Abstract
Continuing the investigation of grammatical relations in Palauan, this chapter focuses on direct objects, which exhibit an unusual pattern of accusative case morphology. I begin by demonstrating that the aspectual properties of transitive verbs correlate with differences in how their direct object DPs are marked, one of which is a dependent-marking differential object marking pattern, and the other is a head-marking object agreement pattern. I present a wealth of evidence from raising-to-object constructions, morphological causatives, transitive stative predicates, and passives that—despite the aspectual split and difference between the case-marking patterns—transitive predicates are structurally identical. I develop an analysis of direct object DP licensing and the syntactic composition of aspect in the verbal complex, concluding that there are different “flavors” of transitive v that are specified for different aspect features. I propose that direct objects are uniformly licensed via an Agree relation instantiated by transitive v and present evidence for this view with data involving left-conjunct agreement. The conclusions drawn in this chapter serve to augment our knowledge of the features of argument structure, Case licensing, aspect, and object agreement in Palauan and cross-linguistically.
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Notes
- 1.
I show in Sect. 3.3 that when er appears overtly to mark direct objects of imperfective verbs, it is not a preposition, but rather a simple case-marker that is inserted post-Spell Out, on the PF branch.
- 2.
The verbs in (113) and (114) are prime examples of the complex verbal morphophonology of Palauan. To understand how these verbs are formed, it might help to think of perfective verbalization as the infixation of -m- into the roots. In (113), we would have \(\sqrt{\textsc {kal}}\) \(+\) -m- which results in the intermediate representation /kmal/. In (113a), the suffixation of -ii results in a shift in stress to the final syllable, which triggers coalescence of /ma/ into /o/, resulting in the surface form kolii. In (113b) on the other hand, no suffixation occurs, so the intermediate form /kmal/ is a monosyllable with main stress, allowing the word-final /l/ to drop, resulting in /kma/. Finally, the velar nasal—which optionally suffixes to words ending in /a/, /o/, or /u/—is inserted, resulting in the surface form kmang. In (114), the verb stems both host suffixes that attract stress, so when -m- is infixed into the root \(\sqrt{\textsc {ues}}\) to yield the intermediate forms /umes-a/ and /umes-te-rir/, coalescence of /um/ before /e/ in an unstressed syllable results in /m/, yielding the surface forms mesterir and mesang, which again shows suffixation of the velar nasal. Thanks to the careful work of Wilson (1972a, b ) and Flora (1974 ), such intricacies of Palauan morphophonology are now well-understood and derivable, despite their complexity.
- 3.
While this set of object agreement suffixes is compatible with the vast majority of Palauan perfective verbs, there is nevertheless a relatively large subclass of irregular verbs which show some variability in the form of their object agreement suffixes, typically in the 3rd person. This is one of the reasons that Georgopoulos (1991 ) analyzes them as true affixes rather than clitics. An example of an irregular form is the [3sg] suffix -ang in mesang “see” in (114a).
- 4.
- 5.
Note the homophony between Palauan’s only preposition, er, and the accusative case marker er. It is not uncommon crosslinguistically for languages to utilize/reanalyze prepositional, locative, or dative morphemes as accusative case markers in differential object marking systems—a fact that presumably calls for some explanation. In addition to Spanish personal a, which marks human direct objects and is homophonous with the preposition a (see (169) through (171) later in this chapter), an anonymous reviewer provides some other examples. In Hindi, the postposition -ko marks both recipients in ditransitive clauses as well as highly animate/specific themes in monotransitives. In Malagasy, pronouns, proper names of humans, and (optionally) DPs introduced by a demonstrative take the proclitic an- when they occur in direct object position; an- also functions as a locative marker. These patterns of homophony might have some structural basis, or they might be the by-product of a common grammaticalization path for the creation of differential object marking. Unfortunately, I cannot say anything interesting or intelligent about the rationale behind the homophony between the differential object marker er in Palauan and the preposition er. It is my hope that future research can uncover the reason for this homophony in language after language.
- 6.
Fortin (2006 ) also argues that Indonesian meng- is a 3rd person indefinite clitic object pronoun that acts as an antipassive marker. Her analysis accounts for some key phenomena in Indonesian, but an antipassive analysis is unlikely to be tenable for Palauan meN-, as meN- appears even on verbs with derived objects like causatives and raising-to-object verbs, as described below.
