrichs and Nakasawa
(1994:22), accounts for Bulgarian complex verbs, too, cf. (22). However in regard to
Bulgarian, these structures license complex verb forms as the ones in (20), but not for
modal auxiliaries, cf. (21), since they require a verb with da-form. ‘Da’ can be declared
as a value, replacing the English-based ‘to’ in Sag et al 2003 only if an additional
mechanism for agreement of the two verbs (or of each verb to the subject) is incorporated
in the grammar.
The issue of complex verb forms goes beyond the scope of this paper but the
above shown overall architecture of the VP, is to be presumed as a background to our
simple predicate examples.
6

(22)

VP FORM fin
V
NP
FORM fin

V
V
FORM fin
AUX + 
FORM base
AUX - 
will
ще
read
чете
a book
книга
the FORM attribute
In addition to the changes to the FORM attribute values, due to the lack of
infinitive forms, discussed above, some Bulgarian-specific FORM values for participial
forms, se-passives and evidential forms are suggested below.
Due to the rich Bulgarian participial system, several participial forms that replace
the English values: prp (present participle), psp (past participle) and pass (passive) have
been introduced The following Bulgarian values are declared as appropriate: presact-p
(present active participle), pastactperf-p (past active perfective participle), pastactimp-p
(past active imperfective participle), pastpass-p (past passive participle,), gerund-p
(gerund participle)5. These forms for the verb чета ‘read’ are given below:
(23)
presact- p
pastactperf- p
pastactimp- p
pastpass- p
gerund- p
- четящ
- четял
- чел
- четен
- четейки
Since there are two passive forms in Bulgarian, respectively two values are
declared for each of them: part-pass in (24a), se-pass (se-passive)(24b):
( 24a ) Хлябът се изяде.
( 24b ) Хлябът беше изяден.
‘The bread was eaten’
In principle, the verbs exhibiting object alternations, being as one alternative strict
transitive, can form passives. However, it seems that for Bulgarian the verb projection
with unexpressed object has a corresponding impersonal passive, in which not only the
agent but also the affected object is not expressed:
(25) Ядеше се.
Eat-3sg
se
Rå Hauge’s English terminology for Bulgarian participles is followed with some minor changes, cf. Rå
Hauge 1999:135.
5
7
This construction is rather similar to German sentences, in which the ‘thematic
es’ is in subject position:
‘(26) Es wurde gegessen
The relation of se-passive to alternations can not be captured without a particular
feature value for it.
An additional FORM value for Bulgarian is evid (evidential). It is to reflect the
systematic presence of evidential verb forms in Bulgarian, e.g.
(27) Той четеше.
He was reading.
(28) Той четял.
He (was said to be) reading.
The declaration of evid as a FORM value allows its treatment via lexical rule.
The value fin (finite) remains unchanged.

The CASE attribute
Case inflection in Bulgarian, similar to English, is morphologically realized only
with pronouns and not with nouns. Since Bulgarian pronouns, in contrast to English, have
also dative form, a value dat (dative) is declared in Bulgarian in addition to nom and acc.

The Attribute-Value Matrix
The language-specific augmentation, discussed above is presented below in (14)
for the sort synsem and (15) for the sort verb-lxm.
The constraints on the pos sort (since verb-lxm is a subsort of agr-pos and
respectively of pos), in particular to the FORM, INF and IMPERF attributes, have been
augmented, cf. (14).
synsem






SYN

(14) 








syn - cat





HEAD






VAL




agr - pos



fin, da, presact -p, past act perf-p, pasrt act imp-p,

F ORM  past pass-p, gerund-p, part -pass, se-pass,



 evid, nform, aform, cform, ...



