The Morphosyntax of Transitions

Abstract

Abstract This book deals with the cross-linguistic expression of events of transition, as encoded in the well-known Talmian typology of satellite- vs verb-framed languages. The principal aim is that of deriving the variation from morphological properties of functional items involved in the syntactic structuring of such events. Empirically, the focus is mainly set on the status of Early and Classical Latin as a satellite-framed language, which is explored through the examination of a variety of constructions. Latin is compared with Slavic and the generalization is explored that neither language allows the expression of complex adjectival resultative constructions. This generalization is shown to relate to a further one, namely, that both languages express the result state/location of a complex transition through prefixes. These languages, which are called weak satellite-framed languages, contrast thus with languages like English, and Germanic in general, which are called strong satellite-framed languages. An explanation is provided in terms of the morphological properties of the head expressing transition, i.e. Path. This head is prefixal in weak but not in strong satellite-framed languages. In verb-framed languages such as Romance, on the other hand, Path is strictly adjacent to v. The analysis is couched in a neo-constructionist approach to argument structure and a Distributed Morphology approach to the syntax-morphology interface.

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