Week 11: The morphology-syntax interface

English Morphology

Fernanda Barrientos

2025-01-14

Valency and arguments

Valency

Number of arguments that a verb takes.

• Note that argument is a semantic concept, whereas subject, object and adjunct are syntactic concepts.
• Arguments are phrases that are semantically necessary for a verb, or are implied by the meaning of the verb.

Verbs according to transitivity

• Verbs that have only one argument are intransitive. Ex: snore

• Transitive verbs require two arguments: a subject and an object.
• Ex: discuss

• Sometimes, a verb will require three arguments. They are called ditransitive verbs.
• Ex: give

Are arguments obligatory?

• Some arguments are not mandatory (though they often are).

• Example: eat

  • I’m eating. ✔️
  • I’m eating a pizza. ✔️

• Note that prepositional phrases are not necessary to the meaning of the verb, therefore they are not arguments. Syntactically speaking, these are adjuncts.

• However, languages have -to different extents- morphological mechanisms to change the valency of the verb

• This way, we can e.g. turn a transitive verb into an intransitive one, or vice versa.

Passivization

• In active sentences, the subject of the sentence is the agent:

• …whereas in the passive sentence we don’t need the agent.

Anti-passive

• The anti-passive also reduces the number of arguments of the verb. However, instead of eliminating the agent, what disappears is the patient.
• The argument made optional can also be expressed explicitly, but in different case
  • In anti-passive sentences, the subject is absolutive and the object, when expressed, goes in dative or locative case

Causatives

• Causatives add a new argument: the subject, which is the causer of the action

• Note that ‘boil’ has only one (patient) argument, to which the causer is added

• In the second example, the verb has two arguments, to which a third one is added.

Applicative

• Applicative morphology adds an object to the valency of the verb.

Noun Incorporation

• Some languages (usually polysynthetic ones) may allow for the Incorporation of a noun as part of the verb

Clitics

• Clitics are neither affixes nor free morphemes:

  • They don’t bear stress

• They form one single phonological word with an adjacent word (host)

• ’ll is the contracted form of will, and ’d the contraction of would.

• Note that these may also attach to other word categories:

• Clitics may appear before or after the host

  • Proclitics come before the host
  • Enclitics come after the host

Simple and special clitics

• In English, forms such as ’ll or ’d are examples of simple clitics, which are unaccented variants of free morphem es and appear in the same position as the free word would

• Special clitics also depend on a host, but they are not reduced forms of independent words. Though it may appear written apart from the host, they cannot form a phonological word.

Phrasal verbs

• In English, phrasal verbs consist of a verb and a preposition:
  • call up
  • put down
  • chew out
• They tend to have idiomatic meanings
• However, they are not compounds, since verb and prepositions may not appear together (one after another)
  • I called my friend up.

Phrasal compounds

• Compound consisting of phrase + noun:

  • stuff-blowing-up effects!
  • take-it-or-leave-it stance

Morphological vs. syntactic expression

• Some languages may express things morphologically, which means they deploy inflection or derivation mechanisms to convey meaning

• Ganar-e-mos

• win-FUT-1.PL

• Other languages, while still being able to convey the same meaning, might have to do so periphrastically: English We will win is the equivalent of Ganaremos

Summary

• Morphology and syntax are not fully independent from each other

• Morphology may affect the syntax of a sentence by changing the valency of the verb

• Some phenomena may blur the line between morphology and syntax, such as clitics, phrasal verbs, and phrasal compounds

• Some languages may have several mechanisms that allow for morphological expression of meaning, while others do so periphrastically

Next week

• Finish exercises
• Attend your tutorial