P RED
 , 


agr
cat




P ER 1st , 2nd, 3rd
AGR

NUM sg, pl



IMP ERF  , 


val - cat


SP R
list(expression) 

COMP S list(expression) 

MOD list(expression) 

8
verb-lxm


SYN


SEM


ARG-ST




(15)

verb


P RED  
HEAD

AUX  , 

P OL  



MODE prop
expression


nominal
 ,
X= HEAD
CASE nom, acc, dat


val-cat



SP R

VAL



COMP S 


















4.2. Changes in the sort hierarchy
The analysis follows Sag et al (2003) postulation of lexical rules as separate sorts
in the sort hierarchy, namely l-rule being the general sort and i-rule, d-rule and pi-rule –
subsorts.
In the paper I propose that the d-rule branch of the sort hierarchy is further
extended by defining alternation rule (a-rule) as a subsort of a d-rule and particular
alternation rules as its subsorts.
Since the proposed alternation rule mechanism licenses unexpressed object
alternations outside the lexeme sort hierarchy, the alternating verb lexemes are ascribed
to only one sort in the type hierarchy and are later treated by lexical alternation rules
which operate on the species of the lexeme sort hierarchy.
(15)
bot
l-rule:
d-rule:
alternationrule (a-rule)
passivization rule
unexpressed object a-rule
a2-rule
…
… nominalization rule
an-rule
4.3. a-rules
The paper proposes the a-rule in (17) according to the augmented l-rule type hierarchy.
INP UT  X , SEM / 1  
SYN / 2 



a-rule: 
(17)


SEM / 1 
OUT P UT  X , SYN / 2  
The additional constraint, enforced by it, is the identity of the phonetic forms of
the verbs. They are indicated by the same variable X, whose values belong to a list
containing the phonetic strings of verbs, exhibiting that particular alternation type. The
ARG-ST value remains unconstrained.
Accordingly, in the unexpressed object alternation rule in (17) the ARG-ST of the
output has no object argument on its list:
9
(17)
Unexpressed object alternation -rule:

INP UT 



OUTP UT 

X
X





 

,
SEM

/ 1


SYN
/
2


ARG-ST Y , Z 
,
SEM
/ 1


/ 2
SYN
ARG-ST Y 
The lexical rule given above is applied to the lexeme read:
LR
(18)
чета
чета
2
1
Чета2 is a lexical variant of чета1, licensed outside the hierarchy. Strictly
speaking, чета in the type hierarchy indicates a class of verb lexemes related by the
lexical rule.
The application of this rule leads to change in the mapping of semantic roles in
SEM [RESTR ‹ [predication] ›] to each ARG-ST ‹ [expression] › in the lexical sequence
чета2, since its SEM value remains unchanged.
5. Conclusions
The paper has argued that the alternations typology of Levin 1993 has descriptive
adequacy for Bulgarian as well. An augmentation of the constraints on Bulgarian verbal
lexical entries has been proposed, so that they fit the general VP architecture of HPSG. A
particular solution, incorporating the alternations into HPSG by means of extended
lexical rules hierarchy and alternations rules, has been discussed.
References:
Avgustinova, T., Skut, W. and Uszkoreit, H. (1999): Typological Similarities in HPSG. Borsley, R. and
Przepiórkowski, A. (eds.) Slavic in Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar, CSLI Publications.
Dimitrova-Vulchanova (1999). Verb Semantics, Diathesis and Aspect. LINCOM Studies in Theoretical
Linguistics. LINCOM EUROPA, München.
Fernandez, A., Martí, M.A, Vàzquez, G., Castellón, I., (1999) Establishing Semantic Oppositions for the
Typification of Predicates: On the concept of Doathesis Alternations as semantic Oppositions.
Language Design 2, 71-87.
Frense, J. and Bennett, P. (1996) Verb alternations and semantic classes in English and German, Language
sciences 18, 305-317.
Hinrichs, E. and Nakasawa, Ts. (1994) Linearizing AUXs in German Verbal Complexes. German in
HPSG, J. Nerbonne, K. Netter, C. Pollard (eds.), CSLI publications, 11-39.
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Conference, Stefan Müller (ed.), CSLI Publications.
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Levin, B. and Rappaport, M. (2005) Argument Realization. Cambridge University Press.
Penchev, J. (1993), Български синтаксис. Пловдивско университетско издателство, Пловдив.
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