- 7.
Raising-to-object constructions are also known as exceptional case marking (ECM) constructions, depending on the theoretical assumptions one makes. See Rosenbaum (1967 ) , Kiparsky and Kiparsky (1970 ) , Chomsky (1973, 1981 ) , Postal (1974 ) , Lasnik and Saito (1991 ) and Runner (1995, 1998, 2006 ) .
- 8.
Note the word order in (147) and (148), in which the (bracketed) embedded subject appears directly to the right of the verb. The word order appears to be the result of clause extraposition, like that seen in (90) and (91) in Chap. 2, but unfortunately I do not have clean evidence to support that analysis. What is important, however, is that the embedded subjects receive \(\theta \)-roles from the embedded predicates, but trigger object agreement on the matrix verb.
- 9.
I remain agnostic as to whether a raising-to-object analysis or an ECM analysis is superior. Although it does seem clear from the position of the case-marked DP that movement has occurred, there is not yet sufficient empirical evidence in Palauan that the moved DP is in the matrix clause for me to advocate one analysis over the other.
- 10.
The name of such a Case is purely theoretical, as the morphology indicating it is null and it is not clear what semantic contribution it would add. Calling it Partitive is arbitrary; it could also be called Dative, or simply Inherent.
- 11.
Note that Josephs (1990: 364) lists meiko and muiko for “blind,” while Ramarui and Temael (1999: 221) list only meiko. As the correct spelling of the Palauan word for “blind” in (152a) is controversial, I have (without consequence) chosen to leave my consultant’s spelling of mikeiu intact, should this somehow be of use to future researchers. The important point to take away from this sentence is not the spelling of any particular word but rather that the derived object a mikeiu el chad “the blind person” is [\(+\) hum, sg, \(+\) spec] and is marked with er.
- 12.
Recall the Persian examples in (126) and (127), the Finnish examples in (128), the Turkish examples in (129), and the Amharic examples in (130). The alternating structural/inherent Case analysis might be a good candidate to explain the facts in these languages.
- 13.
The meN-/oN- prefixes are Palauan’s reflexes of pan-Austronesian (or at least pan-Malayo-Polynesian) maN-, with a change of Proto *n > l, which explains the appearance of [l] instead of [n] in applications of nasal substitution with alveolar inputs. The two forms meN- and oN- are phonologically conditioned allomorphs, alternating predictably according to the shapes of the stems to which they attach. The set of infix allomorphs represents Palauan’s instantiation of pan-Austronesian/ Malayo-Polynesian -um-.
- 14.
Palauan uek- is presumably cognate with Tagalog pag-.
- 15.
The details of the morphophonology are tangential to the current discussion. But to be precise, I analyze the imperfective verb omekdakt in (154a) as oN- \(+\) uek- \(+\) \(\sqrt{\textsc {dakt}}\). The nasal substitution induced by oN- results in /u/ \(\rightarrow \) /m/. I analyze the perfective verb mekdektii in (154b) as -m- \(+\) uek- \(+\) \(\sqrt{\textsc {dakt}}\) \(+\) -ii. The infixation of -m- into uek- results in the sequence /umek/, in which /um/ undergoes coalescence and becomes simply /m/. Even if my morphological analysis turns out to be flawed, what is crucial is that the causative prefix does not appear outside of the aspect morphology, yielding (unattested) forms like *uek-melakt (imperfective) or *uek-dmakt (perfective).
- 16.
Travis (2010 : 268) uses slightly different terminology. She says that imparfait selects a homogeneous expression, whereas passé simple selects a quantized expression. What is important for the present discussion is simply that there is a selectional relation that targets a particular aspect.
- 17.
In Sect. 3.4.2 I called the features that appear on Asp\({}_{\mathrm {s}}\) [ ±definite/telic]; I am not committed to a particular label for the features that occupy the Asp\({}_{\mathrm {s}}\) position, and as their associated morphology is null, any label would be purely theoretical.
- 18.
- 19.
- 20.
- 21.
V could also easily be called \(\sqrt{\textsc {root}}\) if one adopts the category-neutral root theory of Marantz (1997 ) et seq.
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Nuger, J. (2016). Licensing Internal Arguments. In: Building Predicates. Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, vol 92. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28682-2_3
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