Tonjes Veenstra

(John F. Kennedy Institute, Berlin)

Alexiadou & Anagnostopoulou (2001) propose a novel generalization concerning the placement of arguments by Spell-Out, centering the discussion on principles that force arguments to leave the VP across languages. The empirical domain they cover consists of constructions where subject movement is not required for reasons related to the Extended Projection Principle, expletive constructions being one of them. In these environments, one of the arguments must vacate the VP. They argue that argument externalization is related to Case Theory.

In this paper I will present novel data on expletive constructions in Papiamentu that cast doubt on the claim that the Subject-in-Situ generalization should be accounted for in terms of Case Theory. Instead, the data show that theta-theoretic factors are at play.

In a Case-theoretic approach, it is crucial that NP and PP arguments pattern differently, since only the former are dependent on the v-V complex for their Case. It is shown that in Papiamentu NP and PP arguments do not exhibit different patterns. In both cases the subject-in-situ option is not possible. This is a strong argument against the Case-theoretic approach. Furthermore, PP arguments and PP adjuncts do pattern differently. Only in the latter case, the subject can remain in-situ. This is taken to indicate that the argument/adjunct distinction is an important factor in the analysis of expletive constructions in Papiamentu.

In addition, a full discussion of expletive constructions allows us to make the following points. First, Papiamentu has verb movement, although it has no affixal TMA markers (cf. Baptista 2000, DeGraff 2002) This argues against the correlation between “rich” Agreement and verb movement (cf. Rohrbacher 1994, Bobaljik 2001). Second, the behavior of serial verbs in expletive constructions shows that we have to distinguish two types of them in Papiamentu: compound and syntactically built serial verb constructions.

References:

Alexiadou, A. & E. Agnostopoulou (2001) “The Subject-in-Situ Generalization and the Role of Case in Driving Computations.” Linguistic Inquiry 32.2, 193-231.

Baptista, M. (2000) “Verb movement in four Creole Languages: a comparative analysis.” In J. McWhorter (ed.) Language Change and Language Contact in Pidgins and Creoles, 1-34. John Benjamins, Amsterdam.

Bobaljik, J. (2001). The rich agreement hypothesis in review. Ms., McGill University.

DeGraff, M. (2002) “Morphology and word order in ‘creolization’ and beyond.” To appear in G. Cinque & R. Kayne (eds.) Handbook of Comparative Syntax. Oxford University Press, New York.

Rohrbacher, B. (1994) The Germanic VO Languages and the Full Paradigm: a theory of V to I raising. PhD, UMass.